How To Beat Autoimmunity With Peptides

Dr. Miles Nichols

Dr. Jen, thank you so much for having me. Hello, everyone.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Yes, why don’t you introduce yourself a little bit more about how you got involved in what you do now? It seems healing yourself has made you such an expert at healing others.

Dr. Miles Nichols

It goes back to starting with the family that I grew up in. My dad was a doctor, too. He had a Master’s in Public Health as well as being a doctor. He was focused on helping send mobile clinics out to rural areas to give checkups to the working poor and teaching in the medical school. Then he became a state Legislator and then a state Senator, and he was working to get a lot of legislation passed and to get access to resources for people who needed them for health purposes. I remember at one point it got so busy for him, so stressful that he called my mom and said, I think this job is going to kill me. The next day I got a call from someone from my church, and it was Claudia from the church said, Something had happened. It’s your dad. He’s in the hospital and he passed away from a heart attack. 

I was 15 years old at the time. It was a significant shift for me internally to try to understand and come to grips with what had gone on there. Why did that happen? I was convinced that stress was a part of it, and I started to become a little bit obsessed with how I manage stress. How do I not do this to a family someday? How do I help other people? I shifted gears. I started college in Computer Engineering, shifted gears, went into psychology, mindfulness, and spirituality, and then found Chinese medicine and then functional medicine and looked at how I could help people in a way that transformed stress. Because for me, I was also experiencing moments of peace, moments of feeling I was good, content, and at peace. But then the stressors of life would kick in, and I’d feel irritated and frustrated, and I decided I wanted to try and figure that out for myself and to help others.

Through mindfulness practices, movement practices, and meeting some important teachers, I went to this workshop when I was 22. I sat in the back. I was the youngest one there, not by a couple of years but by a couple of decades. I was trying to figure out if it was a movement practice or meditation, but the teacher was talking about the possibility of transforming stress, of being outside of the worries and concerns of the mind to be in this at the moment and the body. I’m, yes, well, I’ve heard all this before. I’ve been in all these yoga classes. I’ve been around the spiritual block, but then he said, I’m going to show you, and I’m going to do a movement, and I’m going to do it with this state, and I’m going to do it not with this state. One time I’m going to do it, I’m just doing normal exercise and physical movement; another time, you’re on vacation. No worries, no concerns, no obligations, nothing to do, nowhere to be—just this sense of complete bliss, openness, and love in the body. He showed it. When he showed the movement with this, just a smile on his face, did this movement. Everything so wonderful and so nice is doing this movement.

I thought that’s what I’ve been looking for and feeling that I’ve needed. I took a deep dive into that piece of how I embody that. How do I live that? How do I get into that in my own body, in my own life, in my relationships, in my work? That did a lot for me. I felt this sense of contentment and inner peace. But what it didn’t do was resolve the chronic fatigue that I had and some of the other stuff. Then I had to go through all the testing and get into some of these novel treatments and peptides that we’ll be talking about today to recover my soul energy. First,  for me, it was important to transform stress and find peace. Then I had to figure out the migraine headaches, the chronic fatigue, and the brain fog. I was a lot happier with those things, but I wanted to solve them too. and by testing and resolving these things, I was able to. It was a long journey. I saw practitioner after provider after integrative and everything that I could find. I wanted to streamline that for people and help them go through a step-by-step process. How do we go straight to the things that are going to be effective and helpful and go through a process that leads to feeling not only healthy but also happy and content?

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Thank you so much for sharing that about your dad. I’m sure that is so difficult. It brings up the great point that stress can affect our health. We’re all just living. We’re bathing in stress every day with notifications on our phones or emails, and you’ve got the rushing syndrome. I feel it. I’m trying to get my kids ready for school. I’m, and I need to just not care if they’re late. Sometimes I just let that go. We need to recognize it, though. You’ve probably had patients that are, and I’m not stressed out. You can tell by their labs how they’re not healing. Well, that means there is some stress. It might not be stress; it might be trauma too. I’m sure that you have to work through a lot of that trauma. I mean, this brings up a good segue way to what you’re an expert in, autoimmune diseases. Why are they on the rise?

Dr. Miles Nichols

Well, I do think that stress played a big role in that; not that stress causes autoimmunity, but stress acts as an amplifier, acting as an amplifier that amplifies dysfunction that’s underlying, and that dysfunction that’s underlying today gets there’s a lot of reasons why that’s the case. There’s an emotional component and a traumatic component you mentioned: trauma and stress. It’s hard to unpack it all, but I’ll say several experts in the field of autoimmunity do believe strongly. Data is starting to come in about a relationship between how a person relates to stress, challenge, struggle, trauma, etc. in their life and autoimmune diseases that we know from the ACEs study. This is an adverse childhood experience, according to studies. There are as few as two adverse childhood experiences. These could be things like parents getting divorced. It can be a parent ending up in jail. It can be emotional abuse. It can be a traumatic event. 

Many things are classified as adverse childhood experiences, and even as little as two of them increase auto-immune rates dramatically. We know autoimmunity has some connection with the history of events and how the developing child was able to handle those events at that time. Those that exceed the nervous system’s capacity to stay regulated may play a lasting role in later health issues. Now, there is some promising research as well on even autoimmune conditions and mind-body therapies for internal family systems. For example, there was a study with rheumatoid arthritis, and it showed some significant improvements. The Hof method, which is breath work, cold exposure, and mindset, has shown some actual benefits in inflammatory marker reductions and is being investigated for multiple autoimmune issues now as a potential therapy. 

We know there’s a direct interventional aspect and a causative aspect that does relate to stress and trauma. There’s also an environmental aspect. It’s very big. When we’re looking at the world today, the environment is significant, and we know that there’s quite a lot of exposure to environmental toxins. That’s not only going to be from homes where the estimates are even in the United States. I was just in the Philippines, and we’re much worse there. There are places in the world where it’s much worse. But in the United States, even the estimates are that between a quarter and a half of U.S. homes have damp conditions conducive to things like mold and bacterial growth that can produce endotoxins, mycotoxins, and schistosomiasis. These things can cause many people to trigger something that is maybe dormant or latent until it presents with that environmental exposure. That exposure then can trigger a process, an autoimmune process, as one example, an inflammatory process. that can then lead to damaging tissue and all the other things that come with autoimmunity. The symptoms come later. Environmental issues are big. 

Of course, today’s gut issues are significant in the microbiome, both in the gut and the rhinobiome in the sinuses. The bacterial populations in the body are dramatically impacted by the overuse of antibiotics, by hygiene, and by how hygiene can sometimes be too little or too much. Excessive hygiene or too little hygiene can both create imbalances in the gut microbiota in the rhinobiome. There are many other reasons why the use of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and other things has impacted the gut significantly. We know there’s a big gut-immune connection. we also see that gut issues, intestinal permeability, and gut-brain connections can contribute to the onset of systemic inflammation in the body and neuroinflammation in the brain. That can include mental health issues, worsened stress responses, and trauma responses. It can cycle here. 

What we’re dealing with today is partly environmentally related and partly related to drug use. Antibiotic use is partly related to exposure and partly to some of the chronic stress and how the world has created busy schedules and a lot of obligations and things that are different than they used to be. A lot of electronic use and a lot of screen time, a mismatch between the light that we’re receiving from devices and natural sunlight, and disconnection with circadian rhythms and nature. many things. But the big one for autoimmunity that we want to look at is the exposures and triggers of gut dysfunction. These are going to be some of the big ones with autoimmunity specifically.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Yes, absolutely. It can be overwhelming. But you have to know about these things because then you can pay more attention. After all, autoimmunity is on the rise post-pandemic for whatever reason, whether it’s the virus or the vaccine. I’ve seen a lot of just-new-onset autoimmunity that we can pinpoint back to that. But it’s interesting because. I’m in the Midwest, in Ohio and Northwest Ohio, and literally, where my patients live used to be a swamp. A lot of mold. Also, there are a bunch of oil refineries here. If patients live near where I am, consider moving. We also have 5G towers. You have to be careful about those. Those can disrupt your cells and possibly lead to autoimmunity. Glyphosate in the Midwest is hit. It’s so bad when I test people’s glyphosate levels. I know they’re going to come back high, but they’re bad. I mean, where you’re in Colorado, glyphosate probably isn’t as bad, but it’s probably still obviously in the food, but environmentally, maybe not as bad. What do you think?

Dr. Miles Nichols

Yes, I don’t think it’s as bad environmentally, but certainly, a lot of food supplies can contain some. When we do test people, they know it’s not everyone, but a lot of people do have elevations and glyphosate levels as well. If we’re going to boil it down, just add three big things. We can say thanks for bringing up infections. That’s important because viral infections can be a trigger. Bacterial infections can be triggers. We do know autoimmunity can trigger those. Infections, toxins, and gut dysfunction—we can say as a broad spectrum for the environmental aspect—would be the top three, plus the stress amplifier and the trauma amplifier. On top of that, that creates a picture of why it is so bad today, where the CDC is now saying 6 in 10 Americans have at least one chronic disease and 4 in 10 have two or more chronic diseases. It’s a majority who are chronically ill today. It’s not a minority issue. It is a majority issue. You are chronically ill today. One of those chronic illnesses that is on the rise is autoimmunity. As research starts to come in, it tells us there are more and more autoimmune issues. One thing I’ve done a lot of testing on in recent years is that a lot of people don’t understand or know a lot about our antibodies against the brain.

We do a whole panel of antibodies against tissues and structures in the brain, such as dopamine receptors, anti-cerebellum antibodies, and antibodies against tubulin. Some can induce things like obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, depression, and other behavioral changes. in children even. This is a big issue. We see several post-infectious or post-toxin exposures, autoimmune onset with the brain, changes in behavior, mood, and the ability to focus and concentrate, and neurologic symptoms, arising as a result of brain autoimmunity, but often never get diagnosed as autoimmunity. Often, it gets diagnosed as someone has a mental health disorder, they have anxiety, they have OCD, they have something, or they have behavioral issues. It’s an ADHD diagnosis, or maybe it’s a diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple chemical sensitivity, migraine headaches, etc., and often these aren’t thought to be or known necessarily to be autoimmune, or they haven’t gone through such a high level of proof yet that people aren’t fully embracing that. But there’s enough research now for me to say fairly confidently that not all, but several neurologic and mental health diagnoses are caused by or contributed to by antibodies against the brain.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Yes. You can get that test. But unfortunately, your conventional medicine doctor is going to look at you. You have a couple of heads, 2 or 3.  you probably would have to work with a functional or integrative doctor who is used to working with those specific tests. I think it’s very sad that people are going to their regular conventional doctor. They’re saying that they’re feeling low or maybe anxious, and they’re treating those symptoms because that’s what we’re brainwashed to do in medical school. It’s a symptom. You call it a disease; you can treat it with a pharmaceutical, and what I want to say a lot is that anxiety is a symptom of a root cause. Whether that’s an antibody against the brain, whether that’s gut health, whether that’s blood sugar, or whether that’s sugar dysregulation, Even so, just if you’re listening out there, just to know that these feelings that you’re having, especially from a mental health perspective, their symptoms are your body telling you, Hey, something’s off, I’m dysregulated. You pointed out that this could be even an autoimmunity against certain receptors in the brain. That could be causing the problem. When you see these patients, you often bring peptides into the mix.

Dr. Miles Nichols

Yes. Absolutely. Peptides are, they’re interesting because they’re natural in the sense that these are amino acid chains. The body makes a lot of peptides and hormones. The body makes hormones. Hormones affect the body. Peptides have hormone effects sometimes or even stimulate hormones to be produced. But they’re a little bit different. They’re amino acid chains. They’re smaller amino acid chains. Just as a protein has a bigger amino acid chain and peptides have a smaller amino acid chain, one of the first peptides to enter medicine is insulin. Insulin entering medicine was a game changer for diabetes, especially type one diabetes, where the insulin isn’t being made in the pancreas anymore, or late type two diabetes, which can become type three, which can start to reduce insulin production and come with severe insulin resistance. This was a game changer for saving lives. This is one of the very powerful peptides. That was one of the first peptides to hit medicine and become a treatment. That’s shown to very strongly take sugar out of the blood and put it into the bloodstream. That’s how powerful a peptide can be. 

Now, many peptides are much subtler than that. Some supplements are even peptides; glutathione, for example, is a three-amino acid peptide. Now, glutathione can be very powerful, but it’s not going to be used in the same way insulin would be. You’re not going to have to be as careful as you’d have to be with insulin. Peptides span the gamut, and they span the gamut in terms of the effects that they have, whether they are very broad or very narrow. They can also be very strong in doing something very impactful to the body that you want to be a little bit careful of, or very broad spectrum doing things that you don’t have to be so careful and can tolerate very high amounts and very, very strong safety profiles for a lot of peptides. 

Peptides are useful when, for example, in autoimmunity. If we’re looking at brain antibodies, let’s use that as an example. Let’s say we’ve discovered brain antibodies. We want to help the immune system calm down. Well, we do with autoimmunity. We want to figure out what exposures or triggers there have been and resolve those triggers. If it is, let’s say it’s a multi-environment, a multi-home, and a mold trigger was involved. Of course, the first thing to do is get out of that home or mediate. That’s going to be important if there’s an ongoing toxin to get rid of. Once that’s sorted out, then we need to get rid of the accumulation of the toxin in the body. When it comes to the accumulation of toxins, the body often uses things like binders, certain detoxification-focused supplements, and some dietary and lifestyle changes. Sometimes some off-label medication is used that may be helpful with finding and getting rid of toxins and up-regulating detoxification function. We’ll often add those peptides to the mix as well. 

Peptides that we’ll use are specifically related to autoimmunity. Often, there are few. KPV is one that I use; KPV is just glutathione. The three amino acid peptides KPV are strongly anti-inflammatory. We know there’s such an inflammatory component to autoimmune diseases that one of the prime treatments conventional medicine uses for autoimmunity is steroids. Steroids are highly anti-inflammatory. The problem with steroids is that not only are they anti-inflammatory, but they also suppress the immune function that’s defensive against infections. They change how the cortisol works in the body and the adrenal responses in the body. While they’re very strongly anti-inflammatory, and that gives a benefit for symptoms, it doesn’t get at the trigger. If you’re exposed to toxins or have a chronic infection; it doesn’t get rid of that. It also doesn’t. It has a secondary effect that’s problematic on the ability to be able to defend against other infections and for the body’s defenses to be impacted by that. 

If we can find anti-inflammatories that don’t suppress the innate parts of the defense, and parts of the immune function, then those are helpful in autoimmune issues. KPV is one of those. We see KPV is part of the pathway; there’s this whole melanocortin pathway. Without going into too much technical detail, I’ll just say melanocortin, and there’s a lot it relates to. There’s a hormone commonly called α-melanocyte stimulating. This does more than I possibly could have imagined until I dug deeply into the research. This relates not only to melanocytes on the skin and skin pigmentation and tanning but also to sexual function. It also relates to immune function and inflammation. It relates to neuroprotection. It relates to other hormones. It’s a very important pathway. This pathway gets highly dysfunctional in many autoimmune issues. 

KPV targets the inflammatory part of that pathway. It’s not going to tan your skin with another melanocortin peptide. Melanotan-2, for example, or Melanotan-1 will tan your skin. KPV, not so much. It’s more focused on the anti-inflammatory part of that pathway for autoimmunity, which is the part that we want to target most. KPV is fantastic, and VIP is another one that we’ll use. VIP is a nasal spray. It’s delivered as a nasal spray. KPV can be injectable or oral use and VIP is used as a nasal spray. VIP is a peptide that helps. There’s been a study showing gray matter in the brain changes. The damage that’s done, let’s say there’s an autoantibody against the brain or let’s say that a toxin or an infection has done damage. On an MRI with AI analysis called a neuroquantitative MRI, we can see that there’s atrophy or breakdown in gray matter in the brain and important brain regions. We’ve seen VIP at a high enough dose over a long enough period, Usually at least three months, better six or longer. We’ve seen actual restoration of the gray matter of the brain that atrophy, regenerates, and improves, and VIP is also impacting this MSH and this melanocortin pathway from a different angle. That and KPV are helpful and important. Go ahead.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

I’m sorry. Let me ask a quick question about VIP. This is used a lot with mold illness. That’s helping with brain inflammation. But I have had patients say that it’s hard to get them off of it. Do you just wean them off, and can you talk about that? Sometimes VIP gets a bad rap a little bit because of that issue.

Dr. Miles Nichols

Yes. VIP has it. It can have a very powerful effect in the sense that people can feel better about it. But if they go off, they may or may not continue to feel better. Part of that depends on what happened before VIP and where a person is at in their process. If VIP doesn’t tend to work well if someone’s still in the midst of a chronic inflammatory response when it’s used, usually first we have to get a person to a certain point of having removed some of the exposures, calmed some of the infections and inflammation, and get rid of some of the biotoxin accumulation in the body. Before VIP can be tolerated well and then gone off of. If those things haven’t been dealt with, then things like KPV and a couple of other peptides, BPC 157, and Thymosin alpha-1, can help with coming off of a VIP even because they will help with that inflammatory and immune dysfunctional component. 

VIP helps with repairs. I think about it as a repair. We’re generating focused peptide, and epigenome change peptide is making epigenetic changes, and it will help to an extent with inflammation, but it’s not meant or intended to be used primarily for a minute and inflammation. It’s primarily used as the end step of resolution, repair, and regeneration, not in the middle, at the beginning, or getting there. It does come at the right time for it to be helpful. But if it’s if people are having a hard time getting off it, then look, are there any triggers that haven’t been identified and your toxin triggers infection triggers? That’s one. Two is, that once you’ve gotten rid of the triggers and removed some of the toxins, you should consider some other anti-inflammatory peptides, such as KPV or immune-regulating peptides like BPC 157 and Thymosin alpha-1 can help to deal with those underlying issues that might be a challenge with VIP.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Yes, absolutely. That’s such a great explanation. I know that with mold when we talk about the environment, a lot of people are still there. Their remediation didn’t work. Sometimes they just have to move. You mentioned it to know minuses and other VOCs, volatile organic compounds. It’s sometimes tricky to get people who are so reactive back to normal, and sometimes it takes time. But that’s why peptides are great: they can move the needle a little bit faster. For these patients that are suffering. What other peptides are you using in your practice?

Dr. Miles Nichols

I mentioned BPC 157 but haven’t talked about what we’re using it for. BPC 157 is a 15-amino acid peptide that is similar and was discovered through stomach acid secretions. What we know about BPC 157 is that it’s nice because it’s orally bioavailable. Many of these peptides don’t work when taken orally, and it would be a waste to take them orally because they’re not going to stay intact. They might break down, they might not have their effect, and they might not stay intact through the digestive process. What we know about BPC 157 is that there is research supporting that. It does signal its effect, even if it’s taken orally, and its effect is also a repair effect but different from VIP. Its effect can. The studies have shown a lot of intestinal repair. One study in it was an animal study. But what it did was take high-dose NSAIDs, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. These can cause, at high doses, stomach problems. It can cause ulcers. It can cause lesions. It can cause liver and kidney damage. that they did with these mice. They gave them high doses that would cause this damage. They gave them BPC 157 at the same time in one group. The other group did not get BPC 157; the other group got arginine. They did a couple of different groups, and the control group wasn’t taking the onset. Now it was fantastic because they showed these pictures of the stomach and duodenum area of the duodenum, the upper part of the small intestine below the stomach, and the ones that had the NSAIDs without BPC 157 looked in a bad way.

You could see the necrotic tissue, you could see the discoloration, you could see the black, the gnarly, and the abscesses forming. Then the BPC-157 group. You could see it looked beautiful, just the control group as if no damage had occurred. Why is that? Well, BPC 157 seems to be able to recruit repair, and it can recruit repair into the gut region. It may be helpful clinically. We find it quite helpful for people who are struggling to get off of antacids or proton pump inhibitors. BPC 157 can be quite helpful for getting off of those and for repairing the stomach, the duodenum, and the intestinal area. A leaky gut, or intestinal permeability, is one big part of autoimmune issues. We do know that if the gut’s leaky, these bigger proteins make their way through the bloodstream and become systemically inflammatory, the immune system sees them, says this is a threat, and some of them look at other tissue in the body. Might look at the thyroid and instigate thyroid autoimmunity, or might look at parts of the brain and instigate autoimmunity against the brain or the pancreas.

We do know that the proteins need to be appropriately broken down into amino acids before they’re transported via transport proteins in the small intestine into the bloodstream. If they’re not in, they’re too big, and they get through because there’s intestinal permeability or a leaky gut. That’s a big problem. BPC 157 can help with leaky gut, and we know that it doesn’t limit itself. Even if you take it early, it doesn’t limit itself to the GI tract. It will. But one study called it running. It will run to different tissues, tendons, ligaments, and muscles. It crosses the blood-brain barrier, so it can stimulate repair. In a mouse study, it showed heart repair. In another study, it showed ligament repair. When there’s tissue damage which is autoimmunity what is autoimmunity? It’s the immune system attacking tissue. We want to repair tissue damage. That’s an important part of an autoimmune treatment in BPC 157 and can be quite helpful with that.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Yes. Do you have one of my favorites? With BPC 157, you could also play on offense a little bit if you’re traveling to somewhere where maybe there’s a lot of infectious diarrhea. You could take that if you get sick. I tell my patients that a lot, once we fix their gut, you always have to be careful. Especially around here. I have to do a lot of preventative things because there’s so much glyphosate. BPC 157 can be used for that if you eat out. I remember I had this burger that wasn’t cooked enough. It was before a Pittsburgh Steelers game anyway. I ate it. After that, my stomach. I had to do some repairs. I had to take some BPC 157 because I didn’t want my stomach to stay inflamed. Also, ulcerative colitis or any inflammatory bowel diseases. I had patients who refused conventional treatment. I’m okay, we’re going to hit up the peptides, and BPC 157 can help decrease flares. I mean, I’m excited. Hopefully, there’ll be more and more studies on this. But that NSAID study was amazing. That’s why they should put those together in a drug.

Dr. Miles Nichols

Yes. If someone is saying, Hey, I need it. I’m in so much pain that I need to take ibuprofen regularly. I say, Let’s code BPC157 in many cases because it can be helpful. Being helpful post-surgery is a lot for people. They’re going into surgery. I found people saying, I  repaired it quickly. Both my surgical team and I said you’re recovering so quickly. BPC 157 is often a part of that. Then, we also use BPC 157. As you said, preventatives can be used early in treatment. It can be used throughout. It can be used preventively when exposed to certain things. a lovely way. One more study on it, just to take it and use it together with some drugs in mice that cause interval changes in the heart. heart rate abnormalities, and heart rhythm abnormalities caused by medication. These are anti-epileptic medications. Certain classes of medications can cause these heart rate abnormalities and code administration would BPC157 shows the ability to regulate the heart. Again, we’ve seen that there’s this normalization of an abnormality associated with medication. We know for sure that heart rate abnormalities and NSAID changes are two that have been studied in animals. BPC 157 does not say this will pan out in humans, but they are certainly worth considering as a co-administration with pharmaceuticals that may have certain kinds of side effects, and seeing if we can repair the damage that’s being done by certain pharmaceuticals may be quite helpful as well.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

That’s cool. Your body makes it so; yes, side effects are minimal. You were going to mention another peptide before I cut you off. I know that’s it.

Dr. Miles Nichols

Yes. Thymosin alpha-1 is a fantastic peptide for immune function and immune regulation. We know this immune balance; the size of the immune system can get out of balance autoimmune issues to Th1, Th2, and Th17. These parts of these T helper cells and T regulatory cells are important in how the immune system can regulate and create a defense against something that should be defended against, but not attack itself or your tissue. Also to be able to regulate against not having allergies to things that normally wouldn’t be harmful to you. Anything in the realm of allergies, certain skin responses, rashes, certain eczema, or anything in the autoimmune category and anything in the immunodeficiency category is going to relate in part to this delicate balance of the different aspects of the immune system and the T regulatory cells. 

One of the things that we find to be quite helpful is that we know that, in our young childhood years, the thymus gland is something that produces a lot of these. It educates the developing immune system, about what is self, what’s not self, and how to defend against different pathogens. that starts to shrivel and dry up. These peptides, which normally are produced in greater quantity at younger ages, are not produced much at older ages. The Thymosin alpha-1, in particular, shows antiviral effects and the ability to defend against pathogens. Show the ability to regulate immune function. What we know is that a lot about immunity is infectious-related and immune to an immune imbalance. Thymosin alpha-1 is a fantastic one to add to the mix. For people who are struggling with immune function, dysregulation of varying kinds, and infections of varying kinds as well.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Yes, Thymosin alpha-1 is cool about being subcutaneous, which is how they’re administered during the pandemic. A lot of studies about its use with COVID in hospitals in China. I missed that one. It’s harder to get now. Unfortunately, it was helpful because it supports the immune system. We know that certain viruses shut down that response or are dysregulated, which confuses the immune system. Then you have that overactive immune system where you have the problems that we saw with COVID. Yes, that one is great for autoimmunity, even chronic autoimmune problems too. Once you get the inflammation down, That one, as I said, is a little bit harder to get because it’s an actual biological drug now on the market. Unfortunately.

Dr. Miles Nichols

Yes. This brings into question all these challenges, with getting peptides and getting the quality of peptides knowing how to dose them, and working the risk. The place I see a lot of people go wrong that I just want to educate about real quickly. Here is what I do see some people taking. They’re looking for a naturopathic approach, a functional approach, or a root-cause-based approach. I see, unfortunately, that some people take a more empathic approach with peptides and wonder what peptide is best for this. What peptide is best for my condition? For my symptoms, What’s good? I mean, we write blog articles on our website about peptides all the time. We get these messages: Which peptide should I take for my X symptom? Or, what peptide is best for fatigue? I mean, there’s no good answer to that because you’re unlikely to get a result on fatigue if you’re relying on a peptide alone. I can say the same about a supplement, and I can say the same about a drug. There’s not one thing that cures fatigue. It’s a very complex issue, and there are a lot of underlying causes. 

When it comes to autoimmunity, I want to make sure that people understand that removing the triggers is imperative and critical, and you cannot get around it by applying the peptide or peptide combinations or cocktail. No peptides are good for autoimmunity. Yes, peptides can regulate the immune system and can help, but it’s not that they’re going to solve the issue unless you are still living in an environment where you’re exposed to a trigger that’s triggering your immune system to attack health. Sure, you can regulate to a degree, but you’re likely to continue to have some degree of underlying chronic inflammation and ongoing issues unless you look at the bigger picture. That bigger picture is that want to look at infections, you want to look at toxins, you want to look at gut function, and you want to look at immune regulation. You want to look at inflammation, and dealing with all those things in their proportions and relationships together can make a big difference, especially if coupled with stress management, breathwork, trauma work, rain retraining, and meditation practices.

Now we’re looking at if you’re making some of those changes, working on your gut, your sleep, your stress levels, your trauma, addressing the infectious load and toxin exposures, and then you add some peptides into the mix. Now it is very effective. But I want to encourage you to don’t miss the boat. Just because insulin is incredibly powerful in getting sugar into the cells doesn’t mean that insulin is a good treatment for resolving diabetes. It doesn’t make any resolutions for type 1 diabetes. It just manages it and is very good at managing it. It does an excellent job of managing it. But if you want to try and reverse it, and I’m not going to say type 1 diabetes is reversible, we don’t see that happen much. We do see a decreased need for insulin. There are lots of things that we can do to see metabolic improvements. Absolutely. But what we want to emphasize is that if you just add a peptide, you will often, especially if it’s applied with a mindset of what peptide is good for, this thing will do the same thing. It’s still in the same mindset as a drug for a problem. What drug treats this problem? What peptide treats this problem? We want to take a step back and say, Okay, there’s a problem, and there are probably multiple cascades of things that are underlying that problem. How do we address the multiple cascades and apply something helpful to the problem? I encourage taking that approach with peptides.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

That’s a great discussion point. For example, if you have a gluten intolerance or celiac where you can’t have gluten at all and you’re still consuming that trigger and you’re, I’m going to take BPC 157, it helps with the tight junctions or it’s going to help with the inflammation. You’re not going to get anywhere. Peptides are super pricey, you’re just going to be spending money on something that you’re not going to get results from. Similarly, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, SIBO, or Candida. Yes, you can take BPC 157. It might help decrease inflammation again, but you’re not removing those triggers in the intestines, and you’re not going to get the resolution that you want. Hopefully, the resolution of the autoimmune disease once you fix that leaky gut. Those are some examples that I thought of. Mold patient, same thing. If you don’t get it out of the mold or get it remediated, you’re not going to heal. Your body is going to be on high alert all the time. It’s a constant fire in your house or something. I love that you brought that up. It’s such a great point.

Dr. Miles Nichols

Yes. When we get these powerful treatments, they can occasionally become a disservice to people because they think, I don’t need to do the basics. The basics are the most important to get: clean food, clean water, clean air, good sleep, good rest, good time, and enjoying nature. I mean these things are so important. A peptide should be an adjunct and not the main focus. But they’re very powerful adjuncts. I’m happy to lean on them when life is a little stressful, there are challenges, maybe traveling, and it’s hard to get access to clean everything. It was for me recently. Traveling in the Philippines is not a place where it’s easy to get access to clean everything. Sometimes, in certain circumstances, we have experiences, and we choose those experiences not because they’re going to be clean experiences. We may need to do some repairs after that. We may. But, if it’s temporary, if it’s, we know. Okay, I have this, for two weeks. It’s going to be stressful. If I’m going to have not enough sleep, exposure, or stress, then do my best in that. But then, luckily, that’s not an ongoing thing. Then peptides repair, just deal with the inflammation and repair whatever resulted from that. Going to get things back. Fantastic. It’s those low-grade ongoing things, those toxins that are still there, those chronic stressors that are still going on every day, day in, day out. The issues that aren’t getting resolved are ones that we need to pay close attention to and make sure to address and use peptide-targeted precision therapy, together with getting a solid foundation.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

I love it. I love the great advice and expertise that you have in the autoimmunity field. I’m so glad you shared everything you’ve shared with us today and all the information about peptides, of course. How can our audience reach you, find you, and work with you?

Dr. Miles Nichols

One place we read a lot of articles, a lot of blog articles, is MedicinewithHeart.com, where you can find a bunch of articles about peptides. A great resource for information. Do you have any specific peptides, just type in the search bar at MedicinewithHeart.com. You may find a nice article. There’s lots of information about it. Also, there’s a place on there to Book or Call with Staff, and that’s a complimentary call with staff. If you’re interested in looking at the clinic and working with the clinic and what that looks like, then you can book a call with staff, and they can discuss what that would entail. The website also has lots of resources on specific conditions. If you do have an autoimmune condition and you want to look a little deeper into that, you may be able to find information in the blog articles and on the website as well. That’s the best resource for how to do it. It’s a central resource for finding out information about me, about the practice, available blog articles, free available information, upcoming events, and working with the clinic.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Awesome. Thank you so much, Dr. Miles. I appreciated talking to you.

Dr. Miles Nichols

You as well. Dr. Jen, take care and have a lovely day.