Living Libido Loca! Supercharge Your Libido at Any Age

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Hello, it’s Dr. Kent Holtorf with another episode of the peptide summit. Today, we are honored to have Dr. Valerie Phillips, and she’s going to be talking about how to turbocharge your libido. So stay tuned. We’ve got to all find out how the heck we do that, especially as people get older. I know women don’t talk about it too much. Men don’t either actually. Valerie, thank you so much for being on and exciting topic. So I really appreciate it. So, Dr. Valerie Phillips she’s a native Angeleno who started studying medical arts as a teenager at a magnet school. Interesting. I didn’t know they had those. She studied biochemistry at UC Davis and subsequently pursued research and neuropathology at UC San Francisco, a place tough to get in. 

She used to volunteer at the Berkeley free clinic at the Native American Health Center in San Francisco and became a healthcare worker there delivering limited primary care services to the underserved population of the San Francisco Bay area. She decided to pursue her long-term interest in Eastern and alternative forms of medicine by pursuing a naturopathic medical degree at Bastyr university in Washington. Her education was a perfect blend of Western scientific medical thought combined with herbal traditions from across the globe, nutrition, physical medicine, and many more disciplines. They really bring in kind of everything, which is nice, you know? I think really that is the way of the future. 

I think a lot of these hospitals set up an integrative alternative whole department and they have a regular doctor and a chiropractor, and a masseuse or and they go through all the same rigorous scientific training, but really looked at body as really holistic, as a whole, where I think a big problem with standard medicine is that everything is separate. You go to the gastroenterologist for this, you go to the neurologist for this, you go to [inaudible] but it’s all connected. Right? So, again, thank you for being on. So what got you interested in, well, maybe that’s kind of a weird question. What got you interested in libido?

 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah, and thanks for having me, I’m really excited to do this. It’s really fun. So my practice looks a lot like a holistic primary care practice. It’s predominantly in this little cow town up a couple hours North of LA. So, I do a lot of female hormone restoration, female hormone balancing, women’s health, that kind of thing. And the way I tend to do it is my ladies come in for a monthly shot. So, a lot of times once we get the hormones balanced, it’s sort of like, how’s it going? How was it? Maybe we adjust the doses a little bit, and then we talk about anything that’s concerning them. And I notice a lot of women, once they get to a certain age, or even even younger women, it’s like their libido just shuts off. It’s like they couldn’t care less about having sex ever again in their whole life. They love their husband. They feel bad for them. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Maybe. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

I know. Sometimes, well if there’s an interpersonal issue, that’s a whole other deal. But you know, the women that I sort of select for these types of treatments are the ones that come in and they’re like, I feel so bad for my husband. You know, he’s such a great guy. I just have no interest. Absolutely. Less than zero interest. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah. And do you find that people women may not say anything because they think it’s normal because none of their friends have libido. You know, it’s like, well everyone else has the same problem. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. They figure, oh, I’m old, I’m married. It’s fine. But then some of them are not old and some of them do bring it up or I usually ask about it because in my hormone protocol I’m giving them testosterone and I’m asking them about their energy and their muscle mass and their sort of vim and vigor. And then I bring up libido and they’re like, zilch, zippo, nothing ever. And then sometimes their husbands come in, I see husbands too, the wives make them come in and, and they tell me about it, you know? 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

And that’s good because you’re comfortable, you can tell, [inaudible] Do you have a libido? Okay. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. You just bring it up. I find people are not against talking about it. In fact, a lot of men come in as well. And they’re like erectile dysfunction, libido dysfunction. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Wow, that’s huge. Or it’s not huge, maybe they’re sensitive. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. So once their testosterone is sort of optimized for them – not everybody tolerates testosterone very well but 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Can you tell me about testosterone? Because I mean, so many people think, okay, men testosterone, women estrogen 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Right. No, I typically blend in testosterone in their protocol as long as they’re not like me, like if I take any testosterone, yeah, it’s good for my libido, but then I grow a beard and it’s like, mate, but then kill, you know. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Like the black widow, no, the praying mantis, but you can just braid your beard, like the [inaudible] or something. But it’s also that ratio, right? If you have high estrogen – you look at young girls, they have high testosterone, but they don’t get all the facial hair and stuff because they have high estrogen. And when you have the low estrogen, your SHBG, sex hormone binding globulin, goes down so all the testosterone you get becomes free, so it’s much more potent. So it’s that ratio, right? A lot of times things are ratios. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. And especially in post-menopausal women, their estrogen goes down and the relative testosterone is high and then they grow a beard. But then they still have no libido because they have no estrogen, you know? 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah. So it’s a combined effect. Correct. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. And in general, I try to do hormone protocols as complete as possible, as I can get the people to do, or however much they tolerate. I often am adding in pregnenolone and DHEA as well, just to kind of cover all the bases. So people come in and I’ve covered all my hormone bases. This one lady ,super healthy, post-menopausal feeling great on the hormones losing weight, but just month after month, no libido, no libido. And I’m increasing the testosterone a little bit to see if that works, they come back, nothing, zilch, zippo. And then she was the first person that I tried PT141 on which, sometimes my population is not a wealthy population. So sometimes – 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Can you mention, just talk a little bit more about what PT141 is?

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Right. So PT141 is fascinating physiologically. It’s a fraction of the the melanocyte stimulating hormone, which is part of a big hormone system called the proprio melanocortin system, which I’ve been calling, unofficially, the naked and afraid system, because it’s got all of the things. Basically it’s a big pro hormone that separates out into all these little hormones, which is everything that you would need if you were naked and afraid. Did you ever watch that show? That reality show? 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah, I would not be doing that 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

I would not be doing that either. For the listeners who don’t know, it’s a show where they take two people and I’ve only seen one episode, but I assume it’s like male and female, just to kind of get the sexual tension going. And they drop them naked and afraid into the wilderness or just naked. Maybe. I don’t know how afraid they are, but they’re naked in the wilderness. They have to, like, build shoes out of leaves. And I don’t know, build shelter and they’re exposed to the elements. They’re always getting crazy sunburns and exposure things. They have to find water. All they get is one bag and one tool. 

So, the proprio melanocortin system, basically, it will give them ACTH adrenocorticotropic hormone, which will kind of boost their immune system and kind of keep them going, I guess in running from bears or whatever survival hormones, and it gives them lypotropin, so they can burn fat for energy as they’re foraging for foods, it gives them endorphins so that they can, I guess manage any kind of pain or energy and injury and maybe feel a little bit better about being naked and afraid. And then it stimulates melanocytes stimulating hormone, which darkens the skin and protects them from the sun exposure, protects the underlying dermis from like free radicals so that they don’t get skin cancer, hopefully. And it also, the melanocytes stimulating hormone also stimulates the libido and also stimulates weight loss. And the immune system of skin – 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Melanatan 1 and melanatan 2, the Barbie doll peptide, right? 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Exactly, Malibu Barbie, peptide. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

That’s it, Malibu Barbie. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Without tan lines. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

You get tan, you lose weight, and you – what’s the last thing? 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

You increase your libido. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah. But the negative to it is that if you’re young that stimulating melanocyte is great. Gives a nice even tan, protects against skin cancer. But if you’re older, it tends to bring out the age spots. And when I took melanotan2, I’m kind of ADD, this isn’t working. And then all of a sudden I am so dark. I’m like what the heck are you? And you can’t stop, and you stop and it keeps going. I looked like some foreign, you know.., 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

It would be interesting. It looks like you’re wearing blackface or something. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

It was, like totally different features. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

That’s so funny. Yeah, I experimented on it with myself as well. I found it worked great for libido stimulating stuff, but I also was a little bit concerned that I was getting kind of weirdly dark as well. I mean, I stopped after three doses because my makeup stopped matching and I was like, Oh no, I’m gonna have to buy new make up or whatever. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

PT141 doesn’t do it nearly as much, but it can. One other very well known doctor was telling me about one of his celebrity patients and they were like you’re making me dark. What’s wrong with it? He was like, no it’s nothing I’m giving you. I’m like, Hey, because PT141 is a part of One is a part of it. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

I noticed it for sure. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

And it’s not as potent, but then there’s KPB and also these are very anti-inflammatory,, which is great. I don’t know if I’d use PT141 for inflammation, but – 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

I actually used it for neuropathy and weight loss in one of my patients and she already reported, I think she’s been on it maybe a week or two, and she was texting me today saying that her feet feel much less painful and numb and she can walk now and – 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Is she having so much sense that she – 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Actually, it didn’t work for her libido. I think having to do with the fact that she’s got an untreated dental infection and I find that things like that can confound your libido. If your cortisol system is [inaudible] because of that or you’re in pain or whatever. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah. Another fragment tried is a KPB, which is even more anti-inflammatory, but it doesn’t have the Melanocyte stimulating aspects and seems to also help with weight loss and lower inflammation in the hypothalamus, which reduces that insulin resistance and appetite it has to do with. I think the biggest problem with like PT141 is nausea, right? 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Nausea and cramping. That’s what finally kind of turned me off of it. The first time was fine, but then the subsequent times I was feeling flushed and crampy, but my patient that I was just talking about, she got flushed the first day, but then was fine after that. And is feeling great. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

It tends to go away. Then it became approved, right? 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Oh, right. Vyleesi. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah, which like, how much is it a month for that? 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

I don’t know because I have never considered prescribing it. We don’t do authorizations. I know it’s going to be a rigmarole. And plus it’s an auto-injector of 1.75 milligrams, which I find to be a little bit restrictive because if somebody is having symptoms like nausea, cramping, flushing, I might want to drop the dose down to one or bump it up to two. And it’s only approved for premenopausal women and my population of premenopausal women with low libido is fairly limited. Yeah. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah. And it’s like thousands of dollars and their copay is more than you can get it for from a company.

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. But it’s cool that it’s FDA approved, I guess. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah. It’s funny. There’s no studies, people will say there’s no studies on these. Then it gets FDA approved, which means it had three studies. Now it’s oh, it’s okay. And they’re done by a drug company, which they basically manipulated, so it’s gonna pass, but you know, that’s exceedingly safe other than the nausea but it’s so funny. It just drives me nuts when people say unproven. How many hundreds of studies do you want that are done by people who have no vested interest, but you believe in this FDA trial, which is – I mean, I know people that work at these trial facilities and they’re supposed to be blinded and they know which ones – the drug companies, they give a big bonus if it passes – and the people administering no. So they do whatever they can to make sure it passes. So the whole FDA approval, there’s no FDA on here, but it is just, they are the enforcement arm of big pharma. The corruption is so deep. I won’t even talk about COVID the craziness with that, but – I may have to edit this. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

I just was talking to somebody at Tailor Made this morning and it’s just so sad. It’s like everything that we get that works, it’s like the FDA tries to – 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

I’m not saying they weren’t doing anything wrong, but some things, but yeah. We have so many FDA attorneys and pharmacy attorneys and the pharmacy attorney’s like yeah, if you find something that’s totally safe and works, they’re going to try to take it away from you. And again, biodentical hormones, thyroid, almost everything [inaudible] is they’re trying to stop you from using it. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

They’re bullies. It’s like defund the police, defund the FDA, you know? 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah. Just to get back to hormones, I think so many women are told hormones are bad, right? The bad hormones are bad. The good hormones are good. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Exactly. You know, it’s all that is based on the women’s health initiative, which used a really inflammatory form of estrogen orally, which I never give anyone estrogen orally. Dr. Kent 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yes, that’s the worse they can use. And it was the most poorly designed study too. And so it’s nuts. I would rather have a hundred studies that aren’t perfect, but then they say, Oh, you need this big trial. Those are never perfect. They’re far from perfect. You know? 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. And plus the protocol they use is is not used by any functional medicine doctors that are experts in hormone replacement. And that’s the study that’s influencing doctors all over America. There was a similarly big study in Europe where they used bio-identical estrodiol, they used bioidentical progesterone and they did not have the same studies and the European women are doing better than the American women. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah. I did a review of all the literature on bio-identical versus synthetic, of the bio-identical hormone debate, and looked at every study head to head showed the bio-identical hormones are safe, lowers the risk of breast cancer, Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular disease while synthetic hormones, especially synthetic progestins. Then you add an oral synthetic to that, it increases clotting factors. And you look at the women’s health initiative, they knocked off most of the people in the first year, probably from a combination of the oral estrogen, going through the liver, increasing clotting factors and the progestin increases clotting factors. And that’s when they all died from a heart attack was the first year, and people and doctors don’t get the difference. And even the literature calls a progestin progesterone and they’ll say, or estriol, which actually is an estrogen that prevents cancer. They’re trying to ban that. And even the drug companies say, Oh, there’s no studies. Well, wait a minute, it’s approved. Your company has it approved for sale in Europe. So you’re saying there’s no, there’s no studies in America, but anyway,. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

It seems kind of political or financially motivated. And it’s strange – 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Okay, where were we? I always get off on a tangent. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Right. When people are concerned about cancer, I give them your article. I think that’s a really thorough article about hormone safety. And generally as long as people don’t have an existing cancer, I’m not brave enough like some, I know that there’s some oncologists that actually use, or maybe used to use high doses of estrogen to create apoptosis, but that’s not anything that I would feel comfortable with doing. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Uzi Reese has a book out, or it’s about to be out, about giving estrogen with cancer. And this whole estriogen receptor, progesterone receptor is so oversimplified. And in general, if you want to prevent breast cancer, take progesterone. If you want to get breast cancer, take progestin, you know? But it gets confused in the literature because they call progestins progesterone, you know? 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. Huge difference. Huge difference. Patentable profitable, progestin, regular, normal – 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah. So I just want to tell women there are doctors, you go to an HMO doctor, whatever it may be, they say Oh, don’t take hormones. Okay. You’re going to increase your risk for dementia, Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative disease, osteoporosis, autoimmune disease, all these things and 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yet they’re giving birth control pills out by the handful. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah. Which is like the worst and your quality of life is going to be worse, you’re not going to live as long, but they say, Oh, you don’t need it. You don’t need, well no one needs anything, right? 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

People come to me, post-menopausal women or perimenopausal women, come to me desperate. They feel horrible. Sometimes they can’t even do their jobs anymore. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

The doctor goes, Oh, you’re just getting older. And the doctor probably feels worse than they do. That’s why they don’t change. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

I mean, the mood disorder issue is 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Depression too 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

And anxiety and sleeplessness. How can women be expected to be functional in this day and age where you have to do so much just to stay ahead. If they can’t sleep, they can’t stop shouting at their partners or children 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

It effects their relationships. It’s like postpartum depression. They have all these things. And you have these huge levels of extra progesterone, then it crashes and you wonder why they’re depressed. I mean, you give them estrogen, progesterone, thyroid, the majority of postpartum depression dramatically improves. Instead they’re giving them – they don’t have a Prozac deficiency, fix this other stuff. And nine times out of 10, you’re going to see people go, Oh my God. You know, because postpartum depression is scary, like, I’m depressed. I’ve got this beautiful baby, but I don’t feel it, you know? 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of people, once you start them on hormones, they say, Oh, it’s like night and day. I feel like myself again 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

I get so many texts just from friends and even people we work with, Oh my God, I’m a new person, you know? 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. It’s very rewarding. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

And so you like to do, so there’s so many ways to do it, in general, I’ll let you speak, but you can take oral. The problem with oral synthetic estrogen it’s going to really increase clotting factors and cause a lot of inflammation, 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

I never give an oral synthetic estrogen. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Oh, I know I’m just saying in general, and then oral bio-identical, not as bad, but it’s still going to increase clotting factors, so if you give the estrogen a different way, topical or shot or pellets, so I’ll let you – 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

So I don’t do pellets for estrogen because first of all, I believe that estrogen should cycle up and down. You know, if I can, I like to do the shot because it cycles and it kind of mimics the natural cycle and there’s different molecular cascades that happen when estrogen is rising and when it’s falling. And I think that that’s wonderful to do with progesterone as well. And testosterone as well. You know, women are used to, we’re designed for all these fluctuations and we’re trying to sort of keep it as natural as possible. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah, don’t have to tell me. Just kidding, just kidding.

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

If people can’t or don’t want to do the shots then my next go-to is the topical estradiol formulations, like a 1% oil and they just put it on the wrist and go like that and that seems to work okay. But a lot of people forget to do it, and so they get these unnatural or non-optimal fluctuations, the same with the progesterone. I like to do progesterone orally if possible. it’s great that Prometrium is bio-identical except that it’s in peanut oil and sometimes that’s a problem. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

And it’s expensive. You can get it compounded for so much less. Yeah, I like oral progesterone and then there’s another debate over saliva testing versus serum but I’ve had a number of people come in on transdermal , I think progesterone should be taken orally as the opposite of estrogen, , is that you get much higher serum levels, but the people who do saliva testing argue well, the tissue level is higher, but I’ve had some people with endometrial hyperplasia on transdermal progesterone. So I’m a little biased, but yeah, there’s two camps and they all have evidence behind them. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. And I’m squarely in the blood testing camp. I just think that I’ve seen too many saliva tests where you just have crazy unnatural spikes, probably because of gum disease. You get just a touch of blood and then it’s just astronomical and people get worried about that and blood isn’t perfect either, you know? 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

There’s no perfect test. I think that’s a great point. Every test is a piece of information. I don’t understand why so many doctors, I see the patient will come in and the doctor keeps doing the same test that’s abnormal, but they don’t do anything about it. Like why did you run the test? They go oh, it’s a false positive. Well, why did you run the test? You know? 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. Mostly I go by symptoms, but I use the tests as sort of like a touchstone, baseline 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

And also on that is certain women that what’s optimal is different. Let’s say you get an athletic thin, small breasted, small hips, athletic. They’re not going to need much estrogen. They’re going to feel better with testosterone because they grew up with low estrogen, high testosterone where more of a full-figured woman grew up with lots of estrogen and you’re gonna have to probably give her more to make her feel better. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. Hormone protocols should be individualized. That’s why, what I tell people, if they’re looking for a doctor where they’re moving is you’ll know that the doctor is a good hormone doctor if they’re going to individualize the hormone protocol to you and how you are feeling. Because some people need more estrogen. Some people need more testosterone, et cetera, et cetera. Some people need really low doses of everything. Some people do great – Oh my gosh, I started using these bio matrix products, which is like a supplement product, which has really high concentrations of estradiol and progesterone. And I have this one lady who just does two drops a day and she’s like night and day. It’s perfect. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Do you use estriol routinely or no? 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

I do try to use estriol routinely. My practice is insurance-based. So a lot of times people are financially restricted and the insurance will oftentimes pay for the shot, which is estradiol. But I try to encourage people to also get the topical estriol if they can. And I explain that traditional formulas are 20% estradiol and 80% estriol because it kind of rounds out the protocol. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

And that was based on Jonathan Wright’s literature, which I think was totally wrong. but you we’ll use typically 50/50, because if you use too much estriol. It blocks the estrogen receptors. Estriol is great for urinary tract symptoms and things like that. Some biochemistry behind it, in general there’s two estrogen receptors A and B. So A is going to basically stimulate growth and is stimulatory, B is going to suppress growth and cancer. Now estradiol is balanced, right? So it’s neutral. You get Premarin, which is a horse estrogen which has Quinlin in it, which is a known carcinogen by the way, and it stimulates A so it’s just grow, grow, grow, and then estriol is a selective B. So it’s gonna dampen any excessive growth. So combining estriol and estradiol, now you get more, but if you do too much, basically you don’t get the activating effects of the estrodiol. So, so we found 50/50, in general, is good. I think the 80/20 I’ve seen we’ve had the people on huge, more and more, doses because it just doesn’t work. And I don’t think that’s good either. You’re going to get massive doses of this ratio. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

But all that was done with topical creams, which I don’t use topical creams at all, so it’s hard to really gauge the percentage with the way I do it because the estriol is topical and the estrodiol is a shot. And so I just kind of modify it until people feel good. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

And you get a lot of aromatase on the skin, it’s like when giving men testosterone, especially overweight diabetics, they’re doing these testosterone creams and it upregulates in the skin. They rotase, so it converts it all to estrogen. So you’re giving them estrogen, basically, they’re getting man boobs and they’re gaining weight and it’s making them worse. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

I’m not a big fan of testosterone creams. I almost never prescribe them. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

We’ve really got away. Shots are the way to go. And I really like the non-aromatizable testosterones like nandrolone, which will not convert to estrogen, especially even a shot with testosterone, for men that are diabetic or overweight, they’re gonna make a lot of estrogen. So you kind of titrate, or you can do stuff to block the estrogen, but I figured just do a different testosterone. Everyone has their own, it’s like baking a cake, telling a chef how to bake a cake. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Exactly. I’ve never used the non-aromatizable ones. I usually just do an estrogen blocker if it seems like that’s what’s going on, or I try to get them to lose weight primarily, and hopefully that’ll be a good synergyst as well.

 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah. Blocking the estrogen is key. You don’t want zero estrogen because you need it for brain and bone and all that, but you want to keep it that healthy range. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. I like to see it between 20 and 30 optimally. I do a lot HCG diet to try to like, get the, get the adipose tissue off or… 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

They’re taking HCG away. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. I still seem to be able to order it though. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah. Everything takes a while [inaudible] which will stimulate, but.. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

PT14, it seems like if you do calorie restriction on PT141, it’s almost as good. And they’ll get a Chubby’s major, that’s a technical term. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

It’s a scientific term. (laughs). Even things like BPC, Delta sleep, [inaudible] where if you get someone good sleep, they start losing weight, reduce inflammation of the hypothalamus because that’s what causes insulin resistance and leptin resistance. So, as you know, leptin goes up when you gain weight, to go back to the brain hypothalamus and tell the brain, Hey, we got too much stored fat start burning fat, lower appetite, increase metabolism, increase thyroid. But if it’s blocked, the body’s going, I’m starving, I’m starving, I’m starving. So it lowers metabolism, lowers your thyroid, increases your appetite. Tells your body to store fat. So for a lot of people, we lower that inflammation, then they start losing weight. And so the melanacortins, whether it be KPV, 141, [inaudible] do that as well. So there’s Delta sleep, [inaudible] and things like that. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

I can’t say enough about Delta sleep. It’s so hard to get people to sleep. You know, I would do just every natural thing on the market and not get any traction with certain of my hardcore non sleepers. And once I started using Delta sleep, it’s so effective. It’s amazing. Dr. Kent Holtorf (00:35:02): 

Can you talk about that for a second? 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. So I used to work with this ortho molecular psychiatrist in Washington and he had this whole protocol for people who are ramping up into a manic episode or into a psychotic episode. And he would give them Xyrem, which is GHB, roofies. And he got into a lot of trouble for that. And he had to like spend a hundred thousand dollars to defend his license. Because I guess they thought he was just like selling it to date rapists or whatever 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

It’s approved for fibromyalgia and – 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah, it’s approved. He should be able to use it, but maybe it was the fact that he was a psychiatrist or that he was prescribing it a lot or that he was an alternative type of guy. I don’t know. I obviously can’t prescribe it. I never even tried. And so I’ve been looking for something as powerful as that to kind of bring people down. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Right. It is a strange drug, and it is kind of dissociative, it’s weird that you could do some weird things on it, but it is saving the lives of a lot of people for something like regional pain syndrome, they couldn’t sleep. People tend to get enuresis, or some people, they pee the bed, but I know of one patient who just puts the diaper on because it’s worth it because she gets sleep. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. And it doesn’t last, it’s got a short half-life so you wake up the next day and you’re not groggy. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

And it’s strange. It’s kind of like you’re supposed to set an alarm, wake yourself up and take it again. It’s like the old joke in the hospital, wake you up to take your sleeping pill, but there’s a reason for it because it allows you to go into deep sleep. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah, yeah. As opposed to Ambiens and the other sleep aids which sort of 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Ambiens are, I think bad, Besides Ambien texting we had one patient on Ambien knock on the neighbor’s door, naked, asking if they can use the jacuzzi. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

I find those stories hilarious, I know they’re not funny to the person. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah. But you have to laugh, but it can be dangerous. You can go driving and people cooking, and things like that. But the epitalon, which is a pineal hormone stimulates melatonin. Right. But it works over and above, it lowers the inflammation. It actually will fix the secondary or tertiary hypothyroidism so it can reset the thyroid. And it also seems to fix dysfunctional [inaudible]. So it increases T4, T3 conversion, decreases T4 and reverse T3. But that combined with Delta sleep inducing peptide, and it’s not like a sleeping pill where youfall asleep. After a couple of weeks, your body starts to be able to get into deep sleep. You fall asleep and then adding some sort of growth hormone, either growth hormone, adding the secretegogs like CJC epimorolin, AOD, which is a fragment, like that combination. 

We’ve had just remarkable results with people that don’t sleep. Like I’m horrible I had Lyme and [inaudible] so I never slept. And that has helped me tremendously. And it’s interesting about weight. I mean, if you don’t sleep, you don’t lose weight. And I’ve done a couple projects where I’m a procrastinator and I’m like up for like almost two days. And then the next day I gained like eight pounds. It’s just bad. And I feel like I’ve aged like so much if you stay awake that long. So sleep, I think also has to do with libido because if you’re tired, you haven’t slept that’s the last thing you need. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Exactly, exactly. I think it’s really cool. And then it sort of correlates with the ancient Ayurvedic philosophy because they have this whole system, which I think is really cool, where it’s called the transformation of the dachus or the tissues. And so they give you a blood tonic, which is kind of like an adaptogen like ashwagandha or something like that. And they say that it gets in your blood and then it goes to your muscle and then it goes to your bone and then it goes to your fat and then it goes to your sexual tissues or your shukra. And then once it’s in your sexual tissues then you can transform that into spiritual tissue. So it’s kind of like this idea that if all your tissues are healthy the sexual part of you is like a meta function of your whole body being healthy. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

I think it is. I think it’s being young and vibrant and healthy you should have a libido if you don’t, there’s something wrong. I think stress is a huge thing, sleep, exercise, mitochondrial function, arterial and cardiovascular health, neurotransmitter health, I mean there’s so many things to it. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Plus all the psychological stuff and if you take, say ashwagandha, and your cortisol can then drop, then your hormone synthesis can shift from stress hormones to sex hormones. And you can be a little bit just more balanced. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Evolutionally, if you’re stressed, Oh my God, you’re going to get attacked by some wild thing, you’re like Hmm, I’d I’d like to have sex right now. It just doesn’t go like that. And I think people are just stressed to their limit, you know? 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. And they might also have sub optimal activation of the proprio melanacortin system. Because according to that system it’s activated by stress and it should increase your libido, but there’s something that is not functioning that way in our society. I think it’s because our stress is of a particularly toxic – 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

And I think it’s constant because we’re not made to be – what is it? We’re on our phones. And we’re like, Oh, someone texted me, someone texted me. Even growing up, we didn’t have computers. We sent letters. You’d send off a letter, wait a week. Now it’s why haven’t they text me back? Why haven’t they texted me back? And you’ve got traffic, you’ve got 10 things going on. You’ve got kids running around. I think everyone’s just ready for the circuits to break. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

All the biotoxins in your brain. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

And then you’ve got Roundup, plastics, pesticides, BPA, , all this stuff. They’re neurotoxic. Then you get mold. And kind of like neurotoxin, I found I started stuttering so bad that I wouldn’t carry a cell phone because I couldn’t say hello. I was going to go to a stuttering clinic, which happened to be one of my buddies on my residency rotation who stuttered, brilliant guy, but he just really had bad stuttering. And he started a stuttering clinic in Irvine. I was going to go, then I read an article on aspartame and then it showed neurotoxin. I went off aspartame and two weeks later. I didn’t stutter. I remember I switched from Starbucks to Coffee Bean. And they put in their sugar-free stuff, one was Splenda, one was aspartame. And all of a sudden I started stuttering again. And it’s hard to get off of it .It’s like diet Coke, I was addicted to it, because they’re excitotoxins. They’re toxins. And that’s just what they say is good for you. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

That’s interesting. I had this one patient who all she ate was Greek yogurt and she would take aspartame packets and pile them high, like a mountain on top of it, her yogurt. Dr. Kent 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

It’s addictive. Yeah. It wakes you up way more than caffeine. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Oh my God. She was intolerant of dairy too. I did the food sensitivity testing for her, got her off dairy. It took like a year to get her to stop taking aspartame, but she had been diagnosed with bipolar and just all that excitotoxins. And then she went through like an early menopause 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

[inaudible] Bipolar. Wow. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

And I think the hormone deficiency combined with all the excitotoxins really was behind what was a serious mental illness for her. And now she’s stable. She’s fine. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah. And I was drinking eight liters of diet Coke a day. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Oh my God. You know, I have patients like that. And it’s so funny how addictive it is. It’s crazy. It’s like the high fructose corn syrup has the same type of metabolism in the liver as alcohol except you never get drunk. It’s so bad for you. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah. So you find the hormones play a big part, so do you fix hormones first and then go to peptides? 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Sometimes. I consider hormones a little bit more foundational than peptides, probably just because they’re less expensive and my population is a little bit lower income, so I’m like let’s see what happens with the hormones. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Nobody knows what they are. They don’t know what peptides are. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah, exactly. If the hormones are therethen I might go to peptides as the next step, or I might try to use an Ayurvedic adaptogenic herb for a while, but I haven’t been too successful with those. So I’m umping to the peptides a lot more these days. I’m really excited about one I haven’t used yet, but I’m excited to use, which is VIP vaso active intestinal peptide, apparently great for biotoxins, mold toxins, as well as vaginal restoration and all sorts of things. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

I’m not impressed with it, and it also increases TH2 inflammation, so there’s reasons for and against, but there was a big critique of Shoemaker’s work. He’s brilliant. Not the nicest guy ever, but where even his HLA antigens. There’s no data to show that this makes you more susceptible and a lot of his stuff, it’s kinda like he goes from here to here and there’s a lot of things that vaso active intestinal peptide does but it also has a double-edged sword a little bit. Or like with the stress incontinence, it’s amazing BPC, just oral ,will eliminate stress incontinence in a huge percentage of patients 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

I’m addicted to BPC. I can’t live without it. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah. And we’ve talked so much about it on the summit, because it does so many things and I worry that people are gonna go, Oh, it’s like snake oil, it does everything. When I give all the studies too, it does this, does this? And I get comments like, Oh, what is this? The new miracle thing? Well, here’s the literature. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

It worked really, really fantastically for me. I had this hand pain that I did all sorts of things for I injected ozone into it and I’d wrap it and I took all these things. I did a whole mycoplasma treatment and it was like, okay, it got better. But then when I met you and Lori gave me a bottle of BPC, the next day, it was 90% better. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

I get that all the time. It’s like at conferences, I don’t know how many times it happened, where the head of the conference is like you can’t do this. I’m like, here, take some BPC I see you’re limping. Then they’re like, you can do whatever you want. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

You guys are awesome. But sometimes I give it to people and it doesn’t work. And, you were telling me that candida is maybe a confounding factor to BPC.

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

It’s actually very antifungal. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Oh, okay. I’ve been doing a candida sort of protocol and then retrying it again, if it hasn’t worked in the past but I have some people with such severe joint dysfunction that it seems like I have a couple people where I’m at walls with, and I’m just trying, 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

I mean, do they have degenerative joints or 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

I have this one guy who broke his ankle while rock climbing. And it was like hanging and he had to hike out. I was doing ozone injections and et cetera, all sorts of things. And it would help a little bit. Then he got an ankle replacement and then. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Ankle replacement? 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

He got an ankle replacement, yeah. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

I haven’t heard that in a long time. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

I think it was appropriate for him because there was just a lot of hardware and the hardware was sticking out and it was just, it was a mess. And so the ankle is maybe doing a little bit better, but he now has some sort of autoimmune uncharacterized inflammatory disorder in all the joints, the shoulders and everything. And the BPC 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Is it from the implant? 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

The shoulder was hurting before the implant, but the ankle hurt so much that he wasn’t talking about the shoulder. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

I would check a cobalt level. [inaudible] We’ll give off cobalt. For these auto-immune things maybe he had a latent infection, you want to look for that. In terms of autoimmunity, I have a couple talks on that where the [inaudible] TB4, TB4 frag,[inaudible], BPC [inaudible] melanacortins, lowering mast cell, It’s that immune modulation and checking his immunity. So his immunity is probably way, the TH2, TH17 way up here and the TH1, Treg down here. If you can snap that back, oftentimes – did he get diagnosed with anything or is it non-specific or mixed connective tissue disease – 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

No, all the rhuematology labs came back negative, but he’s got what looks like a latent mycoplasma infection. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah, there’s usually some infection driving this abnormal immunity. So with a lot of these peptides, if you’ve been monitoring, there’s other ways to do it too, ozone, [inaudible], low-dose naltrexone, zinc, high-dose vitamin C flavonoids are huge [inaudible] is one of my favorites. and there’s IVIG I love, but it’s so expensive now, no one can get it approved. I would really check his immune system. So I really like natural killer cell function from Quest that [inaudible] then CFRA [inaudible] beta for the second part. And maybe also check his hemoglobulins, any common subtypes. And then through Quest, you can do the lymphocyte subset and if he’s really screwed up, that will be abnormal, and really show. So if he’s having – is it migrating joint pain? 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

No, it tends to be fixated in the elbows and the shoulders and the ankle. I also find that sometimes food intolerances can cause systemic inflammatory reactions. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

The gut just sets everything off and that’s the problem. Everything’s a vicious cycle. And where he could have five things, but as soon as he gets seven, now he gets symptom. Or if someone has Lyme, I think they can go their whole life without having symptoms. But it’s when they get stress and toxins and mold exposure, and their hormones start dropping, they get older so their [inaudible] drops and it’s multifactorial. Well, what’s the cause? Then they get reactivating viruses, which makes it worse. Well, is that really the cause? No, but now you may have to treat it, you have to treat all these different things and they get immune activation of the coagulations, so they’ve got fiberon all over the place. So nothing works. It doesn’t get in there. You know, oxygen takes usually two seconds to get in the cells now it takes up to two minutes. So you’ve got to clean that out. Everything is so multifactorial multi-system, which is the big weakness of standard medicine. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. You have to kind of do everything and people come in and sometimes they’re like, well, I want to try one thing at a time and see if it works. And I’m like, well, that’s one way to do it, but everything is a little bit – 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

And I talk to patients and I’m like, you’re right. I get it. You want to know what w I’d rather have it work and then go back and figure out because sometimes you do treatment A it doesn’t work, you do treatment B, it doesn’t work, Do treatment C, it doesn’t work. You do them together, i works. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. You actually need AC and D and E. Yeah. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah, yeah. And so it’s not easy. And I think more and more, it is, we’re seeing so many multisystem illnesses where you go to this doctor, he fixes this little part or tries to, or they come in with 22 diagnoses, you know? Thank you, God, 22 separate you’re so unlucky you got 22 separate diagnoses. Or is there something underlying it 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Exactly, exactly. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

You treat a lot of mood disorders. Tell me about that. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Right. So I find mood disorder is really related to the hormones. I mean, every woman who has PMS, which I’m assuming is a large percentage of women. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Well, I’m not saying anything. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

It’s true, sorry to out you ladies, but it happens. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

It’s not PMS, I’m just sick of you. You’re so redundant, breathing in and out, in and out, you’re just constantly the same thing…no. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

No, it’s horrible to experience it too. And having been on both sides of the issue I know that when the estrogen is dropping and it’s creating all these inflammatory cytokines and your liver is dealing with all that estrogen, and if you have low progesterone at the same time, you will become cranky. It’s like everything is irritating. And you put on a little progesterone or whatever, and it’s like magic. It goes away, you know? 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

We have, in my house, break glass for emergency and it’s a progesterone, dart. Just kidding. It’s a joke. I get PMS myself. One study on PMS in women, they looked at their thyroid through TRH testing, so much more sensitive, which the endocrine society says you don’t need anymore. But they found their TSHs were normal, actually a little lower, you’d think their thryoid was higher. But it was either all low or like 90%. And they all responded to thyroid treatment. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

My work in depression is huge. Of course you’re going to be depressed if your body isn’t working, if you can’t get out of bed, if you’re so sluggish, you can’t function. Of course that’s depressing. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah. And like you said, you said thyroid, right? Yeah. And you know, the Star Report, largest study ever done on antidepressants, compared all the different antidepressants and had an algorithm, this didn’t work, we have this…they found T3 straight thyroid special, not T4 which is synthroid, T3 the active hormone, giving that was a better antidepressant than antidepressants with less side effects. And it worked regardless of their baseline thyroid levels. So it had less side effects. It worked better. It also didn’t stop working after a year which most antidepressants do. Another study they had bipolar patients, 135, that were treatment resistant. They had tried on average 14 different medications without any change. They gave them all T3 again, regardless didn’t matter whether they were hyperthyroid, I don’t know the exact numbers, but it was like 80% responded and 25% total resolution of symptoms. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. T3, especially the state sustained release T3, I use that all the time it’s fantastic. There’s nothing that really compares to that. I mean, you don’t have a Zoloft deficiency in general. I think in a lot of cases it’s being used to mask underlying really important deficiency, which is thyroid, which is going to be more important for your long-term health. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah. And I just got asked to set up a drug indication for time-released T3 and the problem is that the endos are so against it because they don’t know anything about it. And the problem with compounded is that they use too much time releasing agent. So for anyone with any gut issues, which is so many of the people we see, it can go right through. So they go, well, compounded doesn’t work. Well, they’re kind of right because the formula that you used is not correct. So we actually did, all our staff got time-released T3 at different doses and we analyzed it all. We came up with the formula where you need much less time releasing agent and it worked so much better. You can build your own practice on just T3. 

I mean, it fixes so many things. Dr. And then you add some hormones on top of that and peptides, we treat the sick of the sick, good or bad. I mean, it’s tough, but we’d love to have just some thyroid patients and som [inaudible] But you master those and you can get the sickest patients better. Like with the Lyme patients, I had it myself so I really figured I have to give back. And with myself, it’s like antibiotics more and more and more and more, we must be giving more. And I did seven, eight, nine at a time at three, four times the dose I’d never give a patient. And three and a half years later, you have to do an IV and I’m not any better. And that’s when I went searching and found peptides. And with your immune system so low, it doesn’t matter how many antibiotics you give, you can’t lower it enough for your immune system to take over. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. Lyme is so tricky, such a 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

And when I say Lyme, that includes so many other things. It’s rarely just Lyme. You got Babesia, Bartonella infections you don’t even know of, [inaudible], viruses, mold, all these things. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

In Chinese medicine, they call it a goo disease. It’s just this gumming up, parasitic, drag you down into the muck generalized stuff. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

And parasites are huge. Studies on Hashimoto’s showing [inaudible] in biopsies [inaudible] in the thyroid in like 80% of people with Hashimoto’s, but it wasn’t found in the blood also Parvo B19, There’s a gastroenterologist Dr. Stuppe, in LA did a study on parasites and he looked at what areas throughout, he has like a 40 year practice where he gathered all this data, published it and looked at what areas. You’d think it would be in the lower socioeconomic areas. It was in all the high socioeconomic areas and Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, the nice areas. We’re like, what could it be? Cats? or Sushi. And I think that’s probably the number one thing I think of. So if I eat sushi, I bring [inaudible] with me and take it with it 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. Have you ever done any of the parasite therapy, helminth therapy? 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

No. So basically what she’s talking about is you take these and it modulates your immune system. For instance you look in third world countries, they don’t generally get autoimmune disease because they have particular parasites that modulate the immune system 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Gentle parasites that hopefully don’t create a large parasite burden, but they up regulate T regulatory cells. They increase the gastric mucosa. It’s such a hard thing to get your mind around. I did it for myself because I wanted to see if I could reverse my food sensitivities. I couldn’t eat sugar. I couldn’t drink alcohol. I would get ill if I did either of those things. It is pretty limiting. No Thai food, no business drinks, whatever. And it worked fantastically, but it took me a long time to build up the courage to be able to do it. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah, it’s like the old days when you eat the tape worm. And I do worry about parasites and basically it mast cell. but it seems to work. We’ll use bee venom in some patients, which I I’ve seen it work fabulous. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

I’ve been wanting to use bee venom. I haven’t gotten a good source of it yet. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yes. That was the thing, I got powdered. I’m like, I’m not comfortable weighing this out. And there was a story I read, I forget where I read it, but this woman had terrible, I think it was chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and could barely walk, but she went outside and just got attacked by those killer Africanized bees, she got stung everywhere and almost died, but she didn’t. And then all her symptoms were gone. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

The orthomolecular psychiatrist that I worked with was a beekeeper and somehow he had gotten the bee venom into a syringe and he had mixed it with lidocaine. He wouldn’t tell me how, I assume they sting some wax, there’s an extract or something, but it was some kind of trade secret. I wasn’t let in on it. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

We have the dosing. And the key was that you’ve got to buy from a reputable source and the dosing is key. But we started using it, but just kind of stopped for whatever reason, but we can certainly get it. It works. It’s just picking the patient that it works in. Or LDA, do you like low dose allergan? 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

I haven’t done too much of that stuff yet. I’ll do low dose naltrexone and I’ll try to kind of shift the immune system that way. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

I love the low-dose allergen and it probably reduces significantly or eliminates like 60% of the allergies in like 60% of people. It works great. But once again, it’s getting so hard to get because they’re restricting it. No one’s had ever any problem with it. So basically you have low dose and medium dose foods and then inhalants, and then you add beta glucuronidase to it and then little tiny shot. And then you can kind of tell which one they react to by how big their little welt is. If they don’t have anything, then it probably is not going to work, but then you want to do it like two months later, you can’t do it any sooner unless it’s low dose you can take it to a medium dose then like six months later, then every six months or every year. We’ve had tremendous results in some people. It’s just another little tool in the toolbox. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. Sounds, sounds like a good one. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Let’s see. So, someone comes in with a low libido, what’s your approach? 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Well, first I want to rule out all the other things that could be confounding their libido. Sometimes people have low libido because they have some chronic urinary tract infections and they’ve got pelvic pain. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Pelvic pain, I mean, yeah. And I don’t think that’s uncommon, but again, women don’t want – or just dryness cause they’re on hormones and it’s like get away from me. Yeah, Valerie 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah, exactly. They instinctively are like don’t touch there and they might not even be aware because if you have a urinary tract infection that’s low-level chronic for long enough, it just becomes your new normal. Some of those infections don’t show up on cultures maybe they’re mycoplasma or something. They’re not growable. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

And they’re in biofilms. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah, exactly. So I try to address that. I’ll go into gut dysfunction. I have this one patient who she would like to want to have sex, but she has chronic kind of explosive diarrhea. She’s had her colon removed and all sorts of stuff 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah, it’s not sexy 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

You don’t feel sexy when that’s happening. So we did the food sensitivity test for her and she actually, eventually sometimes it takes people awhile, took out some of the foods and it kind of firmed it up a little bit and she was able to kind of at least think about it and she’s on the road. But anything that’s in the sort of lower jow there, if it’s dysfunctional, it’s gonna be dysfunctional. It’s all part of the same pelvic bowl. And then of course the normal – 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Pelvic floor dysfunction or post-coital pelvic pain. Horrible. Right? Yeah. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. My new favorite thing for pelvic floor dysfunction or at least laxity is called Perifit. It’s this little device that you can put in, we used to have these big sort of biofeedback devices that we would use to increase, kind of an assisted Kagel, we called it the boyfriend. It would talk to you, squeeze know, and you’d squeeze, it’d give you a little shock. But there’s one you can buy for about a hundred bucks and you can play a game with your pelvic floor on your phone. You know, you like squeeze and then the butterfly goes up, 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Can you do it when you’re driving? 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

I don’t think so. Unless you have a Tesla self-driving car, maybe you’d crash. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

But when I hear pelvic floor dysfunction, there’s a number of lectures, I’m forgetting the doctor, but Lyme is huge. And I remember when I kind of had that when I had Lyme, I would gear up – wait too much inflammation, I know this guy that had this problem, how’s that? – and after urinating it would just cramp and it was the most excruciating pain. Got rid of the Lyme, and the bobesia and it went away. So a number of lectures on that I wish I could remember the doctor, but that’s what she specializes in. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Is that because there’s some urinary tract infection? 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah. It could be it’s there it’s in the muscles. I mean, I used to get cramps like crazy everywhere. It was that just more sensitive. Like if I would turn like this my back would totally cramp. Which I think is from poor mitochondrial function, not enough energy, muscles are like a bear trap, they need energy to relax, snap back, and then they need energy to close. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. Mitochondrial dysfunction is so important for everything. I’ve been using a lot of Poly-MVA IV. I’ve been very impressed with it for liver disease, energy, mitochondrial function 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

You know what I don’t think anyone’s mentioned Poly-MVA. People have talked a lot about the mitochondrial peptides but Poly-MVA, which people think if you had cancer, but it’s really a mitochondrial booster. And the problem is with like alpha lipoic acid, [inaudible], they go in and they’re gone. And the Poly-MVA tends to stick in there. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

For boosted alpha lipoic acid, I’ve been very successful with it with diabetic neuropathy. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Makes sense. Diabetic neuropathy is a mitochondrial problem. It’s an oxidative and mitochondrial problem, which goes together. When the mitochondria get dysfunctional, they pump out reactive oxygen species. They pump out all these oxidative substances. Yeah. Peptide wise PT141. Valerie Phillips (01:12:32): 

Yeah. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

I’ve never seen it not work really. I’ll tell a quick story. A dear Dr. friend, I won’t mention his name, but he’s been doing this stuff forever, we talked about hiring him, we went to dinner a couple of times and we talked about PT141. He was all, let me try it. And he was getting up there in years and kind of shaking. And I had some in my car and gave it to him. He dropped the first vial on the ground, it broke and then he got the next one. So we saw him again a couple months later at a dinner party, we asked his wife, how’d it go? She says it was okay. And then we ended up talking to her like a couple hours later and she had a few drinks and then we were like so you said that really didn’t make a difference. Well, let me tell you, he was riding me like a horse all night, kept going and going and going. We were like, Whoa. Andshe’s like 75 or 80. I don’t know. And we’re like, Whoa. Yeah. So it was funny, so it matters when you ask them. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

It works so well in men. I think it works better than Viagra because it gets that central nervous system 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

When Viagra doesn’t work, I’ve never seen it not work. Yeah. For some people nausea is an issue. It tends to go away. Also the pigmentation issue is an issue for some people. Depends on how often they take it. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah, less so than with melanatan 2 , but still significant.

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah. And some people have no problem. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. A lot of people love the pigmentation issue. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah. If you’re younger you get a nice, smooth tan, but for me. So you’d be able to use it. I wouldn’t. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

People would accuse you of doing black face, 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Final thoughts. What’s your take home message for doctors and healthcare providers and the general public lay people watching this. What do you want to tell them? 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Just that libido is an important issue. You know, if a woman or a man or one half of the partnership has absolutely no libido, it can destabilize a whole relationship. It’s huge. I have people that are happily married except that they don’t have sex ever. And they tolerate it, but they’re not happy 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

I think that’s way more common than anyone knows. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah. And really as functional medicine doctors, we’re here to enhance quality of life. We want people to be as happy and as functional and live their life to the fullest. That’s why we’re here. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Part of that, I mean, that’s what we’re kind of made to do, you know? And you think when you’re young, that’s all you think about, you know? And then it’s just like, forget it, you know? 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Forget it. I’ll die before ever having sex again. It’s amazing the awakenings. I keep thinking about the first person I used it with when she came back in, after having used it, she just had this happy flush to her face. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Isn’t it funny how it just shows. Right. If someone’s happy, you can almost see like from a distance, you can’t even see their face very well, but you can see if someone’s happier or not. You can also kind of see how old they are without even seeing them but that glow, That what’s going on, you look like something good has happened. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

I was so impressed. And she hadn’t had sex with her husband for 10 years and all of a sudden it’s like a whole Renaissance in their relationship. So fantastic. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Well, I bet he was happy. Like What? What’s going on here. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Exactly. I have a lot of happy husbands in my practice. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Nice. Have you gotten a lot of thank you gifts? 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

I keep all my cards. I can write some funny ones, Paintings and little sculptures and just like it’s rewarding. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

That’s nice. That’s nice. So you’re changing lives. That’s what we’re here for. Right. That’s awesome. Y. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Yeah, trying to be a beacon of light a little bit, as much as possible. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

That’s great. Hey, well, thank you so much. This was very enlightening and I think broached the subject that’s a little uncomfortable for some people. But it’s something I think that affects so many people and even the ones that don’t talk about it, like my marriage is fine, but I think it’s a problem. And I would think the majority of marriages that from my point of view. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

My experience is that people want to talk about it. Once you bring it up they’re like, Oh, thank goodness you asked about that because actually it’s a big deal. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Yeah. It is. Well, thank you. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Thank you. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Thank you for taking the time. I think it was great information and thank you for helping all these people and changing their lives. You’ve changed probably so many lives. You have no idea. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Maybe. I hope so. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

So awesome. All right, thank you so much. 

 

Valerie Phillips, N.D.

Thank you. 

 

Kent Holtorf, M.D.

Bye bye.