325. Peptides & Performance Enhancing Supplements With LVLUP Health Founder
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Thank you for listening to the Boost Your Biology podcast. My name is Lucas Owen. I uncover the most cutting edge health information on the planet, ranging from hormones, nutrition, supplementation, fat loss, biohacking, longevity, wellness, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Boost Your Biology podcast.

What is up, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to the Boost Your Biology podcast. Today, I'm joining the studio with a very special guest who is also a fellow naturopath and is the CEO and founder of Level Up Health. Kyle, welcome to the podcast, man. Thanks for having me back on five years later. I don't know if the OG episodes are still there, but Lucas and I jammed about five years ago when I just started the business and had one

or maybe even just two products to level up names. So yeah, no. - Man, we will tell the audience how we, I mean, we met at university, right? Like we were sort of one of our lecturers, a mutual lecturer that we both had just connected us. And then we'll just like two autistic hyper nerdy people

up on the rooftop at our university jamming it out talking about new ingredients freezing our butts off after the connection from shared out dr miranda miles uh for making that connection but yeah it was like two and two hours freezing our butts off talking naturopathy and uh connecting um over all the things that are kind of off menu for the naturopathic um course as well so

Now, it's been great to know you over the past few years and see your growth and see how the podcast has blown up since I think we're episode six or something back way when. So yeah, we've both gone on our paths and our journeys and yeah, we've come full circle to be doing it. I know, man. I know. Well, the one thing that I must say that I've like been pretty inspired by in terms of what you've done, man, is just you have...

pretty much just dream, believe and action it. Like you have just been, if the idea is in your mind, like you just go after it. And I think that's hats off to you for being like courageous in that regard and, you know, putting into practice what you read, you know, you obviously were bouncing ideas always was looking at different formulas, chatting about ingredients. I mean, for my audience, like

What do you want to do in terms of like the five to 10 year trajectory of Level Up Health? Like you've already got some incredible formulations. Like where do you see it heading in? Yeah, so my purpose with Level Up is to provide the best tools for naturopaths to...

get results as fast as possible. And that means anything that is safe and effective, and it's not going to be like a drug that might have horrible side effects or reactions. And from a like philosophical perspective, I want every anyone who has some health condition to be able to come to level up and there be the right product for them. So there's still plenty of gaps in the market in the range, but

Essentially, probably around 50 products would be the end goal being level with like Thorne or Seeking Health or someone like those bigger brands that have a larger range for just everything. And then just, I guess,

not coast, but just maintain steady there once we've got everything and just continue to refine what already exists. Like with, um, ultimate GI repair, the third product I come up with, we're up to iteration number five of that. Now it was just constantly refining the dosages, working off, um, customer feedback, sort of the more, as I developed my knowledge and, um,

As manufacturing improves to just keeping the product updated rather than sitting on your hands and just being happy with what you made years ago. So that's definitely the five to 10 year plan is just to keep this business. I love doing it. I love formulating. I love all the R and D that goes into making a new product, all the individual ingredients that you, you know, encapsulate yourself and see the effects or,

see the negative ones sometimes and then don't make them a product. But yeah, it's all really fun for me. I've always loved doing it from, you know, as you know, from the day you met me, we bonded over experimenting and you and I both react differently. So getting your opinions and your advice on these formulas has been really beneficial. And, you know, you've got miscommunication

Mr. Novel Nutrients, basically. You always know an ingredient that I've never heard of. So it's been really good to learn from you as well. And it's really helped your education that you've put out and your feedback and your mentoring to some level to me has really helped the brand grow too. So I appreciate that. Yeah.

It's been a really interesting, like just seeing the whole supplement space evolve over the years and like just reflecting back, I'm like, what was it that really like put Level Up Health on the map? And deep down thinking about it, would you say that like BPC-157 was like the peptide that really solidified your, you know,

I guess, awareness in the supplement space. 100% it was. Like timing-wise, I couldn't have timed it any better because now I think if you go to anyone who's interested in health, most people will have heard of it. At least 60% have heard of BPC now from influencers like Rogan and...

Even Kennedy, I think, is on BPC and plenty and plenty of people have tried it and used it now. And we sort of were doing it five years ago when I was based in Australia, having tried to bring it in and failed to do so and had the opportunity to make it locally and serve the Australian markets where I began. And there was no one really doing it. So it was a really unique opportunity being the only one. It was quite nice to begin the business without all this competition and being crushed.

But now plenty of people are jiving onto it. And like, I reckon about a half a dozen brands starting up their own BPC product every week. Now they're just popping up like mushrooms now. So really the fact that we doubled and tripled and quadrupled down and the first few years of business, just not really running any level of profit, just reinvesting and re adding to the range, building it out because I always had this fear that BPC would,

like i wouldn't be able to sell it for long before it was potentially banned or we got in trouble so i'd always that's usually the case with with with with peptides and compounds that work too well i mean we see it time and time again yeah what was it dave asprey said if you ever want a list of the best biohacking ingredients just go on the water bam list that'll all be there bpc is now on that which really sucks for a lot of the athletes who are

using it and who really should still be allowed to use it when there's basically no negative effects to it. Well, there are some athletes that will absolutely still be allowed to use it if they're competing in the current enhanced games. Have you heard about that competition? Yeah, the one where they're breaking all the records.

Yeah, like literally this morning, I think they did the first event today where they did the 50 meters freestyle. And for those listening in, the enhanced games is basically a drug permitted Olympics. So basically any performance enhancing drug is...

permitted. Obviously, there's a lot of medical supervision. They're doing it properly. It's sort of like saying, let's maximize human potential. Let's explore the boundaries of human performance. So those athletes, I think they should be on BPC 157 as well as... I'm sure they are. For all the other things that they're on, if BPC is not included, then whoever's coaching them is probably missing a huge piece because I was saying this on a podcast I was doing last night is these things extend the

duration, that short window that most professional athletes have in their prime, if they were allowed to take it, you know, five to 15 years might be the average 15 for a really exceptional athlete or five for your average. Like injury is the biggest thing that ruins someone's professional career. So yeah,

Why should you not be allowed to take something like BPC, which doesn't give you unfair advantage. You're not going to come back after taking BPC looking like Ronnie Coleman or C-Bump. It does have a slight affinity for upregulating growth hormone receptors, but no one who's done BPC comes back looking like absolutely yoked or jacked. Oh yeah. Yeah. Would you say that, because I was thinking about what's the main reason why you wanted to start selling BPC-157. Was it initially because you're like,

I think this is the Holy Grail for gut healing. Like, or was there any other sort of effect that was that caught your attention? So at the time when I started the business, I was working at a hyperbaric oxygen facility. Most of the people who were there had chronic conditions and I would ask them to sponge every bit of information and knowledge I could off of them because these guys are in the trenches trying to get their own health back. And time and time again, people would say that BPC was one of the most beneficial things they'd taken.

There was a compounding chemist across the road that were administering it to these patients. And I really wanted to do it, but I hated the hurdle of doing needles. And when I learned that you could do it in a capsule and had the opportunity to make it as a capsule, I jumped on that one and it really made a huge difference. At the time, I had horrible adrenal issues. My guts were ruined. It was a very bad time because within a year of working in that job, my mom had just passed. So it

cortisol through the roof i'd been in this eight-year battle with her against all the doctors sort of it should be with but it was more against than with at the time so it was one of these ingredients that really helped bring my brain back but also helped me with these gut issues that i'd never really experienced until that point and then just knowing it had clinical utility based on hearing how many people had used it and said it was like the best thing that ever they'd ever used so

That's why I had to make it and had to bring it out. And from then it's just now in like five to four or five different formulations and,

on the tip of every biohacker's tongue at the moment. So I'm really glad to see that. And it makes a lot of sense when you understand how multi mechanistic it actually is. Like not many people are going to take BPC and not notice something if it's improved gut health, or improved brain health, or increased deep sleep, or you know, less anxiety because of its GABAergic effects, or even just like distal injuries, just so many things that can work on that it's

super it was a pretty easy decision to sell something that's like got so many ways that it can help so i'm really will be forever grateful to ppc for basically being the thing that got level up to where it is and again to you like you were the first person to promote the brand um promote the products and that sort of ripple effected now to being i think one of the biggest brands in biohacking which is absolutely awesome and i'm honored to say that no i appreciate it man well when i first came across bpc i mean i was

Like back then, a lot of the research was focused on gut related issues, inflammatory bowel disease, maybe like I think there was a few on like Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, that sort of stuff.

um there wasn't a lot on like specifically uh injury recovery like tissue healing until only sort of like i mean recently my my new youtube video coming out about um bpc is going to be blow people away because i'm sharing a study that i don't even think you've probably even seen yet or maybe you have but it was about its ability to actually um

It was a ligament, so it was tendon to bone reattachment and it actually just basically resolved that ability to, well, accelerated the recovery rate in terms of healing that pathway. And I was like, man, this is 2020, I think it was a 2024 study.

And I'm like, people are using BPC nowadays for, like you said, they're realizing that its benefits are broad beyond gut health, but also like, yeah, the sleep. I mean, when I used it, my deep sleep, I told you about that went up to like three hours and 15 minutes, which was ridiculous. No other supplement that I've ever used ever got my sleep that high. And that was after, you know me, I've tried how many different ingredients, but

I need like 30 hands, no more than that to count. I know, I know. But let's sort of switch gears, man. I'm super keen to talk about one of my favorite products that you sell and I literally take it every single day, at least two to three capsules a day. And that is Tutka. So did you want to sort of, I mean...

The idea for you to even release the Tutka, where did that come from? So Toro Urso deoxycholic acid, that fantastic bile salt that helps people's digestion was, I think it was within one of the first three or four products that I released on the level up. It's because, you know, you, me and all our friends in Melbourne, we're all talking about it and loving it and using it. And

No one was doing it with a transparent label. It was part of a blend. So I'm like, well, why would I not just do this and launch it when the people I knew and for myself taking it significantly improved my energy. Helping clear out the liver is where your thyroid's converted before to T3. So I noticed a significant, not a huge one, not like taking caffeine, but a noticeable energy improvement when I first started taking it. And then

When I had a bit of mold exposure, I noticed the first time I took a big dose of it, I had a huge Herxheimer bile dump reaction that was like very eye-opening and very impactful and powerful to see just

a how bad my liver my bile had gotten how thick it was which can happen to a lot of people especially bodybuilders and men who are taking oral testosterone or not testosterone and things like oxandrolone for example that will reliably um cause cholestasis if you don't do anything to prevent that from happening and tudka is almost like not saying it's going to cure that but it's like the

closest thing to a remedy you have for that because it thins out the bile. So the thinning of the bile was just very powerful and not very pleasant, but certainly had very powerful benefits for my liver health and my overall health too. And then obviously the energy and then you find out about it like there's things you could take like ox bile, which essentially is

going to have levels of UDCA and TUDCA in it and then other digestive acids in there too, or bile acids in there as well. But the thing about TUDCA that's really interesting is its ability to help with protein folding and reduce the endoplasmic reticulum stress. So it goes far beyond just liver health and fat digestion. It's got like

I think it's been well studied for brain health as well because of those mechanisms. So it's one of these things that was like, all right, I love BPC because it does all these multimodal, it has multiple effects. And Tokyo is not as diverse as BPC and maybe not as instantly noticeable, but it also has a huge range of effects for most people. And unless you're pushing like mega doses of it for a long time, it's something that most people will benefit from.

benefit from like nine out of 10 people would say that they get a really good experience from it. Yeah, man. I would mention that like probably the main reason why I first started taking it as well was because I was just at the point where I was playing around with like some of the bitter herbs, like artichoke and gentian, the famous classic naturopathy sort of herbal extracts.

And, you know, that was at the time when I got off the reflux drugs that my dad as a pharmacist prescribed me or recommended to me at a very young age. And I was like, nah, like, I don't want to be on these for the rest of my life. And then I just went down the rabbit hole of like bitter herbs, activating bile flow and production, like,

Man, bile is one of those like pathways that I think most people when it comes to digestive health completely ignore or they just neglect it. They think it's all about stomach acid, but I would say stomach acid and bile, like they have to be top two priorities. If you're like in terms of resolving gut issues, stomach acid, bile.

bile and they're usually the two then everything else sort of follows from there yeah well a lot of the time people with elevated liver enzymes will take Tudcure and the way that it supports it is by opening phase three detoxification which is bile flow if your bile isn't flowing that's just going to backlog everything in phase two of your liver detoxification and then you'll have a build-up of intermediate metabolites which will then show as usually as elevated liver enzymes so

Anyone pushing detox needs to be doing all the things, as I call them, like rebounding and lymphatics and drainage. But Tudka, for example, or even other bile acids are going to be very beneficial. Fiber as well to bind the Tudka. There's ingredients like chitosan or chitosan, which is a bile sequestering binder. Those two in combination can be fantastic for

you know, the push with the Tudka and the catch with the Chardazin, that's a really good protocol for people who maybe the, one of the biggest issues with pushing detox pathways is you end up with potential recirculation. And that's why you and I both like calcium deglucorate. That's a prevents recirculation of estrogens, but the bile itself gets recycled. And if it doesn't get cleared properly, then again, you can have recirculation of the

Um, the toxins that are, that are removed via the bile. So that one works really well, but you're right. Like focusing on stomach acid, super important. And the over prescription of antacids and reflux medication that basically nukes the, well raises the stomach acid to the point where you now get.

undigested food part proteins and food matter hit the small intestines and then you end up with bacterial overgrowth because then the bacteria's purpose is to try and help your body digest what your stomach acid failed to do so so that's when we end up with issues like the small intestinal bacterial overgrowth which then has just a huge downstream effect but

Yeah, naturopathy certainly has some good ingredients to it. But todka is really one that they should teach in there. Like, it's just a super safe supplement. You love taurine too. That's sort of a really good one for liver health as well. And part of the reason why I believe it's amazing is your body will make deoxycholic acid.

And then ursodeoxycholic acid is also produced, but you need taurine to actually create Tudka endogenously. If you're not getting dietary taurine, for example, you're following a plant-based diet, you are going to have no basically endogenous Tudka produced and your liver health is going to deteriorate. So, you know, vegans, please make sure you get in supplemental taurine if you're not going to take Tudka. I don't know who you are.

But like you mentioned vegan, but I don't think there's many listening to the podcast. So I don't even know who's going to hear that. Oh man, you've got to clip it. You clip it and then your followers send it to their vegan friends. They're trying to convince them. So that's how it will get to them. Uh-oh.

Man, I think the other point as well is I've looked at blood tests numerous times. That's part of what I do with my consulting, coaching clients to achieve better health. And let's look at the most obvious markers of liver health, which is AST and ALT. And from what I've seen through me recommending Tudka, reliably will lower liver enzymes. So do you want to sort of

elaborate on that like you know the importance of tutka for you know actually objectively moving the needle per se yeah well a lot of the animal studies have directly linked supplemental tutka to the lowering of those specific enzymes too in reject uh

preventing fatty liver from occurring for example there's plenty of studies on tadka but basically the mechanism is it's a water-soluble bile acid that will thin the bile make it flow it's essentially if you have elevated liver enzymes like the drainage pipe in your bathtub is clogged or the water itself is really thick and full of fat and toxins and whatever else

whatever other crap that you're putting in your body is sludging it up. So it's like bringing in drainer, thinning it out, allowing it to flow and getting rid of the backlogs to allow it to flow out and then reduce the burden on the, on the metaphorical bathtub. So that's,

That's how it reliably will reduce liver enzymes. And then if you combine it with something like N-acetylcysteine or glutathione, then that's like a one-two combo that should resolve most people's issues with liver enzymes. If they're not dropping, like I was taking Tudco when living in mold and it helped a hell of a lot, but they never really got below the elevated range because I was still in the environment in which was causing the oxidative stress effect.

And the sludging of the bile, which mold toxins certainly do that as well. So, you know, there's always reasons why you've got elevated liver enzymes. If it's as simple as I'm on a PED or something like that, then that's where Tudka will just be like the one plus one equals two remedy. But if they're on PEDs and living in mold and they live near a golf course or like some other place,

toxin compounder, then that's when things like this might not be strong enough, but you can certainly push it at really high doses and sort of make it happen. Right. So let's, yeah, let's explore that because when I talk to guys and I say like some of the studies, I think they use up to 1800 milligrams of Tudka from memory and that actually improved liver insulin sensitivity. Is that, is that the max you've seen? Was it 1800? Look, it's,

Around the two to two and a half is probably the high end that I've ever seen people push. In studies, I'm not exactly sure. But yeah, I wouldn't ever go above two personally because then I feel like

You'd notice if you've pushed it too high because then you would actually see bile in your stool, like a yellowing of your stool. And if you do it for too long as well, like this is an interventional supplement. You can take it daily if you need that level of support for your liver. But ultimately, everything that I make with Level Up is kind of designed to just be bring it in.

Get the change that you're looking for rectify the body's system and then remove it and see how you go. And if you choose to continue to take it, then sure. Great. But also be aware that most things have this bell shaped curve, sweet spot, Goldilocks zone. And for people that zone mightn't be a dose, it might be a duration. So taking it for like two months and then reassessing afterwards.

am I still digesting my fats properly? Are my liver enzymes all stable despite whatever I'm doing in my lifestyle? Then you might need it anymore. But if you're eating like a lot of people, we went to a conference last year, which was basically KetoCon and carnivores. A lot of people were on Tudka because they needed that level of digestive support for the insane amount of fat they had consumed on that diet. So that's a situation where I'm like, all right, this is going to be a beneficial product for you for pretty much the rest of your life.

the rest of the time that you're bringing in this diet, if it's going to be your life, then probably forever. But if you're doing it to sort of combat, you know, insulin resistance and sort of rectify some of the mitochondrial dysfunction that can come with the Western diet, then yeah, it's probably going to help you for sure. And a lot of people who do start those diets end up with

really a lot of pain in their stomach from all the excessive amount of fat and they end up with diarrhea sometimes, especially if they're pushing the MCT oils and other things like that. So that's where an ox bile or a tudec is going to help those specific dieters. But

Yeah, you and I have gone back and forth and I'm definitely on your side of the argument now around keto. I don't ever think anyone should really do it more than like three to six weeks and then bring back things, bring back carbs. I've had many a podcast debate with people who believe it's the holy grail of diets, but you've never bought into that, which is cool. No, I never did. But you know what's really funny is that Mark Bell, have you seen his content recently? Oh, man.

Like, all right. So now he's basically advocating. He's basically partnered up with, not partnered up, but he's hanging out with Durian Rider, right? And you remember this guy. I'm sure my audience would remember, but like,

What are they doing now? They're going all high sugar, basically like fruit, sugar juices, you know, fruit juices, but super like basically low to no carb. Sorry, low to no fat. Or protein even like it's ridiculous. Yeah. And it's like, what happens in the body, man? Like, what do you think?

Because like, I know that the combination, it's the sugar and the fat together. If you modulate both of those together, not the best thing. What do you think of this? 100%, especially saturated fat with sugar in combination, like that's not a great combination. And you look at dietary sources of that combination, it's essentially just cow's milk, where you see them together in nature. And the purpose of that is to fatten up the baby cow, for example. So

Look, if you're going to do really high carb, high sugar and you do low fat, that's better than doing this to it concurrently. But I also think extremism in dieting is a bit ridiculous. And having done it myself, I don't ever recommend people take an extremist view or do an extremist diet other than like the definition of extremist is kind of up for

up for debate. Like if you're like me, and you only eat organic, and you don't eat gluten and follow like a paleo, but not carb restricted diet, I don't think that's personally extreme, but someone else might think it is to not include other things. So I just whatever works for your body, like it will, especially if you've got your body to a level of a baseline level of health that's better than the average.

There's lots of little like free signals that your body will give you about how you feel, whether that's your energy levels. If you do blood tests, everything should be within range. If you're doing everything right, if the diet's working for you, but if you've got elevated homocysteine, if you've got

a stool test and you've got high levels of gut biosis or an organic acid test and you've got something off, then maybe your diet isn't the thing that's working for you or it's environmental, one of the two. But Mark doing that is interesting. I love it when people push the envelope, but they have to be prepared to break themselves, which Mark is.

As someone who would deal with patients or people, I'd never ever recommend that level of extremism to any diet though. Yeah, yeah. When you said before around like the body will give signals and so like if they look at a blood test, everything should be in range.

Do you want to also emphasize the fact that like in range versus, you know, in range? Yeah. Yeah. Because guys may not have symptoms externally. Like they might say, yeah, my energy is great. Yeah, I feel good. Then they do their blood test and it's like shit, like their cholesterol is high, their HbA1c is terrible, insulin. CRP, all those things. Yeah. I guess there's...

You have to get to a certain level before you might start to really feel shit. And when you do feel shit, it's a very steep slope that you start to fall down. So yeah, good point. Good pick up. Good pull up on that one. There's certain things you can do. Like Mark should be for certain doing a CGM and seeing like trying to keep it

Let's just go buy him one and send him one. I'll message him after this and just say, hey, Mark. He probably, I bet you he's had like a thousand DMs to say like, put on a CGM, do a blood test, do this, do that. I mean, there's this level of I'm looking to do things that will garner a huge amount of attention within the biohacking and health. I get it. So,

So I can see why he's doing it. And it's certainly working if that's a strategic goal, but people like Brian Johnson are a perfect example of that. Like he can, he'd be doing probably 40% of his protocol would be detrimental, but it gets a lot of benefit and a lot of traction and views and clicks. What do you mean by detrimental? Not like, yeah.

Vegan, basically. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, sorry. Even using rapamycin and other experimental drugs and doing gene therapies which could backfire. Like, I don't know. Like the folistatin gene therapy. I think that one's fine, but it's pretty reckless to do something that's never been proven like that, but at the same time, like it's obviously working. Dave Asprey did it. That's why he never wears a shirt anymore. So, yeah, certainly...

I don't know. I'm more on the try to stay in the middle ground of, I don't know, logic and common. Experimental versus, yeah, like you want to go, you still want to be novel. You still want to introduce, I mean, SLUPP332, which people have just heard me say that they think I'm literally writing down someone's password or something. But like that's an experimental compound that, I mean, is being,

studied for fat loss and you know um i've never personally used it but you know i want to try it by itself i know it's sort of um side tangent but you've included it in your one of your you know fat fat burning products as well the total recomp yeah i just tried it and didn't get any negative effects like i was going to use an ingredient called tessafencine but that had a huge risk profile and a huge massively long half-life so that was

I released it and then immediately discontinued that product. The sloop, though, seems to be one that's only going to elicit benefits in the preliminary studies.

increasing energy expenditure, fatty acid oxidation, decreasing fat mass, all of the things that are going to help with metabolic syndrome and mimicking exercise. Like there's other natural ingredients like albaba, for example, that do that as well. But the synergy of using a small molecule like that alongside them, alongside like GBB, the precursor to L-carnitine, as well as N-acetyl L-carnitine, like I kind of go a bit stupid sometimes with

the amount of ingredients I use, but none of them I will ever, I'll try my best. Can't make any promises, but I always try my best to make sure that a product's going to work for most people and it's not going to harm anyone. Like that's our naturopathic philosophy is it's actually the doctor's one that they kind of forgot about, but first do no harm. And you, you know, start with the minimal intervention possible. Well,

That's really well and good to just, all right, let's just start with Alkanatine. But is that really going to move the dial for people to be consistent with it? I think the way the world is now, the distance that most people are from optimal health is too large to be using things that are just going to move the needle a little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

It's an interesting analogy saying people are so far away from being optimal that you need to whip out the big guns and also use big dosages and also use combination of ingredients to move the needle. Otherwise, it's just because the average population is so average, like just in terms of their...

their state of health, you know, it's like not their fault. It's just the way the world's kind of been set up. And there's been a lot of very poor governmental dietary advice over the last sort of 50 years that have led to a food industry that prioritizes like cheap and nasty sugars and seed oils and,

all these things whilst concurrently bringing in like 20,000 chemicals that all that none of them have been studied. And some of them are forever chemicals or have endocrine disrupting effects. There's just so many things that we have to fight against, you know, in our bodies to get to that baseline level of good health, that it's no surprise that, you know, the chronic disease epidemic is so high, there's so many cancers, there's so much autoimmunity now that

it's kind of like, well, we need powerful tools to sort of remedy this now. And the old naturopathics and the homeopathics are kind of don't move the needle enough for most people. Once you've really clawed back your health, like even GLP-1, semaglutide, ozempic,

Ritatrutide. All these ones are ones I used to absolutely say no way in hell I'd do that. But that's for me personally. I have a better than average baseline level of health. These can be incredible peptides that you bring in for a short term to get you on the right track, to break the negative spiral of poor health

to clear the inflammation that your excessive adiposity is going to be causing. And then you take it out, you swap it out for something like Recomp or you then swap out Recomp for something similar, like just Albabel or GlucoVantage.

Or then L-carnitine. And then the diet might be the final step where you don't even need supplements. They are supplemental. They're meant to just be interventional, not forever things. But the way the amount of things we have to overcome now means that you kind of need heavy hitting tools, which Zempik's probably the top of that.

It's like a tier system, right? Like the severity of it. Okay, you got your Ozempic and GLP-1 agonists. Then it's like, what's the second tier? What's the third tier? And you go down. I think if you explain it to people like that, I think it makes a lot of sense because they're like, all right, now I can sort of see where total recomp fits in or where L-baba, glucovanage, oh, that's where it fits in. They like to say it relative to...

People are obsessed with pharmaceutical, like just because a doctor prescribes it, you know, it's like, oh, wow, it must be so effective. You know, there's that stigma. But let's sort of switch gears and focus on the test booster that you've, it's been on the market now for what, at least over six months? Yeah, probably closer to three years. Three years? Two or three. No way. Yeah, yeah. Back in Australia and yeah.

It would probably be about a year and a half to two years, if I'm honest, not maybe. And the formulations stayed the same? No, I added some methyl Bs to convert the GAA through to methyl GAA, aka creatine. So that used to not have that one. But yeah, it's essentially been the same core foundational combination of Sustange, Fidoja, Anacyclis,

Shilajit and Boron, Zinc and a few others that elude me off the top of my head. But yeah, there's that combination of ingredients for ones that I'd been tried out as early as knowing you basically with Sustanche and that gave me some fantastic effects. But primarily I bought that one out after I'd been living in mold for about two years and my T levels dropped below 300, which was absolutely catastrophic for

my personal health my uh my relationship your whole life my whole life yeah the business was really struggling to get momentum because i didn't have the motivation that you know test and dopamine are inherently linked so i could take all the mccuna in the world to try and force it to work but with that level of test i needed something and bringing in

that combination in as not as botanabolic, but as all single ingredients, I had this massive stack of like 10 products that I would just take and put in my little supplement organizer and that reliably brought the levels up. So I'm like, you know what? This actually works. It worked for me. It had ingredients like Icarin, which really helps

with blood flow, it's a natural PDE5 inhibitor. So that really helped get things on the front end working a lot quicker while on the back end, the things like Tonkat Ali and Sustanch and the cyclists work on the LH to bring up your test that way and things to reduce SHBG. Just as many of the mechanisms for

optimizing hormones as I could hit. I tried to hit with that formulation. And when I develop a product, that's always my starting point is what is the end goal? What is, how are people going to feel as the end goal for the product? And what are the mechanisms that you should hit to get them to feel that way? Like,

a nootropic, you could hit absolutely every single neurotransmitter that you know, but the end result is going to be worse than if you target specific ones like acetylcholine and dopamine. If you push GABA and

serotonin whilst you push those other two, then you almost nullify the effect. So with the end goal of increasing T levels, reducing SHBG, increasing blood flow, all those really critical things for male vitality as the end goal, that's how I came up with that combination. I'm sure there's some

iterations in the future the next one's going to have um black ginger extract in it too so sort of double down on that pd5 cialis like effect from a natural ingredient so yeah i love it it changed my relationship my life after taking it and bringing my tea back it only got to like 700 naturally with that but um i haven't retested in about only only yeah well hey man i'm not pushing my pay like you and other people in your community and people who work with you so

Just throwing some N-climafine in that combination, then you get to 1,200. But with the test formulation, I mean, go back to the... Because you've recently released a Shilajit standalone ingredient. Are you planning on keeping the Shilajit in your botanical block as well? Yeah, absolutely. Like Shilajit's fantastic as a tea booster. It indirectly has...

indirectly, it has a plethora of other effects, which will help with like sperm quality and mitochondrial health in it as well. All the fulvix, humix, elegytenins, elegic acid, urolithins, AUB and other, it's just such a amazing multi mineral as well that

I don't know. It's really hard to pinpoint like the very specific benefits like detoxification support too. But for T levels, it was in our mutual friend, Matt Leggs, when he was with ATP Science, it was like their hero ingredient in there.

What were they called? Alpha... Alpha Mars. Alpha Mars, yeah. And that was a fantastic ingredient and fantastic product that I don't know if they even have anymore, but Shilajit was always the ingredient, the hero ingredient that A, was really hard to source properly, but B, was the absolute needle mover for that formula. I was just thinking like, man, you never know with certain iterations in the future, Catawaba may be an additional...

And Katsua Pure might be an additional ingredient. You never know. If you're willing to share, I'd be happy to use it. But at the same time, it's kind of like your thing, right? I know, I know, I know. Well, look, the thing is people... I was saying to James, I'm like, man, people like...

We're always going to need a good natural testosterone booster on hand because like testosterone levels are not getting any better. And guys as young as, you know, in their mid-20s, they're not going to go on TRT, man. Like they're just not. Some guys do and then they regret it and then they hit 30 and it's like, shit, what do I do? I want to have kids, that sort of thing. But it's like I think the demand for a good natty T booster is always going to be there.

And also one that doesn't suppress your body's own production. Like that's the whole point of a natty tea booster is that you take it, it boosts you up, puts you above baseline. Even if you come off, you should still remain somewhat enhanced, but then gradually go back to normal sort of thing. Absolutely. That even people who are on TRT, I've got a number of wholesalers and people who are in supplement stores who take it have

said that they need significantly less of the TRT that they're on because of this. Like when they did take a full dose, it was too much. And then they ended up with some side effects from the TRT because this has gotten their baseline level up, like complete suppression. It's got you. It's like turning around a sinking ship. It's possible, but it's very hard if you've been going heroic Olympia level doses, but it's not impossible. Um,

it's just being realistic with where you're at. And if you're a 20 or 30 year old who's not done TRT yet, then this is a great bridge between that.

that sort of 25 to 45 year mark where I wouldn't mind some TRT, but I don't, I'm not ready for that. Or maybe I want to have a family. I want to not cause suppression. That's where Natty T boosters. Certainly that's the demographic for them for sure. And interestingly, women too, like women and testosterone. I don't know how much content you put out on that, but the significance of women having optimized testosterone level is huge. Like women need it too.

And a lot of women in the biohacking space go on bioidentical testosterone creams and feel freaking fantastic from it too. So using things like stinging nettle for women is great too, because the issue with women doing testosterone boosters is DHT has some pretty undesirable effects for women. So if you bring in things that block the conversion to DHT for women alongside of a booster like this one, or even just Shilajit or Hydroxyl,

whatever other one that you wanted to use, or like Tomcat, for example, then both men and women are going to benefit from these herbs. They also have adaptogenic effects, a lot of these, and that reduction of the cortisol levels is like the higher your cortisol is, generally speaking, is obviously exceptions, but the lower your T is going to be if you're chronically stressed. It just makes sense. So things like terkesterone's been, a lot of people have used out terkesterone and said it increased my T levels. I'm like,

Not directly, it didn't because it doesn't work on that pathway, but I'm really glad to hear it. But then I figured out, oh, yeah, it's because it's a really potent adaptogen, cortisol modulator. And, you know, I guess indirectly by bringing down cortisol and stress hormones, it's increased T levels that way, even though it works on a different mechanism, the estrogen beta-2 receptors rather than the hypothalamic testosterone axis. Yeah.

Well, with your formulation, I mean, like you said before, you're trying to target it from multiple different angles. Like you're hitting the HPT. You're also hitting HBA axis. You're also hitting like the minerals. You're hitting like the prolactin. You're hitting SHBG. Like you're probably tinkering with DHT in some way. Cystanch, that one, yeah. Yeah, the Cystanch.

There is a lot of demand at the moment that I've noticed from guys like this hyper obsession with SHBG and like the fixation with like, first of all, a lot of guys think that SHBG is like the devil hormone. And I'm trying to sort of educate guys that it's not great to have super high, but it's also not great to have super low.

Did you think about, I mean, you're probably thinking about SHBG when you're formulating the product as well, right? Yeah, push it lower for most people. Like generally speaking, people who need a T-booster are going to have higher SHBG. So as a like, which path would you walk down? It would be the lowering path rather than the...

you know, trying to get it ideal because yeah, it's so many things that have it elevated, but you know, again, everything has a bell shaped curve, right? A sweet spot in the Goldilocks zone. SHBG is no exception. Testosterone is no exception. Dopamine, everything has a mid point that's right for everyone. As I said before, everyone tends to be

left or right of that Goldilocks zone unless they've been really working hard or have empowered themselves with education too. Like that's a really good way. Like not everyone needs a supplement or a coach if they are dedicated enough to figure out their own biology. I think that's the most empowering thing people can do because when you get your health right, then the rest of your life becomes so much easier and you can accomplish everything else that you want to do. If it's family, if it's business, if it's just

being better at video games, for example. There's no limit to sort of what you can accomplish as a human if you get your health in check first. But if you don't have your health, then none of that's possible. Take it from me who live

three years in mold and had testosterone levels plummet, liver enzymes plummet, like where the business is now I'm very proud of. But if I didn't have those handbrakes and those hurdles to jump all the time, I would not have to be so distracted in doing all of the saunas and trying to work my way out of this or, or take ridiculous amounts of supplements just to get back to that baseline level where I'm at now. And my ability to speak articulately and remember mechanisms is,

50 times better than, you know, two years ago. I needed, almost needed Medafinil just to function. So yeah, just make sure your environment is something that you're optimizing and yeah, bring these things in to get yourself back to that baseline level.

It's a great message for a lot of my audience listening in, a lot of guys out there probably listening to this, you know, want to start a business or have just started a business or they want to be more productive. Like, dude, you and I both know testosterone and dopamine together. Like if you have both of those and then you stack it with like, you know, good quality sleep, you know, training, man, you can just accomplish so much. Like,

You're probably able to pull, I don't know. I don't know how much you work, but you know how much work that I used to do a couple of years ago was ridiculous, like 13, 14-hour days consistently. But that is not doable without testosterone and dopamine. You just can't. Exactly right. A lot of people, this is why I've suggested to you to do a dopamine support product, is a lot of people are stuck on this thing

vicious negative spiral of dopamine addiction that then I guess concurrently doing things that nuke their testosterone and then they end up with depressive symptoms and anxiety and all the things that I guess no one would ever wish on their enemy around mental health issues. Like there's so much male suicide and depression and over prescription of SSRIs, which don't even rectify the issue now that

Like there's never been a time where I feel like supporting dopamine and testosterone has been more important. It was never something we even had to worry about. Most men in the fifties were worried about impregnating their partners more so than they were worried about, you know, whether they could actually do it or not. So, um, yeah, we're at a pivotal time and that's where I really believe the education you put out, the products I'm creating and other brands are doing as well that can sort of rectify and steer this ship back on course. Um,

But that's just testosterone, man. We're not going to get into all the things that need course correcting because it's pretty much a single aspect of health. And it's why I wanted to become a naturopath, to be part of that positive change. But I found that doing the supplements has allowed it to be a bigger scale than if I was just working one-on-one with people. So I'm really glad that I fell into this space.

Yeah, I was gonna say, man, on that sort of note is like with your brand, like you've clearly built out incredible formulations, multiple different products, like and you just continue to grow. And I'm just sort of thinking like, would you ever consider like releasing a product that's not necessarily a supplement, but something else to complement that?

the supplements per se, like it might be a health device. It might be a, I don't know, like you're thinking about that at all? Yeah. I looked at doing sinus cleanse, like a neti pot sort of thing, but like a motorized one, because that's what I used when I was living in mold. I had sinus colonization mold, which even when we were out of it, I was still being molded because it was actually under my eyes. You could, you could feel it. And then when I did all the sinus cleanses with

with NAC, with saline, with colloidal silver and some of these citrus essential oils. It was absolutely demonic what come out of my sinus cavities. Couldn't breathe out one side for months until I just did all the steaming and metabolic Mike, Mike, Mike Mutzel put out maybe three and a half years ago where he got a scan of his sinus cavities to see congestion and

Since he dealt with that, he went and got a medical treatment to get it removed, but his voice deepened. He was really nasally. And when I listened back to old podcasts of myself, I was like really nasally and sounded terrible. And I could almost pinpoint the time of when I did that podcast based on just hearing my voice and knowing that I had that sinus congestion from the mold.

But yeah, the other thing that made that horrible was because it was in the sinus cavities, it was trickling mycotoxin directly into my brain. Like it was just so hard. I couldn't string a sentence together when it was really bad, when that was happening whilst living in it. So what's really, what I really like about having gone through these experiences is good things have come through it. Like I said to you that when I first met you, my mom had passed, it had been like a year since she passed. Well, most of the,

Off menu stuff that I knew that we bonded about was stuff I'd learned from trying to help her, not just working at that clinic. The reason I got the job at that clinic is my mom was a patient for over 200 and something hours of doing hyperbaric. So yeah,

you know, the silver lining is all the negative things that people are going through. And if anyone's suffering from low T, then you might be the next biggest men's health coach. If you can figure out and work with someone like Lucas or similar and get yours on track and then learn from him, do something like the Institute of Health, learn that sort of from those sort of people. You know, a lot of people pivot. I've got a friend who worked in finance who are now men's coaches because they're

they were living an unfulfilled life, not doing a job that was good and good pay, but

the benefit and the the fulfillment and purpose that you get from helping people come out of a state of poor health is it fuels me personally with these products when i hear get good reviews or hear how i've allowed a guy to finally have a baby for the first time when he's in his nearly 50 and didn't think it was possible those things are what keep me going with the business when you know as a business owner it's freaking challenging and

And if you don't have good dopamine and testosterone, a lot of people would just be inclined to throw it in and just go back to an easier life. But this is bigger than just money, bigger than just making products. Like I genuinely love making a positive change in people's lives. And also as part of that, man, I mean, like it's great to see the fact that like you're receiving attention, you're receiving the feedback from customers, from your hard work and resilience. And a lot of people don't realize that

man, the shit goes on behind the scenes in terms of like you're running a company, right? But no one would have any, like a lot of people would have no idea about the number of setbacks you've had, the number of hurdles, obstacles, like you have been through the ringer, man. Like you're just dodging this, dodging, like doing this, doing that, having to pivot, do this, do that. Like there's a lot behind the scenes. Especially with peptides, like these things,

directly compete in mechanism with what a lot of pharmaceutical drugs aim to accomplish or the diseases that they are trying to manage. For example, like, as you said, that study around BPC with bone to ligament reconnection or whatever the abstract from that is, how many surgeons are going to be pissed off to hear that?

Why would they want to give a supplement or a injectable peptide that's going to do them out of thousands and thousands of dollars of work? You know, I'd argue that

as a rough number off the top of my head, like 60% of surgeries could potentially be avoided by utilizing this along with like PRP. And if exosomes were a thing in Australia, you can go overseas and get them and stem cells. There's so many things that are avoidable in the medical system that naturopathics and peptides and things like PEMF and hyperbaric oxygen can all be the alternative to the extreme and detrimental, um,

that Western medicine has been offering and kind of causing damage with over the past couple of decades. Oh man. Well, the reason why I asked before around, would you be open to like branching out of just the supplement stuff and sort of look at alternative health products is cause like I brought it up on the podcast a couple of times, like I was telling you before with Hans from Testo Nation, um,

Man, if you can develop, and I know you'd be interested in investing in this idea, but a continuous testosterone monitor, a CTM, what are your thoughts? I mean, it's certainly something I'd want to know, right? Oh, man. Could you imagine the experiments that you could run? Like you could just... I'm so good, man. How good would that be? And just watch it go up. The CTM Olympics, you know, competitions for...

almost as interesting would be to see how, what, what's lowering it to like people, the amount of data people are getting from CGMs, like not just that, but every single one of your hormones, like how beneficial and how much data inside are you going to get from something like that? I don't know how far off that is, but man, that's got to be coming. Dude. I honestly imagine this, you do a before and after you, you, you, um,

on-sell or upsell people from the botanabolic they but they also add to cart a ctm let's say 300 bucks 200 bucks i'd pay 500 bucks a month for that personally um and let's say last two weeks could you imagine what you could do from that like the data points you could change your diet you could take botanabolic you could take um you could do sprinting you could do you know weight training

And then you could go on a, like you might have a weekend where you have a lot of alcohol. How does that affect you? Like, it'd be awesome. Yeah. Yeah. All the, all the data tracking and all the testing, we're kind of in a golden age of testing. That's only getting better. Even like women with cycle tracking, there's things that they can like daily pee on, didn't see what their hormone levels are at with estrogen, the prolactin and give them a data that apps already exist for cycle tracking for like

a natural cycle tracking or form of contraception. Well, it's not too far fetched to believe that you could just do urinary tests for that, but a CTM would certainly be a lot more of a brag, I guess, having it on your arm. Yeah, what's my T at? Oh, yeah, it's at the third right now. That'd be fun, but yeah.

Not the glucose goddess, it's the testosterone god. T-god. Yeah, I love it. T-god. Man. Well, there's definitely, I mean, there's so much you're exploring. I mean, you would have a number of products in the pipeline as well, I would imagine. Like you've always been formulating. I bet you've still got so many in the pipeline you're excited about.

Like what does the next like maybe year look like in terms of you looking to release, you know, any new products in the next 12 months or so? Yeah, I got 14. Yeah.

I'm trying to work on a few daily things. I was saying that most of the Level Up Health range is kind of interventional, which has been by design. But there's certain things like a multivitamin, for example, that has things like ubiquinol and PQQ, and there's a bit of shilajit in it. And you have all of the bio-identical forms of B vitamins. That one I'm working on. I'm going to have a powder that synergizes with the GI repair, some of the linoleic.

larger things like the aloe vera, the DGL, lactoferrin, immunolin we're using in that one. So that will be coming too. Just a cheaper and, you know, in that tier that you mentioned, the tier listing of interventions, it would be a bit on the lower end, but also the cost end of that will be lower. So people don't have to spend hundreds of dollars on a product that might get them most of the way to their resolution of their gut issues.

I've got a next new version of liver complex coming through with GGC, intermediate step from NAC to glutathione conversion. GGC? GGC, yeah.

i think it could gamma something am i going to my old system oh yeah i've seen that i've i've heard about that one yep his resist is getting phymoquinone what else going i'm trying to bring out a binder or all the binders that i use while being in the mold like there was it wasn't one product it was a combination and trying to bring that out along with some things that also bind to lipopolysaccharide lps which is a huge driver of inflammation and liver and whole body issues

And then reworking the performance range of bought out a pre-workout, which was a massive flop because it tasted so bad because of all the actives and it clumped. It had to use sucralose as the sweetener because all those things tasted so bad, which didn't sit right with me when I know very well that sucralose causes some gastrointestinal issues. That's pretty shit of me to say.

create products that fix GI issues while also having a pre-workout, which might cause them. So bringing out a full range of like aminos, a pump product, a pre-workout, the Crevolution that I have is getting ridiculously good reviews and feedback from that. That one's the combination of TMG, which is great for, you know, exercise performance and muscular strength, along with three forms of creatine, the precursor GAA, which you've spoken about before, and, um,

The other one cluster dextrin to help the other creatine forms absorb better because carbs like them or hate them help creatine absorb. No argument or doubt about that. So that product's done absolutely phenomenal. And I personally take that one every day just because I really like the effects of creatine and it doesn't cause bloating and.

Neurologically too, the GAA has been shown in some studies to increase white and gray matter creatine levels significantly higher than creatine alone. It's something like 4.9 times more effective, the combination.

Um, so that's, yeah, these are all the things I'm bringing out. My partner and I are trying to launch some skincare stuff. That's turned out to be the hardest thing in the world to do compared to just putting things in a capsule. But yeah, I'm just super excited to just keep pushing innovation and pushing the supplement industry forward in a positive way, I hope. And, um,

Yeah, I mean, it's a beautiful space to be in. Most of the people when you go to these conferences are absolutely vibrant and happy to be there and high on life versus some of the medical ones are a bit lackluster and kind of just there for the free drinks and credit points while on a holiday. So yeah, no, I'm really excited for the future of Level Up and now I'm out of Australia. It's kind of opened up a lot more opportunities with formulations not being as

governmentally restricted in what you can and can't use. BPC was banned in Australia last year.

when we were an Australian company. So we had to stop selling that across the board. But now we've moved the whole business outside of Australia and we can sell it again everywhere in the world, which is really good. I'm happy to be able to do that because there was so much outreach from the Aussies who were my first customers for the first three years, outrage and just upset and almost like tears for some people who had IBD issues and couldn't get GI repair. So

Basically, that's one of those back end things that you mentioned that people don't know what goes into a business. Well, I've had to move my whole family out of Australia because of it. So that's a bit of a sacrifice, which is, you know, allow the business to continue. And I wouldn't change it. We're happy where we are now. And the business is booming, having left Australia in America is where we're based now. So, yeah, it's it's a golden age for supplements and getting it at the right time to my friend with him before.

Yeah, man. Well, I'm excited as well. I'm really keen to keep sort of brainstorming ideas and bouncing ideas in terms of formulations and ingredients. It's just, it's a fun place to be in. It's a fun industry to be in and it's evolving fast and

Yeah, you've always sort of been on the cutting edge as well. So for those listening in, if anyone wants to actually check out Kyle's products, Level Up Health, I'll leave that linked in the podcast show notes. There'll be a discount code as well. If you guys want to use my discount code, Ergogenic, that should be active still. You guys can use that one. But otherwise, Kyle, thank you so much for featuring on the podcast again. I look forward to having you back on. Thanks, Lucas. Appreciate it.

Awesome. And for those listening in, if you did enjoy today's podcast, please do leave it a five-star review. It does help to boost it in the algorithm. That's it for me today, guys. I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.

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