(813) 867-0608 • Contact • Schedule an Appointment

(813) 867-0608 • Contact • Schedule an Appointment

#image_title
#image_title

BPC Provoke Plus Peptide Accelerates Healing and Reduces Inflammation

By |2025-03-07T17:56:13-05:00March 7th, 2025|Categories: Peptides|Tags: , , , |0 Comments

At PROVOKE Health, we encourage the use of prescription-strength therapeutic peptides for patients whose plans of care call for accelerated healing, injury avoidance, and optimization of their physical routines, including exercise and workouts.

Therapeutic peptides are also helpful for patients with chronic inflammatory conditions, including those effecting heart and lung function, joints, brain health, nerves, and even  mental health.

And when it comes to such peptides, Body Protective Compound-157 (BPC-157), Thymosin Beta-4, and Sermorelin have strong anti-inflammatory effects. In addition, they may be safer for some patients than conventional aspirin and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and prescription anti-inflammatory medications, including corticosteroids, such as prednisone.

BPC Provoke Plus Peptide

The added benefit of the administration of medically supervised peptides is that they often stimulate the body to repair cartilage, muscle, tendons, ligaments, blood vessels, collagen, and other tissues that are impacted by injury or chronic diseases.

So, if you’ve been hearing a lot about peptides and in your search to avoid conventional medication side effects — including gastrointestinal upset and liver disease — this post should prove of interest.

Today, we want to tell you about BPC Provoke Plus — a therapeutic blend of peptides that may be included in your PROVOKE Health plan of care. Here’s what you need to know.

Introducing BPC Provoke Plus

BPC Provoke Plus is our blend of three of the above-mentioned peptides, each accelerating the body’s self-healing mechanisms. Working closely with a trusted compounding pharmacy, BPC Provoke includes: Continue reading…

Restoring Immune Health and Function with Thymosin Alpha-1

By |2025-02-13T18:53:07-05:00February 13th, 2025|Categories: Peptides|Tags: , , , , , |0 Comments

Your immune system can act as a double-edged sword. When it’s functioning properly, it attacks and eliminates every alien invader that poses a threat to your health, be it a pathogenic bacteria, virus, fungus, or parasite.

When it’s underperforming, you’re at a greater risk of contracting infectious illnesses, including colds, flu, staph infections, e. coli infections, herpes, shingles, salmonella, pneumonia, and the list goes on.

When it’s overperforming, this active system can attack healthy tissues, causing autoimmune disorders, such as rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, lupus, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, and Graves’s disease. Then there are other immune disorders that often fly under the radar, triggering chronic inflammatory responses that can cause significant distress.

Graphic for Thymosin Alpha-1

Modern medicine has provided us with numerous medications that can dial up or dial down the immune response. Medications most frequently used for dialing up the immune response are vaccines that trigger a response to specific pathogens that cause common illnesses such as measles, mumps, hepatitis, and polio. Other medications that prompt an immune response include interferon, colony-stimulating factors (CFSs), and monoclonal antibodies. Those medications that dial down the immune response include antihistamines and corticosteroids, among many others.

That being said, there are very few medications or supplements that are effective at both dialing up and dialing down the immune response to restore healthy immune function. Which is why we here at PROVOKE Health often recommend a peptide called Thymosin Alpha-1 (Tα1) to our patients who are struggling with immune system dysfunction or age-related immunosenescence (deterioration of the immune system).

What Is Thymosin Alpha-1

Thymosin Alpha-1 is a zinc-dependent thymus peptide primarily secreted by the thymus. If you’re unfamiliar with peptides, please read The Healing and Rejuvenating Power of Therapeutic Peptides by our founder, Dr. Matthew Lewis, D.C., DACBN, CFMP®, here on the PROVOKE Health blog.

Thymosin Alpha-1 plays a crucial role in modulating immune function, particularly in T-cell differentiation and immune response regulation. (T cells are a type of white blood cell that plays a key role in fighting infections.) Over the years, research into Thymosin Alpha-1 has uncovered its potential applications beyond immunomodulation, including neuroprotection and anti-inflammatory effects.

One of the beneficial applications of Thymosin Alpha-1 is its ability to Continue reading…

Using Tesamorelin and Glutathione to Treat Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

By |2025-02-06T16:09:26-05:00February 6th, 2025|Categories: Peptides|Tags: , , |0 Comments

With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, healthcare bloggers will no doubt be focusing their content on heart health. I have no objection to that. The heart is certainly a vital organ worthy of admiration.

However, the liver is often overlooked and equally deserving of love. After all, it’s a veritable workhorse in terms of all the vital services it provides. This dark reddish-brown, wedge-shaped organ serves the body with everything from digestion to detoxification. It produces bile to help digest fats and absorb fat-soluble vitamins. It helps regulate metabolism. It manufactures essential proteins. It regulates cholesterol levels by producing, converting, and breaking them down. And it’s a crucial component of the body’s detox mechanisms.

This Valentine’s Day, start showing your liver a little love. In this post, I introduce you to two natural therapies that promote liver health and provide valuable support for combatting a common liver condition — nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

Treating Normal liver versus liver with Cirrhosis damaged liver excessive drinking of alcohol treatment

What Is Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease?

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a global health issue, affecting nearly a 32 percent of adults — 40 percent of men and 26 percent of women, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Characterized by excessive fat accumulation in the liver, NAFLD can progress to more severe conditions, including nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), fibrosis, cirrhosis, and even liver cancer.

NAFLD happens when too much fat builds up in the liver, even without heavy alcohol use. It is closely connected to health problems like obesity, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and high cholesterol. Too much fat in the liver can cause stress and swelling, which can damage liver cells and make the condition worse. Right now, there are no FDA-approved medicines to treat NAFLD, so making healthy lifestyle changes and using natural treatments is very important.

While healthy diet and lifestyle, along with exercise, remain the cornerstone of maintaining liver health and managing NAFLD, emerging research highlights the potential benefits of Tesamorelin and glutathione in mitigating liver damage and improving overall liver function.

Targeting the Excess Fat with Tesamorelin

Here at PROVOKE Health, we provide peptide therapies that include Tesamorelin, which human studies have shown to significantly reduce NAFLD in Continue reading…

Shoulder Pain Cure: There’s a New Multi-Layered Approach

By |2024-09-05T17:43:22-04:00September 5th, 2024|Categories: Peptides|Tags: , , , |0 Comments

If you read my earlier post about a new treatment for rotator cuff injuries (“Is There a Miracle Cure for Rotator Cuff and Other Joint Injuries?”), you know that shoulder pain isn’t something you can just shrug off.

It is such a common occurrence that medical researchers say nearly 70 percent of adult women and men will experience significant shoulder pain at some point in their lifetime.1 While it is usually associated with aging and generally starts between the ages of 30 and 60, shoulder pain can strike at any time and without a known reason.

Although some people feel they can trace their shoulder pain back to a clear cause — an injury, for example — most shoulder pain is due to normal wear and tear over years of use (or misuse), internal inflammation, or other underlying issues.

Illustration for Causes of Shoulder Pain

That said, understanding the factors that can cause or contribute to shoulder pain is important in order to provide effective treatment. In many cases, several factors need to be addressed. In this post, I explore the many causes of shoulder pain and describe the multi-layered approach we now recommend to our patients here at PROVOKE Health to alleviate the pain, repair any damage, and restore strength and range of motion.

Common Causes of Shoulder Pain

While those of us who have never lived with it may think that it only affects baseball pitchers, competitive swimmers, or football quarterbacks, serious shoulder pain can arise from many factors, including one or more of the following causes: Continue reading…

Understanding the Role and Benefits of Vasoactive Intestinal Peptide (VIP)

By |2024-06-19T13:54:26-04:00June 19th, 2024|Categories: Peptides|Tags: , , , , , , |0 Comments

At PROVOKE Health, we prioritize understanding the latest advancements in functional medicine and integrative healthcare in order to provide our patients with the most effective treatments.

One such advancement is the use of Vasoactive Intestinal Peptide (VIP), a peptide hormone made up of 28 amino acids. Found in high concentrations throughout the body — including in the respiratory system, endocrine organs, heart, and brain, , and— VIP plays a crucial role in maintaining overall health.

If you’re unfamiliar with peptides, read “The Healing and Rejuvenating Power of Therapeutic Peptides” here on the PROVOKE Health blog. In short, peptides are short strings of amino acids — much shorter than protein molecules and easier for the body to absorb and break down — that are bioactive and have a beneficial effect on the body.

Graphic for Role and Benefits of Vasoactive Intestinal Peptide

In this post, we’ll focus on the benefits of VIP, starting with its impact on improving gut health.

Vasoactive Intestinal Peptide and Gut Health

Vasoactive intestinal peptide has a significant impact on the health of your gut. Here’s how VIP supports a healthy digestive system: Continue reading…

Benefits of Boosting Human Growth Hormone (HGH) for Recovery and Resilience

By |2023-09-07T19:30:38-04:00September 7th, 2023|Categories: Peptides|Tags: , , , , , , , |0 Comments

For many of us, as children and teenagers and even into our 30s, we found ourselves strong and energetic, recovering quickly after moderate and even intense exercise, and often immune to daily aches and pains. As we aged beyond those years, however, we started to lose our stamina and ability to quickly recover.

More and more exercise is required just to maintain our strength, flexibility, and vitality. It takes longer for us to recover from those exercise sessions, and we’re more susceptible to injury. Why is this? What do we lack in our later years that we had in abundance in our youth?

The answer is human growth hormone (HGH). HGH stimulates and regulates the growth and lifecycle of nearly every cell in the body. And when you reach the age of about 30 years, your pituitary gland releases less and less HGH with each passing year. This decline can occur rapidly, and to be clear, it is a normal part of aging. However, this reduction of HGH is largely responsible for many of the signs associated with aging:

  • Lower energy
  • Decreased muscle mass and inability to build new muscle
  • Increased difficulty losing or maintaining weight
  • Weakened immune system
  • Decreased healing efficiency
  • Other signs of physical and mental aging

Today, I want you to know that by working with functional medicine-focused doctor, you can work on reversing this process and boost HGH in two ways:

  • Directly via injections of synthetic human growth hormone, which is typically recommended only for people whose pituitary gland is damaged or dysfunctional
  • Indirectly by stimulating the pituitary gland to release more human growth hormone that your body produces naturally

Stimulating the Pituitary Gland to Release More HGH Naturally

Stimulating the pituitary gland to release more human growth hormone is the safer way to increase HGH, and there are several ways to do it: Continue reading…

Semax: A Therapeutic Peptide for Brain Health and Function

By |2023-07-05T17:39:02-04:00July 5th, 2023|Categories: Peptides|Tags: , , , |1 Comment

Brain health and function are at the very core of our physical, mental, and emotional health and wellbeing. The brain supports — and in many ways orchestrates — cognitive, sensory, motor, social, emotional, and behavioral functions.

Our brain serves as the command center for the body’s central and peripheral nervous systems, controlling nearly every other system of the body — circulatory, respiratory, digestive, muscular, and so on. It is the center of our thoughts and memories, enabling us to learn, work, and be creative and innovative. It’s also the center of our emotions. Thanks to our brains, we can not only live but enjoy our lives and fully realize our potential.

Anything that positively impacts brain health and function enhances our overall health and the quality of our lives, including healthy diet, long-term learning / education, clean water, fresh air, physical activity, intellectual challenges, and constructive relationships.

Many medications and supplements on the market can also be helpful in supporting brain health and function, including omega-3 fatty acids, L-theanine, phosphatidylserine, resveratrol, creatine, choline, ginkgo biloba, B vitamins, vitamin E, caffeine, and others. Currently, my supplement of choice for supporting, restoring, and enhancing brain function is Semax.

Semax peptide illustrated

What Is Semax?

Semax is a therapeutic peptide based on the molecular structure of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) — a hormone produced and secreted by the pituitary gland to stimulate the release of cortisol (the stress hormone) from the adrenal gland. Semax is best known for having the following three properties: Continue reading…

Is There a Miracle Cure for Rotator Cuff and Other Joint Injuries?

By |2024-04-30T21:38:36-04:00June 15th, 2023|Categories: Peptides|Tags: , |6 Comments

If you think you’ve tried every treatment in the books for your rotator cuff injury or any other joint injury, think again. I’ve experienced rotator cuff injuries — including frozen shoulder (adhesive capsulitis) in both shoulders.

 

Visual graphic showing Rotator Cuff

 

My injuries didn’t require surgery but over the course of 24 months I tried the following conventional and alternative treatments:

  • Physical therapy: Eight weeks. I was in too much pain for anything good to happen. The ice felt good — that always provides some relief.
  • Acupuncture: Four weeks. No relief.
  • Massage: Once or twice a week for more than a year. Sometimes it helped; other times it amplified the pain.
  • Chiropractic: Multiple adjustments to my neck. Alleviated some pain, but relief was only temporary.
  • Stretching: Stretching plays a critical role in healing, but it did not resolve the problem.
  • Vitamins and anti-inflammatory herbs: May have helped, but I took them over the course of two years and continued to experience pain and stiffness.
  • Prolotherapy injections: Short for “proliferation therapy,” this process jumpstarts the body’s regenerative mechanisms to promote healing. The injections may have helped with healing, but the pain and stiffness remained.
  • Platelet rich plasma (PRP) injections: These injections, which have the potential to promote healing, delivered little, if any, relief.
  • Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs): Two to three days max to avoid any liver damage. Didn’t do much for me.
  • Cortisone injection: I suffered one of these injections so I could go on vacation and not be miserable. It worked for a good four or five days, but then the pain returned to its baseline level.

That’s everything I tried that didn’t work. Later in this post, I reveal what did work for me, but first I want to go into a little background about what the rotator cuff is, the telltale signs of a rotator cuff injury, and the conventional treatment options, which may or may not provide relief and promote healing depending on the nature and severity of the injury.

Understanding What the Rotator Cuff Is

The rotator cuff is a group of muscles and tendons that surround the shoulder joint and stabilize the arm during complex motions, such as swinging a pickle ball paddle or throwing a ball. When these muscles or tendons become inflamed or are strained or torn, they can Continue reading…

Enhancing the Body’s Self-Healing Properties with BPC-157

By |2023-06-07T19:34:19-04:00June 7th, 2023|Categories: Peptides|Tags: , , , , , , |1 Comment

Imagine a car that maintains and repairs itself. All you need to do is fuel it up, change the oil and other fluids occasionally, and it remains in tip-top condition for decades. As parts wear down, they are rejuvenated within hours. If there’s an accident, it might take a couple of weeks for the dents to pop out, leaving your car looking like new.

That’s pretty much how a healthy human body reacts to proper care, and it’s amazing. Cut your finger, and within days, the tissue repairs itself. Properly set a broken bone, and within six to 12 weeks, it’s almost like new. Plagued by stomach ulcers? Identify and address the cause, and those ulcers heal in a matter of two to eight weeks. 

Given the right supports, the body may even be able to heal itself of certain cancers. And thanks to neuroplasticity, the brain can regrow neurons and build new neural networks.

reducing inflammation with peptides

Unfortunately, there are a number of factors that can impair and undermine the body’s self-healing mechanisms. These include age, nutritional deficiencies, toxins, stress, poor sleep, and insufficient physical activity. Some medications can also impede healing, including non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), immunosuppressants, anticoagulants, and corticosteroids. 

In contrast, chemical compounds called peptides show promise of enhancing the body’s natural ability to heal itself. They can trigger responses at the cellular level that kick the body’s healing mechanisms into high gear. I’m especially excited about one peptide in particular — Body Protection Compound 157 or BPC-157 for short — which is the focus of this post.

Dr. Lewis Recommends: For a detailed overview of peptides, please read The Healing and Rejuvenating Power of Therapeutic Peptides here on my blog. If you are already familiar with that post, feel free to skip the next section and jump directly down to What Is Body Protection Compound 157?

What Are Peptides?

Peptides are naturally occurring chemical compounds — short chains of fewer than 50 amino acids — that serve as Continue reading…

The Healing and Rejuvenating Power of Therapeutic Peptides

By |2023-06-06T19:14:21-04:00May 12th, 2023|Categories: Peptides|Tags: , , , , |0 Comments

As a functional medicine-trained doctor, I thrive on discovering therapies that harness the body’s ability to heal and rejuvenate itself. I’m talking about therapies that build upon the fundamentals associated with proper nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress management, and medication.

And that’s why I continue to be impressed with the benefits of therapeutic peptides — those chemical molecules that bind to receptors on the surface of cells and trigger positive responses at the cellular level. I experienced these benefits firsthand recently when I started to treat an old rotator cuff (shoulder) injury of mine with a combination of two therapeutic peptides — Body Protecting Compound-157 (BPC-157) and Thymosin Beta 4. Look for a separate blog post about this later this month. For now, I’m going to share what you need to know about the use of therapeutic peptides in a medically-supervised plan of care.

What Are Therapeutic Peptides?

Peptides are short strings of amino acids — much shorter than protein molecules and easier for the body to absorb and break down. Therapeutic peptides are those that are bioactive and have a beneficial effect on the body. Some common peptides are available in over-the-counter supplements, such as collagen peptides for skin health, and creatine peptides, which may help build strength and muscle mass. Some therapeutic peptides are natural or derived from natural sources; others are synthetic — manufactured in labs.

Pharmaceutical companies have developed a wide variety of natural and modified peptides into medications that act as hormones, growth factors, neurotransmitters, ion channel ligands, and anti-infective agents. One example is insulin, which is a peptide hormone produced by the pancreas.

Semaglutide (also known as Ozempic, Wegovy, and Rybelsus), which is commonly used to control blood sugar and support weight loss, is another therapeutic peptide that you may have heard of. More than 60 peptide medications have been approved for use in the United States and other major markets.

Using Therapeutic Peptides to Treat Specific Medical Conditions

Peptides are now being used in plans of care to treat many illnesses and diseases, including: Continue reading…

Connect

Contact / Support
Schedule an Appointment
Phone: (813) 867-0608
Email:

Connect

Contact / Support
Schedule an Appointment
Phone: (813) 867-0608
Email:

Link to Dr. Matt's Facebook page.
#image_title

Address

Lutz Location
21754 State Road 54, Suite 102
Lutz, Florida 33549 USA

South Tampa Location
730 Sterling Avenue, Suite 214
Tampa, FL 33609 USA

Address

Lutz Location
21754 State Road 54, Suite 102
Lutz, Florida 33549 USA

South Tampa Location
730 Sterling Avenue, Suite 214
Tampa, FL 33609 USA