Robin Rose MD has been a world traveler, a health food chef, journalist, professional dancer, and artist. After some years of collecting life experiences, she went to nursing school then became a family nurse practitioner while learning nutrition, herbal medicine, acupuncture, massage, homeopathy. Then she made the leap and went to university of Arizona college of medicine and then completed a family medicine residency- while continuing to study holistic and functional medicine. She practiced for many years in southern Oregon offering a holistic array of loveliness and healing medical guidance. After a series of intense stresses she found herself challenged with kidney cancer and severe kidney disease. In the past decade she has become agile in the realm of kidney regeneration and has created a new paradigm of kidney success – ways to engage nature and mind body spirit to achieve the innate healing that leads to thriving. Her recent book RENOLOGY Peptides is a text that dives into the root to succeed – using bioregulator peptides as a way to illuminate the path.
Dr Ritamarie
Dialysis is not the inevitable sequela of kidney disease, much to the difference of opinion in modern medicine. Today we're here to show you how it's possible to turn kidney failure into kidney success. And I'm super excited to share a very special guest who's an expert on this area.
And my guest today is Robin Rose, MD, who's been a world traveler, a health food chef, journalist, professional dancer, and artist. Quite a collection of different professions, I will say. She studied as a family nurse and practiced as a family nurse practitioner, then went on to medical school. She was learning while she was a family nurse practitioner, nutrition, herbal medicine, acupuncture, massage, and homeopathy.
And then she decided to bite the bullet and go to medical school and completed a residency in family medicine while she continued to advance her skills in functional medicine and holistic health. She practiced for lots of years in Southern Oregon and now she's in one of my favorite places in the world in Hawaii on the beach.
What a life, I love that. But she had a point in her life where after a series of intense stressors, she found herself with kidney disease, kidney cancer, by the way. And she was just given the typical prognosis of you're going to go on dialysis, et cetera. And she created a whole new paradigm from her own experiences of kidney success.
How do you engage nature, mind and spirit to achieve the innate healing that leads to thriving? And we all have that, right? We all have our innate healers. We just get in our way with modern life and all the stuff that's out there.
And it's just so wonderful to see somebody who's conventional medicine, Western medicine trained, and has practiced that through her own health crisis, turned it around, and created a whole system that she calls Renology. And we'll be talking about that in a little bit. Her recent book is Renology Peptides, and it dives into the root causes of kidney disease and how to succeed using these special peptides. So hello and welcome. I'm so excited to have you here.
Robin Rose MD (02:34)
Thank you, I am too. Thank you for listening.
Dr Ritamarie (02:38)
So Renology is an interesting word, right? It's a new word. It's something that you coined.
Robin Rose MD (02:44)
I coined it, because nephrology basically was saying, nobody knows what the word renal means, so we're not going to use it anymore. And I thought, okay, I'm looking at kidney from the early stages, primary care, somebody doesn't feel good, they walk in, could be any number of a thousand different things. Sometimes it's the kidney. And what do you do?
That's not failure, that's just the beginning. And so I thought, okay, I'm going to claim Renology as primary care kidney with a different attitude, with a regeneration, and a normalization potential that isn't talked about in nephrology. God bless them. They have very sick patients. Part of it is because early on, kidney isn't even recognized.
And that's part of why I'm doing so much and talking about this so much, because if we talk about it early, and we understand, there's things to do. You see amazing, miraculous recoveries, innate healing it is.
Dr Ritamarie (03:55)
Exactly. And you know what I think, I talk about this all the time to my patients, and to the public, and when I'm speaking, is that prevention is so much easier to accomplish than is pathology reversal, right? And who wants to get to pathology when you can prevent things, and you can catch it in early stages. And that's a big problem that I see in Western medicine, is a lot of the testing and the scanning. They wait until it's pathology, rather than looking at those early signs and saying something was probably there that we could tell you were heading towards kidney issues. They weren't looking at it appropriately.
So I would love to hear a little bit about that, and how the kidney does decline. We hear about it in regards to diabetes. We hear about it in regards to all sorts of things. There's a lot of reasons, polycystic kidneys and all this stuff.
What is that landscape? What is it that causes the kidneys to start to decline? And what does that look like early on so that people know how to catch it early on?
And then we're going to talk about Renology, and how do you get in there with the peptides and all that if you are headed in that direction.
Robin Rose MD (05:10)
Well, first the thing I want to say is that the lab work is available in every panel. When you go in to see any doctor, often you get a urinalysis, a CBC, and a chemistry panel. There's so many clues on those, but there's a big but here. The EGFR, glomerular filtration rate. Is it changing?
It’s noted as greater than 60 normal. And I'm here to disagree with that. So you have to know there's stages, and there's stage one. You can celebrate. Don't eat toxic stuff and don't breathe icky fumes. I mean, it's sort of obvious.
Stage two, however, is where I step in saying at this point, there's changes happening that functional medicine knows about, dysbiosis, endothelial damage, heavy metals, toxic exposures. Then you look at glucotoxicity, any kind of cardiovascular anything, any autoimmune anything, neoplastic anything, are portals into this decline that sadly is ignored.
So it's not even in the statistics. The statistics already sound absolutely horrible, up to 15% of adults, but they don't even include stage two. So in stage two, people don't really know. It's vague symptoms, and that's what makes it challenging. There could be fatigue. There could be facial swelling, digestive stuff, sleep issues.
Dr Ritamarie (07:03)
Everybody that we see on a regular basis has all those symptoms.
Robin Rose MD (07:07)
Which is why primary care is really an incredible specialty that gets disregarded as a potent place. And sadly, there's a little bit too much patent blow.
Dr Ritamarie (07:19)
Wait until it becomes a pathology, so we have a drug or a surgery to give you, right?
Robin Rose MD (07:25)
I practiced for a long time, and it was always about this, before I became aware that our medical community, both the allopathic community and the holistic functional community, isn't up to speed with the kidney. It was shocking. Some of the brilliant people that I knew couldn't help me when I was struggling. I was just about at stage four with “When are you going to be ready? I ain't ready. Offer me something useful.” And so I sat here in this very beautiful place with the internet and just started looking stuff up.
Dr Ritamarie (08:05)
I just want to comment on something you just said. In the olden days, it would be less than 60, above 60. Now, a lot of the labs, the labs I'm using anyway, we see numbers. I've seen them as low as 31. I've seen them as high as 98. So, what's your experience with that?
Robin Rose MD (08:22)
That's changing. Not all labs are doing it. The other factor that we're getting rid of is there's been a discrepant number for blacks.
Dr Ritamarie (08:31)
I always wondered about that.
Robin Rose MD (08:36)
You know, they said their bones are bigger or whatever. What it does is, it keeps many black people from getting the care they need, because it falsely elevates the number. I've actually always ignored that. And, I mean, if you think about it, there's been so much interaction between races. It's an absolutely ridiculous thing.
So, you throw that out, make believe it isn't even on your paper if you see it. Ultimately the GFR is helpful. There's another lab called Cystatin C. Creatinine is all we had for years, traditionally. It's a toxin that when kidney decline happens will rise.
There's other things that cause that and little skinny old ladies have low creatinines. That included me. And so it gives you false security, because creatinine is part of the formula to figure out the e, estimated GFR. And so you use it, but is it really accurate? And I've had a lot of people do a GFR and a Cystatin C, and they're fairly normal with the Cystatin C, but the GFR is showing some difficulty.
In my mind, there's primary prevention. Nobody should mess up their kidneys, and we've ignored them. We've done the brain thing, we've done the heart thing, the kidneys are coming, because it's collecting.
Dr Ritamarie (10:25)
I believe you, because you look at summits, right? You look at podcasts, you look at blogs, and people focus on the gut. They focus on the gut a lot. They focus on the heart. They focus on blood sugar, but I haven't seen any on the kidney. So you have to do a kidney summit to get the education out there.
Robin Rose MD (10:41)
It's coming, because, there's a conference happening in August, an integrative kidney conference put on by Ellie Campbel. I don't travel, so I'm going to do a recorded talk, but there's a lot of wonderful speakers. I think it's worthy if you can get yourself to Atlanta in August. It's a good way to learn.
We all have to learn this, because ignoring the kidney means every other cell in the body has a certain aspect that's being neglected. The kidney influences everything.
Dr Ritamarie (11:19)
So for those of us who are on the front lines in doing functional blood chemistry analysis, not just blood chemistry analysis, but we're looking at, and we have all kinds of guidelines, and the guidelines for the eGFR is if it's high, great. And if it's too low, but what? Do you have a specific range that you would say, “Hey, let's really use this as a red flag.” Like I know if somebody has a 90, they're okay. If somebody has a 30, they're not okay. So where do you like to look?
Robin Rose MD (11:51)
At 70 or 80, I start saying, “Look. There's some decline. Let's look.” Look at heavy metals, do an OAT test, NutrEval, or one of those wonderful nutrients, some evaluation of dysbiosis, heavy metal panel, a mitochondrial evaluation, because in stage two, there is so much going on that we don't see clinically. You can do a physical exam. You don't see much. The labs don't look that bad. But there are tricks.
I am a big fan of following phosphorus. Phosphorus is needed. But when there's kidney decline, the body can't get rid of the phosphorus. And here's the clue with this. The normal range is not accurate for the kidney. Mid-range, 3.5, and below is OK. So a lot of people get missed. Phosphorus in excess steals calcium from the bones and puts it in the arteries.
Two big things that happen later on down the line in kidney disease. Early on, let's look at this. There's so many things to do that are natural. In the conventional world, let's wait until it's bad and then we'll give you a drug.
Okay, there's many things that we can do, but there's FGF23, fibroblast growth factor, that tends to elevate before the phosphorus shows up and yet it says, Pay attention to phosphorus.” Then we start looking at things like diet, and stresses, and dysbiosis, because there are reasons along with the kidney why phosphorus would be getting dysfunctional. And that's just one. There's so many ways to enter into kidney awareness. And phosphorus is a big one that I think is kind of neglected conventionally until it's very late.
Dr Ritamarie (14:08)
And that's one that's on, along with GFR of course, and creatinine, that's on your standard metabolic panel. The Cystatin, you've got to order separately.
Robin Rose MD (14:18
And I have to say, you’ve got to get this lab now.
Dr Ritamarie (14:23)
Well, that happens all the time In my practice, in the groups that I work with, because the standard medical panel is so antiquated and so inadequate, they're missing so many markers of early signs of cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, metabolic dysfunction, right? Even as far as metabolic, something as simple as glucose dysregulation.
They're still just testing fasting glucose, and glucose dysregulation is a common cause of kidney dysfunction.
Robin Rose MD (14:58)
Absolutely. And there's vicious cycles. So kidney declines, you get metabolic, you get cardiovascular. So the vicious cycles, I say in Renology. We turn them into precious cycles, because we do have things to do.
Dr Ritamarie (15:12)
So tell us what your definition of Renology is. And how you came to it. Actually, I know how you came to be interested in it.
Like many of us, you come to be interested in what you need most for yourself or your family, but how do you define Renology?
Robin Rose MD (15:30)
Well, when most people hear kidney, they say, “Are you on dialysis?” “You have kidney failure.” And I'll tell you what, that word failure affects the limbic system not nicely. And so one day I thought, I don't want kidney failure. I want kidney success. It was kind of like I did a happy dance.
And then I decided, since the term renal isn't being used as much in nephrology, let's take that term and create for our functional community a renewed paradigm about kidney, that kidney can be reversed, the damages can be reversed.
I have an Australian naturopath doc friend, Fiona Chin, who tells me that they're actually reversing people on dialysis. And so it really is a mindset.
When you get old, it's not necessary that your kidneys are going to decline. Even if you have declined, there is the possibility of fixing it. However, and this is like the biggest however, willingness. Because, if you're addicted to the habits that cause problems, and you're not willing to give them up, you will be in trouble. Those are the people you say, “Well, you know, here's your meds.” That's always there.
I can't say I don't have judgment, but no judgment. You know what I mean? Everybody chooses. And yet I've been a cheerleader for how do I get past people's inability to see the long haul? Like this feels good now, but what's going to happen 10 years, 20 years, 30 years later is going to come way faster than I thought it would. I don't know how I got here. Three quarters of a century later, I'm still talking about willingness. Get rid of sugar, get rid of junk, eat organic.
Plant-based protein really helps with kidneys. Start early. It doesn't mean you never eat anything animal, but you know, every patient is different. Every one of us has a unique entry point. And so it really takes being thorough. This isn't one of these, God forbid, seven minute visits. Ridiculous.
Dr Ritamarie (17:59)
God, don't get me started on that. That's a big failure in medicine. That's the thing we need to change. Here's the thing, I think. People need to feel safe with you. They need to feel like you care, and you can't show that you care in seven minutes, and take a history, and do all this other. You can't do it, right? That's why reinvent healthcare came about.
We need to change this system. We need to reinvent it to a system that's about people, about caring for people, putting the care back in healthcare, because that's what's been missing. Well, putting the health back in there too, right? Not just disease management. So we're trying to create a system where everybody's focused on not disease management, but optimal health. And what you just said about helping people to see the long haul, if they're not willing to see the long haul.
I mean, I'm not overly direct with people, but I'll say these are the things that I have in my toolbox that I've had success with over the last 33 years in practice. And if you want to do something different, I don't know how it's going to work out. And if you want to continue to do the things you've been doing up till now that got you here, how'd that work out so far? Like give something else a chance and give, believe in yourself, and believe in your self-healer.
Even though it's been sleeping for a while because of the habits, we can reawaken it and help you to be well.
Robin Rose MD (19:22)
And I call this the tree of life, of the kidney tree of life. And I do all kinds of diagrams, they evolve in time. But you know, it starts out with diet.
Diet is first. Honesty, true confession. Get rid of sugar. Get rid of junk. That could be a whole conversation. Then there's sleep.
So many people with kidney issues aren't sleeping well, and you have to. And kidney decline interferes with things about sleep. So there is a need to attend to stuff. And then exercise isn't optional. You've got to move it or lose it basically. Toxins is a whole huge conversation, in the food and in the mind, under your bathroom sink, the air, the soil, all of this. So caution.
I don't paint anymore. I had somebody else paint this lovely lavender ceiling, because there's fumes. And as I want to get better, anything I inhale, anything that goes on my skin, anything that goes in my mouth is going to influence the kidney. So there's that.
And so you're right, with a functional approach, stage two isn't like a death sentence. It isn't this failure thing. It's like, let's optimize. Because when the kidneys aren't working well, things stop being optimal. And I can tell you very clearly that that's so. The brain isn't working. The liver is sluggish.
And so the book that I wrote really cameos the fact that the kidney influences the eyes, the brain, the thyroid, the thymus. The parathyroid is a huge conversation. It affects the liver, it affects the gut hugely. And so how do you address all of these things is really the art of renology, to be that thorough, and you can't say hello in seven minutes with that.
Dr Ritamarie (21:40)
With what you're saying, it says to me that we have so much specialization these days, right? We try to look at this organ or this system in isolation from the rest. That's kind of what Western medicine does. And in functional, we're not looking at all of it. We're looking at those pieces. And what you just said is the kidney is involved with all of it.
But also what I want to find out more about is you named your book Renology Peptides. So not that there's a magic bullet solution to any health condition, right? But there are things that help support the recovery in addition to all the things you just mentioned, the diet, the sleep, the stress levels, the toxicity, et cetera.
So I'd love to hear more about the peptides' involvement and how you discovered that. And how did you turn your situation around with that?
Robin Rose MD (22:35)
Anybody in the peptide world needs to know this. They don't really work unless you do all of this, what we call the low hanging fruit, the diet, the exercise, the sleep, the hydration, stress, toxins has to happen. And then there's a huge array of supplements, nutrient supplements, mineral supplements, Tudka. The list is huge.
And I decided I was going to write this book, and I think it would have taken me 100 years to put it all together as I was envisioning it. So that's a whole other set of encyclopedias. But I got my GFR from 30, which I felt like poop, up to 51, before I discovered peptides.
Dr Ritamarie (23:22)
And that was through what you just said, right? That was through addressing the diet, addressing the hydration, addressing the nutrient imbalances.
Robin Rose MD (23:31)
Discipline, yoga, kidney yoga, seriously, you've got to mean it.
Robin Rose MD (23:35)
You know, yoga of intention. People talk about, I'm a kidney warrior. And I was like, no, I'm a kidney yogi. I'm looking for kidney peace, not kidney war.
So Beth Shirley, who's the nitric oxide genius, was the one who I heard this from. Nitric oxide, by the way, is damned in kidney and is hugely important for vascular health. That's a diet and supplement conversation. But she was telling somebody else, and I overheard the conversation, that BPC 157 enhances nitric oxide. And I did the like, “My God, I got to know about this.” I wag her flag a lot, because she's been an incredible help to me.
I started looking at the larger peptides. I'm sure most of your audience understands this, but the body's made of a lot of proteins, and peptides are little fragments of proteins. The government has changed it, but I still think peptides are from 2 to 50 amino acids. So they're smaller chains.
Proteins can be hundreds and all folded up and have different actions. Peptides are little. And in fact, there are even tinier peptides. The very small ones can be 2 to 4 to 7 amino acids. Those can be oral. The larger ones, like insulin, need to be injected subcutaneously. And so then I discovered the bioregulator peptides, which is what I used in the book to illustrate the kidney with.
I say whole body regeneration through the lens of the kidney, because it really is a whole body assessment. But the bioregulators are so small that they actually can enter the cell without a receptor. They can enter the nucleus effortlessly. And then what they do, and this is just extraordinary to me, they lodge in the DNA. They stretch it open.
And then each one, and there's basically 21 of them with an array of some others, repair epigenetic damage, each uniquely. And each one of them homes to the tissues from which they originate. There's different classes of them. Some of them are synthetic, and they're identical to what the body makes. And some of them are animal based and come from very well tested pigs and cows, and their peptides are identical to humans. So the body doesn't recognize it as foreign, and therefore, there's not very many side effects, if any.
I mean, I've been in touch, I've been graced with a connection with the wife of the man who discovered all of these. He's a Russian researcher, a gerontologist and was ordered by the Soviet military to discover these to protect their military from our military. And he did. And after he was out of the military, he created an institute, got tons of research money, and did a lot of work. Then the Soviet Union fell apart, and he had the institute. His wife is a pediatrician, and she mentored me quite a bit. I'm very grateful to her, Svetlana Trofimova.
I've not met her. And a lot of the names of these things, I still to look up the names of some of them. I get them mixed up.
Dr Ritamarie (27:21)
Well, there's a lot of them, right? And if they're Russian words, it's hard to remember.
Before you go on, this is really fascinating. I want to go back. You said that the bioregulator peptides are very small. Does that mean that they are then consumable orally? And does that mean that we can get them without prescription?
Robin Rose MD (27:39)
Yes, correct. They are separate. They are considered supplements. There are some very reputable resources and then there are some that you’ve got to question, because when they come from animal sources there can be prion contamination and the companies that I vetted and have talked to them, they are very strict about this.
Dr Ritamarie (28:03)
Now, are you listing these in your book?
Robin Rose MD (28:06)
It's not in the book, it's on my website. It's the website. And the website basically is there to showcase the book, but there's a little thing that says menu, and there's blogs that I'm starting to write, and then lots of videos, and some other information. The website, by the way, is Renologyiskidneysuccess.com. All one word, no punctuation.
Dr Ritamarie (28:31)
It may be hard to type, but it's easy to remember. Renologyiskidneysuccess.com
Robin Rose MD (28:37)
Exactly. My husband said that's too hard to type, and I was like, “Yeah, I'm messing with people enough to have them know this.” Like every time you have to say that, I'm serious. It's like every time I say it, my limbic system celebrates. I can, I will.
Dr Ritamarie (28:52)
And I think that that's a big piece of healing in general that's missed by the mainstream, right? That we have to have that attitude, because people are walking away from appointments with a prognosis. The prognosis is grim. Get your affairs in order, right? If you do these invasive treatments, you have the prognosis of living for another five years or whatever it might be, but it implants in the brain, in the psyche, in the energetic system, the lack of success, and the defeat, right? And the people that are the most successful, as I've seen, are the ones that have the positive attitude.
Robin Rose MD (29:30)
I mean, I was told, don't be surprised if you lose 5% a year. I got fierce and that was when I came home and cried, and in Chinese medicine, kidney is fear. I mean, how dare you instill fear in me, kidney doctor. It's just ridiculous.
Dr Ritamarie (29:55)
That's a really good point. And the point is that there's different ways people approach it when they're given a poor prognosis. Some of them, like you, you cry, you're scared at first, and then you go, “Look, I'm going to defeat this.” And others just give into it. And they said you have six months to live, and six months to the day, they go.
So the brain, the mind, has so much to do with it. And I love the fact that you want to keep repeating it, Renology is Kidney Success. Okay, good.
Robin Rose MD (30:25)
So my experience, I mean there's TMI here, but when I had the cancer, I had a nephrectomy. I was very clear. I want this out, but the surgeon left me with some gut issues that were complicating my situation enough that I had to deal with stuff. And the BPC, the first injection that I had finally, (I spent about a month deep diving into research), it changed my life. I went from spending most of my morning sitting in the bathroom, to acting like everybody else. Hello, I'm awake. Let's go with the day. It was really radical.
Dr Ritamarie (31:05)
And you had the BPC, let me clarify the timing, after you had the nephrectomy.
Robin Rose MD (31:10)
Yeah, many years. And at this point I had gotten my GFR up to 51. I have a tray of supplements, and we have an amazing garden, and fermented food is part of every meal that we make ourselves. So that's an aside. It's like, don't eat out, don't eat junk. Home cooked organic food is life saving.
So that got me started with peptides.
First of all, I don't like needles. I'm a needle-phobe. I do acupuncture. I love sticking needles in somebody else. I'm a wuss. And I am, I admit it. I try hard. My husband, who does my peptide injections, was a pediatric nurse.
Dr Ritamarie (32:02)
Okay, well you got somebody. You got the right husband there. That's great, great. So the BPC is a prescription versus those small bioregulators.
Robin Rose MD (32:11)
It can be. There's ways to find it. The FDA has been messing around with the injectables to some extent. You can get oral BPC, because that one's made in the stomach. Otherwise, the stomach breaks them up into little pieces.
Interesting, the stomach breaks things up into bioregulator-sized pieces. So when you take bioregulators orally, they don't get broken up.
They're very effective orally. And you know, what I first heard about was Pielotax, which is the kidney bioregulator. And that was another, “I’ve got to know about this.” And then I started learning about it. I actually listened to some YouTubes that Natalie Nidam is kind of a peptide influencer, mentor for me in some ways, and she interviewed Bill Lawrence, who's a PhD researcher who worked with the Russians and is replicating his longevity study using these. And I was in the study, so I got an idea of how you sequence these, because they're not like take-a-pill every day kind of thing. You can cycle them.
You can do a month of one and then wait three months. You can do 10 days and cycle them every one to three to four months. And each case is unique. So that's where the time's spent to assess. There's a bit of a learning curve as a clinician to know how to prescribe these. And they are prescribed, but it's quite amazing when you realize the pineal gland is a huge piece of kidney disease. Whoever talks about that, the thymus.
So you cycle these in. The parathyroid is an enormous thing. In fact, in the phosphorus conversation, the parathyroid is involved. And so you use a parathyroid bioregulator. It helps with the calcium-phosphorus balance, which gets distracted with kidney decline.
Dr Ritamarie (34:20)
So there are some resources where people can go and see the different bioregulators that are there, and you have some resources for that on your website.
Robin Rose MD (34:32)
Now, I struggled to find all this. The reason I wrote this book, for the people who can see a visual, I'll show it again. I love the cover. A Ukrainian artist did this for me. It's so beautiful. I just love the image. I call this the book I needed. There wasn't anywhere where it was all put together. And that's what I was told, is this is kind of a prime opportunity to learn about the bioregulators, whether you want to know about the kidney or not. Because the first section is about kidney, unique functional medicine ideas. The second one really talks about how did they develop all these? Because people were asking me, so I thought, all right, I'll tell you.
Here's the research, how over decades they were developed and evolved, but the third section is a materia medica, and it's by systems. I'll do the kidney-brain axis and then go through all of the brain bioregulators, how they relate to kidney, but also how they relate to other stuff. And so, you know, it really is a text. It's a reference book. It's not a sit down in the evening and read the whole book kind of thing. I still use it. I'll go and just open sometimes. It's indexed and referenced. It's an amazing thing.
Dr Ritamarie (35:53)
Nice. So this sounds like everybody should go to, Renologyiskidneysuccess.com, and order the book. I want a copy of it. It sounds like an amazing resource for every practitioner to have on hand and for patients who are struggling with kidney.
Robin Rose MD (36:10)
Because there's a fad of peptides going on, my goal is that we, educated clinicians, become the experts. There's a lot of biohacking. I love that, because it means people are willing and motivated, but there's a lot of messy use.
So, part of my mission in talking about this all the time and doing the website, doing the book is because we all can learn this. It's not that complicated. I mean, I've had doctors say, “I can't learn this. I don't want to know this. I don't know peptides.” I'm like, doctor, have you heard of insulin? Insulin is a peptide. Glutathione is a peptide. The hormones in our body, most of them are peptides.
You know, now there's a fad with the GLP ones. That's a whole other conversation. They're useful and useful in kidney disease as well, by the way.
Dr Ritamarie (37:10)
But also useful in the context of what you said earlier, doing the foundational pieces. You can't just take something and expect it to do miracles in your body and continue to eat Cheetos and M&Ms and live in a toxic world, right?
So those are the things that we all need to keep coming back to. And I love that there are things like these bioregulators, like certain herbs and nutrients and all that, that we can supply the body with, but we can't do it at the expense of ignoring the foundational pieces. Good food, et cetera.
Robin Rose MD (37:44)
Absolutely. Ever. And to know each person's unique.
Dr Ritamarie (37:51)
And to know that there's no one size fits all in healthcare. I tell people that all the time. The one size fits all is a myth. There's no magical cure for any disease. There's no magical supplement. There's no magical food. It's a composite, and it's going to vary from person to person.
Robin Rose MD (38:07)
Absolutely. I get the question, what's the one peptide you would recommend? And I'm like, I don't do that. I could, but why would I? This isn't an allopathic pill for ill medicine, which is why it's so exciting. It's delightful to have tools like this while you're working on learning how to meditate, learning how to listen.
Dr Ritamarie (38:34)
So we're not saying it's just a matter of you'll turn your kidney disease around just by learning how to meditate and eating organic foods. It's a whole combination of restoring balance to you. And some of these extra things are going to help facilitate the process perhaps in each individual case.
So tell me, what is your routine right now? What is your regime for maintaining and getting better and better and better every day in your kidney?
Robin Rose MD (39:02)
Well, starting with kind of soul work, constantly.
Gratitude and self-love, compassion, forgiveness really matters. I can tell you the physiology of it, but I'll let you guys look that up yourself. It's potent. That's the spirit part of it. The mind part of it is really looking at how I think. What are my attitudes? Kind of mind-emotion. It's not trivial. Stress comes from our own thinking addictions.
And so journaling, drawing, dancing, so that brings in exercise, movement. I didn't mention joy. That goes through all of it, even in body and everything.
Dr Ritamarie (38:53)
I love that you said joy, because I have foundational principles that I teach people. It's called the freedom pillars, to be free in your body and be able to do what you want to do. And the first one is fun, which is joy, fun, pleasure, all that. It's joy, fun, rest, environment, exercise, diet, outlook, which is the attitude piece you talked about and mindfulness, all the stuff you've talked about here. So I love that we're aligned with that.
Robin Rose MD (40:27)
A lot of it for me started with diet. I had been vegan before and had stopped. I had a camp out with a Burning Man crew of people in Oregon and ended up pigging out on sausages for a weekend. My God, After decades of not eating animals, I was like, “Well, I love this”. And so I stopped doing stuff like that. I actually had a naturopath tell me you have to eat meat. You don't. It's a mistake with the kidney, and there's many reasons. It's too acidic. It raises your phosphorus. There's too much nitrogen. So, there's a lot of reasons why not.
So, I returned myself to basically vegan protein with some exceptions. I live on the beach. Sometimes I eat fish. I eat egg whites. My phosphorus was elevated, which is why I became so poignantly attendant to it. And that's because my gut got damaged, because you're not supposed to have high phosphorus in stage three. Well, thanks, but I do.
To me, it was because of the gut issues as a consequence of the surgery. So all that's been resolved to some extent, hopefully. And so growing a lot of food, I'm very strict about organic. I blow it sometimes. You don't have to be obsessively perfectionist, but close to it. I have been very, very disciplined. I kind of call it kidney kosher. Like I have rules, and I stick with them, because if you don't, there's consequences. Is God going to come punish you? No, you're going to feel bad though. Who did it? Me or God? We're all in this together. Let's just keep it together and try to stay on the path. So that helped. Resting when tired, hydrating.
Exercise, whether it's dance, yoga, gardening, carrying rocks and logs around, excessive exercise, not a good thing. I've been very serious about toxins, eliminating whatever is in the garage, whatever is under the bathroom sink, all of that really, really matters.
The diet conversation, you're the expert about that more than I am, but don't do it. Just don't. I had a group on Facebook for a while with stage three kidney patients, and people whined about the M&Ms and the Pepsi. And it's like, a lot of those people are dead. The ones that listen to me, they're still Facebook friends, because I stopped doing that group as I was evolving with the book. It was just one thing, too many.
And so know your limitations. Like I'm really good at social isolation, because some people are toxic. I avoid toxic people as well. As well as I can. The world is crazy right now. And so I'm looking for peace.
Dr Ritamarie (43:41)
And then what about the supplementation piece? What does that look like for you? The supplementation, the peptides, et cetera?
Robin Rose MD (43:48)
Well, it's a sizable chunk. I started doing a NutrEval many years ago, you know, the Genova test, and it was alarming. I had so many things wrong. This is when I was really quite ill. I had a high homocysteine level. You've got to know homocysteine, you’ve got to know TMAO and ADMA. Those are all really important with CKD.
Dr Ritamarie (44:17)
They're also very important for cardiovascular disease, and those are on my list of absolutes.
Robin Rose MD (44:25)
When you think of the kidney, it's cardiovascular. And so when one nephrologist said, we don't care about homocysteine anymore. It doesn't affect the kidney. I was like, anyway, I still have some PTSD from some of these conversations to tell you the truth. And many of the patients that I talk to also do. It's like this needs to change. And we do have some lovely functional nephrologists these days. There's a handful and hopefully growing.
And so I supplement CoQ10, endocalyx, B complex, methylated Bs. Tudka is a really important one, NAC, modified Citrus Pectin for the Galactin 3, which goes askew in CKD.
One of the things that I really love, and it's a very easy thing to add to people's regimen, is Acacia Senegal. It's amazing.
Dr Ritamarie (45:33)
It's a fiber, right? It's a soluble fiber, prebiotic.
Robin Rose MD (45:36)
It basically grabs things in the colon and makes the colon an intestinal dialysis. So it will grab toxins. It'll grab creatinine. It'll grab phosphorus. I think it also has an effect on heavy metals. I'll do a blog post on this soon.
Dr Ritamarie (45:55)
The sense is similar to modified citrus pectin in its effects.
Robin Rose MD (46:02)
And so it's really a useful piece of it.
The other thing that I love, and I take religiously, is also a peptide, it's a bioregulator, is carnosine, not carnitine, which I have a problem with kidney people, because of the TMAO, but carnosine in my book, it's like 40 pages just talking about carnosine for kidney. It's incredible and so worth looking into. I'm going to do a podcast with Fiona Chin, the kidney naturopath about carnosine soon.
All this will end up on my website. It's amazing conversations. And aged garlic extract, I think is a really useful one.
Dr Ritamarie (46:51)
How does that compare to fermented black garlic where you do your own. That's one of my favorite foods to add to my diet.
Robin Rose MD (47:03)
It's like you can't do all of it. And so you kind of switch off, do something for a few months, watch clinical status and labs. I live by the ocean, so there's waves. You come in waves.
I take Pielotax. I've been taking it for several years. That's the kidney bioregulator. I might stop for a week or two and then I'm like, I want it. So there's something about it. I've asked some of the experts who are the designers of these, and they're like, you're okay. If you have side effects, don't do it. But I said, there's no side effects.
Dr Ritamarie (47:53)
Great, great. So do you work with people? Do you work one-on-one with people in helping them to put together their plan?
Robin Rose MD (48:00)
I have a new way of doing this, because I don't really have the infrastructure set up. I've been doing it somewhat casually. And so I now have what's called Renology Associates. I am working with Dr. Daniel Readers, and I have him do the initial intake. He's a functional cardiologist and works with mind-body stuff in a way that I've never seen a cardiologist do so well. And so we work together, because I'm here, and he's in California, and the patient could be God knows where. We just get on a Zoom call, and I get on and his infrastructure is taking care of all of the logistics that I actually don't want to do anymore.
What I've been doing is getting on calls with a physician and their patient. And so it's kind of like a peer to peer with the patient listening. And we're able to do it that way. So I'm kind of in evolution, since I did the book. I'm realizing more and more people are going to want this.
I want to train more clinicians. I want more clinicians to know this stuff, because I call it the kidney-demic. It's that bad. There‘s so many people, and I get like, “My God, my GFR went from 90 to 70 in the last four months. What do I do?” Here we are, let's talk, it's perfect.
Then I get like, I have a GFR of 32, what do I do? They're different conversations. You know, my GFR is 19, what do I do? It's also something. And at every stage, that which we do is helpful. Even on dialysis, they’re eating junk. Dialysis doesn't take care of everything. And so there are needs that remain.
Dr Ritamarie (50:09)
I mean, that's the last thing you want to go. You honestly, mean, dialysis is not something you want to say, “Well, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing. If it gets worse, I'll go on dialysis.” Right?
Robin Rose MD (50:22)
Realize the first sound is die. Without that, you're dead. And so that's what I realized. I personally, and everybody chooses, I understand some people have much in their life that they want to live for, and they will do dialysis. And that's okay. I didn't want that.
I actually did a class trip by myself with my husband to the dialysis center on my island,
which means there's way too much kidney disease on a small island.
Dr Ritamarie (50:52)
I can't believe there is actually a dialysis center on your island. That's crazy.
Robin Rose MD (50:57)
The incidence is very high, very high. Diabetes, hypertension and distress, because Hawaii was overrun. Their sovereignty was taken and so there's the mind-body piece of it. And so I walked in, and I said, hi. I was pretty sick at that point. Still. I'm here to let you know I'll never see you again. And these young Hawaiian women were looking at me like, you’re crazy, then they were like, “We never want to see you again.” You know, and so it really took a little humor, a little willingness. Like if this doesn't work, it's been a good life. And yet, I'm committed, but unattached. It's like, I'm not the choreographer. I'm just, I'm in the dance troupe.
It really does take a lot of effort to get better. This isn't the easiest. No problem, you'll just get better. I mean, you really have to mean it.
Dr Ritamarie (52:02)
Right. When you get to that stage, right? So what I want to really impart with our clinicians, and with our health coaches, and with just health seekers who are listening is that if you wait for it to get to the point where you need dialysis, that’s very different than if you're looking for these subtle clues, knowing how to look at the labs and not just assuming that somebody's fatigued for whatever. They need CoQ10 or something,
There might be some other stuff when you put it all together.
So making sure that we are doing the right testing. We're doing a NutrEval. We're looking at their gut microbiome, and we can help people early on when their GFR has dropped from 90 to 70 and go, something's going on here, and we need to work to support your kidney function.
Robin Rose MD (52:52)
And you know, it's a lot easier to make the changes when you're not so sick.
The brain is working better. There's a certain depression that accompanies pathology. It's not like, “Wow, I'm depressed.” It's like physiologic depression.
Dr Ritamarie (53:14)
No, it's physiologic.
So this has been a fascinating conversation. I so appreciate your time, and sharing, and your book. So, we've been talking to Robin Rose, Dr. Robin Rose, and she is the author of Renology Peptides. It’s loaded with brilliant insights on lifestyle integrative meds. Very big, it's heavy. You could weight lift with it if you can't get a chance to read it, right? Look at that. Good for you.
Having been through her own experience, and also her medical training, and everything else, putting it all together into this book. I think it sounds to me like a book that every clinician, anybody that works with clients and patients, needs to have. Because kidney disease, unfortunately, is overlooked too much.
There are too many places that do dialysis, which says there's too many people that need it, and we need to reverse it. But we also need to see the early signs and prevent it, before it gets way down that path. So I thank you so much.
Robin Rose MD (54:11)
By the way, my next book is going to be My Kidney Garden, about the botanicals in my garden that are kidney friends.
Dr Ritamarie (54:22)
My Kidney Garden. Lovely. Thank you. That sounds awesome. That sounds so awesome. So get the book. You can go to Renologyiskidneysuccess.com You can order the book from there.
Robin Rose MD (54:34)
And you can communicate with me there, too. There's an email.
Dr Ritamarie (54:39)
There's a chat there. Great. So reach out, and I appreciate you being here. And I appreciate you being part of our movement to reinvent healthcare, because that's the future of healthcare. So thank you, thank you.
And for all of those listening, get the book, check out the description in the show notes for all the details and really learn about this, because the kidney is critical. The kidney, the heart, they make the body run, right? So we can't afford to have them fall apart. Yeah, and they're interconnected. So thank you for being on this journey with us.
All of you out there who are out there in the trenches, working with people and looking for root causes, and looking to help people truly get well, not just cover everything up with band-aids and until next time, shine on.
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