My Story
Hi, I’m Michael Peterson and I was first introduced to herbs and the supplement industry when I spent a winter in Boulder Colorado. At the time I was having trouble sleeping and was filled with anxiety. As my anxiety grew, my heart started skipping beats which caused more anxiety and soon lead to panic attacks. I honestly thought I was losing my mind. That’s when I discovered herbs. Valerian Root eased my anxiety and Kava Root kept my heart from skipping. I thought they were amazing, so I began to learn about all kinds of herbs as well as plant based supplements.
Very Sick Animals
In 2013, after being up many nights with Angel, our toy poodle with chronic pancreatitis, I made a supplement for her which is now called GastroElm Plus. From the very first time I gave it to her, she was like a puppy again instead of a 12 year old. Our daughter’s horse kept getting colic whenever she took her to shows or on trail rides, costing us hundreds of dollars in vet bills each time. I told her to start adding a tablespoon of GastroElm Plus to her feed and again, it worked like magic. Now we help thousands of horses, dogs and cats each year with GastroElm Plus and our Colla3 line.
A Very Scary Prognosis
In January of 2020 I became extremely ill with a terrible virus. I was absolutely exhausted, had a 104 degree fever and was in bed for 5 days which is something that had never happened in my entire life. Not only was I sick, but my neck, back and hips hurt so bad that I had to take Advil every few hours. It wasn’t until the weather got nice in April that I felt like I was truly over it as I had a lingering cough, neck and back pain and low energy. In mid-July I attended an outdoor wedding. It was a very hot day and everyone was very careful about not catching Covid, however, I made the mistake of eating the potato salad. Within an hour I didn’t feel good and by the time I got home things exploded into full blown food poisoning. It was a day and a half before I finally started feeling better.
About ten days later I woke up with sore hips. I took some Advil and went on with my day. Over the next few days my hips got worse and my neck and back started aching the way they did in January. I did the Advil routine again, but it didn’t help as much as it had in January. We were working on a big project and I was completely miserable, only able to sleep a few hours per night. My hands were swollen and hurt like I had carpal tunnel syndrome. I called my Doctor about getting some prednisone, but he wanted me to come in for testing. A few days later, he informed me that I was ANA positive indicating I had an autoimmune issue. He also said the speckled nature, along with my other symptoms made it appear that I was in the early stages of Lupus. He recommended that I go see a specialist.
After spending a few hours on Google researching the conventional medicine approach, I realized there had been no advances in Lupus care in more than three decades. I was not going to spend the rest of my life on prednisone, hydroxychloroquine and anti-inflammatory drugs. I switched gears and went back to what I knew best… herbs and supplements. I started taking Lutein & Zeaxanthin to protect my eyes, Ubiquinol to protect my cardiovascular system and Astaxanthin as an overall antioxidant. I took anti-inflammatories like Curcumin and Ginger to try to reduce the inflammation. I cut way back on alcohol and sweets. My reward? Six months later I got rechecked and my titer score had doubled from 40 to 80 meaning I was one step away from full blown autoimmune disease.
During this time I saw a video of Dr Terry Wahls where she explained how she treated her MS with diet and supplements to go from being wheelchair bound to being able to ride a bike for 8 miles within a year or two. One thing that stuck with me was the fact that she focused on mouse research because it’s always 10 years ahead of human clinical trials. I had always read PubMed articles whenever I was researching a new supplement, but now I really began to dig in to see if I could find something that could help me. I also began eating more paleo, eating more oil fish for the omega 3s and cutting processed foods from my diet. After several days of combing through studies I found one that showed ANA positive mice had been turned back to negative by taking a supplement called NMN. After doing some research, it sounded like something I wanted to try, so in May 2021 I started taking it. In September I made another appointment to recheck my ANA levels. I knew it was a long shot that my ANA would’ve changed to negative, but I was feeling better which I told my doctor. He seemed unimpressed.
Four days later, I received a letter from him saying “Congratulations! ANA normal.”
All of these experiences have taught me the incredible power of plant based medicine and nutraceuticals. My goal is to start my own human supplement line and charge much less for the same cutting edge formulas, as I know the markup in the industry as a whole is ridiculous. We have done this with our animal supplements and developed an incredibly loyal customer base. My goal with this website is to create some initial cash flow selling other people’s supplements to fund the development of our own product line.
I would like to invite you to join my newsletter, so I can let you know when amazing new formulations come to market as well as releases of our own signature products down the line.
I wish you the best!
Michael Peterson
Leading Edge Formulas