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Peptides: where to begin?

science.org

131–140 of 431 posts

Re: Peptides: where to begin?

#131

Peptides are a revolution and you don't need to know how they work to know that they work (for various people for various conditions). There is a tension between empiricism and fundamentalism with much of medical science focusing on fundamentalism. Now with the ability to collect and search large amounts of empirical data and communicate it peer-to-peer people are picking up on a lot of things that work without knowi…

I'm pretty sure there is no diagnostic test for ME/CFS. What are you referring to?

Also I don't understand how semaglutide did help you while you're at the same time part of a minority risk group with a hypersensitivity to it. Isn't that a contradiction?

Re: Peptides: where to begin?

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Injected BPC-157 to a wound is a magic healing potion as far as I'm concerned. That it's not more broadly available is a crime, imo. If I had a billion dollars, I'd push so many things through the FDA.

If you had a billion dollars, you would need many billions more to push even a single thing through the FDA!

This is entirely theorical, but the $2.6 billion figure that's commonly quoted accounts for all the failures as well. If I took something that's proven in Europe but wouldn't get a patent, it presumably would manage to pass FDA regulations, it's just that without the patent protection, there's no financial incentive for an existing company to do that.

Re: Peptides: where to begin?

#133
post #85
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My total layman view is that powerful drugs often have powerful side effects.

That's because you grew up in a society still deeply coded to puritan moral viewpoints. People for so upset that GLP-1 has no long term side effects. There's still the crowd completely sure everyone will get HyperCancer in 10 years or something (they won't).

I'm glad we have GLP-1, and I don't think there are really major side effects. But they are ineffective outside clinical trial setting for treating obesity.

It seems to be like treating alcoholism with disulfiram: it's a miracle in clinical trials but in the real world the patients just lower the doses or discontinue treatment after 1-2 years and go back to their old habits.

Re: Peptides: where to begin?

#134

I read the article but didn't get the tl;dr about peptides. What are they and what are they used for?

Cut and paste from New Yorker: The human body produces thousands of peptides. Many are portions of proteins which send messages or regulate systems in the body, often in ways that scientists don’t fully understand. Researchers have known about some peptides for decades, and dozens have been turned into safe and effective drugs. The hormone insulin is a peptide that moves sugar from the bloodstream into cells; GLP-1, or glucagon-like peptide-1, spurs the pancreas to release insulin and slows the passage of food through the gut. (Peptides are usually defined as having about fifty amino acids or fewer; more than that and they’re proteins.)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/why-are-people...

Re: Peptides: where to begin?

#135
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post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know dozens of people at my gym I don't think I even know dozens of people, full stop, let alone well enough to talk to them about their peptide use.

I go to a gym that has IFBB pros and people competing on elite powerlifting level, steroid and peptide use is an every day chit chat topic.

That does not seem like an environment we should use to determine if the rest of the world should take a substance lol

Re: Peptides: where to begin?

#136

The author is missing a massive segment of that gray market: people who buy FDA-approved weight loss drugs (e.g., semaglutide or tirzepatide) at 2–5% of the brand-name price. This route carries some risk, but there are ways to mitigate it, such as performing third-party testing. I assume most people who do this couldn't realistically afford the brand-name drug anyway, making this their only viable treatment.

I bought Semaglutide at 50c/mg and had it tested, it's the real deal. What's the normal price, $100/mg? My gf is in medicine so she had a friend test it through their work.

> had it tested, it's the real deal

How did they test encapsulation? I thought the whole problem is your stomach acid breaking it down.

Re: Peptides: where to begin?

#137
> a patient who is discontinuing her statin therapy - very inadvisably, given the clinical presentation described - but is enthusiastic about “BPC-157”

This feels new. I thought the methylene-blue-for-cancer types continued their medicine while taking other things as extras.

Personally, I've swung over to the laissez-faire side of medicine. At the end of the day, if you're an adult, it's your body. You should be given the chance to educate yourself. But if you want to inject yourself with a prion, like, go for it. Maybe you won't fuck up your own research.

(Marketing should be tightly regulated, possibly banned.)

Re: Peptides: where to begin?

#138

Lowe has a point, but the FDA has painted itself into a corner by (a) forcing up the costs and the various bureaucratic demands associated with clinical trials, (b) allowing drug advertising , but then forcing those comical "may cause death" disclaimers, both of which have become totally ubiquitous, and (c) inconsistently following its own rules, and in some cases flouting its own rules. At this point, broscience is…

> prescription system into nothing more than a parasitic middleman/gatekeeper

Agree. Unless it's addictive or in short supply, you should be able to buy it OTC.

Re: Peptides: where to begin?

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medicine doesn't really ignore nutrition, but the problem is: 1. Most people don't believe it anyway. People want to hear they can eat hamburgers and milkshakes and be healthy. Telling them "we know that gives you heart disease and cancer" does nothing. 2. Nutrition is complicated and different for every person, because everyone has different things they can tolerate. The "perfect" diet is actually worthless because…

> Most people don't believe it anyway Maybe because so much of it is wrong, or (very charitably, as much is industry-biased) outdated? Lifestyle modification is a definite challenge and I’m not dismissing it. Still, hamburgers and milkshakes don’t give you heart disease and cancer. Overeating, oxidative stress from low-quality ingredients, etc might.

> hamburgers and milkshakes don’t give you heart disease and cancer

They absolutely do, particularly if you're getting most of your calories from them. If evidence-based medicine doesn't convince you, uh, hamburgers and supermarket milk tends to be processed.

Re: Peptides: where to begin?

#140
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post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Triple yes! Most of the people buying it have been buying it and using it for years.

Why do you think only the people taking it would be buying it?

> Why do you think only the people taking it would be buying it?

I don't. But the cost of access is significant. And with pharmacies in India, China and Mexico willing to ship basically anything into America, it's a purely-cosmetic tax now.

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