NYT: Chinese Peptides are Latest Biohacking Trend in Tech Industry

#10

I’m sure there’s more to it, but one issue is that, due to influencers, many people who aren’t on forums like this simply assume peptides are perfectly safe because they’re ‘something already in our bodies.’

I know someone who said their friends use peptides and they all have ‘a guy’… they don’t know anything about testing, and none of them know to check labs or to talk to people much smarter then they are… you know, like I do!!

Also, the idea of peptide raves freaks me out… it reminds me of all the Botox parties that I refused to go to… it might have been perfectly safe, but I dunno

#11

The “Peptides Party’s” by the “expert’s” have been going on for sometime.

Conniving is always on the horizon.

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#12

I spent some time over the holidays in the SF Bay area in some of the wealthier tech hub cities (Menlo Park, Los Gatos, etc) and was surprised by the number of new peptide clinics and store that I saw relative to previous visits…

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#13

QB$

Quick Buck $yndrome

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#14

But peptides are affordable even to us Europoors.

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#15

What peptide does this?

I love small molecules. Small molecules are good for health! lol.

#16

From the article @WJ_PhD posted

But on Silicon Valley’s frontiers, a wider array of unproven, unregulated peptides has taken hold: People are trying BPC-157 and TB-500 for healing injuries by stimulating new blood vessel growth, oxytocin for improving eye contact (one OpenAI researcher called it “Ozempic for autism”), epitalon for sleep and retatrutide — a next-generation weight-loss drug still in clinical trials — for everything from appetite suppression to increased focus.

I have my first bottle of oxytocin nasal spray here and I don’t notice anything, so ?

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#17

I’ve used oxytocin nasal spray and injectable and I had no good results from it. I had skin flushing red, a weird metallic taste in my mouth and increased heart rate.

Now I have 9 extra vials of this stuff and no desire to use it haha.

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#18

i lived in china for 2 years

after that i have never eaten any MIC foods as far as I can avoid it i avoid it

i have zero trust in their food safety. their medicines are even worse. i just hope these people are merely getting saline and not something more dangerous that will eventually kill them.

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#19

I find it humorous how some of the responses are so negative towards peptides. This comes from a group of people who push health boundaries, especially by regularly ordering rapamycin from a foreign country and take it for an off label use :joy:. I’m not trying to debate anyone, it’s just an observation on my part.

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#20

Its not so much peptides, its anything sourced from opaque supply chains with reputations for poor quality control, with very little evidence, at high prices… most of the “data” on peptides are personal reports… not even “case studies”.

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#21

What it really is…

Xenophobia

Adjust for the Country

Sinophobia

Russophobia

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#22

Joseph,

Many of us here have worked in jobs where we have to deal with suppliers in these countries and have many years experience with quality problems. These problems are very different from the type you encounter when dealing with US or European or Japanese countries, where there are legal recourse to extreme problems.

With Russia and China - if the product does not meet the quality specifications generally you have lost all your money and have no legal recourse (even worse if you’re taking these substances yourself and suffer health consequences).

Ignore these warnings and experiences at your own risk.

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#23

Joseph, I’m originally from Russia and I suffer from Russophobia.

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#24

@LaraPo and all,

I’m very cautious to try Chinese peptides.

Like my forray into rapa 3+ yr ago, some how my view that I was late to the DIY peptide dosing some 2 yr ago. I now find my self modestly in the middle of direct buying peptides direct from a Chinese retailer. One such Chinese is selling via a telegram channel and paying via crypto via the soft wallet Exodus.

LOL at 72yo it was definately in line with the assertion that you keep your brain young mainly by still doing difficult things that “are of consequence” vs cross word puzzels…

This is JMHO: today 90% of ALL peptides have some portion mfgered in some Chinese location, maybe hong kong etc. Then either wholey put into viles or raw materials shipped to other facilities US or not being put into viles. Even compounders 90% (my extrapolations) are using some form of Chinese ingredients.

We hear US made!!! What I hear, maybe US bottled (viled) but not many true bioreactor mfgers in the US… Its impossible to know the truth IMHO.

At each price point vendors are testing in quality.

Today: JMHO: the issue is no longer toxics, LPS, molds, IMHO its isomers that still pass the chromatology spike location verificatons the std COAs test for.

There’s not many COA labs. Alot of shared COAs if the raw material is traced back the same mfger, batch. One such lab is https://janoshik.com. A coa: Janoshik Analytical This coa is of a peptide from the direct to China vendor on telegram. 99.7%!!

I agree that its prudent to be careful. Given the range of places I’ve bought tirzepitide, SS-31 (20+) I can say I don’t know how to assure better quality, higher efficacy, lower risk. Given today my biggest question is as cost goes down, what happens to isomers in the batch that chromotoligically (??) test with the same spike locations? Efficacy of the isomers?

I have paid 100x (one hundred) price range for peptide XYZ. The latest tirzepitide I’ve bought might have been around $1 per 1 mg. IE a 40mg vile is $40. And list price for zep??? is what $1000/mo at 6mg/week. So $1000/24mg = $41 per mg or 40x. Reaching 100x is not hard.

Worse is peptides are like Chinese medicin, TCM, small nudges daily over time add up to modest improvements. Thus its difficult to gauge efficacy at the injection level!!!

= Summary

In the same way we take 6mg of rapa every Monday, with little effects to show for it, I’m taking a range of peptides and bioregulators (like peptides only shorter chains) on faith.

Yet I can see more muscle, less fat, more energy and whos to verify its my diet, my excersize or peptides / bioregulators.

There’s tiers of peptides that have long term thus subtle effects; SS-31, motsc, tb500, TA-1, even BPC-157 etc

Some medium term and you might tell the difference: Higher bolice dosed BPC-157, maybe ghk-cu, maybe others.

Short term very noticable: all of the GLP-1s, the sexual peptide PT-141 especially if combineed with cialis has definate noticable benefits but like alot of peptides efficacy is per person and per dose. Thus one dose is not correct for everyone and some may not see any benefit of any of these peptides. Thus $1000’s / mo at a clinic getting compounding pharm BPC-157 may have spotty $$ value.

I should stop my rambling… Like having an interest in taking Rapa on faith AND the willingness to deeply invest in self education and willingness to be N=1 experimentor with dosing, peptides and bioregulators can have good results. A bottom line here is: the $$/result value has a wide $$ range depending on alot of variables which like in rapa includes your specific body’s receptivity, disease state, co-activities you do in parallel (excersize, diet, sleep…).

Good luck, curt

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#25

Ha, I have said learning to use crypto for this has been the ultimate brain exercise for me… that which does not kill me and all

I was very leery of peptides made in china (and even buying things from India… I thought you all were NUTS), until I learned that most of the API’s for our US pharmacy supplied medicines are made in China, and even many of our generics are made in India… eureka!

Having said that, I buy peptides from a source who has them tested and then there are second rounds of random testing.

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#26

Core memory podcast

Biohacking has gone through a lot of different phases. Implanting an NFC chip in your hand is old school and having a blood boy is passé. Among Silicon Valley’s 20-somethings, all the cool kids have a peptide stack.

Jasmine Sun joins us this week to chat about all things peptides. She was previously a product manager at Substack, but now she writes about San Francisco culture on her own Substack. Jasmine recently published a deep dive in The New York Times about the trendy injectable and deets on the Chinese peptide rave (which you first read about from our new writer, Kylie Robison, last month).

One interesting thing mentioned in this podcast is that some people in San Francisco are getting their peptides tested for purity and quality by the free drug checking services (targeted primarily to prevent overdose, etc. in the illegal drug user population). See here: Drug Checking (SCOPE) - San Francisco AIDS Foundation

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#27

Related Substack post by Jasmine:

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#28

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Influencers are pushing suspicious peptides. How much are you willing to risk? (Verge)

The search for the contents of my mystery “GLP-3” vial leads further into the wellness wild west.

On TikTok, it’s disturbingly easy to find videos of influencers reconstituting vials of powdered peptides. In most, influencers hold up a vial of gray-market retatrutide, an unapproved weight loss drug colloquially known variously as GLP-3 (because it adds two extra agonists, glucagon and GIP), reta, and ratatouille. The other supplies on hand are alcohol swabs, syringes, and bacteriostatic water. These kitchen-counter chemists say how easy it is to turn a powdery substance in a bottle into a peptide that can be injected into the body. To figure out dosages, just use an online peptide calculator. The storage instructions are all over the place, but generally boil down to “keep it in your fridge for 30 to 90 days.”

Most tutorials don’t include simple, crucial instructions like “wash your hands” or “disinfect all surfaces.” The vast majority of influencers don’t wear latex gloves. The most anyone does is swipe an alcohol swab over the lids of the retatrutide and bacteriostatic water vials.

When I show these clips to a bona fide pharmacist and compounding specialist, her face falls.

Read the full story: Influencers are pushing suspicious peptides. How much are you willing to risk?

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#29

I am originally form Russia, Moscow, and have a healthy skepticism as well … but that is my motto for most countries in general.

Russia has some incredible Research “Institutes” - peptides including - and some production facilities associated with them… probably best in the world. But you have to be in the know to be able to identify them…

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