What it really is…
Xenophobia
Adjust for the Country
Sinophobia
Russophobia
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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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Joseph, I’m originally from Russia and I suffer from Russophobia.
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@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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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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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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Related Substack post by Jasmine:
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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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