I have used local BPC injection for shoulder or knee pain 5 times the last 2 years. A friend a mine who is 59 and still lifting heavy also uses it with succes if he has local inflammation / pain. A colleague used the capsules for biceps tendinitis and also recovered faster then he did before. If you look how many “famous” people admit to using it, I think if you buy it from a reputable source, you shouldn’t worry to much about trying it.
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The Peptide Tsunami is still building…
Source: https://x.com/nikillinit/status/2046290906274574378?s=20
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Are these companies partnering with compounding pharmacies, or are they trying to turn into pharmacies? What is their liability plan for selling substances with only preclinical data behind them ?
Generally I think they are just contracting with the compounding pharmacies. Not sure on the exact legal positioning but I think they are hiding behind the doctors and their insurance.
Effectively many of them will be just marketing companies, subcontracting most of the business and technical operations to others.
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Injectable Peptides Are the Latest TikTok Wellness Fad. Doctors Are Worried. (WSJ)
Jaime Garcia injects five different peptides into her body that she gets from a doctor and a telemedicine company.
The 44-year-old Los Angeles resident says the peptides have helped with myriad symptoms she has long struggled with due to a disorder of her autonomic nervous system. “It’s been life-changing,” she says of the four months she has been on the regimen.
Injectable peptides like BPC-157 and TB-500 are all the rage in Los Angeles and other places where wellness is an increasing focus. Testimonials flood TikTok and other social-media sites.
There is just one largely overlooked reality: Many of the substances have been largely illegal since 2023, when the Food and Drug Administration removed 19 peptides from a list of drugs that compounding pharmacies could make.
That could change. The FDA is convening panels later this year to discuss lifting restrictions to allow compounding pharmacies to make 12 of the peptides.
So what are peptides anyway?
Peptides are short chains of amino acids that can play roles in regulating hormones, releasing neurotransmitters and repairing tissue.
The peptides in question are synthetic ones. There are a few FDA-approved peptides, such as the popular GLP-1 weight-loss drugs. Other drugs are approved for specific conditions but are sometimes prescribed off-label for muscle mass and immune health, among other things.
The popularity of injectable GLP-1 drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound has made injecting drugs more mainstream and accepted, say doctors, contributing to the popularity of peptides.
What about the popular peptides all over social media, like the Wolverine Stack?
Injectable peptides that aren’t FDA approved include BPC-157, TB-500 and CJC-1295, commonly taken for gaining muscle, speeding up injury recovery, reducing inflammation, and general antiaging properties.
“They’re really just unapproved illegal drugs,” says Paul Knoepfler, a professor of cell biology and human anatomy at UC Davis School of Medicine.
Many patients want to know if such peptides can help them recover from musculoskeletal injuries or heal faster after surgery, says Dr. Alexander Weber, chief of sports medicine at the University of Southern California.
Weber’s response to peptide questions is simple. “As a physician these are non-FDA regulated, non-FDA approved injectables so the conversation I have with patients always starts with that,” says Weber. “I don’t prescribe these medications. We have no long-term clinical data.”
Weber, Dr. Cory Mayfield, chief resident at USC orthopedic surgery, and other researchers recently published a study in the American Journal of Sports Medicine where they reviewed the literature on popular injectable peptides. They found only one poorly done trial in humans.
Some of the animal studies showed promise but never advanced, says Mayfield.
Full story: Injectable Peptides Are the Latest TikTok Wellness Fad. Doctors Are Worried. (WSJ)
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Big shots
At the invite-only California Peptide Club, ‘not for human consumption’ is a provocation.
The AGI House, in San Francisco’s hilly Twin Peaks neighborhood, is a mansion with an expansive view of the Golden Gate Bridge and the hills of Marin, seven bedrooms, and a toilet on the main floor so modern that it includes written instructions on how to operate. It houses technologists working to accelerate artificial general intelligence, and hosts events that bring together people working toward this mission. But on April 12, the house was reserved for another potentially world-altering development: peptides.
More than 100 people arrived for the California Peptide Club, an invite-only gathering to discuss the substances that have become synonymous with self-optimization. Attendees included several clinicians who prescribe peptides, a peptide manufacturer, the founder of a longevity DAO, a Stanford researcher, and dozens of people who identified as “peptide curious,” searching for either the resources or confidence to build their own “stacks.” Another 300 had been waitlisted. “Creating the allure of getting invited to the house is actually one of the priorities,” says Julius Ritter, the event’s organizer and the president of the AGI House.
Interest around peptides has been surging. In April, Google searches for the word “peptide” overtook “pickleball.” Joe Rogan takes peptides; so does Jennifer Aniston. The phrase “Chinese peptide dealer” has become a meme, creating a sense of superiority among those who are pepped-up. For those who are not, it can feel like being locked out of the world’s greatest party, where everyone is getting hotter, smarter, and better.
Ritter, 24, started the California Peptide Club to widen this circle. His peptide journey began several years ago, when blood tests revealed that his testosterone levels were “in the bottom one percent of men my age,” he says. Medication helped somewhat, but not completely. Then he learned about peptides and decided to experiment with CJC-1295 and Ipamorelin, a combination used to stimulate growth hormone production. “I was the only one in my friend group doing it,” he says. “My roommates made fun of me. They were like, ‘Julius, join the guys in the Tenderloin, injecting yourself in the butt.’”
His results were underwhelming, but a different stack — BPC-157, SS31, Ipamorelin, Tesamorelin, and IGF-1 LR3 — made him feel great. Still, information about peptides was scattered; anyone starting a protocol had to be comfortable with a fair amount of risk and self-experimentation without complete data. A community of people could make it easier to compare notes.
My roommates made fun of me. They were like, ‘Julius, join the guys in the Tenderloin, injecting yourself in the butt.’"- Julius Ritter, president of the AGI House
On Sunday, Ritter welcomed people into the AGI House to do just that. This being San Francisco, guests were asked to leave their shoes in a pile at the door. At the entrance stood a pair of black mannequins, which Ritter had adorned with togas — to create a Greco-Roman aesthetic — and had stuffed their outstretched hands with insulin syringes.
Many attendees I spoke to seemed curious but cautious about taking peptides. One woman told me she was too scared to inject GHK-Cu, a copper peptide known for its beauty benefits, but she had started using a topical version in her moisturizer. (Her skin was, indeed, luminous.) Another woman told me she wanted to see more research on popular peptides before trying them, but had already started giving herself injections of NAD+, a coenzyme associated with improved energy and anti-aging. “It’s actually kind of fun,” she said of stabbing herself with the tiny needle.
The event began with Ritter disappointing everyone by announcing that this was not an injection party. Then he asked how many people had taken peptides. Half the room, or about 50 people, raised their hands. And how many people had injected themselves with a research-only peptide, one labeled “not for human consumption”? Every hand stayed up.
While some peptides, such as insulin or GLP-1s like Ozempic, are legal and can be obtained with a doctor’s prescription, most fall into a regulatory gray zone and can be sold only as “research” chemicals. These vials of powder usually come from compounding pharmacies, or research labs in China. This could change in the coming months. On Wednesday, three days after the peptide event, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, announced that he would reclassify a dozen peptides that were previously banned, including BPC-157 for recovery, Semax for cognitive enhancement, and, for some reason Melanotan II, a peptide that helps people tan. But for now, the semi-illicit nature of peptides can make using them feel like a science experiment, or actually just doing drugs. How do you reconstitute the vial of powder? Where do you buy insulin needles? If you’re not working with a doctor, how do you find the right protocol?
Sunday’s event was intended to answer some of those questions with a series of presentations by experts, or at least people who had been messing around with these substances for a few years. There were testimonials of lives improved in all kinds of ways: A functional medicine practitioner named Awais Spall said peptides had spared him from taking opioids to treat muscle pain. Alex Ellis, a former frozen yogurt store owner who now runs an event called BioHack Miami, swore by a cognitive-enhancing peptide called Semax: “an absolute game-changer.” Grace Liu, who prescribes peptide stacks to athletes and business leaders, shared the protocols she had designed for several clients, and suggested certain peptides, like Selank (for improving mood) and Epitalon (for better sleep), could be used by just about anyone.
It was difficult to tell where anecdotal evidence ended and medically-backed data began — in part because there isn’t much. It was also difficult to tell who was a doctor and who was simply comfortable creating peptide protocols. This seemed to be a broader problem, as one attendee told me: He had sought the advice of a doctor in creating his own peptide stack, and later learned that the doctor was actually an ophthalmologist.
Between talks, Ritter invited everyone to compete in a Kahoot quiz about peptides for a chance to win a peptide mini fridge, along with reconstitution syringes, injection syringes, and alcohol prep pads — a complete starter kit, peptides sold separately. (The winner worked in peptide manufacturing and didn’t want it, so the prize went to the runner-up, a founder of a prop tech startup.) Later, Ritter asked for a volunteer to demonstrate how to self-inject Retatrutide, a weight loss drug that’s become popular in tech circles. A French woman jumped onstage and offered a tutorial on reconstituting the powder with bacteriostatic water, loading an insulin syringe with the desired dose, and then injecting it into her flesh. Dozens of people raised their phones to film it.
Ritter, who plans on hosting the California Peptide Club monthly, told me that he is “trying to figure out the legality” around offering injections at future gatherings. There might be a table with, say, vials of BPC-157 for people to sample. “People actually like the syringe, because it feels like you’re hacking yourself,” he said. “And if you’ve done it once, you’re like, wow, this is actually really cool.”
Still, he worried about reputational damage if anything went wrong. Last summer, at a Las Vegas event called Revolution Against Aging and Death Festival, two women who received peptide injections at a booth were later hospitalized in critical condition, requiring the use of ventilators. Even when injected correctly, peptides can cause side-effects like nausea or skin irritation in the short term, and a few have been linked with cancer risks in the long term. Peptides of unknown provenance can cause even bigger problems: If you’re ordering a vial from a research lab in China, it’s hard to be certain of its purity, its concentration, or its impact on your body.
Indeed, risks were not a main topic of conversation at the California Peptide Club — an oversight Ritter brought up to me in the days following the event. “I think we did many things well, but what we didn’t do, we didn’t take a step back from the accelerationist mindset. Like, hey, what are some of the risks? What do you have to be careful about?”
Risks weren’t among the takeaways of the attendees I spoke to. Before I left the event, I chatted with an early-stage venture capitalist, who was enthused by the prospect of starting his own protocol. He had torn his ACL and the recovery was grueling; now, he thought he should’ve just injected BPC-157. It seemed so obvious, he told me. Next time, he wouldn’t be so cautious.
Arielle Pardes is a reporter in San Francisco covering the business and culture of technology.
Source: Inside San Francisco's Hottest Peptide Club - Business Insider
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This looks to be the big trend in peptides market:
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Do I have negative responses because I’m a skeptic?
I have spent many hundreds of dollars and poked myself with too many injections to count on several of the more popular peptides and as I previously noted, the only one that did anything was tirzepatide.
At this point I am more skeptical than ever.
If you want to pay for a possible placebo effect that’s fine.
I bought from companies that were “reputable” and most of their products scoring at least a “B”.
I’m feeling a little curmudgeonly tonight 
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Couldn’t have said it better myself. Exactly my Experience.
Peptides are a scam (97% of the more than 30 I tried. The 3% that worked is GLP1 which do work but you have to carefully follow guidelines, or you end up losing a lot of muscle and some fat)
The absence of a moat is a big thing in healthcare more generally.
It could be argued that rapamycin is part of the same trend. the trend towards self-prescribing, ordering from India, bypassing traditional gatekeepers, and doing our own research. This trend, augmented by AI, won’t make doctors obsolete, but it will give the patient more freedom, independence, and privacy.
In my view, this is nothing less than a revolution in medicine.
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