Ep 225 Peptides: What your peptide dealer doesn’t want you to know

Looking to get swole (do people still say that)? Want to rewind the clock and smooth those bothersome wrinkles? Trying to lose weight rapidly and without a prescription? If you’ve spent any time on social media lately, chances are you’ve been inundated with ads, influencers, and podcast bros extolling the seemingly unlimited powers of peptides. With GLP-1s turning ‘peptide’ into a household word, the online “wellness” market has been flooded with the newest iteration of snake oil salesmen. According to them, these bespoke peptide combinations can reverse baldness, build muscle, and restore youth, all for the low, low price of… you get the idea. But what the heck even are peptides? How are they regulated? Is there any evidence to support these bold claims? What isn’t your peptide dealer telling you? Tune in to find out. Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/3WwtIAu See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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  This is exactly right.

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• 1:41Speaker 02

  FDA's war on public health is about to end. This includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals, and anything else that advances human health and can't be patented by pharma. If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you. One, preserve your records. And two, pack your bags.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  Okay. That was a tweet from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on October 25th, 2024.

• 3:16Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  And I feel like it sets the tone.

• 3:21Speaker 03

  It really does. Some of those things are not like the others.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  Do you think, Erin?

• 3:29Speaker 03

  Oh, God. Yeah.

• 3:32Speaker 02

  So this is what we're dealing with today.

• 3:34Speaker 03

  Sounds about right. Welcome. Welcome. Hi, I'm Erin Welsh.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  And I'm Erin Omenupdike.

• 3:41Speaker 03

  This is this podcast will kill you. Sorry, I'm still laughing from the firsthand account.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  Today, we're talking about peptides.

• 3:48Speaker 03

  Peptides.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  Today, I'm talking about peptides today.

• 3:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. What I, you know, Erin, I have, maybe it's a little head in the sand, but I'm like, anytime I see peptides, I'm just like, Liz Lemon eye roll, and I'm not engaging.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  Your eyes just glaze over and move somewhere else.

• 4:06Speaker 03

  And I'm like, this is nonsensical. So I can't wait. I don't know very much, and I cannot wait for you to tell me all about them.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  I will tell you as much as I possibly can in the time allotted. If you guys missed last week's episode, we're doing something a little bit different last week and this week. Last week, Erin Welsh told us all about snake oil, because we decided we just want to pick topics and just tell each other about them. So that's what we did. You got to listen to it if you haven't already, because it is truly phenomenal and like, sets the stage for today's episode in a way that we could never have predicted how perfectly it does so.

• 4:42Speaker 03

  Erin, we're just, we work together really well. We're best friends.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  We mesh. But today, I'm going to talk about peptides, what they are, what they do, why is everyone talking about them online, do you need a peptide dealer, et cetera.

• 4:56Speaker 03

  Are they actually called peptide dealers?

• 4:58Speaker 02

  Yes, Erin. Yes, Erin.

• 5:00Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  They have other names as well, too, that I'm probably not hip enough for.

• 5:04Speaker 03

  Okay, okay.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  But before we can do that, it's quarantine time.

• 5:08Speaker 03

  It's quarantine time. Erin, tell me, what are we drinking this week?

• 5:11Speaker 02

  We're drinking MyStack, which, by the end of this episode, if you don't already get it, you'll get it. And if you do get it, that's a wink.

• 5:22Speaker 03

  Beautiful. What's in MyStack?

• 5:25Speaker 02

  My particular stack is iced coffee with a vanilla maple cold foam. So it'll really get you going.

• 5:33Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  So you can.

• 5:35Speaker 03

  That sounds really good.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  Caffeine, you know? It's helpful. It is actually really good. It's what I've been drinking like almost every day.

• 5:42Speaker 03

  You make a maple cold brew foam?

• 5:44Speaker 02

  I do. I do. A vanilla maple cold foam.

• 5:47Speaker 03

  How do you do that?

• 5:47Speaker 02

  My mother-in-law, thank you so much, Chris, bought us for Christmas last year, like, one of those little milk foamer things.

• 5:54Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  And it can do cold or hot foam. So I just put the milk in there, and then a tiny bit of maple syrup and a tiny bit of vanilla extract, and then I press the cold foam button, and then I pour it over my iced coffee, and it is legitimately so good.

• 6:07Speaker 03

  My gosh, okay. Next time I visit you, you're making me this.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  Next week, Erin, I will make you one. Okay. Okay, but that's it. We have a episode, we'll post the, what am I doing?

• 6:19Speaker 03

  Quarantine recipe on our website and on our socials. Our website has the usual mix of things that we talk about every week. And, you know, just in the interest of time, let's go straight to the episode?

• 6:30Speaker 02

  I can't wait. Let's, let me tell you all about peptides.

• 6:34Speaker 04

  I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator, and host of Scam Goddess Podcast, the true crime comedy podcast, all about robbery, fraud, and those who practice it. Each week, I bring on an amazing guest.

• 6:46Speaker 05

  Ooh, I scam them.

• 6:47Speaker 04

  What?

• 6:48Speaker 05

  I could talk to you for an hour.

• 6:49Speaker 04

  You're a generational yapper, like me. That's why I had to make yapping a job. And now you can catch full episodes of my show on YouTube. Start listening to Scam Goddess on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  In case anyone listening is chronically offline, unlike us.

• 7:23Speaker 03

  I'm jealous.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  Me too. But like, my mom, who, when I told her we were doing this, she was like, what are you talking about? And then the next day, sent me not one, but two New York Times articles about peptides. So she's in the loop now.

• 7:34Speaker 03

  That's just her phone listening to her as well.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  100%. But also, there was two articles on the same day that came out about peptides. Anyways, what we're talking about today are drugs, really, called peptides, that people are primarily injecting into their bodies, usually either under the skin or sometimes into their muscles. Sometimes, these peptides might be spread around in topical creams, and very rarely, they might be used as ingestibles or peptide suppositories. All right? And the peptides in question have such names as BPC157, which stands for Body Protection Compound 157.

• 8:16Speaker 03

  No.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  Yes? Okay. KPV, which I forget exactly what that one stands for. Actually, no, it stands for just the three, the three amino acids that are in that peptide. TB500, melanotan is another one. But far more often, they actually go by these really fun, even more colloquial names, because all of those are not scientific names, even though they sound scientific. They go by these really fun names for the so-called stacks that people build out of them. So people will take multiple peptides and combine them together in what they call a stack, and those will have names like Wolverine Stack.

• 8:54Speaker 03

  No.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  Which is purported to get you swole and to recover as quickly.

• 8:59Speaker 03

  Like Axe body spray names, essentially?

• 9:00Speaker 02

  Yes. Yes. Yeah. So that you can be like Hugh Jackman.

• 9:04Speaker 03

  Wolverine's going to get you swole.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:06Speaker 03

  The technical term.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. Swole, and then also recover very quickly, the way that Wolverine can, if you've seen X-Men.

• 9:14Speaker 03

  Long time, like the OG, yeah.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah, yeah. They, like, he can, like, you know, get totally beat up, and then he heals himself. That's really why it's Wolverine Stack.

• 9:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  There's also barbie peptide, which will tan your skin, snatch your waist, and increase your libido.

• 9:30Speaker 03

  Is that for real, Erin?

• 9:32Speaker 02

  Yes, I'm 100% for real. I don't know if it will also give you a perma-high heal, like Margot Robbie pulled off in The Movie, but one can only hope. Basically, these substances have been purported to treat and/or cure pretty much any ailment that you can think of. They are claimed to improve recovery times, to dissolve fat while building muscle, to improve your mood and cognition, to give you energy and focus. Peptides are truly this season's cure-all. That's why I said last episode, Erin, nothing has changed since the 1840s.

• 10:09Speaker 03

  It is so, honestly, there's a, there's a certain poetry to it. If I weren't crying at the same time.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  Um, I also have to say, for anyone who doesn't know me that well, um, so not you, Erin, because you know this about me. Honestly, most people who have listened for a long time could probably have figured this out, but some of you might not really know me. I am a fun sucker. I am not like a fun person to be around. I can get bogged down, for example, in the semantics of things.

• 10:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, you don't like when we, when I play hypothetical games with you. Cause you say that would never actually happen. And I'm like, well, but if you did have to choose between never having pizza or ice cream again, and then you don't like to answer those questions.

• 10:58Speaker 02

  No, who does?

• 11:00Speaker 03

  I wouldn't call you, because we have the most fun together.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  No, we have fun, but you know, that's.

• 11:04Speaker 03

  We suck the fun simultaneously.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  There, there are things that I just cannot let go of. And so to, to say that like, I get frustrated when I hear people talking, like throwing the word peptide around as if a peptide is a single thing.

• 11:22Speaker 03

  Is a meaningful term.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  That has any, right? Like the word peptide does not mean what people are meaning it as. And so it is, it is, uh, it frustrates me deeply to my core. So apologies if that comes out a little bit. But what I want everyone to get out of today's episode today, today's episode today, is I want you to understand what is actually going on with some of these most popular peptides. To know that, we first have to learn some pretty basic biochemistry so that everyone is on the same page about what does a peptide actually mean? If you're throwing this word around. We're going to talk about where we actually use peptides as medicines today, because we've actually been using them for a really long time.

• 12:06Speaker 02

  And then we'll get into why do we think, why do I think really? It is now in this moment that we are seeing peptides specifically explode in popularity. And like, why are they having such of this moment? And I'll talk in a little bit of detail about some of the specific like stacks and combinations, especially because the FDA recently had an advisory committee on whether they were going to like, allow these to be basically used as pharmaceuticals again in the US. We'll get into it. Okay?

• 12:38Speaker 03

  I mean, yeah.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  So I hope that you all can understand by the end of this episode, what peptides are and how they could be used. And then recognize some of the drivers of their popularity. To then be equipped to suss out claims about these peptides for yourselves. Like you said at the end of last episode, Erin, we all need to know where to direct our skepticism and how.

• 12:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  Can we do it?

• 13:01Speaker 03

  I love this.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  In one episode. Okay.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  The word peptide, what that actually means is just a string of amino acids. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. Amino acids are just carbon based compounds that have what's called an amino group, which means a nitrogen and a couple of hydrogens. And they have a carboxyl group, which is two oxygens and a hydrogen. And then they've got side groups. And there can be a whole bunch of different side groups to make several hundred different amino acids that have been identified. A few dozen of these amino acids are important in our human bodies. Nine of them are the essential amino acids, which means that we don't make them in our bodies. So we have to get them from our diet.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  So just like simple sugars are the building blocks of complex carbohydrates, when you string multiple amino acids together in a chain, you first form a peptide. And then if you string many strings together of peptides, you fold them in complex ways to make a protein. Okay?

• 14:07Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  That's all a peptide is. We make in our bodies, a whole bunch of peptides. And we use them endogenously for so many tasks. Oxytocin, our love hormone, that's a peptide.

• 14:23Speaker 03

  Is that in a stack or?

• 14:25Speaker 02

  I'm sure, I don't know. We, I mean, we use it in medicine. We use synthetic oxytocin. People hate on it. It's called pitocin. It saves lives. Insulin, which is essential for regulating our blood sugar, also a peptide. A lot of our hormones, it turns out, are peptides. Like a whole bunch of our hormones are peptides. And that's because they are really good at traveling throughout our bloodstream. And they, this is an important part about peptides. They do not last very long in our bodies. Keep that in your brain.

• 15:00Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 15:01Speaker 03

  How long is very long?

• 15:03Speaker 02

  It depends on the peptide, but it can be on the matter of minutes to the matter of hours. Okay?

• 15:09Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  Many of our neurotransmitters are peptides. Growth factors that we use in our body are peptides. Antimicrobial compounds are sometimes peptides.

• 15:19Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  It is not wild, it is not new, it is not novel. It is not like, holy crap, what an interesting idea to use peptides as medicines. The very first peptide that was ever used as a medicine was insulin. Da na na. See our diabetes episode for how we figured this out. And by we, I mean, what was it? I wrote their names down.

• 15:43Speaker 03

  And Frederick Banting in like London, Ontario. That's all I remember.

• 15:49Speaker 02

  Something like that. There was like a few of them.

• 15:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, there was a few. I'm sorry. I can only remember Banting.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  No, that's okay. That, you are right. So they initially extracted insulin from bovine and porcine pancreas.

• 16:00Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  To develop insulin. And that saved millions and millions of lives. That was in the 1920s, 1921 was when it first came on the scene. Then in the 1950s was when scientists were first able to figure out how to synthesize peptides. There was yet another Nobel Prize in Chemistry that was awarded for this in 1955. And then in 1984, scientists figured out a newer, better, faster way to synthesize peptides. Yet another Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1984 for this.

• 16:36Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  This is my version of history, by the way, Erin.

• 16:39Speaker 03

  Love it.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  So we have been using peptides in medicine since at least 1921. And through the 1950s, and especially since the 1980s, we've been using more and more of them because we have had the technology to be able to come up with them, to synthesize them, to test them, and to figure out what they do and put them through clinical trials to be able to use them as medications. As of 2021, there were 80 approved drugs on the market that were FDA approved in the US. And they're used in many other countries across the globe that are actually peptides. And we use these peptide drugs for everything from diabetes control to weight loss to cancer treatment. We use them for the treatment of osteoporosis. There's some immunosuppressive drugs that we use that are peptides.

• 17:27Speaker 02

  You remember our leeches episode?

• 17:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  We talked about a drug that was developed, that's a thrombin inhibitor. So it helps to block clots and it was developed from the saliva of leeches.

• 17:37Speaker 03

  Uh huh, yeah.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  That's a peptide. That's a peptide.

• 17:39Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  Okay?

• 17:40Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  Some of our antibiotics are peptides. There was a really early drug developed for the treatment of MS that was a peptide. There was an early drug developed for HIV. We don't use it that often anymore because you have to administer it multiple times a day and it has to be given by injection. So it's not as convenient as the oral medications that we have now, but it's a peptide. We use peptides for the treatment of hormone sensitive cancers. We use them for the treatment of growth hormone deficiencies. Like, we use them in medicine all the time.

• 18:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  And all of these different types of peptides are examples of things that most of the time are peptides that we make in our bodies. Or sometimes they are peptides that are really similar to peptides that we have in our bodies.

• 18:28Speaker 02

  But every single one of them does very different and very specific things, right? A peptide that we use to treat diabetes is very different than the peptide that we use to treat prostate cancer. Okay? And all of these peptides that we use in medicine had to go through animal studies, cell culture studies, and three phases of human clinical trials in order to demonstrate that they are safe, that they are effective, in order to come up with dosing and treatment plans for their use to treat a specific condition. Then they had to be reviewed by the FDA and approved for use.

• 19:11Speaker 02

  And the companies that make them are required to follow specific regulatory guidelines, dispense them only with a prescription for the treatment of specific conditions under the guidance of a medical professional.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  What's happening?

• 19:28Speaker 03

  What the heck is going on, Erin? I don't understand.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  What's happening today is not that use of peptides.

• 19:34Speaker 03

  No.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  It's not even the same as the use of supplements, though it falls under many similar gray umbrellas.

• 19:43Speaker 03

  Right, so what is it regulated as?

• 19:48Speaker 02

  The vast majority of the peptides that people are using on themselves today are explicitly not to be used for human medication. They are not regulated as supplements. They are sold under the guise of for research use only. So people are able to purchase them online from either direct to consumer like peptide manufacturing plants in China or through WhatsApp messages a lot of times, or through, in some cases, compounding pharmacies, and we'll get there in a minute, and through different organizations and companies that have sprung up in order to sell peptides, all of which, much like in our raw milk episode,

• 20:33Speaker 02

  where you can buy raw milk that is labeled not for human consumption, people are buying these peptides that are specifically labeled not for human use or for research use only.

• 20:44Speaker 03

  I mean, buyer beware. Let the market figure itself out. Oh, my gosh.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  And in truth, peptide really has become the newest buzzword to mean, quote unquote, "natural", to mean, quote unquote, "beneficial", and it is very tightly linked with the whole anti-aging longevity crowd.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  So while, yes, there are many FDA-approved peptides, and some of the ones that people are using are FDA-approved or maybe almost FDA-approved, we'll get there, compounds that people are using, but using them in ways that are not FDA-approved. But most of the time, that's not how they're being used. They're being sold through essentially what's called a gray market. I'm not really sure what's gray about it. It seems like it's just not legal, but nobody's cracking down on it, so they call it gray.

• 21:35Speaker 03

  Well, because the head of HHS is explicitly endorsing it.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  Right, exactly. And so they make it, they call it a gray market.

• 21:43Speaker 03

  Who's enforcing any sort of ban? Or, yeah?

• 21:46Speaker 02

  Nope. And to say that this has become, like, if you're like, "I've never heard of this peptides thing", it is a massive industry.

• 21:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  Online advertising of unauthorized peptides, which is what these all are, grew eightfold from 2022 to 2024, per a New York Times report. And this market is already worth billions of dollars, just this peptide market. A review from 2026 valued the global market of peptides at $37.8 billion in 2022 and estimated that it was growing 9% a year over the next decade, so that by 2031, just peptides alone would be worth $85.9 billion. So.

• 22:31Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 22:32Speaker 02

  Why?

• 22:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  Why?

• 22:36Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 22:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, why?

• 22:41Speaker 03

  Why, why is this springing up now?

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Yes, that's my question.

• 22:45Speaker 03

  And what are people, like, what is the range of this? Like, when you hear peptide, because like, all I hear is peptide, and I, I think I immediately associate it with like, the, the men's health, the Wolverine, let's get swole, podcast bros, that kind of thing.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:02Speaker 03

  But there's much more out there. So what are the things? Yeah, why and what are the things?

• 23:06Speaker 02

  Let's get into it. Let me try and answer the question as to why this market has blossomed so much, especially in the last few years.

• 23:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  And then we'll go into a little bit of detail on some of these and like, look at the range of, of things that they claim to treat or to prevent or, or whatever, to kind of understand how wide it has gotten. It's really hard, actually, to pinpoint, like, why now? Why today? But I think in, in all of the research that I've done, there's at least two big things that have happened in the last few years that we can point to as pretty major contributors. And on top of that, we just have this general rise in demand for like, health optimization and our social media algorithms, including podcasts, which really helped to mass-market this idea that we need to optimize our health. And I think that's kind of a separate part that has played into this. But the other two things, the first one are GLPs.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  Now, we really do need to do an actual episode on GLPs. I'm sorry that we haven't yet.

• 24:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  But GLP-1 stands for glucagon-like peptide 1. And drugs like semaglutide or semaglutide, depending on how you like to say it, which is Ozempic and Wegovy, is a GLP-1 agonist. It acts on this glucagon-like peptide receptor. GIP is gastric inhibitory peptide, and drugs like terzepatide or Zepbound or Monjaro act on both GLP and GIP.

• 24:29Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 24:30Speaker 02

  Now, these, semaglutide, terzepatide, these were not the first of these GLP-1 type of drugs. The first was actually called Exenatide, and it was isolated from Gila monster venom.

• 24:41Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 24:42Speaker 02

  Uh huh. And they were first approved well over a decade ago for the treatment of type 2 diabetes.

• 24:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:49Speaker 02

  So we've been using these type of peptides as drugs in medicine for a really long time. But it became very clear in some of the initial trials that some of these drugs also had the ability to induce a substantial amount of weight loss in people with diabetes when they were studying them to be used for diabetes.

• 25:06Speaker 03

  I really want to know the Gila, like, how did the Gila monster become? Who was looking at it?

• 25:11Speaker 02

  Who was looking at it?

• 25:13Speaker 03

  I guess we'll, when we do the GLP-1s episode.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  Now, this is, now, this is making you want to do GLP-1s.

• 25:18Speaker 03

  Well, I knew, I knew that they were involved, but I was like, how did the leap, how do we leap from there to here?

• 25:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, right. So after they saw this in a lot of clinical trials, then pharmaceutical companies saw a way to make more money. And so they studied these drugs, these GLP-1 agonists, for the treatment of obesity, quote unquote, for, to induce weight loss specifically. And that led to the approval of the first weight loss, well, actually, it wasn't the first weight loss one, but it was the first, like, really good one, because there was one in 2014, but it wasn't that effective. It required daily administration. It's called Saxenda, it's still on the market. But Wegovy or semaglutide, which was already being used for diabetes, but got the FDA approval for weight loss for obesity

• 26:06Speaker 02

  in 2021, when everyone was at home with COVID and still on lockdowns and things, followed by terzepatide or Zepbound in 2023. That really opened up a market that did not exist before. And we have seen since then so many more come out. We've seen oral formulations of semaglutide. We've seen a new drug that's an oral formulation from Eli Lilly, who makes Zepbound. We're going to see a new one, I'm sure, soon, and we'll talk a little bit more about it later. It's called ritatutide. And so GLP-1s, being so successful, getting on the celebrity scene, everyone becoming obsessed with them,

• 26:50Speaker 02

  and then becoming such a huge topic of conversation among everyone, played a huge role in the conversation around the idea of peptides in general. Because now peptide has entered our consciousness. What is this? It's a peptide. What is a peptide? Well, this drug is a peptide, and it's helping everyone, and everyone's using it.

• 27:10Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  And so researchers have said that this induces what's called a halo effect. The halo effect is this idea in psychology that if there is, if you see a benefit in one area, then you're going to assume that there's a bigger benefit in everything. So the idea behind GLP-1s is like, well, if this new and exciting peptide that everyone is on or everybody wants to be on, and nobody can even get their hands on it, that seems to be beneficial. So this other peptide, or all peptides, must be beneficial, right?

• 27:45Speaker 02

  GLP-1s also, I think, did a few other things that get overlooked a little bit. They really normalized the concept of injecting yourself with a drug, and specifically injecting yourself with a drug to improve yourself, which I think is the way that they were marketed, right? And there was another thing. Because when these GLP-1s came on the market, 2021, 2022, 2023, even today, they were very hard to come by.

• 28:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  So people were finding ways to get these drugs outside of conventional prescriptions, because you could not get them from your CVS or your Walgreens or your Walmart pharmacy. So many people started to get semaglutide from compounding pharmacies. And that brings me to point two.

• 28:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Why do compounding pharmacies matter?

• 28:33Speaker 03

  What is a compounding pharmacy?

• 28:35Speaker 02

  Great question, so glad that you asked. Compounding pharmacies are places that you can go, they're pharmacies, that you can go to get drugs made kind of on demand. You still need a prescription to get a drug from a compounding pharmacy.

• 28:48Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  But what you can get from there is a kind of custom-made drug that is made by a pharmacist for you based on the prescription that your physician sends. So what does that mean in practice?

• 29:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, give me an example of like, a legitimate use of this.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  Right, a really good example. Compounding pharmacies are really important. If you have somebody who cannot take a tablet formulation of a drug, and there's only tablet formulations on the market, a compounding pharmacy can make a liquid version of that drug for someone who's maybe tube-feeding dependent or something like that.

• 29:19Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  So there are many, many reasons why compounding pharmacies are a really important part of, like, our pharmacy ecosystem, because major drug manufacturers are only going to make one version of a thing, right?

• 29:32Speaker 03

  Where, like, where do compounding pharmacies exist? Are they in hospitals? Are they separate buildings?

• 29:39Speaker 02

  A lot of times, hospitals will have their own pharmacist who basically will compound in the hospital. So that's really important for things like TPN or parenteral nutrition. That's got to be made by a pharmacist. There's also standalone compounding pharmacies. So like, I know the, I know the one that's here in San Diego that I know of, and I will sometimes send things there if I have someone who needs something that you can't get at a regular pharmacy. Compounding pharmacies can only make either FDA-approved drugs in a different formulation, like that example I gave of a liquid drug for someone who needs it, or they can make drugs from compounds that are on this list that's called the 503A bulks list, which is like a list of substances,

• 30:21Speaker 02

  a list of things that you can use to make a compounded product. There's also specific rules, and this is what happened with like, the Ozempic and Wegovy situation in the early 2020s, is that there wasn't enough of it. So if there's shortages, then compounding pharmacies are also allowed to make drugs, even if they're still under a patent, kind of a thing.

• 30:43Speaker 03

  Gotcha.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  However, compounding pharmacies are not held to the same federal standards of regulation. They are regulated by their state board of pharmacy. And there are many loopholes that could be used by compounding pharmacies, both local ones, so like, I'm gonna go to my compounding pharmacy. But there's also a lot of compounding pharmacies that have kind of sprung up that are more like mail-order type of compounding pharmacies. And they are not regulated in the same way.

• 31:15Speaker 03

  How, how, how?

• 31:17Speaker 02

  How, how, how, how? This is a question a lot of people have asked. Now, why does this matter for peptides?

• 31:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  Well, back in 2023, there was a large number, I think 12 peptides, that were specifically removed from this 503A bulks list. And they were instead placed on a list that specifically prohibits compounding pharmacies from using them in medications because the FDA cited significant safety concerns and not enough evidence that they had any efficacy. Peptides were already pretty big in certain circles, like a decade or more ago. They were really big in bodybuilding circles, to the point where the World Anti-Doping Agency actually has several peptides on a list of banned substances. Not because there's data that they actually improve your performance, but because people were using them, hoping that they would.

• 32:09Speaker 02

  There is a theoretical basis by which they could, and there is substantial safety concern. And that's one of the criteria that the World Anti-Doping Agency uses to make their decisions on what's safe for athletes to use. So in 2023, when there was this big change at the FDA, many people, including some prominent peptide lovers like RFK Jr., were pretty mad about this. Which is why, in 2024, as you heard in our firsthand account, RFK Jr., who is now our head still of HHS, tweeted that he was going to end the, quote, "aggressive suppression of peptides," end quote, among other things, as part of the, quote, "FDA's war on public health," end quote.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  He has actually fulfilled this promise, essentially, because he replaced eight members of an FDA review committee on compounding pharmacies, whose job it is to review these lists and what substances should be allowed or not allowed on this bulks list that compounding pharmacies are allowed to use. And at the end of July, they had a hearing, and seven of these peptides were up for review. I watched them, Erin, I watched these hearings, so that you don't have to.

• 33:22Speaker 03

  How was that? Yeah.

• 33:23Speaker 02

  Here's how it went. It was hard. Anyone from the community was invited to give comments on each one of these peptides. Many, many people did. Most of them were either peptide users, peptide prescribers, or like ran a peptide company who were selling peptides. And they gave their anecdotal evidence for why they should be able to, and why they wanted to be able to prescribe peptides specifically from compounding pharmacies in the US. Their main reason, aside from like, these are great, they help everyone, they're amazing, was also that the idea is it would be safer to get them from a compounding pharmacy in

• 34:05Speaker 02

  the US, rather than from a peptide manufacturer in China, where you don't even know what you're getting when you're ordering online. So the community members were allowed to give comments. And then, an FDA scientific review committee reviewed the evidence and presented the evidence on the physical and chemical characterization of like, what is the compound in question? What are any safety issues that are raised by the use of this compound in compounded products? Like, do we have any safety data? How is this product going to be used? And what's the data on it? What is the evidence of effectiveness or lack thereof of this substance to treat whatever disorder you're claiming that it treats?

• 34:46Speaker 02

  And finally, what is the historical use of this compound in compounded products, or of this substance in compounded products? Which is really an interesting thing that they consider, like, oh, well, if it's been used for a long time, then it's probably safe, even if we don't have that much data.

• 34:59Speaker 03

  Ah, no.

• 35:01Speaker 02

  So, so the community presented their evidence, this FDA review committee, scientific review committee presented their evidence, and then the panel, which again, was just essentially overhauled

• 35:11Speaker 03

  Right.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  by RFK, voted. Do we add it to the, let's go ahead and use it list, or do we keep it off the list?

• 35:18Speaker 03

  Okay, so, real quick, the peptides that were under consideration were the ones that had been previously removed, or this was a whole new batch?

• 35:25Speaker 02

  It was several of them that had been removed.

• 35:27Speaker 03

  Okay, okay.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. And for literally every single one, all seven that were reviewed, there were substantial safety concerns that the FDA review committee presented, including concerns of immunogenicity. Not a single one had sufficient evidence to recommend their use for any of the conditions that they were being suggested for. And in every single case, the FDA review committee's recommendation was to not add these substances to the 503A bulks list.

• 35:55Speaker 03

  But what happened, Darren?

• 35:57Speaker 02

  Except one, the panel decided to add them to the list, regardless.

• 36:03Speaker 03

  I mean-

• 36:05Speaker 02

  And most interestingly, the vote was almost always eight yes, six no, one abstain. And RFK replaced eight of the members on that committee.

• 36:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, and how many of those, who's getting paid by these peptide companies? Who owns them? Who owns shares? Who, whatever? Yeah.

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• 37:02Speaker 02

  So, and so that's how compounding pharmacies play a really big part in this, right? There is a big push from, you know, physicians who have their own longevity clinics-

• 37:14Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  -who are prescribing these peptides, who want to be able to prescribe them more easily through compounding pharmacies. There are bulk compounding pharmacies who want to be able to sell these in the US, because they can make a lot of money off of it.

• 37:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, a quick question about compounding pharmacies and how, how payment works. If it's something like you're being prescribed a medication, and you, and you have insurance, and that insurance will pay for, in part, or whatever, some of the medication, but you could also then, as an individual person, with these peptides now approved, as an individual person, without a prescription, you could go to the compounding pharmacy and say, give me my stack?

• 37:52Speaker 02

  Incorrect.

• 37:52Speaker 03

  Okay, tell me.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  So, yes, you still, to get things from a compounding pharmacy, you need a prescription.

• 37:57Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  So this, them being added to the compounding pharmacy list, means that physicians who are selling them-

• 38:04Speaker 03

  Right.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  -are going to be able to do that more easily, and claim an air of legitimacy, right? Make it seem as though this is safer, because it's coming from a US-based compounding pharmacy, rather than from this sketchy website, or whatever. But you still will need a prescription. You still can get these online very easily, without a prescription. You do not need a prescription to go get them from your WhatsApp dealer-

• 38:25Speaker 03

  Right.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  -or whatever. And so I think that that, like, this whole conversation around compounding pharmacies, and what should be allowed and shouldn't be allowed, and I'm not trying to hate on compounding pharmacies as a broad thing, but-

• 38:35Speaker 03

  No.

• 38:36Speaker 02

  -you do have to understand that there are a lack of regulations on what they can and cannot do. And whenever there's a lack of regulation, there's going to be people who are not acting in the best interest of the individual, because they can make more money doing it differently. And, and, so it's, it's the normalization of the idea of peptides because of GLP-1s. It's the idea that compounding pharmacies and getting your medication outside of the typical structure is more normalized. And then it's that third and final thing that has allowed this gray market to spiral so far out of control, is just our mistrust of science overall, right? We see the rise in so many different areas, not just in health, of these social media

• 39:18Speaker 02

  personalities, some of whom claim to be scientists, like Andrew Huberman, some of whom don't bother, like Joe Rogan, but they don't have to, because they have so-called scientists, and many actual physicians, on their very popular programs to talk about things in scientific language. The word peptide sounds very scientific-

• 39:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  -while also claiming that it is natural, and distinguishing it from the word drug-

• 39:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  -which sounds bad.

• 39:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:45Speaker 02

  And so all of this, I think, has really contributed to why we're seeing the rise today.

• 39:50Speaker 03

  It's the same, I mean, it's the same thing as Snake Will. It's cherry picking what parts of science you can use in order to sell something while downplaying everything else and not actually being a scientist and not actually being, doing what scientists do, which is being honest and being, well, not all of them, but of course, like,

• 40:06Speaker 02

  That's what you're supposed to.

• 40:07Speaker 03

  The spirit of science is transparency. It is, it is not overstating.

• 40:11Speaker 02

  Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But so what are, I've just been saying the word peptides in a way that I hate. What are we talking about? What are the actual peptides?

• 40:19Speaker 03

  What are the peptides?

• 40:20Speaker 02

  There's a lot. I can't get into every single one of them. What I can tell you is that the vast majority of them fall into a few big buckets of what they claim to do. There are peptides that claim to be anti-aging and to improve longevity.

• 40:36Speaker 03

  That's really easy to test in a clinical trial.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  Really easy to test in a clinical trial. There are other peptides that claim, there's a lot around tissue regeneration or repair, faster recovery times. Sometimes they're marketed for like muscle building. These are the types of peptides that were really popular even among like bodybuilders and things like that before we've seen the like more widespread use of peptides today.

• 41:00Speaker 03

  I mean, which also that to me sounds like another interpretation would be like, this is cancer causing because if you're causing cell proliferation.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  This is, you are so smart, Erin, because 100%. Okay, let me get into a little bit more detail on that. It is such an important part that everyone's just like, I'm going to ignore this? Sorry. If you can start replicating your cells really quickly, you can also just quickly grow cancer.

• 41:24Speaker 03

  Yes. Yeah.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  Sorry, I yelled that. Like, I can't, I love that all I had to say was tissue repair and that's where your brain went. I love you so much. I can't even tell you. God, I love you. Okay.

• 41:35Speaker 03

  I love you too.

• 41:37Speaker 02

  Other ones are marketed for fat loss, a big moment right now. Okay.

• 41:42Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  Pain management, hormonal balance, sexual health. There's obviously huge money in improving sexual health.

• 41:49Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  There's other ones that are marketed for neurocognition, which I think is really hilarious because peptides can't even cross our gut barrier.

• 41:57Speaker 03

  I was gonna say, can they cross our blood brain barrier? Okay. Also, how upsetting if it could, like,

• 42:01Speaker 02

  If it could, that would be bad.

• 42:02Speaker 03

  Terrifying.

• 42:04Speaker 02

  And they all, what's so, I think is so interesting is that many of them use these very chemically sounding names, but they are not the chemical names. Like in the FDA hearings, the scientific review committee was like, we don't actually even know what chemical compound you're talking about because you just said BPC157 and that's a meaningless term. Do you mean the salt form? Do you mean the free peptide form? What are you talking about?

• 42:26Speaker 03

  Right.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  So the chemists out there pulling their hair out.

• 42:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  But I want to talk about a few of them in specific. Okay. These are some of the ones that were, first of all, that are really big. And second of all, that were specifically recently looked at and probably are going to be approved for use if the FDA approves them based on the panel's decision recently at the end of January. These are BPC157, okay, and TB500, which is thymosin beta 500. If you put these two together, you get Wolverine stack.

• 42:59Speaker 03

  Okay, great. Cool.

• 43:00Speaker 02

  Okay. I know you'd want to know about that one. Now, neither one of these, BPC157 or TB500, has really any safety data in humans, period. BPC157 at least has a couple of published papers where humans got injected with it, but they were like, one of them was a study of like 17 people and only some of them got only BPC157, other ones got BPC and TB4, which is like a different version. It's the larger version of what TB500 is.

• 43:35Speaker 03

  Okay, so it's an Iron Man instead of Wolverine or something?

• 43:38Speaker 02

  Who knows?

• 43:39Speaker 03

  Am I mixing my Marvel and the other one DC?

• 43:41Speaker 02

  Those are both Marvel, so good job. Yeah. Good job. You did great.

• 43:45Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 43:45Speaker 02

  But so there's really no human safety data on either of these two compounds. There is some data on BPC157. Most of the data on this is in mouse models of tissue healing. So there are a couple of studies, literally two studies, that show that if you rip off a mouse's ACL or tear their thigh muscle and then inject them with BP157, they have faster wound healing of those muscles specifically. And TB4, which is thymosin beta 4, this is a peptide that we make in our bodies that has been shown in cell cultures to promote

• 44:28Speaker 02

  angiogenesis. That means the growth of new blood vessels and to promote cell proliferation and to stop senescence where cells age.

• 44:39Speaker 03

  Tumors love this. One simple trick.

• 44:41Speaker 02

  This is literally all we talked about in our cancers episode. This is what cancers have to do. TB500, which is what everyone is injecting, not everyone, but the people who are, who are, TB500 is a six amino acid sequence that's a part of TB4. We don't have any data on TB500, no human studies at all, no toxicity data, no safety data whatsoever. So there's major concern here for the potential for these two in specific to cause cancer.

• 45:12Speaker 03

  I mean, this is a public health crisis waiting to happen, currently happening.

• 45:16Speaker 02

  It's already happening. I actually have several examples of really serious things already happening from people who are injecting these compounds and it's quite scary. Another one that recently just got looked at is, I also think quite scary, it's CJC1295. I don't remember what that stands for, but again, it's not like a real chemical name. This is a long-acting version of a growth hormone-releasing hormone. Now, the difference on this particular peptide is that we did study it. There is some data on this in humans, on people who had growth hormone deficiencies. So people who do not make enough growth hormone. But the phase two trials on the use of this were stopped after somebody had a heart

• 45:58Speaker 02

  attack. Probably was not related, who knows if it was, but the point is that this compound never made it out of phase two trials for the treatment of anything, including growth hormone deficiencies or lipodystrophy, which is where you have issues with how and where you store fat. And so it's, you have issues with a lot of hormones in that particular condition. So this drug has had, it at least has some human data, but it's not great human data and it was stopped prematurely. In practice, people often combine this particular peptide with another peptide called epamorelin, which is also a growth hormone stimulator. And so now we're using two different growth hormone-related peptides and we actually

• 46:43Speaker 02

  already know what happens if your body starts making too much growth hormone. You develop a condition called acromegaly.

• 46:48Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 46:49Speaker 02

  Where you have continuous bone production, especially in your head, your hands, your feet. You can have a heart that continues to grow. You can have pretty major, serious issues. Again, not a lot of safety data. Definitely no, what are people using it for? There's no like, uh, condition that people are treating that we're using it for.

• 47:05Speaker 03

  Well, you invent the, you invent the problem and then you sell the solution.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 47:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:10Speaker 02

  Another one that recently got added to the list of approved, well, is going to be added to this 503A bulks list because they voted on it, is KPV, which literally is just lysine is K, proline is P and valine is V. It's three amino acids. It's,

• 47:26Speaker 03

  But it's like the jargon-y thing really, really kills me.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  This one I find so interesting because people are using it topically and the FDA was supposed to look at it for quote unquote wound healing. What kind of wounds? Nobody knows. And inflammatory conditions. Which one? Nobody knows.

• 47:40Speaker 03

  Just general inflammation broadly.

• 47:42Speaker 02

  General inflammation of the skin? We don't know. We have no idea what the molecular targets of this are. It is a part of a hormone in our bodies called melanotropic stimulating hormone.

• 47:55Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 47:56Speaker 02

  Melanin? Yeah. Our, yes.

• 47:58Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  If you are worried about skin cancer.

• 48:00Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 48:01Speaker 02

  You are correct.

• 48:01Speaker 03

  Yep. Okay.

• 48:02Speaker 02

  We don't know if this one targets the exact same parts of MSH as the whole peptide would because we don't have any data on it.

• 48:13Speaker 03

  Oh my God, Erin.

• 48:14Speaker 02

  But here's the good news, Erin. On the cadaver skin trials that we do have, it doesn't even permeate through the skin. So you're probably not actually getting anything by using it on your skin. There's no studies of it in live humans at all and no toxicity studies, period. Um, one that was not on the list of recently like re-added to the bulks list, but I do think is important to talk about because I think it targets, first of all, an entirely different subset of people that might be targeted from Wolverine stack and growth hormone stack, is melanotan or the barbie peptide.

• 48:46Speaker 03

  The Barbie. Yeah.

• 48:47Speaker 02

  And there are,

• 48:48Speaker 03

  Melanotan.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  Melanotan. There are two different versions of this peptide. One is called melanotan 1, and this is actually an FDA-approved drug that is used for a treatment of a genetic condition that causes extreme sun sensitivity.

• 49:03Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 49:04Speaker 02

  When it is used as an FDA-approved drug, it's usually like a subcutaneous implant that people are given, again, if they have this genetic condition.

• 49:11Speaker 03

  Fascinating.

• 49:12Speaker 02

  It has a compatriot, melanotan 2, which is not FDA-approved, but is the one that is being used more frequently as the Barbie peptide.

• 49:21Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  Which appears to not only tan your skin, but also increase your libido, affect your appetite, et cetera.

• 49:27Speaker 03

  Wait, appears to or is sold as?

• 49:29Speaker 02

  Is sold to.

• 49:30Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 49:31Speaker 02

  Is sold to. It does target your melanin receptors. So it does cause darkening of your skin because you produce more melanin. It also has been shown to cause cancers in at least two people. It has also resulted in rhabdomyolysis and renal infarcts in case studies. So.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  And there's also a lot of concerns about the immunogenicity of these compounds, because we have no idea what's going into these vials that people are being sent. So there was actually a couple of people who went to a wellness fair convention thing in Las Vegas and ended up sick and hospitalized. One of them had to be intubated after the injection of an unknown peptide. So it's not like, it is not an exaggeration to say that this is already causing effects.

• 50:25Speaker 03

  It's like, best case scenario is that you just get a tube of water.

• 50:29Speaker 02

  That's exactly the best case scenario, Erin. And there are, this also has made a whole new market for people, because there have been other companies that have popped up saying, you know, it feels really sketchy that I'm ordering this thing that I'm injecting in my body from WhatsApp, or from this website where it's being shipped from China and I don't know what is actually in it.

• 50:48Speaker 03

  Keep engaging with that skepticism, yeah.

• 50:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, so people have said, I'm gonna test these compounds. And so they've made new companies, biotech companies, that they can also make money off of, to then test these, these peptide vials. And in studies where people have looked at this, up to 40% of the time, it is not what it claims to be in the vial. Either it's too much of it, which is really scary, or it's not the same concentration that it claims that it is. In many cases, they find evidence of bacterial contamination. So they find endotoxins and things like that, which indicate that the manufacturing process is not, you know, safe and not following best practices. I'm, I, like, I, it's, it's so much, Erin.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  There's also a last one that I want to talk about in specific in name is ritatutide. I mentioned it briefly. People are calling it Reta, that's the short name for it. And this is a peptide that is currently still under investigation by Eli Lilly, and it probably will be approved through the FDA. They did phase one, two, and three trials. It is similar to terzepatide, targeting GLP-1, GIP, and also glucagon. So it's a, targets three different receptors rather than just one. And it has shown substantial and incredibly rapid weight loss.

• 52:10Speaker 03

  Oh, God, that sounds scary.

• 52:12Speaker 02

  Really, really rapid weight loss. And because those trials have been published, and because the peptide, ritatutide, was published under a patent, the amino acid sequence is publicly available, which means that plenty of companies say, oh, I could make that. And you can now buy it through this so-called gray market, not having any idea if it's actually ritatutide, or if it's exactly the same version as what would be made through the actual pharmaceutical company, what the concentration is, how much you should be using. So people have been losing a lot of weight with this, which can be incredibly dangerous.

• 52:51Speaker 03

  Really dangerous, and not doing any of this under the guidance of a licensed medical professional, or an ethically licensed, I don't know.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  No, because you, because you can't, right? Like, a provider cannot ethically prescribe this, when there is no data to back this up. And a phase two or three trial without an FDA approval is not enough data to do this.

• 53:12Speaker 03

  So how are the, I think I'm still trying to get my, my head around, if you are trying to get your hands on one of these peptides, where do you go for that?

• 53:20Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. You literally just, like, Google it.

• 53:23Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 53:24Speaker 02

  And then you can find a number of websites that will sell it to you directly. A lot of times, people will reach out to TikTok or other influencers that say, this is where I got mine. And then they will connect you to their dealer via WhatsApp. And I'm saying all this as someone who, I have not done this, but I read multiple, like, op-eds of people, one was a reporter and one was a physician, who went through this process.

• 53:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:51Speaker 02

  To actually obtain these peptides. So it's not just like, oh, you don't know what is going on. Like, I didn't do it, but this is very easy, from everything that I can tell, it would not be difficult to get your hands on.

• 54:00Speaker 03

  This is a big question, but tell me the cast of characters who is making money off of this. Is it their peptide companies? Is it the compound pharmacies? Is it, of course, the people who are influencers and getting paid by the companies themselves? Are there physicians involved? Are, are there pharmaceutical companies involved? Where are the financial incentives to make this public health crisis legal, continue to happen, et cetera?

• 54:28Speaker 02

  Yes. All of those people that you listed are making money off of this. There are many physicians who have set up longevity clinics, or wellness spas, and things like that, who are able to make a lot of money off of this. Of course, all of the influencers who are making a lot of money off of this. And then, yes, the peptide manufacturers themselves. And what I think is really interesting is to really look deep at some of the claims that people use to kind of justify this.

• 54:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:59Speaker 02

  One is that a lot of people who are really into this idea of peptides claim that, well, they're already present in our body, these are things that are already there, and so they're low risk, because adding more peptide to something that you already have, it's...

• 55:14Speaker 03

  Don't we, don't we have an opioid receptor because we make small amounts for pain relief? So that's not a problem, right?

• 55:22Speaker 02

  Can't you die if you inject too much insulin into your body incredibly rapidly? Like, it is actually offensive, like, it is deeply offensive, that idea, that something, just because our body makes it, is not harmful to inject. It is, that is totally untrue, and a really scary and dangerous assertion to make.

• 55:42Speaker 03

  I mean, it follows all of the same logic that so many of, like, natural, natural, natural, well, our bodies know what to do, well, we don't need to take antibiotics because we've been fighting bacteria for millennia.

• 55:54Speaker 02

  Correct. And the other thing that people claim, because you mentioned, are pharmaceutical companies making a lot of money off of this?

• 56:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:03Speaker 02

  Now, plenty of pharmaceutical companies are, because they are selling peptides through FDA approval, with insurance, et cetera.

• 56:09Speaker 03

  Right.

• 56:10Speaker 02

  Or through their direct, their own direct-to-consumer manufacturing processes, right? So plenty of pharmaceutical companies are making money off of peptides. The peptides that people are getting through this gray market, the pharmaceutical companies are not making money off of. And that is one of the things that people say is the reason to trust these peptides, because, they say, there is no incentive for pharmaceutical companies to invest the time and money into these clinical trials, because they would not be able to patent these peptides to be able to make money off of them. That is also wildly false.

• 56:46Speaker 03

  No, pharmaceutical companies can patent so many freaking things.

• 56:50Speaker 02

  They are experts at finding shady ways to make money off of their compounds. This is not a pro-pharmaceutical podcast, yo. Like, they are still making money off of insulin, okay? And I said at the very beginning of this episode, Erin, that our endogenous peptides are only active for a really short amount of time, right?

• 57:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:14Speaker 02

  So literally, none of these peptides that you're injecting are exactly the same as what your body is making, because if they were, then they're not doing anything. They're only there for a number of minutes, right? So anything that you're injecting once a week, if it's having any effect at all, it is a synthetic, changed version of that peptide, which means that if pharma wanted to, absolutely they could patent it, and they could make so much money off of it, okay? The real fact of the matter is that most of these peptides have been studied in one degree or another, and have not shown enough promise to be of interest to pharmaceutical companies, or have shown significant safety concerns.

• 57:53Speaker 03

  And then there's liability.

• 57:54Speaker 02

  Like, they might cause cancer.

• 57:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. Okay. Tell me, let's say that somebody wanted to buy a stack of Wolverine, et cetera. How much does a stack cost? How much does a supply cost?

• 58:04Speaker 02

  That's such a good question. That's a really good question. There's a few, like, op-eds that I read that kind of delved into a little bit more of this, but a lot of times, it's on the order of, like, several hundred dollars. So it's gonna be a lot cheaper, a lot of times, than like, the thousands of dollars your insurance might tell you that you have to pay for Wegovy, right?

• 58:20Speaker 03

  Right.

• 58:21Speaker 02

  You could get ritatutide for a couple hundred bucks, and it might last you a couple of months, right? Especially if you're microdosing it, which means, what are you even doing? But that's a separate conversation.

• 58:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:32Speaker 02

  So, yeah, they're on the order of, you know, depending on where you're getting it from, you know, we're talking like, a few hundred bucks per vial. But I have seen influencers being like, this is $25,000 worth of peptide. Like, people are spending a ton of money on this stuff.

• 58:47Speaker 03

  Well, and then there's that, that psychological game, the, the psychological effect of, when you spend a lot of money on something.

• 58:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 58:55Speaker 03

  You think it's worth more, you think it, you're more likely to think that it works, and you're more invested into thinking, like, I did not waste my money, I did not waste my money.

• 59:03Speaker 02

  100%. 100%. Like, the truth is that these wellness companies just found a workaround, right? Everyone who is profiting off of peptides right now has found a way to do that without having to do any of the research, gather any of the evidence to show efficacy and safety, because that is hard work, and it costs a lot of money, and is required for something to actually be sold as a medication.

• 59:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:26Speaker 02

  The, like, do you have any other questions about peptides before I TLDR for anyone who didn't want to listen?

• 59:33Speaker 03

  I feel like, to me, the biggest question is about how we can tell the difference between the peptides prescribed as medication, and then there are the peptides that are not. So what is the delineation there? Like, how does someone, how, how does someone know, you know, when they're being told, this is a peptide, just like insulin, just like GLP-1, just like whatever, like, how do they know that it's not a legit peptide?

• 1:00:00Speaker 02

  I think that when people talk about peptides as a single word, oh, do you do peptides? Oh, are you on peptides? That is a huge red flag, right?

• 1:00:11Speaker 03

  For sure, yeah.

• 1:00:12Speaker 02

  Let me tell you about my peptide stack. That is a huge red flag.

• 1:00:15Speaker 03

  The peptide stack alone is just, all the red flags, just across the horizon, yeah.

• 1:00:21Speaker 02

  And then I think also, like, really asking about what the evidence actually is to support any of these, right? Because we have really clear evidence to show what the effects, the risks, and the benefits of FDA-approved drugs are. And so if something is saying, here are all of the benefits with absolutely no risk, that's a red flag.

• 1:00:48Speaker 03

  Yep. Just like in the snake oil. Yeah, just like in the snake oil episode. Yeah. This will do it faster, cheaper, easier, less painless, guaranteed results. And guess what? There are no side effects. And your doctor doesn't want you to know about them.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a secret. If it's a secret, that's a red flag. Also, I keep, I keep seeing, this is just because you know, my algorithm is tailored towards me. But I keep seeing people be like, do you actually think that scientists are keeping things a secret? Like, have you met a scientist? They want to tell you every detail about everything ever.

• 1:01:18Speaker 03

  So true.

• 1:01:18Speaker 02

  They don't know how to keep a secret.

• 1:01:21Speaker 02

  This idea that we're hiding things from you.

• 1:01:23Speaker 03

  I mean, yeah.

• 1:01:24Speaker 02

  But yeah, I mean, it's hard because there are so many ways that I think things can be spun. Right? And so as soon as we say like, oh, this is the red flag to look out for. They're going to change the rhetoric on, on how they're selling something.

• 1:01:36Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:01:38Speaker 02

  In terms of all of the peptides that are being sold outside of prescriptions, outside of FDA approved medications right now. All of the ones that I looked into, and there are a lot more that I didn't name specifically. But for all of them, there is literally no good evidence that any of these are safe to use in humans. There is simply no good safety data on them. There is also no good evidence that any of these unregulated peptides are actually effective at treating or preventing the conditions that they claim to. They're all based on anecdotal data.

• 1:02:21Speaker 02

  Or they love to use mouse model and animal model data. Which I think is so, so dangerous because it lends it this air of scientific legitimacy. Right? But if there's no studies outside of a mouse model, that means that there are no efficacy studies. Right?

• 1:02:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:40Speaker 02

  And most importantly, whether we are talking about a compounding pharmacy or an overseas research grade manufacturing facility. There isn't any real oversight to ensure that the vials that you're buying actually contain the drugs that they claim to at the concentrations that they claim or that they're free from impurities.

• 1:02:57Speaker 03

  At least be mad that you're ripped off by these companies.

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  A lot of the argument for these should be allowed at compounding pharmacies is that that would at least ensure that you are getting what you are supposed to be getting. But again, when we don't have any evidence that they're safe and we don't have any evidence that they're effective. What are we doing by saying this should be allowed to be compounded? We are undermining scientific expertise and we are undermining our safety and efficacy and regulatory environment. And at the end of the day, companies are making billions of dollars off of us.

• 1:03:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:30Speaker 02

  And, and they are never going to be held liable when things go badly. Period.

• 1:03:36Speaker 03

  Nope.

• 1:03:37Speaker 02

  The end.

• 1:03:38Speaker 03

  The end. Wow. I love this two parter. It wasn't meant to be a two parter, but it definitely was. Yeah. I'm, there was so much about peptides I had no idea about. I mean, I really knew nothing and it's, uh,

• 1:03:56Speaker 03

  it's more horrifying than I imagined, but I think if I had imagined more of it, I would have. Yeah, it sounds about right.

• 1:04:03Speaker 02

  It's also, it's just so weird how it's everywhere. Like I get a lot, my algorithm gives me a lot of skincare content. Don't know why. Maybe because I engage with it. But they give me a lot and there's always like, well, you need to add peptides to your regimen. And I'm like, what are you talking about? What peptides are you talking about?

• 1:04:21Speaker 03

  The newest thing. I mean, it's just like how, honestly, except, except this seems even more insidious. And, and dangerous because it's not just like a buzz phrase of, or like a buzzword of the paleo diet or keto diet or whatever, you know? It is, or like, oh, omega threes, it's, it's actually like, these are things that people are injecting into their bodies. And we do not have any good research or very good research on long-term effects of it. So it seems to me more like when radiation was a thing.

• 1:04:53Speaker 02

  Fascinating.

• 1:04:54Speaker 03

  Than it is, you know, and like, here's some radiated water.

• 1:04:57Speaker 02

  We'll just use it for everything.

• 1:04:58Speaker 03

  Yep. Here's whatever, all these different medications that had radiation.

• 1:05:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:03Speaker 03

  You know?

• 1:05:04Speaker 02

  It's really, it's really scary. And like, might some of these end up being drugs someday? After more research? Maybe. So it's not like we're saying, oh, they can't possibly have an effect. It's like, we literally have, you have no idea what you're, no idea.

• 1:05:16Speaker 03

  Also, consider what it, it's like anti-aging. It's stuff that is impossible to actually quantify.

• 1:05:25Speaker 02

  Hundo.

• 1:05:25Speaker 03

  Which is, which is all part of it. Like that is, that is by design.

• 1:05:30Speaker 02

  Listen, I have so many sources, if people want more on these and so many more. If you want to know about your specific peptide that you have questions about, that your friend is taking and you're like, what about this one? I probably have a paper on it or I can tell you where you can get more information. Cause I have like 16 more pages just on individual peptides, Erin. Let me tell you about some of my favorite. I don't even know where to start. Okay.

• 1:05:54Speaker 03

  Do you want to just direct him to the website?

• 1:05:56Speaker 02

  I think I do. Yeah.

• 1:05:57Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  I think I do. There, there's a lot there. I got,

• 1:06:03Speaker 02

  go to our website, thispodcastwillkillyou.com, under the episode tab. I promise you, this was all researched from actual sources. Okay?

• 1:06:13Speaker 03

  Thank you to Bloodmobile for preventing the music for this episode and all of our episodes.

• 1:06:18Speaker 02

  Thank you to Leanna and Mark and Tom and Pete and Jessica and Christina and everybody else. And exactly right, who makes this possible?

• 1:06:26Speaker 03

  Yes, thank you. And thank you to you listeners. Let us know what you thought of this two parter or of this two individual parters, whatever.

• 1:06:33Speaker 02

  These episodes that we did.

• 1:06:35Speaker 03

  What other questions? What other topics would you like to see highlighted?

• 1:06:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:38Speaker 03

  Please reach out.

• 1:06:39Speaker 02

  Do you, are you getting peptide content? I want to know what everyone else is talking about with peptides. Cause I feel like I just got really deep in it anyways. Thank you also to our patrons. For your support of our Patreon. Sorry for talking so much. We really enjoy your support.

• 1:06:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, we do. We really appreciate it. Uh, well, until next time, wash your hands.

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  You filthy animals.