Biomedical Scientist Debunks The Biggest Peptide Myths on Reddit

Alpha-amanitin, produced by the death cap mushroom.

It's a peptide and it'll kill you.

All peptide samples were found to be contaminated.

There's often this huge mismatch

between the confidence of what the internet is claiming

and the actual evidence.

Are peptides legit?

I'm a biomedical scientist

with a PhD in microbiology and immunology.

From peptide therapy, healing peptides,

anti-aging peptides, fat burning peptides, sexmaxxing,

to the Wolverine stack.

Let's take a deep dive

and set the record straight on peptides.

[graphic clinks]

Let's start with a big question on many people's mind

being asked here by Aggressive_Sands.

Do peptides truly work

or are we getting collectively scammed?

Well, I agree with Emotional_Stage who says, they work, bro,

but not all of them, and the source is important.

That's an upvote from me.

But which ones work?

Well, insulin works.

It's a peptide and it's been used for over a hundred years

to help regulate blood sugar.

Ozempic, also known as semaglutide, is also a peptide.

Your antibiotic ointment, which contains bacitracin

and polymyxin B, also peptides.

But the key thing about these peptides is

they've been rigorously tested for approval for use

by all of the medicine regulatory agencies around the world.

The peptides blowing up on Reddit

are often completely different experimental compounds.

And we'll get to those in a minute.

But first, let's take a step back

and bounce over to the Explain Like I'm Five subreddit.

What is a peptide

and why are there so many posts on this site

trying to buy them?

Scientifically, a peptide is amino acids like glycine

that are joined together by peptide bonds to form a chain.

You can think of a peptide as a mini protein.

As you can imagine, this is a huge bucket of chemicals

and all very different from each other.

But the wellness industry uses the word peptide

as if it is a therapeutic class

when really it's just a type of molecule.

But also being a peptide doesn't mean

that it's automatically more natural or safer.

Alpha-amanitin,

that's the chemical produced by the death cap mushroom.

It's a peptide and it'll kill you and cause liver failure.

And then there's sarafotoxins, which are peptides

in the venom of the burrowing asp,

some of the most lethal snake venom toxins.

And yeah, they happen to be peptides.

The TL;DR is,

peptide is a chemistry term

and it certainly is not a medical endorsement.

How are people using peptides?

Now, apparently there's something peptide enthusiasts

refer to as the Wolverine stack

because of its supposed rapid healing of injuries.

Jachy Bochsss says, Taking the Wolverine stack

and it's amazing.

Been taking Wolverine for two months now

and my shoulder injury healed.

So BPC-157 and TB-500 are referred to as the Wolverine stack

after the superfast healing X-Men character

played by Hugh Jackman.

Because proponents claim

injecting these two peptides

will dramatically accelerate recovery from tendon injuries,

ligament injury, shoulder problems, knee pain, etc.

In cells and animal models,

researchers have reported effects involving angiogenesis,

which is growing vasculature, so blood vessels,

ligament repair and muscle injury.

But those studies are looking at cells growing

on a piece of plastic or in mice.

It's entertaining how many people are shooting themselves up

with all sorts of peptides

based on low-quality rat and dog studies.

I would 100% upvote that.

So scrolling into the comments

and this exchange caught my eye.

FancyInvestigator792 says,

I have psoriatic and rheumatoid arthritis.

I've been in pain for the last seven years.

Took his first dose four days ago

and within an hour and a half,

90% of the chronic pain was practically gone.

But GiantBrownBalls responds and says,

That seems unbelievable.

Well, 'cause it is.

I'm week eight of TB-500 and day 32 of BPC daily,

haven't seen much improvement.

FDA scientists were just reviewing BPC-157 data in June

and publicly stated that there is no human data

to support its use or its safety

when being used by people.

And this is something that we often see

among the wellness sphere.

There's often this huge mismatch between the confidence

of what the internet is claiming about something

and the actual evidence that we have.

Now, it looks like kayleeeeebop and aria3246

have a word of caution.

As a warning, BPC gave me horrific anxiety.

Went away after stopping, but whew, it was bad.

And aria3246 says, Yep, same here,

plus crippling anhedonia.

Now, these reports are interesting,

but they don't tell us that BPC-157 caused the anxiety.

But this raises another really important issue.

When you buy an unapproved and unregulated supplement

like these peptides online,

you have no idea what you're taking.

It could contain the wrong amount of BPC-157.

It might have residual solvents

from the actual extraction process.

On top of that, these are meant to be injected,

so there are also serious concerns

related to potential infection, sterility of those vials,

and potential contamination

that can lead to really serious side effects.

They're even talking about peptides

over on the 30PlusSkinCare subreddit.

Oh, should I be on that subreddit?

How do we feel about topical peptides?

Is it a gimmick?

There are certain topical formulations

that include peptides that do have a therapeutic use.

And in fact, our topical antibiotics include peptides

and they help cure skin infections.

Bobmaybe says he uses topical peptides daily

for anti-aging together with his LED masks.

A lot of this kind of anti-aging skin health ecosystem

is based on misleading and exaggerated claims.

With LED masks, there is a nugget of truth there

where certain wavelengths of certain types of light

can have limited therapeutic effects

with certain medical indications.

But the issue here is when they get exaggerated

and extrapolated to then claim

that all of these different compounds

that have different structures and different functions

have similar benefit to your health or your skin health.

I'm also seeing people using peptides to get hornier.

From ShortGirllikescake61,

which peptide increased your libido?

Reddit commenters aren't inventing

the libido connection here.

The main peptides behind sexmaxxing are PT-141,

also known as bremelanotide.

There were legitimate clinical trials for PT-141.

That was FDA approved for a very narrow indication

for sexual dysfunction.

That product is called Vyleesi.

The claim that PT-141 makes you horny

is a wild oversimplification

of what was actually demonstrated

in the clinical trials for Vyleesi.

That particular product is manufactured and FDA approved

and regulated and prescribed by doctors

for women that fit that bucket.

It's not for the general population

who just want to amp up their sex drive

or perform better in bed.

Now, kisspeptin, also part of the sexmaxxing stack

is way more experimental.

There were two very small studies in people,

only 32 people in each,

using a different version of kisspeptin

that maybe found some slight changes in brain function

after administration,

but none of that is suggesting that

you're gonna improve your sex performance, your libido,

your erection, whatever the case happens to be.

And then there's the final piece

of the sexmaxxing homebrew, Melanotan 2.

And here's the top comment on that.

TheBTYproject says,

I'm a relatively pale woman,

so I started taking Melanotan.

Dude, I cannot even explain what happened.

I was insatiable.

Yeah, I'm gonna downvote that one

just right off the bat.

Melanotan 2 is a synthetic version of a hormone

called alpha-melanocyte-stimulating hormone

or alpha-MSH.

This normally exists in our body.

It stimulates certain cells called melanocytes.

These are pigment cells in your skin to produce melanin,

which is the actual pigment molecule

that darkens your skin

when you're exposed to UV light.

I have a very nice tan right now.

This is all natural UV radiation, people.

Melanotan 2 was originally developed

around the idea of stimulating pigmentation

without as much UV exposure

because we know that excessive UV exposure

leads to skin cancer.

In the very limited studies that were done in 1996,

researchers found that, yeah,

it caused spontaneous erections.

Those studies were 30 years ago.

So if there was potential for Melanotan 2

to have some sort of therapeutic effect,

we would've heard about it.

They would've continued to study it

and they would've been utilizing it,

but Melanotan is not FDA-approved,

whether we're talking about tanning without UV radiation

or for sexual performance.

As we know, cancers occur

when we mess with certain cell types,

right when they stop behaving normally.

And if we're messing with these melanin-producing cells,

that can increase the potential risk of cancers

like melanoma,

which are the most aggressive types of skin cancers.

But I think we haven't gotten to the bigger question of,

are peptides really safe?

And that's a question in the Biohackers subreddit.

So Easy-Influence-2089 asks,

Hi, so I've been getting all these TikTok videos

about peptides and how they're good for you,

but are they really?

There are actually two layers of risk.

One, is this molecule safe?

And two, is this vial safe?

With an unapproved peptide that you could buy online,

the answer to both might be no.

So for compounds like BPC-157 and TB-500,

we don't know what the appropriate dose

of either of those things are.

We don't know what the potential drug interactions are.

We don't know

whether it's gonna have cardiovascular effects

or what's gonna happen to you after long-term use.

The next layer of risk is the vial itself.

You're trusting that what it's saying on the label

is what's actually inside.

Here, one Reddit user says they're safe.

The ones I bought have a C of A.

C of A, or Certificate of Analysis,

is produced by the company selling the product

with no regulatory oversight.

You can basically put whatever you want on a C of A.

Now, think about if you buy a vial

of one of these peptides,

it's usually gonna arrive at your house in powder.

It's called lyophilized,

and you have to reconstitute it with usually water

to get it to dissolve again before you inject it, right?

So you're gonna pull it up in your needle

and you're gonna inject it.

Every time you take that needle and you puncture a vial,

if you're not a professional,

that is an opportunity to introduce harmful bacteria

into the vial, increase your risk of infection,

and also now you have dosing error risks as well.

One Redditor asks, What does RUO mean on the label?

For research use only.

And usually it comes with not for human consumption.

These RUO substances are things that I would use in the lab

if I'm gonna conduct an experiment

on cells that are growing on a piece of plastic,

but I definitely wouldn't consider putting

those same RUO substances into my body.

Those are two wildly different levels of manufacturing,

quality, and safety testing.

What about the phrase gray market peptides

that's been circulating lately?

It's all over the peptides subreddit, like SeaLab348.

I'm trying to figure out how much risk is involved

with gray market peptides versus research peptides

from companies based here in the United States.

Research-use-only peptides are the ones

that are being sold on the gray market.

They are not FDA-approved for a medical indication.

The gray market isn't some random guy

selling mysterious vials out of the trunk of his car

in a sketchy parking lot.

These can be professional-looking websites.

They can have branding, they can have customer service,

they can have certificates of analysis.

They could legitimately be selling

to an entire ecosystem of scientists

who are using them legitimately for research use only.

As a scientist, I would buy these sorts of substances

to conduct experiments in the lab.

But then there are consumers, people,

non-scientists, non-researchers who are buying this

and having these products shipped to their home

for human use self-administration.

And here we've got an even more concerning thread

on the supplement subreddit

where SavingGrace0262 says,

Coach is pushing peptides labeled for research use only.

Am I crazy for thinking that's not okay?

No, you're not crazy.

That question alone gets you an upvote.

She goes on, My fitness coach,

who also happens to be a bodybuilder,

runs a peptide company, that's a red flag,

and recently started telling clients

to buy one of his products.

He promotes it like it's safe and effective for recovery,

but it's not FDA-approved or tested.

This is a big no-no.

There's so many red flags.

The coach is personally profiting,

so obviously there is motive there

to drive people to buy these unapproved substances.

It is straight up unethical and unsafe.

Unique-Television944 posted a warning

on the Biohackers subreddit.

Be careful with peptides.

I'm a proponent of peptides.

I think they have solid evidence base

that will only develop in time,

but I have seen studies circulating,

sounding the alarm about research-grade peptides,

which they basically all are.

In a Belgian study,

all peptide samples were found to be contaminated.

I think this is an upvote from me.

The researchers in Belgium bought peptide products

from suspected illegal online pharmacies,

and they found that the amount of peptides varied wildly

depending on the vial that they received.

Some contained large quantities

of peptide-related impurity,

so these are byproducts

of the breakdown of these peptides.

They also detected elemental contaminants

such as arsenic and lead,

and in some of those vials,

the arsenic concentrations were more than 10 times higher

than the international limit of arsenic on injectable drugs.

Ironically, arsenic overdose or arsenic poisoning

can cause anxiety.

Just a little callback to that comment

about BPC-157 use and causing anxiety.

Let's sort these comments by controversial.

I bet if you ran your drinking water through the same tests,

you would probably get some of the same stuff.

That's a downvote.

Detection of something

doesn't automatically mean relevance.

And yeah, arsenic is in the environment,

so there are trace levels of it in our water.

But we have chemistry tools that can detect teeny,

tiny amounts of substances down to the parts per trillion.

So an analogy there is one second of time in 31,700 years.

Think about how small that is.

We're talking about in these vials,

10 times more arsenic than the international limit

for safety for injectable substances.

That's very different than the minuscule quantities

that you might find in your water.

Let's take a look at this thread

asking about negative side effects

in the peptide subreddit.

Due to lack of long-term data/user experiences,

I would like to know

about the various negative side effects

that anyone has experienced

as a result of taking peptides.

And then we have a couple of responses.

CoCoNUTbec11 says,

No matter how much bac, this is bacteriostatic water,

I added, I would get painful red lumps.

They've lasted for over a month in one spot.

This person is buying an unapproved peptide,

reconstituting it themselves in bacteriostatic water,

which is intended to inhibit the growth of bacteria,

but that doesn't automatically mean

the substance is sterile.

A persistent red painful lump in the skin could mean

inflammation from an immune response

of whatever's in the vial, an infection.

If you are getting a painful red lump in your skin

after injecting the substance,

the smart thing to do is

stop injecting that substance into your arm.

Now, over on the ScienceBioTechnology subreddit,

they're discussing some recent developments as of this year.

BPC-157, after the July 23rd FDA vote.

Is it FDA-approved now?

The FDA did not approve BPC-157,

part of the Wolverine stack.

That's not what happened here.

Here's a bit of a spicy discussion in the comments

about the approvals process.

The path to FDA approval includes an IND

and clinical trials.

Good luck with that.

Not what this is about.

They're considering adding these peptides

to the very small 503A bulks list,

which would allow compounding pharmacies

to dispense without full FDA approval.

That's correct.

On July 23rd, there was a meeting

of the Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee,

which is an advisory committee within the FDA,

and that committee, which unfortunately is staffed currently

with friends of RFK Jr. and Marty Makary,

they voted to recommend putting BPC-157

and five other unapproved peptides

on something called the 503A bulks list.

The 503A bulks list deals with ingredients

that compounding pharmacies may be legally permitted to use

when preparing compounded medications.

So compounding pharmacies are labs

that basically create custom formulations of substances

using an active ingredient

that exists in an FDA-approved medicine,

but manufacturing it under non-FDA-approved circumstances.

And it also gives a path

for these online wellness stores and med spas

to sell formulations that may now be technically legal

because a compounding pharmacy is permitted to use it.

The advisory committee basically overruled the scientist

who said there's no human evidence to support their use

and there's no human evidence that says they're safe.

And they just said, Well, we're gonna do it anyway.

And then Difficult_Fact closes with,

Safer than that worthless COVID vaccine.

Let me know when they make an mRNA vaccine that works.

That's a definite downvote.

We know that the COVID vaccines were safe and effective.

We had phase three clinical trials

that included over 70,000 participants.

We had multiple years

that encompassed billions of doses globally

that have an incredible safety profile,

and it's estimated to have saved millions of lives

since 2020.

The claim that mRNA vaccines didn't work

and they weren't tested,

both of those are a big fat no.

So in the end, do peptides work?

Are they legit?

Are they safe?

Well, some are legit.

Some absolutely work.

Those that have robust human data

and have regulatory oversight

like insulin and glucagon and oxytocin,

but some have almost no meaningful human data.

They have no safety data.

They have no information about long-term side effects.

Those ones maybe you want to be cautious about.

Even a molecule that technically works,

that technically has a therapeutic effect is useless

or potentially even dangerous if what's in your vial

isn't actually what you think it is.

All right.

I've had enough Reddit.

I've had enough screen time.

Thanks for watching.

[instrumental music]