Why is there a rejection of peptide usage among the general population? People are offered to be cut up or are told to follow incredibly ineffective routines that all too often don’t really solve their issues. The things are often able to be eaten or injected. There are fewer objections to eating animals that have been injected with antibiotics and immunizations, and many people seem to think that there is no need to apply this same methodology to themselves for chemicals that are far more safe. The lack of marketing, the lack of good information, the lack of what can be cured are a few factors. Folks might
have heard of the weight loss peptides such as tirzepatide and semaglutide. These are two of thousands of compounds with even more uses. Preventing hair loss can be corrected with a copper GHK-CU peptide. There are many that can act as a nootropic. There are peptides that ease the appearance of aging such as NAD+. There are even ones that can aid in recovery, such as in the case of tendinitis.
According to a leading Medical news publication, “Peptides are naturally present in protein-rich foods. It is not necessary to take peptide supplements or use topical sources of peptides.” (Leonard 2023). The way that this is worded is misleading to me. For one – when is it not necessary to take the supplements? All the time? The open-ended statement lead myself and certainly many other folks to dismiss what otherwise could be very important opportunities in their life. Just last year I was told I had De Quervain’s tenosynovitis in my right wrist and would need a De Quervain’s release surgery in order
to restore the mobility in the wrist. The sickness is essentially an inflammation of the tendon that runs from the bone in your arm to your palm, somewhere. In there the tendon runs through a hole of cartilage in the wrist that enables fine motor precision movements under load, so basically when you are holding something, that you can rotate it around freely for any reason you please is due to the ability to have no restriction on that tendon as it slides through that channel.
Occasionally, inflammation or scarring can build up in such a way that parts of either the
channel itself or on the tendon string. The enlargement or swelling of either of these can cause contact between the two surfaces that cause inflammation due to rubbing. As this builds up over time, the inflammation and the normal usage of the wrist can get so bad that nothing be picked up. I let it go on for about ten months before I’d see an orthopedic surgeon who confirmed the diagnosis and recommended surgery as the amount of time that had elapsed was beyond a typical expectation for it to heal without surgery. I put it off for a few reasons but during that time was informed of two peptides called BPC-157 and TB-500, which showed incredible promise for recovery for me (Chang 4) & (Maar
9). I used both of these for a couple of weeks, and before the month was over with my wrist was getting better. Before the end of the year the issue was gone. I had a full recovery.
Returning to the article mentioned earlier, Medical News Today is a highly credible news
agency, leaning toward a “Pro-Science” rating (MBFC 2024). It’s incredible to me, still unbelievable, that fifty dollars worth of chemicals that aren’t discussed anywhere other than outside of this country & medical system as solutions to these kinds of problems. I was told that I would need to take up to a month off of work, get physical therapy and risk going through a surgery that wasn’t even needed. Why do these doctors have so few tools available to them? The doctor never mentioned peptides, the only thing he mentioned he could offer was corticosteroids and NSAIDs during the first months for
treatment. It turns out that the doctors aren’t allowed to recommend these as solutions, and despite them being available for sale in every single modern country, the general disclaimer as to why they aren’t available for sale is because, “not all peptides make it to the last stage of clinical trials.” (Rathi 2024). As a ‘translation’ here, this typically means that there exists no opportunity for a company to be able to properly monetize a solution despite having 99% of the safety and efficacy data. As I’ve been a part of medicine industry for 20 years and could discuss this at exhaustive lengths, I’d like to keep discussion on patent law, clinical drug trials and what may prevent the bringing of these drugs to market away from the main focus of this paper and instead focus on regenerative medicine applications.
For my solutions, I stumbled on them from a random bodybuilding forum online at
https://www.professionalmuscle.com. Despite an entire medical team that included a primary care doctor, a surgeon and a few nurses that nobody had mentioned these things that bodybuilders use commonly. It reminds me of a time just two years ago, when I started having air leak from my tires. I didn’t know what was going on. I brought it to the place that sold me some new Michelin’s and they told me there was nothing wrong with the wheels that they could see, but at the time I was flying around a lot for work and so I parked it and when I got back two weeks later two of the tires had lost about 5-10 psi. It was not enough to cause much issues at the time, so this goes on like this for a month or two, I fly out and come back and put 5-10 psi into the tires each time. About three months of this goes on before I brought it to the same place and they told me they would take a look at them. I got told there was nothing wrong with the tires but they replaced one of the TPS sensors. So I left, and then came back a week later and they were still losing air. This goes on for about another six months, me bringing it to random places to fix it only to find out that whatever they told me was a lie or just wrong.
One guy told me he pulled a piece of bone out of the tire! While this was going on, I’d moved from San Antonio to New York around that time and was parking in a parking garage for a while and the folks that maintained the garage drove by and asked me
what was going on. I told him this story about taking the thing to like 4 or 5 places all keep telling me nothings wrong with the tires. The guy tells me that he’s got the best tire guy that I’d ever find and I should go there. I figured it would be worth it to try, and it turns out that I had two cracked rims and it would cost me 150 dollars to fix it up and I haven’t had a problem since then. The other folks were trying to sell me some rims at one point and it was then that I realized that the reason they didn’t tell me that I had cracked rims even though they would happily sell me a whole wheel for 600 dollars each was because I was just taking the truck to the wrong place. They didn’t make any money on fixing rims, they made money by selling rims.
I guess this kind of relates a little bit to my doctor issue, because had I gone to a different
doctor, I would have probably been told the same thing. I don’t know what made me look for tendinitis issues on a muscle building forum online, but I’m glad I found it. I don’t think it will be the case that the 10-15 years of training these doctors get would be able to keep up with the rapidly changing field of synthetic peptides. I think that it’s more likely to be the case that they just don’t know of what these things can do, rather than they didn’t tell me about them. It would be a waste to think that it would have instead have been so them & the insurance folks could make thousands of dollars when all I needed to
spend was fifty dollars.
I believe that these types of chemicals are just the beginning of regenerative therapies that can be used to avoid invasive and potentially risky surgeries. Possibly in my case it was just that I was lucky, definitely in some areas I was. One particular issue is that due to the chemical composition of these compounds, I don’t believe they are able to be patented profitably for use in commercial sales and because of this it’s a lapse in patent law that seems to be preventing the interest in these from being picked up by larger manufacturers. I guess there is a lot of social issues as well, like faith in the healthcare industry – many folks would have and have gotten the surgery instead. My biggest fear in
surgery is that my mom went in for a spinal fusion and ended up with a dropped foot that left her in a worse physical shape than before. I don’t hold a grudge against the industry – everyone knows that surgery comes with risks. I don’t even think at the time when she had gotten the surgery that these types of compounds had been available as small-scale single-use biomanufactuirng techniques were still largely unavailable unless in a lab or mass-scale manufacturing model. Either way, the event and the change in life I had seen for my mother had lead me to seek any other alternatives prior to proceeding with the same thing.
In conclusion, there are risks that come with using traditional methods of healing a body that are generally outside the domain of regenerative medicine. A lot of folks are faced with treating their immediate issues and this lacks a holistic approach that may yield better results. There are a lot of reasons for viable drugs to not make it to the market despite most of their safety and efficacy data being available. Had I opted for the surgery I would have been pecking away at the keyboard with the points of my fingers for a while instead of buzzing right through the keystrokes I know so well already.
Works Cited
Chang, Chung-Hsun, et al. “The Promoting Effect of Pentadecapeptide BPC 157 on Tendon Healing Involves Tendon Outgrowth, Cell Survival, and Cell Migration | Journal of Applied Physiology.” Journal of Applied Physiology, 01Mar2011,
journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysiol.00945.2010.
Check, Media Bias Fact (MBFC). “Medical News Today – Bias and Credibility.” Media Bias/Fact Check, 21Dec2024, mediabiasfactcheck.com/medical-news-today/.
Leonard, Jayne. “Peptides: What Are They, Uses, and Side Effects.” Medical News Today,
MediLexicon International, 16Oct2019, www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326701.
Maar, Klaudia, et al. “Utilizing Developmentally Essential Secreted Peptides Such as Thymosin Beta-4 to Remind the Adult Organs of Their Embryonic State-New Directions in Anti-Aging Regenerative Therapies.” Cells, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 28May2021, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8228050/.
Orthoinfo. “De Quervain’s Tenosynovitis.” OrthoInfo, 01Feb2022, orthoinfo.aaos.org/en/diseases–conditions/de-quervains-tendinosis/.
Prisk, Victor. “TB-500 Exposed: The Risks Outweigh the Benefits.” Prisk Orthopaedics and Wellness, www.orthoandwellness.com/blog/tb-500-exposed-the-risks-outweigh-the-benefits. Accessed 25Feb2025.
Rathi, Kumar. “Are Peptides Legal – Legality Status for Each Country.” Muscle and Brawn,
31Aug2024, muscleandbrawn.com/peptides/are-peptides-legal/.