Peptides

If you are new to this, read what peptide therapy is first. It explains why the single most useful question is never whether peptides work, but which specific compound is being discussed and what its status is.

That page also carries the list of questions worth putting to any provider offering this category — the sourcing question in particular separates a clinic operating properly from one that is not.

These compounds act upstream of growth hormone rather than supplying it. They split into two mechanisms — GHRH analogues, and secretagogues acting at the ghrelin receptor — and into sharply different regulatory positions.

The regulatory spread inside this one group is wider than most people expect. One of these compounds held US approval and was withdrawn as a branded product, so it reaches patients through compounding pharmacies today. One never held approval at all and is sold in two distinct forms that behave differently, which is a detail marketing routinely blurs. One now sits in the FDA category of bulk substances raising significant safety concerns for compounding, which meaningfully constrains lawful preparation.

They are also commonly sold as a pair, on the reasoning that engaging two receptors beats engaging one. That is a mechanistic rationale rather than human evidence, and combining two compounds that individually lack it does not produce it.

BPC-157 and TB-500 are the two most heavily marketed compounds in the whole category, and neither is an approved medicine in the United States. The evidence people cite for both is overwhelmingly preclinical.

One derives from a fragment of a protein found in gastric juice; the other relates to thymosin beta-4, a protein involved in the structural machinery cells use to hold shape and move. They are routinely discussed as though they were variants of one thing. They are not, and neither is identical to the natural protein it is named after.

What they genuinely share is regulatory status, and it is the most important thing about either: no US approval, no regulator-reviewed adverse-effect label, and an online market that sells them labelled for laboratory research rather than for human use.

• No dosage numbers or protocols. Dosing is determined by a licensed provider.
• No efficacy promises. Where the evidence is preclinical, we say preclinical.
• Regulatory status stated on every page, because in this field it is often the most decisive fact.
• Sourcing addressed directly — research-chemical material is not made for human use, and we say so.
• We do not sell peptides and have no commercial relationship with anyone who does.

In most areas of medicine you can reasonably ask whether something works and get an evidence-based answer. In this category that question is frequently premature, because the more basic question — what is actually in the vial, and was it made for human use — has not been settled.

That is why every page here leads with status rather than with claims. A compound with an approval has a regulator-reviewed dossier, a defined population, a manufacturing standard and an adverse-effect label. A compound sold as a research chemical has none of those, and no amount of mechanistic reasoning substitutes for them.

Mostly people who have already encountered a peptide somewhere — a clinic menu, a podcast, a training forum — and want a description that is not written by someone selling it. That is the gap these pages fill.

If you are being offered a peptide protocol by a clinic, the useful preparation is knowing which specific compound is involved and what its status is before you go in. Both are on the relevant page, and neither takes long to check.

If you compete under a testing body, start there instead: peptide hormones and growth factors are broadly covered by the World Anti-Doping Agency's prohibited list, and that consideration overrides everything else on this site.

• What is peptide therapy?Peptide therapy explained without the marketing — what peptides are, why the category spans approved medicines and unapproved research chemicals, and how to tell which is which.
• BPC-157A plain, non-promotional account of BPC-157 — its origin, what the research literature actually covers, its US regulatory status, and why sourcing is the central problem.
• CJC-1295CJC-1295 explained without hype — the GHRH analogue, the difference between the DAC and non-DAC forms, its regulatory status, and how side effects are properly discussed.
• IpamorelinIpamorelin explained — the ghrelin-receptor pathway it acts on, how it differs from GHRH analogues, and the FDA compounding category it now sits in.
• CJC-1295 and ipamorelin blendsWhy peptides are marketed in pairs, what the CJC-1295 and ipamorelin combination is meant to do, and what combining unapproved compounds means for evidence and risk.
• SermorelinWhat sermorelin is, why a previously approved medicine is now a compounded preparation, how it differs from growth hormone itself, and what to ask a prescriber.
• TB-500What TB-500 is, how it relates to thymosin beta-4, what the research literature actually covers, and why it has no approved status in the United States.