> My patient is refusing a drug studied in 170,000 people because of side effects that a 124,000-person analysis just confirmed do not exist — while injecting a compound studied in 14 humans, from unregulated sources, based on the recommendation of someone who profits from selling it. She’s probably not the only one. And those using it believe they are “doing their own research.”
Ok, and? At worst you waste a couple hundred dollars and deem the alternative therapy not worth it and go back to your doctor but I know dozens of people at my gym that used BPC 157 and TB 500 that fixed their chronic tendon/joint issues within weeks of starting the therapy that physios couldn't fix for years.
> I know dozens of people at my gym
I don't think I even know dozens of people, full stop, let alone well enough to talk to them about their peptide use.
I go to a gym that has IFBB pros and people competing on elite powerlifting level, steroid and peptide use is an every day chit chat topic.
That does not seem like an environment we should use to determine if the rest of the world should take a substance lol
He's the guy that's selling them peptides.
You know dozens of people from a single place that have chronic tendon/joint issues?
Yes? These types of injuries are common among bodybuilders and powerlifters.
Pfft -- they're common among anyone over 30 who exercises!
> they're common among anyone over 30 who exercises
They shouldn't be. If someone has chronic tendon or joint issues, that's something to discuss with a doctor and a trainer.
I don't doubt it. You make casual friends sometimes at certain gyms, especially if any sort of sports are involved like tennis or even group classes.
I am a super introvert and know at least half a dozen folks with such issues, more if you include my close friend group.
Any place that has a lot of physically active people stressing their limits a bit is going to have a lot of injured folks over a decent period of time. And of course it gets talked about quite a lot, since it limits performance and ability.
My trainer knows I have a chronic shoulder issue, and an adductor issue at the moment I'm working through that we need to avoid stressing too much. The few other folks who tend to work out around my schedule know of this, and I know of theirs.
Not very uncommon really.
Sure. He says that they commonly use steroids. It's no wonder they have degenerative joint disease.
Hang out at a BJJ or MMA gym for a bit, and you'll find plenty. Peptides are really popular in combat sports circles, with good reason.
You should hang out at a climbing gym sometime. There is nothing that unites climbers more than injury talk.
It's often part of the life if you're lifting competitively.
> At worst you waste a couple hundred dollars
At worst you inject unknown substances into your bloodstream that could do more or less anything.
My partner's grandfather died of cancer because when he was having pains they believed their homeopathic medicine would work. When he finally when in to see a real doctor it was too late. If he had gone in earlier, he would been able to have a chance. This is not a rare occurrence for these types.
Why would you stop going to a real doctor though? It's not one or the other.
I'm very on the fence over BPC-157/TB500, I really want to see some actual clinical trials ran on it. I have a feeling the effects are overstated, but I also have had a number of "insider" conversations where I know these and other compounds are very much being utilized in pro athlete injury recovery programs. Those athletes certainly are getting state of the art medical care via traditional sources, plus elite level physio therapy - so it's hard to say if the illicit injury recovery drugs are doing much or not.
I don’t think either of those are patentable so I doubt you’ll see studies or trials any time soon. A lot of strength athletes at all levels, not just elite, are absolutely convinced of their efficacy and their usage sometimes seems as common as ibuprofen.
> Ok, and?
According to our new AI overlords, a short synopsis of potential risks of BPC 157 based on mechanistic and animal work to date (don't know human risks because there haven't been sufficient clinical studies):
* Possible pathologic angiogenesis (abnormal blood‑vessel growth), which theoretically could support tumor growth or inflammatory and autoimmune processes. * Modulation of nitric‑oxide pathways that, at high levels, might contribute to anemia, altered drug metabolism (CYP enzyme activity), and possibly neurodegenerative processes in theory. * Concerns that its pro‑healing, pro‑growth signalling (e.g., FAK–paxillin) could encourage cancer spread if malignant cells are already present; this remains theoretical, with no proof in humans. * Possible liver and kidney toxicity suggested in some commentary and extrapolated from preclinical work, but not well characterized in people. * Immune reactions or allergic responses, including fevers, rash, hives, muscle aches, or systemic inflammatory responses
These do not appear to be results that would appear overnight. It would be "nice" if the folks injecting random shit into their bodies also disclaimed any subsequent medical intervention as a result of said shit, but that I suspect that's unlikely.
My total layman view is that powerful drugs often have powerful side effects.
That's because you grew up in a society still deeply coded to puritan moral viewpoints.
People for so upset that GLP-1 has no long term side effects.
There's still the crowd completely sure everyone will get HyperCancer in 10 years or something (they won't).
We have no specific reason to believe there are concerns with GLP-1s for cancer or anything else, beyond the mildest signal in rodent studies around thyroids.
We do not have robust clinical data for things like BPC-157 but we do have strong preclinical data and an understanding of the mechanisms in play.
I use BPC-157/TB-500/Ghk-CU/KPV - so I'm certainly OK taking the risks. But those mechanisms mentioned before? The same things we're counting on for healing and inflammation reduction are the same things that we know can cause an increase in tumor growth rate and chance of metastasizing. VEGF/VEGFR2 expression are even suppression targets for some cancer therapies.
Are there powerful and useful medications out there, available today, that we both don't have good scientific data on and are free enough of serious side effects? For sure! Is everything out there that, though? No. Some things that work will have too serious of a side effect profile to be feasible. Some things won't work at all, despite however much anecdata is out there.
As for the general idea... I agree there's no law that says a medicine with a strong positive effect must also have strong side effects. And we have plenty that don't - statins, particularly the latest generation, like pitavastatin, are effectively side effect free for the hugely overwhelming majority of people and have great lipid lowering effects. Even older ones showed extremely minimal incidents of things like muscle pain - a vanishingly small number of people relative to the total amount on the medications report muscle pain, and when investigated, quite a lot of even that ends up being unrelated to the statins. Yet the narrative persists that make it sound like anyone on statins is going to have their muscles ache 24/7
I'm glad we have GLP-1, and I don't think there are really major side effects. But they are ineffective outside clinical trial setting for treating obesity.
It seems to be like treating alcoholism with disulfiram: it's a miracle in clinical trials but in the real world the patients just lower the doses or discontinue treatment after 1-2 years and go back to their old habits.
> But they are ineffective outside clinical trial setting for treating obesity.
This is one of the wildest claims I have ever seen on this website.
Would you claim insulin is ineffective outside of clinical trials for treating type 1 diabetes because people have to keep injecting it?
I hope it sounds less wild if you think obesity as disease of addiction. Reducing GLP1 dose can increase the enjoyment in eating, so it makes sense why treating obesity with GLP1 is like treating alcoholism with disulfiram: Effective in theory but hard to adhere outside trials.
Type 1 diabetes (or majority of diseases) doesn't involve addiction.
> they are ineffective outside clinical trial setting for treating obesity
This is totally false. I know a number of people who took GLP-1 to treat their obesity and then stopped and have stayed not obese.
I can't reply elsewhere so I will reply to this again.
> In my friends, all of them stopped taking GLP-1 drugs within 2 years because all of them lost the weight they wanted to. Out of curiosity, what sources lead you to believe this?
Anecdotes like this are interesting but in medicine they are not sufficient to make factual statements about drugs. In meta-analyses there is weight regain which is steeper as more weight is lost during treatment [1].
The weight regain seems to be rather slow, it can take years until the baseline weight is reached.
[1] https://www.bmj.com/content/392/bmj-2025-085304
> In meta-analyses there is weight regain which is steeper as more weight is lost during treatment
What does "steeper" mean? The studies I've seen show a net weight loss, even after regain, for the median patient.
> The weight regain seems to be rather slow, it can take years until the baseline weight is reached
Maybe. Right now, however, the evidence shows solid effects outside clinical settings. Your original statement was wrong–your sources own refute the claim.
If you're arguing the effects in the real world haven't consistently been as ridiculous as they were in clinical trials, sure, you get a brownie point. But broadly speaking, these drugs are terrifically effective, both when taken for life and when taken intermittently.
If only there were a federal administration whose responsibility it was to collect data about food and drugs so we could rely on something more than anecdotes from random strangers on the Internet.
Do you have a link to those data showing GLP-1 agonists are ineffective?
I emphasize it's like the drug disulfiram: Very effective as long as patients take the full dose, but the lack of real-world efficacy stems from the difficulty in adhering to the treatment.
This study found that 84.4% non-diabetic patients stop taking GLP-1 drugs within two years. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
> the lack of real-world efficacy stems from the difficulty in adhering to the treatment
Do you have a source for this "lack of real-world efficacy"?
> This study found that 84.4% non-diabetic patients stop taking GLP-1 drugs within two years
"With a with a median on-treatment weight change of −2.9%" [1]. Of those who discontinued and experienced "weight gain since discontinuation," they were "associated with an increased likelihood of GLP-1 RA reinitiation."
I'm genuinely struggling to see how this source shows real world inefficacy. In my friends, all of them stopped taking GLP-1 drugs within 2 years because all of them lost the weight they wanted to.
Out of curiosity, what sources lead you to believe this?
> it's like the drug disulfiram
Have clinicians made this connection?
[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
It is not ineffective outside of clinical trials. All the evidence says that people gain some weight back after they discontinue treatment - which is not a lack of efficacy. But they also usually gain back less then they lost.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12361690/
It's kind of two separate topics: 1. Whether patients can adhere to GLP1. 2. Whether discontinuation leads to weight regain.
Have you ever looked at leaflets attached to any medicine prescribed by doctors?
You mean the ones that are the result of experience through controlled clinical trials with statistical analyses and error bars, yep, sure. I guess I have a bit more faith in those leaflets and the testing regimes that generates them than the word of some gymbro or influencer who injected themselves and didn't immediately fall over dead.
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