Biohacking gets a peptide infusion

The internet is rife with trends promising to optimize your body, and right now, peptides are the It drug. Available as injectables, intravenous infusions, pills and nasal sprays, the chains of amino acids are rumored to help with weight loss, anti-aging and rapid muscle repair. But government restrictions have led to an increase in gray-market sales of peptides — something its champions hope to change soon.

New wonder drug?

The human body naturally produces peptides. They have fewer amino acids than larger proteins and are responsible for sending messages or regulating the body’s systems. Researchers have known about some peptides for decades, and “dozens have been turned into safe and effective drugs,” said The New Yorker. The hormone insulin, for example, is a peptide that “moves sugar from the bloodstream into cells” and is used to treat diabetes.

The drugs that are driving the current wellness trend are part of a broad category of synthetic short-chain amino acids that includes “familiar, well-studied items like insulin and GLP-1 weight loss drugs,” said Stat News. Unlike those two FDA-approved uses, however, the peptides being touted by some influential figures in the health sphere are part of a “thicket of newer drugs with catchy names like BPC-157, TB-500 and CJC-1295.” Most of them have “comparatively little research” to support claims that they can “treat injuries and chronic pain, increase muscle, slow down the aging process and boost energy.”

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Off-label use of peptides was initially popular among bodybuilders. Still, in the “era of Make America Healthy Again,” their popularity has risen among the general public, said The New Yorker. Compounding pharmacies are experiencing soaring demand, and imports of gray-market peptides and hormones from China nearly doubled last year, The New York Times said. Influencers like looksmaxxer Clavicular and podcaster Joe Rogan, as well as Health Secretary Robert. F. Kennedy Jr., are among those singing their praises.

Part of the appeal of peptides is the “promise of autonomy,” Stat News said. The idea is that if you “take the right blend of drugs, along with good nutrition and exercise,” it’s “possible to DIY your way into optimal health.” This coincides with the “right-to-try” philosophy touted by physician Gabrielle Lyon on celebrity fitness trainer Jillian Michaels’ Keeping It Real podcast last year. People should “have physical autonomy,” Lyon said during a discussion about peptides, and as long as it doesn’t hurt them, “they should be able to choose.”

Kennedy comes for the gray market

In 2023, during Biden’s administration, the FDA placed 14 peptides on a “do not compound” list due to “potential significant safety risks,” which included immune reactions, pancreatitis and accelerated growth of cancerous cells. In February, Kennedy said the FDA would make changes to make their use more acceptable. “I’m a big fan of peptides,” Kennedy said on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, adding that he “used them myself to really good effect on a couple of injuries.”

A senior Health Department official said the FDA plans to “aggressively enforce rules against making false or misleading claims about medical benefits” while moving forward in allowing compounding pharmacies to produce the injectable peptides, said the Times. The agency is also planning to convene its Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee. That group is likely to “consider whether there is a medical justification for the peptides” and vote on adding them to a list of products that compounding pharmacies can legally use.

Lifting the restrictions on peptides would be done in an effort to curtail the use of “very substandard” gray-market products, Kennedy said to Rogan. He wants people to have access to “ethical suppliers.” However, such logic could set a dangerous precedent. If you “applied that argument more generally,” it would “prevent the government from banning almost any substance that people widely demand,” said Lewis Grossman, a professor and the author of “Choose Your Medicine: Freedom of Therapeutic Choice in America,” to Stat News.

Proponents of the peptide movement remain unmoved. Critics will say, “if the FDA were to do this, this will create the Wild West,” Brigham Buhler, a compounding pharmacy owner, said to the Times. “And my rebuttal to that is: We are living in the Wild West.”