Pushing peptides

0:00Kristi Noem's husband. No, no. April Fool's. Peptides. Peptides. I keep seeing ads about them. You probably keep seeing ads about them. Want to bulk up? Take this peptide. Want to have healthier skin? Take that peptide. Want to cure that ankle injury? Peptides. Chains of amino acids you can inject from the comfort of your own home. Maybe you already have, or maybe not, because you're scared or skeptical. but maybe you don't have to be. I bet there are a few peptides you're already familiar with. Insulin is one of them. Ozempic is another. Turns out the P in GLP-1 stands for peptide. But what about BPC-157 or CJC-1295 or TB-500 or GHKCU?

0:47Sounds a little R2-D2-C3PO to me. Hello. Should we really be shooting these things into our bodies? On Today Explained, we're going to hear from a guy who did and he's still alive, so yay.

1:08Today explains Sean Ramos from I've never shot any peptides into my already perfect body, but Ezra Marcus has. I'm an investigative reporter for New York Magazine and other publications. Ezra's latest opus for New York Magazine was called Life on Peptides Feels Amazing. We asked him what made him want to live that peptide life. I became curious about it. When I just started hearing people I know bring up that they had started taking these injectable substances that I didn't really understand, and I felt like the term was just sort of popping up. Like you'd hear somebody at a party say, oh yeah, I've started taking this or that peptide for, you know, joint pain or anti-aging or weight loss or what have you.

1:48Is there a reason that literally every single person and their mother are on peptides at this point? I'm starting a new peptide today. This one is for pain and inflammation. I'm starting with GHKCU Glowstock. I take peptides. So what? So what? It's for my health. And it was just sort of a, it felt like a buzzword that was increasingly everywhere, not just in, you know, real life, but online, influencers, celebrities, this and that. So it just felt like something that was just sitting out there and was percolating, and I wanted to know more. Before we get to how it went for you particularly, tell us about the influencers.

2:29What are they saying about peptides and who are they? There's a huge, endless constellation of influencers pushing, you know, health and wellness trends online. Obviously, there has been for years and that ecosystem is flourishing more than ever. and they're always looking for what, you know, it feels like the hot new thing, the kind of like just around the corner invention that's going to change everything about anti-aging and weight loss and muscle growth and, you know, everything under the sun, especially when it comes to kind of, you know, vanity outcomes that typically move the needle for large numbers of people in America.

3:10And so we're talking about everyone from like, you know, Maha, like life extension, RFK types of influencers. Yeah, I mean, I'm a big fan of peptides. I've used them myself. I was talking to a pro football player who pulled his hamstring. He's like, dude, I shot that shit right into my hamstring for two weeks and I was right back on the field. Wow. I was like, that's nuts. To just like straightforward beauty influencers, to gym bros. If you want one peptide that you can actually see when you look in the mirror, you're going to want GHQCU. If I was anything under 200 pounds, there's a three peptide stack that I would definitely be taking right now to put on some weight.

3:48To the so-called look smacksers. Everything I'm taking to look smacks as a woman. So what's the best way to improve upon your coloring, right? So Milano 10-2, guys, Milano 10-2 is the best peptide that you could take for your coloring, right? But it's almost every sector of people talking about how to optimize your life at some point dip their toes into the peptide hype cycle over the last year or so. When you want to take peptides, there are a few doors you can open. Let's talk about the door that you chose to open. Where did your journey begin? Yeah. So when I was researching this, I was talking to people and I was sort of coming across, like you said, a variety of entry points for the consumer.

4:36And I explored two different ones, the sort of above board way and the gray market way. And the above board way is just you go to any number of wellness clinic, you know, med spa, whatever. And all of them sell peptides now. And I basically just went to one in the city, made an appointment, talked to the nurse. I said, you know, I'm a reporter working on a story about peptides, but I'm also curious about trying one. What do you got for me? And he was like, well, what do you want to fix about yourself? And I was like, well, I guess I, you know, I could use a little more energy. I freelance, so I get sleepy in the afternoon.

5:11What do you have for me? And he suggested a compound called NAD +, which is a really popular compound that people take for a variety of supposed benefits, including more energy, anti-aging stuff. Week three update, and I think it's an obsession at this point. You guys, I am aging backwards. Truly, I feel 15 years younger than I did a year ago. I simply am taking NAD. I basically paid for a six-week supply. They gave me a bunch of insulin needles and taught me how to inject and sent me on my way. How much did it cost? It cost$250 for a six-week supply. So, you know, it's expensive. Definitely not covered by insurance.

5:54You go home and what, do you immediately start shooting peptides? Straight up. Tell us how it goes. What do you do? You know, it's given to you in the form of a, it's called a lyophilized powder, which basically just means powder in a vial. You mix that with something called bacteriostatic water, which is just water with a bit of alcohol mixed into it. That turns it into a fluid, which you then draw into a syringe. And then you inject it in your fatty tissue. So in my case, that was into my stomach. That's pretty much that. I wouldn't say that the NAD produced particularly dramatic effects. It felt a bit like taking a very mild dose of Adderall for the day that I'd taken it.

6:36But without the kind of comedown or anything like that, the next day, it didn't feel much. It sounds like basically it felt like you drank a bunch of latte one day. But there are definitely power users out there. And you spoke to a bunch of them. How much differently are their peptide experiences to the one that you had? Well, it's not really comparable just in that people are taking so many different kinds of peptides for so many different things. I would say probably the peptide that had the sort of biggest hype cycle around it and the biggest push on social media and that was making the most dramatic changes for people is really just the GLP-1 drugs.

7:17There's also a drug called retitrutide that's a sort of the next generation of GLP-1 that Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical company, is developing. that's not on the market yet, but it's basically being synthesized, you know, technically illegally and sold at scale. And a lot of people were taking that because it seems to have much stronger effects than even the current class of GLP-1 drugs on the market. What if I told you that there's a weight loss drug that is going to make Ozempic obsolete? Would you believe me? So today we're talking more retitrutide. And I will say it works freaking wonders.

7:53Okay. And I took that one as well. How'd that go? So that's the other pathway into the market that I explored, the gray market. Oh. I went on Reddit and started talking to people that were posting about taking peptides. And I came into contact with somebody who introduced me to his Discord server, where he helps coordinate a group of a few hundred enthusiasts purchase peptides from a Chinese factory. And the representative from the Chinese factory, who was using the name Jasmine, was posting in the Discord and letting people know, you know, we have this X, Y, and Z product. We have a special for the Lunar Festival.

8:38We have, you know, bulk discounts. Dear friends, happy new year. Wishing you a joyful holiday with family. Our exclusive sale is on. Perfect time to stock up. So I started talking to Jasmine on WhatsApp. And I basically said, look, I want to buy a GLP-1 called the Reddit TruTide, which is not available yet in the legal market, but is being synthesized in China. and she basically said, great, send me$150 in Bitcoin, which I did. You can send me screenshot after payment. I also need your name, phone number and address to make an order. Thank you. And then, you know, half expecting basically nothing to happen.

9:23But then two weeks later, I got a shipment, which was labeled as face masks from the Philippines, but in fact contained a six-month supply of retitrutide, 10 vials, 5 milligrams each. Were you nervous to try the Chinese peptides? So I went to a third-party testing company, which a number of them have sprung up. As these things have grown popular, people are understandably wary about injecting the stuff that they're buying sight unseen from overseas. I sent them one of the vials, they tested it, and it came back that it was what it was supposed to be. It was, in fact, five milligrams of redditrutide without any toxins or anything.

10:07You know, some 20 % of the vials that they get in for testing have something wrong with them. They're over or underdosed. It might be contaminated in some way. You know, all things you don't want to be injecting. So, yeah, I mean, the risks are very real. But in my case, it was what it said it was. I injected it and it did exactly what it's supposed to do, which just curbed my appetite. So I became really curious about how much of this stuff these factories in China were actually capable of producing and selling to America, because I think a lot of this stuff is being bought at scale, white-labeled, and sold for huge markups.

10:48So I started just messaging dozens of these factories who all had enthusiastic representatives on WhatsApp who largely had AI-generated images of young, beautiful women as their representative. And I just started asking, like, hey, how much of this could I buy per month? Let's say I operate a storefront in the U.S. and I want to purchase 10 ,000 vials of Reddit True Tide a month. Could you sell me that? And they were like, of course. I said, how about 100 ,000? They were like, no problem. And I got to the point, I was like, could I buy a million vials a month? And they said, absolutely. We are airlifted.

11:22Don't worry about customs. We will give you a refund if you are detained. And we have other customers buying this much as well. And we'll help you get it through customs. Send the cash now. And I was blown away just that it was as seamless as that. You're obviously not a doctor, but you wrote this piece in which you waded into this world that a lot of people are curious about right now. What was the reaction? I had a lot of random people emailing me asking for the name of my Chinese supplier. because there's an implication in your piece that this is a great way to get rich well no because they were they wanted to buy and use peptides for themselves i heard from other people that were like oh yeah my cousin took this and like had kidney issues i heard of some of that and i heard a lot of people just basically being like okay so should i do it i was like i mean the kind of the whole point of the piece is like i don't know um and i don't think anyone really does that this is a total Wild West.

12:18And when people are telling you about it on social media, that's because they're making money off of that, and they're not experts. There's just these economies of people with skin in the game trying to pump their bag, essentially. And that basically buyer beware. At the same time, these things have real effects.

12:43you can read life on peptides feels amazing and nymag.com it's a good read the FDA would like to make it easier for you to shoot peptides the view from Washington when we return on today explained Thank you. financial goals. Chime has products like MyPay, which can give you access to up to$500 of your paycheck anytime. They say you can earn up to 3 % APY on your savings. That is nearly eight times more than what traditional banks offer. And if you get stuck, Chime says they have you covered with five-star USA Today rated customer service, real live human beings available 24-7. Chime is not just smarter banking.

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15:30Today, Explain is back. I'm Sean Ramis from here with Lauren Gardner. She's an FDA and pharma policy reporter at Politico. Lauren, we just heard from this guy, Ezra Marcus, about the growing popularity of peptides. Where does Uncle Sam stand on them? As of now, the United States government is generally not on board. But this is for specific peptides, the kind that I'm sure you were talking about with Ezra. So essentially what happened is the FDA reclassified a little more than a dozen of these peptides, basically saying we don't have enough safety information to confidently allow these things to be made for American consumers without stepping in here.

16:16So what this did was it moved several of these peptides to this agency list that refers to them as bulk drug substances that may present significant safety risks. Now, the thing about that is that in some cases, FDA really doesn't know whether they're safe or unsafe. They truly just don't have or they say they don't have enough data to make that call. What happens in 2023 when FDA comes out and says without a whole lot of data, like some of these things are unsafe. We don't like them. According to several of these wellness influencers, compounding pharmacists who are big in this space, to them, they said this made their market essentially dry up.

17:04The peptide industry is collapsing. The U.S. government is stepping in and finally regulating peptides. Guys, I don't lie when I say things like this. I would get it while I can because who knows if it's ever going to come back. A lot of these online platforms, there's a wellness clinic side to it, and then they might be tied to a specific compounding pharmacy. So the compounding pharmacy being the entity that has a lab and they make these concoctions for people if they can get a prescription for them. By this action happening, the compounding pharmacies couldn't legally make them anymore. So instead, people who had been getting them from providers, you know, wherever in the United States, turned to kind of black and gray corners of the web.

17:55So FDA tries to come out and say, hey, guys, we're really worried about these peptides. We're going to say maybe don't. and then everyone says, but I want to, and goes online to China, gets them. Sometimes they come disguised in the mail and uses them anyway. Surely that isn't the system we want. And the implication is that Robert Floride Kennedy Jr. wants to do something about it? Yes. So if you listen to Secretary Kennedy and some of his many podcast appearances, particularly on Joe Rogan. During the Biden administration, they illegally moved those to Category 2, which says do not formulate.

18:40It was illegal because they're not supposed to do that unless there's a safety signal. And they didn't have a safety signal. They're not allowed to look at efficacy. They're not allowed to say, well, we don't believe these are efficacious or whatever. They can only look at safety. They moved those to Category 2, which means do not formulate. He recently referred to what the FDA did a few years ago. He called it illegal. So it kind of gets at the expectation that he is going to institute some kind of change here. The argument that he and many of his allies make who are big in this peptide space is that it's already a wild west out there in peptides.

19:25People are already getting this stuff and injecting it into themselves. Their argument is it's being done. We might as well, A, have people have access to safe substances that they're injecting into themselves, and B, have them be American-made. So that's been a huge part of kind of the context swirling around this is that we've done it before. They say it was being done safely here until the FDA made this change two-plus years ago. So let's go back to that. And now we'll be in this situation where people will have more freedom to experiment with these types of things, but to do it in a way where they're under the care of a provider who's prescribing it to them.

20:07It's being made here in the U.S. They'll know the sourcing of the ingredients. It'll just be it'll be better all around for both consumer safety and the U.S. for large.

20:23Okay, so RFK wants to do something about this. He is not the head of the Food and Drug Administration. When should we expect some decisive action to be taken on peptides in this country? There have been lots of indications from people who are very active in this space who, you know, talked to Secretary Kennedy that something is coming on this. And that only ramped up more once the secretary went on Joe Rogan's podcast and basically said as much in February. Oh, I'm very anxious to move. Probably not all of those peptides. Some of them are in litigation, but about 14 of them back to making them more accessible.

21:06And FDA is in the middle of, I think, within a couple of weeks, we will have announced some kind of new action. I have been refreshing the webpage that would contain such an update for several weeks now, and nothing's changed. So, you know, this is the type of thing where there are, like, I's to be dotted and T's to be crossed on the FDA side. But also, at the same time, what is expected here is that probably about a dozen or so of these peptides will be moved to another category where legally it's okay for them to be made. but it's not like the FDA is going to be saying, don't worry, they're safe or safe enough.

21:51Like, it's no big deal. It essentially is, it's like a regulatory purgatory. The term of art in FDA parlance is enforcement discretion. But even once that happens, it doesn't necessarily mean it's the end of the road because someone can petition the FDA to do something more formal on it. And then that would unleash a whole separate regulatory process that would take probably years to go through. How soon is it, do you think, before we see like the next GLP-1 situation here in peptide town? Because it feels like insulin, pretty big deal. All these weight loss drugs, pretty big deal. And then there's like a lot of fringy stuff going on that Ezra mentioned and that you talked about too.

22:34Is it only a matter of time before we see the next huge peptide trend? Or do you think this is like a passing fad? It does seem like there is some kind of craze to be capitalized on here. But whether it's going to be, you know, one or two of these in particular or just like a giant class of these substances that people are just going to be flocking to telehealth sites like HIMSS for, I think that's kind of the open question. I think a lot of it's going to come down to how many, you know, quote unquote, legit actors start to step into this space. And by that, I mean, in particular, the telehealth platforms like HIMSS, Roe, the ones that you see a lot of advertisements for on TV or online.

23:16How many of them get into this? Because telehealth has also democratized access to things like GLP-1s in a way that has fundamentally changed the industry. And I think that's how a lot of people would be accessing peptides as well, because you can easily access a provider and don't necessarily have to look up some wellness clinic in whatever area you happen to live in and see if there's someone who has any idea how BBC 157 works or might work for you. But one thing that feels true of like our current experience as a society with GLP-1s right now and what Ezra wrote about with his experience just trying a bunch of stuff out is that like we're all just guinea pigs right now until the government figures this out or even once they do it feels like.

24:07Yeah, and these things aren't without risk. And I do think that can get lost in the conversation. For instance, there was a case last summer of two women going to a wellness conference in Las Vegas, and they ended up getting really, really sick after they were injected with peptides there at this festival. And just earlier in March, Nevada regulators fined three people who played a role in offering peptides to attendees of this anti-aging conference. So they're certainly not without risk. and I think what is TBD is to what extent will people as like the pool of consumers taking these sorts of things how many people are going to experience bad reactions like that versus you know on the flip side of the coin actually see benefits or or is it all just one big placebo effect how will that be measured who knows Watch this space to find out Exactly Okay

25:21Read Lauren Gardner at politico.com Find Miles Bryan, Danielle Hewitt, Amina Alsadi, David Tadashore, Patrick Boyd, and Andrea Lopez Cruzado at Vox.com This is Today Explained

25:56We'll see you next time.

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