#387 - AMA #83: Peptides—evaluating the science, safety, and hype in a rapidly growing field

Hey, everyone. Welcome to a sneak peek, ask me anything or AMA episode of the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. At the end of this short episode, I'll explain how you can access the AMA episodes in full along with a ton of other membership benefits we've created. Or you can learn more now by going to peterattiamd.com/subscribe. So without further delay, here's today's sneak peek of the Ask Me Anything episode. Welcome to Ask Me Anything. In today's AMA, we take on one of the most requested and most confusing topics we've ever covered, peptides. Peptides sit at the intersection of biological plausibility, clinical promise, and rampant commercialization. They're often marketed as cutting edge regenerative therapies for everything from muscle peptide ecosystem is sprawling, poorly regulated, and filled with claims that range from legitimate to completely ungrounded. So the goal of this episode is not to promote peptides or dismiss them as a category, but to give you a framework for evaluating them. Because as you know, we love us some frameworks over here. We walk through what peptides are, what questions you should ask before putting any peptide or any drug into your body, and how to think about the strength of evidence, the safety profile, and the difference between science and marketing hype. So specifically, we're going to discuss why peptides have become such a dominant topic in the wellness and longevity culture, the differences between FDA approved peptide therapeutics and quote unquote peptides, which are what most people refer to with quotes in the biohacking world. A framework for evaluating any peptide, mechanism, intended effects, safety, dosing, and alternatives. And then we're gonna run our framework through a handful of examples in detail. SS 31. Talk about the background, the biology, and the types of conditions it has been studied for. Milana ten two, receptor activity, common claims, related FDA approved compounds in the same pathway. CJC twelve ninety five, gonna talk about growth hormone signaling, why it has been studied in humans, what it's been studied for, and how dosing is typically approached. Of course, BPC one five seven, no discussion on the topic would be complete without that. The origin story, the proposed mechanisms, and the nature of the animal and human evidence that's often cited. We're gonna talk about the role of patents and the incentives in drug development and why some compounds do or don't advance through formal clinical pipelines. We're gonna compare peptide evidence standards to other widely discussed interventions that fall into high interest incomplete data categories. We'll talk about how peptides are manufactured and sold in the gray market, and what the research use only designation actually means, what third party testing can evaluate and what it doesn't capture, talk about oral peptides, digestive breakdown, absorptive challenges, and what we know from pharmaceutical examples, talk about what needs to happen for peptides to become more broadly usable therapies, and where peptide therapeutics may expand in the future …