Elizabeth Yurth, M.D.

Should we be thinking about replacing the peptides we lose?

So these endogenous peptides that our body makes all the time, and we haven't even identified all of them, and we can take those endogenous peptides and we can synthesize them.

but they're basically the identical structure to what our body makes.

So your body makes peptides that are working on recovery, and your body's making peptides that work on immune system, and your body's making peptides that increase joint muscle function, increase growth.

So there's all these different categories our body makes, and this is what we call exogenous peptides, which are ones that are synthesized that our body doesn't make, but people have recognized in laboratory settings, things like that, that they have significant benefits, right?

So not all the peptides we use are going to be ones that our body naturally makes, but the ones that I like the best really are.

They really are things that our body naturally is doing anyway.

So just like you're replacing the hormones that drop as you age, should you also be replacing the peptides that drop as we age?

In my mind, I think so.

So which ones?

So you think about the peptides that are kind of high when we're young and growing and developing.

And really, you know, through our 20s, we have very ample amounts of peptides.

And kind of the top of that list probably is the growth hormone peptides, right?

So we call growth hormone secretagogues.

And growth hormone secretagogues are not necessarily naturally made by our body, but they're trying to duplicate what our body does to release growth hormone.

So as you age, your growth hormone levels drop.

Naturally, all of us do.

Some people are going to stay higher than others.

If you exercise and eat well, you're going to have higher growth hormone levels.

But we all drop just like your testosterone drops, just like your estrogen drops.