Chapter 1: What are peptides and why are they gaining popularity?
Kristi 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 GHK-CU? Sounds 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!
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Today 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.
Is 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 Glow Stock.
I take peptides. So what? So what? It's for my health.
And it was just sort of, 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.
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Chapter 2: What experiences do users have with taking peptides?
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. You go home and what, do you immediately start shooting peptides? Straight up.
Chapter 3: How does the FDA currently regulate peptides?
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.
Chapter 4: What impact does the FDA's reclassification of peptides have?
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, but without the kind of comedown or anything like that. The next day, I didn't feel much.
It sounds like basically it felt like you drank a matcha 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.
There's also a drug called Retatrutide that's 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 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 Reta True Tide. And I will say it works freaking wonders, okay? 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. We 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 True Tide, 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.
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Chapter 5: What are the risks associated with taking peptides?
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 is curb 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. So 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 US 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. Don't worry about customs.
Chapter 6: How are influencers shaping the conversation around peptides?
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 wanted to buy and use peptides for themselves. I heard from other people that were like, oh yeah, my cousin took this and 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? And I was like, I mean, kind of the whole point of the piece is like... I don't know. And I don't think anyone really does. You know, this is a total wild west. And, you know, 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, like, economies of people with skin in the game trying to pump their bag, essentially. And that, you know, basically, buyer beware. At the same time, these things have real effects. You can read Life on Peptides Feels Amazing on nymag.com. It's a good read. The FDA would like to make it easier for you to shoot peptides.
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Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Transcription by CastingWords Sean Marmoser, let me ask you a question. Which journalistic endeavors do you pay money to support? Oh, my gosh. Which or like how many? Let me think. That one and that one and that one. A bunch of public radio stations. A big newspaper that I can think of. Some sub stacks. So many newsletters.
I don't know if they're sub stacks, but like I was trying to count the other day because someone asked me and I think it's like six newsletters at least. Dang. Like a lot. How about you? Are you in the newsletter camp, too? All of that, not so much newsletters, a lot of podcasts on Patreon. Heck yeah.
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Chapter 7: What are the implications of using gray market peptides?
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Today, Explain is back. I'm Sean Ramos 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. So 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.
The peptide industry is collapsing.
The US 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.
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Chapter 8: What future changes might we expect in peptide regulation?
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. People 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. 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. It'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.
Okay, 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, talk 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. And 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, like it's no big deal. It essentially is, it's like a regulatory purgatory. Yeah. 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.
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