Peptide Therapy Clinic in Bend, OR, Seattle, WA and telehealth throughout Oregon & Washington.

Transcript of Peptide Overview by Kevin Jones, MD

Let’s talk about peptides. Who hasn’t heard about peptides? They’ve become really well known with the GLP-1 medications. Those are peptides. And now the Internet, social media, your neighbor – everyone is taking additional peptides. Well, what are those? How can they help? Well, peptides help with targeted specific functions within the body.

And they’re part of what we call Medicine 3.0. And medicine 3.0 is really focused on individualized care, Longevity. And focusing on symptoms that improve your health span, not just making you live longer, but living healthier. Medicine 1.0,  is back when you’re just observing things using herbal remedies, leeches, stuff like that.

Medicine 2.0 is the era that we’ve been in right now, which is excellent at treating disease as it develops. So if you get diabetes, we have treatments for it. If you get cancer, we have treatments for it. Of course, it’s not perfect. Medicine 3.0 is what can we do to prevent these things from happening? How do we prevent diabetes?

How do we prevent cancer? How do we prevent dementia? Peptides play a role in that. They’re, of course, not a perfect fix, however. That’s what we’re going to talk about today and give you some info about what peptides can do, how they can help and what they’re focused on. Well, who benefits from peptides?

Mainly people. As we get older, you know, we slow down our performance. Athletic performance goes down, our recovery takes longer, Injuries take longer to recover from. We want our skin to look healthy. We want to look like we did when we were 20. Well, we can work towards that.

Of course, we can’t get there completely, but peptides can play an important role in that. What peptides are, are short chains of, amino acids. Long chains of amino acids are proteins. We have both in our body. These short chains, however, are, Are like specific messages that get sent to cells.

Peptides are designed to supplement what your body naturally produces, not not replace them. This is different than taking hormones such as testosterone or estrogen have important roles in the body. However, peptides are very specific. The advantage of this is that you can go on peptides and go off of them.

You typically don’t have to monitor levels, though we do recommend checking some  basic blood tests before starting peptide therapy. You can think of peptides as text messages that get sent from & to specific parts of your body to activate certain pathways.

Now, those pathways could be focused on recovery, could be focused on performance, could be focused on skin health. Think of peptides as a more targeted physiologic approach to health optimization. Now, the categories of peptides. Well, I mentioned GLP-1s for weight loss.

Very popular. Revolutionary. Honestly, I think it’s one of the most important drugs to ever come out. We finally have a cure to fix obesity, which leads to cancer, heart disease, stroke, you name it. It’s amazing. newer peptides, the ones at least are getting more popular in the news, have different focuses.

You know, when you exercise you’re tearing muscle fibers, recovering those and getting stronger. Other peptides are geared towards performance. These would be things like sermorelin. These peptides help your body produce growth hormone, which allows your body to recover faster.

That’s when you know, you think of a 14 year old who breaks a bone, they’re back running around in two or three weeks, they feel great. However, most people in this room break a bone, you’re out for two or three months. That recovery process is growth hormone mediated. Growth hormone allows your body to recover faster.

Peptides tell your brain to produce more growth hormone. They don’t replace it, just add to what you’re naturally producing. Added benefits of growth hormone production are often improved sleep. More energy at the gym and just overall feeling better, more energized during the day.

Another peptide is called tesamorelin. That’s Fda approved to promote visceral fat loss in HIV patients. Used off label for healthy patients. But that’s a very good peptide to help decrease the visceral fat, around our intestines/insides that can lead to heart disease and stroke.

Another common peptide that you’ll hear about in the news, especially with celebrities, is the beauty peptides. It’s a copper peptide that’s used in collagen production, skin and hair formation. Gives you that youthful appearance.

Now, how are peptides used? Because they’re amino acids. That’s what your stomach breaks down. Like when you eat meat, you’re eating proteins, which are amino acids. So we have to bypass the stomach. For peptides to be effective. That can be done mainly in two ways. Peptides can be done or taken as.

Either a troche, which dissolves underneath the tongue. But to be most effective, peptides need to be injected. That’s the GLP-1s, like the once a week shot, so very tiny needle. Some people have a lot of concerns about this. We’ve treated thousands of patients at our clinic with peptides. And once you do it once, it’s really easy.

It’s not that big a deal. But it does for most peptides involve an injection or at least a troche to take. Now, peptides, it’s important to note, Except for the GLP1s, are not FDA approved for the conditions that I’m talking about. Peptides are used off label.

Meaning that there’s limited study data. And this is always going to be the case because these medications are naturally occurring and have been around for decades. There’s no drug company that can patent these medications and make a lot of money off of it. That’s how, modern pharmaceuticals work, and it’s not going to happen with peptides.

So we’re never going to have these giant studies that show lots of safety. What we do have is a lot of anecdotal use. I mean, they’ve been around for decades finding good improvements and, And the FDA is looking at these. Some peptides are currently on a do not compound list. The peptides are made at compounding pharmacies because they’re very specific.

And with recent regulation changes. You may have heard about this in news. Some peptides will likely be added back to a list that’s allowed to be compounded. There are pharmacies that make variations of peptides, so you can basically get what you want. Right now, what we don’t recommend doing is buying off, Black market Internet sites because the quality can vary.

People can get really sick from that. We do recommend that you go see a healthcare provider. Talk about what you’re looking for. They can go over the risks and benefits. They can go over the dosing, any labs that you might want to monitor and just check on your progress. It’s well worth the money to spend time to do peptides correctly and safely.

After all, this is your body and you get what you pay for. So who can benefit from peptides? They’re mainly geared for people who just want to live life better. Maybe you need more energy to get through the day, or have a better workout or train for a race. Maybe you have a chronic injury that isn’t getting better.

For instance, I had tennis elbow for a year from. Exercising too hard, Basically, I’ve been to physical therapy. You know, modify my exercise routine. Nothing was getting better. I did a month of recovery peptide and that pain went away, and it’s been gone since. Now, of course, your mileage may vary. Not everyone has these sort of benefits, but this is what we’re hearing from our patients.

In summary, peptides are geared towards health optimization. So we’re basically trying to get you where you want to be in a personalized, individual way with medications that supplement what your natural body produces. This is about helping you feel strong, capable, and resilient over time and live the best life that you have while you’re here.