The Peptide I Almost Injected
I had the transfer form open and my bank app in the other hand.
The shop sold vials. The shipping terms said the contents were for lab research only and not for people. Sites include that so whatever happens next is your responsibility.
I have both a medical and dental degree, but I was still about to send money to strangers for something I planned to inject into myself.
By August 2024, my wife was putting my socks on for me. Underwear was even harder because you have to balance on one leg. I washed my face in stages. After 18 months of this, things only got worse. On work mornings with travel, I took the strongest painkiller I had.
I wore headphones most of the day. That August, while half-listening to a podcast, I heard Andrew Huberman tell Joe Rogan something about a compound called BPC-157:
“while only animal data, it’s very clear, you know, it has the propensity to encourage fibroblasts, which is cells that, you know, make up things like, you know, tendon and cartilage, et cetera, and can really repair tissues… I certainly have experienced it can help repair things.” [1]
I missed the warning. The words that stayed with me were tendon and cartilage.
I had heard about it before and ignored it. That afternoon, I ended up on a vendor’s website.
The vote that changed nothing
I first heard about BPC-157 in July 2021 from the same two men on the same show [2]. Three years later, I was at my lowest point when it came up again. Two years after that, on July 23, an FDA advisory panel voted 8 to 6 to recommend letting pharmacies compound it, even though the agency’s own reviewers disagreed. Eight panelists were recent appointees, and six of them ran clinics that sell peptides. One person voted yes but admitted the data was disappointingly incomplete [3].
But nothing changed after that. A panel can only recommend. The list of what pharmacies can legally make hasn’t changed since February 2019 [4], so no pharmacy in America can legally make BPC-157 today. The vote only changed what people expect might happen.
There was a vote, but still not a single randomized trial in humans. That’s why people keep asking me the same question: Are peptides safe?
No one can answer that, because the word itself doesn’t refer to a single thing.
The word is a size
Insulin is a peptide. It has 51 amino acids and is the reason a 14-year-old in Toronto, who weighed just 65 pounds when admitted, lived another 13 years [5]. Semaglutide (Ozempic/Wegovy) is also a peptide, and someone on your leadership team is probably using it quietly.
A peptide is simply a short chain of amino acids. That’s the definition. In the U.S., regulators set the cutoff at 40. Anything above that is considered a biologic, which is protected from copies for 12 years and can’t be made by compounding pharmacies. Regular drugs get 5 years [6][7]. Tirzepatide (Mounjaro/Zepbound) is just under the limit, at 39 [8].
That number only affects the paperwork and nothing else.
Abud Bakri is an internist who has used these compounds himself and says so, sits on the medical commission of Enhanced, which sells peptides, and has consulted for a group planning a BPC-157 trial. On Huberman’s show in June:
“everyone online talks about peptides are good or peptides are bad. There’s no actual scientific category of peptides that gives you a functional definition that’s discussable between two people. Because what do you mean by peptide? Do you mean carnosine or do you mean [retatrutide]?” [9]
What I ask myself before taking anything
Three questions, in order.
Has this ever been given to humans in a study I can read? Who funded that study, and do they also sell the compound? And does the result actually matter in real life, or is it just a number in my blood that’s never been shown to make a difference?
Most so-called longevity peptides don’t even pass the first question.
One lab in Zagreb
In the early 1980s, a group in Croatia went looking for whatever keeps the stomach from digesting itself. By 1989 they said they had it: a fragment of a larger protein, 15 amino acids long [10][11].
The full sequence of that larger protein has never been published. When a reporter asked why, Predrag Sikirić said that if you have your own child, you want it to be yours forever. Anna Mapp, a chemist at Michigan and president of the American Peptide Society, told the same reporter that without the full sequence, it’s impossible to reproduce the original work [11].
Then came the animal studies: rats with severed tendons, cut ligaments, burns, and crushed muscles healed faster, again and again, mostly in studies by the same group. About four out of five BPC-157 papers on PubMed list Sikirić or his Zagreb colleague as an author, a number his critics published last year, and he disputed in the same journal [12].
There are no randomized controlled trials in humans. A systematic review last year looked at 544 papers and included 36; 35 were animal studies [13]. The only human study was a survey: 12 patients who had already received knee injections were asked how they felt afterward; 7 said they felt better, but there was no placebo and no blinding [14]. The rest are a small intravenous pilot in two people [15] and a couple of Croatian trials from the early 2000s where the compound was given as an enema and never fully published.
Bakri says that when researchers checked those patients’ blood afterward, they couldn’t find the compound [9]. Maybe it stayed local, broke down too quickly to measure, or was never absorbed. No one outside that group can verify it.
And almost no one takes it the way those trials did.
What I won’t write down
I should be clear that I’m not a purist. I’m curious and have tried plenty of things on myself that aren’t standard medicine. I’ve written before about experimenting with psychedelics. I know my own body, and I understand physiology and pharmacology well enough to take a calculated risk. I’m comfortable being the one who finds out.
What I get from that is a study with one participant, me, unblinded, and run by someone who wanted it to work. That’s a long way from real advice. I wouldn’t give it to my own family.
People still ask me for prescriptions. Metformin, because they read about its link to longevity. Stimulants. Testosterone. And lately, peptides.
Some of these would be easy to prescribe, and the risk would be small. I could write the prescription in 20 seconds and say what everyone says: this is off-label, I’ve explained it to you, you’re doing it at your own risk, I take no responsibility. All of that is true, but it still makes me the one who signed.
Most of my surgical years went on cancers of the mouth: the lip, the tongue, the floor of the mouth, the lining of the cheek. Surgery is the backbone; radiation comes after it, sometimes with chemotherapy alongside. Surgery means cutting in three dimensions with a margin of a centimeter around the tumor. Take something the size of a walnut out of the tongue, and you have changed how that person speaks for the rest of their life, how they move food around their mouth, whether they can swallow at all.
Most were men in their sixties, smokers, with a lesion on the side of the tongue they’d called a mouth ulcer for months. I would sit down and explain the situation. The consequences would be permanent, and they’d be reminded every time they spoke. It was their best chance, but no one could promise it wouldn’t return.
They said yes, almost all of them.
I would see them months later, eating, talking, holding a cup of coffee.
I’ve already been the person who said yes and then watched someone go home and live with the outcome. That’s why I won’t do it casually for something untested, just because someone wants it.
The argument back is always the same. If you don’t, someone else will.
Fine. Then someone else can take responsibility for that.
The correction that didn’t travel
In July 2021, Huberman told Rogan that things like it “definitely do accelerate the healing of an injury and there’s no question about that.” Rogan, same conversation: “I’ve used it myself, and I had a tendonitis in my elbow that I just could not fix. I started using [BPC-157]. It was gone in two weeks” [2].
By August 2024, Huberman had moved. The sentence now started with “while only animal data” [1]. And 5 months before that, on his own show, he had gone further still: BPC-157 may raise tumor growth risk through the same blood-vessel mechanism that makes it interesting, and he does not suggest anyone buy black-market peptides [16]. He has since said he took it himself, on a prescription, and no longer does [9].
He was more cautious than people think, and he became even more careful as time went on.
Still, I found myself on a vendor’s website.
The warning and the claim both leave the podcast studio, but only the claim spreads.
The evidence trail is contaminated too
Say you do the responsible thing and check. The American trials registry is where a careful person looks, and as of August 4 it returns Phase 2 studies for BPC-157 and TB-500, marked recruiting.
Three of the records in that cluster say inside their own text that they are fictional or mock entries [17].
They seem like practice submissions that accidentally got out of a test system. I have no proof anyone meant to mislead. But the effect is the same. You search for evidence and find something that looks real, from a sponsor with a real name, marked as enrolling patients. The BPC-157 record doesn’t have any disclaimer.
The Wolverine stack
Few people take BPC-157 alone, and the bundles have names.
BPC-157 with TB-500 is sold as the Wolverine stack. Add copper peptide, and it becomes the glow stack. Someone picked those names. An adult decided that a man injecting two untested compounds into his shoulder should picture himself as a comic book hero with claws. It works, because people buy it. I used the male pronouns on purpose.
Bakri described what he calls the Trinity stack: a GLP-1, a growth hormone drug, a hormone layer on top. “A lot of these transformations you see in CEOs and celebrities and stuff is using a combination of those three things,” he said. On whether it’s healthy: “We’ll find out” [9].
We’ll find out. By watching what happens to people like you.
He also explained how people get there: buy one, see a result, add three more, and “the average sale value goes up from these research sites” [9]. I couldn’t find any study on what these combinations do together.
The GLP-1s are the exception, and the reason everyone else is comfortable holding a syringe. Semaglutide and tirzepatide went through the full process, and they are the best evidence in this field.
I couldn’t find any published analysis of what’s actually in gray-market BPC-157. Researchers bought semaglutide from online sellers. The vials were overfilled with material that was only 7.7% to 14.4% semaglutide, against a label claiming 99%, which still left the dose 28% to 39% above what the label promised. Every sample carried bacterial endotoxin. Mostly unknown material, and more drug than you think [18].
Bakri told a story about a man who ordered a weight loss compound and saw his skin darken, only to realize he was injecting a tanning peptide [9]. That’s the kind of mistake you can see in the mirror. The others, you can’t.
Insulin and the GLP-1s are medicine, with the trials to prove it. BPC-157 is unfinished. TB-500 is a 7-amino-acid piece of a bigger molecule whose own trial record is mixed, and the fragment inherits none of it [19]. Melanotan II, the tanning one, has published case reports of muscle breakdown, kidney infarction, priapism, and new atypical moles [20][21][22][23]. KPV, dihexa, PEG-MGF, and epitalon have no registered Western human trial, which didn’t stop the July panel recommending KPV alongside BPC-157 [3].
Where I’m on thin ice
I can’t say BPC-157 doesn’t work. The animal data is better than I expected after a week of research, and there’s no published series of humans harmed by it either because no one has done the study that would answer that question.
And by my own three questions, my own back wouldn’t count as evidence. One participant, no blinding, no comparison group, and a condition that sometimes gets better on its own. I know that. I’d still begin with what I did before. If physiotherapy fails, you’ve lost 12 weeks. If a vial fails, you can’t take back whatever it already did.
This is the Activate pillar of the Upward ARC, the part about what you put into your body, and it’s where that risk hits hardest.
Try this today
Some of you are already taking something. Some of you are just thinking about it. This is for both groups.
If you have any history of cancer, or anything undiagnosed, this is where I stop being neutral. BPC-157 appears to work partly by growing blood vessels. Tumors need blood vessels. Nobody has run the study that would tell us whether that matters in a person, and I wouldn’t volunteer to find out. Huberman said the same on his own show, and almost nobody quotes that one [16]. If you compete under anti-doping rules, all three of these are prohibited at all times on the WADA list: BPC-157 as a non-approved substance, TB-500 as a thymosin derivative, MOTS-c as a metabolic modulator. A prescription is no defense [24].
Ask yourself those three questions before trying any compound. Most options will drop off the list.
Find out what’s actually in the vial, and ask about the markup. Who made it, which lab tested it, and is that lab independent from the seller? Then ask your clinician what the pharmacy charges them and what they charge you. That price gap is legal in many places and goes into someone’s pocket. Treat the seller’s certificate as marketing: in one analysis, two custom-made peptides were found to be 20% and 43% undeclared mannitol by weight, which standard purity tests wouldn’t catch [25].
Decide what failure looks like before you start. What will you measure, by when, and what result will make you stop? Write it down. Without this, every intervention seems to work forever.
Two years of boring
Looking at that transfer form, I realized what I had become: a man in an alley, buying something from a stranger and just hoping.
I had become someone willing to put an unknown substance into my body just because I couldn’t put on a sock. No vial could fix what that said about me.
So I chose the other path. I sought guidance from physiotherapists, back pain specialists, nutritionists, and others. I rebuilt my training routine twice, changed my diet, lost weight, and kept habits I still follow, like a walk before my first call and a proper shutdown routine after 10pm. It took months, but it worked. I haven’t needed a painkiller in almost two years.
At some point, my wife stopped needing to help me with my socks. I can’t say which morning it was, and that’s how I know it was the slow, steady approach that worked.
I’d listened to every podcast. The only thing I never did was take action on a random Tuesday, in a life that doesn’t stop for experiments.
I was lucky because of where I lived. The compound was hard to get in Germany, and that delay gave the rational part of me time to catch up with the desperate part. If I’d been somewhere with next-day delivery that August, things might have turned out differently.
Stay healthy.
Andre
PS: I’m not judging anyone, because I was one click away from doing the same thing. Have you ever come close? It doesn’t have to be peptides, just anything you considered when pain or exhaustion dragged on too long. Reply and tell me about it. I read every message, and I never share them. If you know someone who needs this, forward this edition to them. This is how this newsletter grows, and it’s the only way I want it to.
PPS: If a friend forwarded this to you, you can get Under Load, my Sunday edition, here:
https://www.andreheeg.com
.
References
[1] Rogan, J. (Host). (2024, August 27). #2195 – Andrew Huberman [Audio podcast episode]. In The Joe Rogan Experience. Speaker-labeled transcript, approximately 3:02:52.
[2] Rogan, J. (Host). (2021, July 14). #1683 – Andrew Huberman [Audio podcast episode]. In The Joe Rogan Experience. Approximately 2:39:14-2:40:37. Automated transcript; both speakers render the compound inconsistently, and bracketed corrections are marked.
[3] Lovelace, B., Jr., & Miller, S. G. (2026, July 23). FDA panel recommends easing some peptide restrictions despite disapproval from scientists. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/peptides-restrictions-ease-fda-panel-recommend-bpc-157-scientists-rcna588879
[4] List of bulk drug substances that can be used to compound drug products in accordance with section 503A of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, 84 Fed. Reg. 4696 (February 19, 2019), codified at 21 C.F.R. § 216.23. No subsequent amendment as of August 2026.
[5] Rogol, A. D., Laffel, L. M., Bode, B., & Sperling, M. A. (2023). Celebration of a century of insulin therapy in children with type 1 diabetes. Archives of Disease in Childhood, 108(1), 3-10. https://doi.org/10.1136/archdischild-2022-323975
[6] Definitions, 21 C.F.R. § 600.3(h)(6).
[7] Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009, 42 U.S.C. § 262(k)(7); Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984, 21 U.S.C. § 355(j)(5)(F)(ii); Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act § 503A, 21 U.S.C. § 353a.
[8] Coskun, T., Sloop, K. W., Loghin, C., Alsina-Fernandez, J., Urva, S., Bokvist, K. B., Cui, X., Briere, D. A., Cabrera, O., Roell, W. C., Kuchibhotla, U., Moyers, J. S., Benson, C. T., Gimeno, R. E., D’Alessio, D. A., & Haupt, A. (2018). LY3298176, a novel dual GIP and GLP-1 receptor agonist for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus: From discovery to clinical proof of concept. Molecular Metabolism, 18, 3-14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.molmet.2018.09.009
[9] Huberman, A. D. (Host). (2026, June 1). Peptides: The science, uses & safety | Dr. Abud Bakri [Audio podcast episode]. In Huberman Lab. Quotations at approximately 0:00:29, 0:21:12, 0:34:15, 2:30:20 and 2:37:50.
[10] Józwiak, M., Bauer, M., Kamysz, W., & Kleczkowska, P. (2025). Multifunctionality and possible medical application of the BPC 157 peptide: Literature and patent review. Pharmaceuticals, 18(2), 185. https://doi.org/10.3390/ph18020185
[11] Talpos, S. (2026, May 29). A peptide, a secretive scientist, and a debate over evidence. Undark Magazine. https://undark.org/2026/05/29/stress-test-bpc-157-history/ (Co-published by STAT News, June 1, 2026.)
[12] Józwiak, M., Bauer, M., Kamysz, W., & Kleczkowska, P. (2025). Reply to Sikiric et al. Comment on “Józwiak et al. Multifunctionality and possible medical application of the BPC 157 peptide: Literature and patent review.” Pharmaceuticals, 18(10), 1451. https://doi.org/10.3390/ph18101451
[13] Vasireddi, N., Hahamyan, H., Salata, M. J., Karns, M., Calcei, J. G., Voos, J. E., & Apostolakos, J. M. (2025). Emerging use of BPC-157 in orthopaedic sports medicine: A systematic review. HSS Journal, 21(4), 485-495. https://doi.org/10.1177/15563316251355551
[14] Lee, E., & Padgett, B. (2021). Intra-articular injection of BPC 157 for multiple types of knee pain. Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, 27(4), 8-13.
[15] Lee, E., & Burgess, K. (2025). Safety of intravenous infusion of BPC157 in humans: A pilot study. Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, 31(5), 20-24.
[16] Huberman, A. D. (Host). (2024, April 1). Benefits & risks of peptide therapeutics for physical & mental health [Audio podcast episode]. In Huberman Lab. https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/benefits-risks-of-peptide-therapeutics-for-physical-mental-health
[17] U.S. National Library of Medicine. (2026). ClinicalTrials.gov records NCT07437547, NCT07487363, NCT07481734 and NCT07437560, first posted February-March 2026. Retrieved August 4, 2026.
[18] Ashraf, A. R., Mackey, T. K., Vida, R. G., Kulcsár, G., Schmidt, J., Balázs, O., Domián, B. M., Li, J., Csákó, I., & Fittler, A. (2024). Multifactor quality and safety analysis of semaglutide products sold by online sellers without a prescription: Market surveillance, content analysis, and product purchase evaluation study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 26, e65440. https://doi.org/10.2196/65440
[19] Sosne, G., Kleinman, H. K., Springs, C., Gross, R. H., Sung, J., & Kang, S. (2023). 0.1% RGN-259 (thymosin β4) ophthalmic solution promotes healing and improves comfort in neurotrophic keratopathy patients in a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-masked Phase III clinical trial. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 24(1), 554. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms24010554 (Primary endpoint not met, p=0.0656; funded by ReGenTree, with authors employed by the sponsor or its parent.)
[20] Nelson, M. E., Bryant, S. M., & Aks, S. E. (2012). Melanotan II injection resulting in systemic toxicity and rhabdomyolysis. Clinical Toxicology, 50(10), 1169-1173. https://doi.org/10.3109/15563650.2012.740637
[21] Peters, B., Hadimeri, H., Wahlberg, R., & Afghahi, H. (2020). Melanotan II: A possible cause of renal infarction. CEN Case Reports, 9(2), 159-161. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13730-020-00446-0
[22] Dreyer, B. A., Amer, T., & Fraser, M. (2019). Melanotan-induced priapism: A hard-earned tan. BMJ Case Reports, 12(2), e227644. https://doi.org/10.1136/bcr-2018-227644
[23] Reid, C., Fitzgerald, T., Fabre, A., & Kirby, B. (2013). Atypical melanocytic naevi following melanotan injection. Irish Medical Journal, 106(5), 148-149.
[24] World Anti-Doping Agency. (2026). The 2026 prohibited list. BPC-157 under S0 (non-approved substances); thymosin beta-4 and its derivatives, including TB-500, under S2.3 (growth factors); MOTS-c under S4.4 (AMPK activators, metabolic modulators). All prohibited at all times.
[25] Choules, M. P., Bisson, J., Simmler, C., McAlpine, J. B., Giancaspro, G., Bzhelyansky, A., Niemitz, M., & Pauli, G. F. (2020). NMR reveals an undeclared constituent in custom synthetic peptides. Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis, 178, 112915. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpba.2019.112915