Peptides

Oral versus injectable, local versus systemic, short cycle versus long — BPC-157 has some of the most elaborate community conventions of any peptide, built almost entirely on animal data and repetition rather than human trials.

The peptide world's most familiar growth-hormone pairing runs on a specific logic: two receptors, complementary signaling, and a nightly ritual built largely outside controlled trials.

Intermittent schedules, exercise timing, widely divergent dose conventions, and the emerging human trial that is beginning to test what the community has been improvising for years.

Elamipretide is now an approved drug for one rare disease at a specific dose — yet the longevity community researches it at very different, usually lower amounts. The gap between the label and the practice is the story.

Tesamorelin is unusual: an FDA-approved drug with a defined regimen and real trial data, used by the community for a different, off-label goal. Comparing the label with the practice is where this one gets interesting.

They are both mitochondrial peptides, and they are almost opposites — one a natural signal that tells cells to adapt, the other a synthetic molecule that physically stabilizes the membrane. Comparing them is the clearest way to see how many angles mitochondrial medicine really has.

NAD+ sits at the center of how cells make energy and repair themselves, and it appears to fall with age. That has made raising it one of the most pursued ideas in longevity — and one of the most instructive tests of how biology translates from mice to people.

Most mitochondrial strategies work on signaling or fuel. SS-31 does something more structural — it binds the lipid that holds the energy machinery together. In 2025 it became the first mitochondria-targeted drug the FDA has ever approved.

By engaging three metabolic receptors at once — GLP-1, GIP, and glucagon — retatrutide represents a genuinely new idea in metabolic pharmacology. Here is what triple agonism means, and what the human data shows so far.

They are often mentioned in one breath, but the peptides that raise growth hormone work through genuinely different mechanisms — and the differences matter. A guide to the growth hormone axis and the molecules that act on it.

A naturally occurring copper-binding peptide that researchers have studied for fifty years — and whose biology spans an unusually broad range of processes in skin and tissue repair.

A tiny peptide encoded inside the mitochondria may help explain how our cells adapt to exercise and metabolic stress — and it is opening a fascinating window into the biology of aging.

A peptide with an unusually broad preclinical literature and a remarkable breadth of healing signals across tissues — and a human research chapter that is just beginning.

Three different numbers describe what is in a vial, and each answers a different question. Knowing what each one means makes you fluent in the language of a Certificate of Analysis.

A growth-hormone-releasing peptide backed by large randomized trials and an FDA approval — a look at what a fully developed body of human peptide evidence can look like.