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Dr. Nicole Safire (0:34)

It's Dr. Nicole Safire from Wellness and Mass. One of the most common challenges I see is that people want to eat healthier, but they don't always know what to cook. That's where Snapshot Recipes becomes incredibly useful. It gives you multiple ways to instantly create a meal. You can snap a photo of the ingredients you have, upload a meal photo that you want to recreate, or simply type in what you're craving. Every recipe includes step by step instructions and complete nutrition facts. It removes the guesswork and makes consistency easier. Download Snapshot recipes today and get your first month free. Hi, this is Dr. Nicole Safire from Wellness on Mass. Are you struggling to see up close? Make it visible with Viz. VIZ is a once daily prescription eye drop to treat blurry near vision for up to 10 hours. The most common side effects that may be experienced while using viz eye irritation, temporary dim or dark vision, headaches and eye redness. Talk to an eye doctor to learn if VIZ is right for you. Learn more@viz.com that's V I Z Z.com

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Dr. Nicole Safire (2:15)

Welcome to wellness unmass. I'm Dr. Nicole Safire and today we're going to talk about peptides. Mainly because everyone keeps asking me about them and I don't really know much about them, so decided to do a little research and so spread some knowledge because if you haven't noticed, peptides are becoming quite popular. There's a quiet revolution happening in medicine right now and it's not coming from big pharma it's coming from these peptide clinics and telehealth startups and wellness and longevity communities. So people are using peptides for longevity, muscle repair, fat loss, brain health. So the problem is some people are just taking a whole bunch of random peptides, three, four, even five at a time, with really no data whatsoever that they're beneficial when used together and if there is or is not any harm. So let's go just a little bit deeper. Which peptides are being used, what do they claim to do, what data exists and what should make us pause before trying some of these peptides. So let's start out with what peptides are. Peptides are short chains of amino acids that act like little biologic messengers in our body. They bind receptors and then they trigger specific physiologic responses in our body. They increase growth hormone, stimulate collagen, reduce inflammation, improve mitochondrial function and alter appetite signaling. So think of them as like targeted biologic nudges. Instead of like taking a medication to treat a disease, this is taking something to help promote natural occurrences in the body. That's why they're attractive. Most peptide use falls into really three categories. You know, number one, the longevity slash, anti aging peptides. Number two, the one for you see athletes talking about muscle repair and injury recovery peptides after, you know, an injury during a game or a practice or whatever it is, and then the last one being metabolic or the ones that help you lose weight and maintain your blood sugar. So let's talk about them. I bet you didn't realize this, but you already know a little bit about peptides, because some peptides we've been talking about for over a century, like insulin. Insulin is a peptide. A lot of people think of it as a hormone, but it is a peptide and it helps regulate your blood sugar. What's another peptide that you've heard a lot about recently? GLP1 medications like the Ozempic and the Wegovy and all of that, that's also a peptide. At this point, there is very strong, robust data on those demonstrating benefits, but also risks to taking those medications. What I want to focus on today are some of the lesser talked about peptides, the majority of which are not approved by the FDA and that are kind of making their way onto social media platforms and with influencers talking a lot about them. So these are the ones that are dominating these conversations. The Epitalin. This peptide is marketed as a telomerase activator and that is it essentially that it lengthens telomeres, and telomeres are essentially the Protective caps on DNA that are associated with aging. So if you are protecting those caps, then the theory is that you are stopping aging or slowing it down. Now, in animal studies, when they were given this peptide, it did increase the lifespan in rodents and it improved their immune funct and it reduced oxidative stress. Those are all good things. And a very, very small but human study out of Russia showed that the use of this peptide improves sleep and reduced mortality in elderly people. And they suggested it may have caused some telomere stabilization, you know, those protective caps on the DNA. But it was not conclusive whatsoever. And it was very small study, not randomized. This is not FDA approved. There's no long term safety data. There's really no long term benefit data either. But it's still being widely used in longevity clinics based off of a theory. Now the next one I want to Talk about is MOTs C M O T S C. Now this one is interesting. MOT C is a mitochondrial derived peptide, meaning it targets cellular energy. Now the claims with this one is it improves metabol flexibility, enhances insulin sensitivity. So your own insulin, your body's producing it, makes your body more sensitive to it. It also improves exercise performance and it can slow aging pathways. And this is demonstrated in mouse data. And in the mouse data it showed improved endurance, reduced obesity, improves insulin sensitivity, and it increased lifespan markers. So that's interesting. And a small human study showed improved exercise capacity and glucose metabolism, but again, very, very small sample sizes. But this is also one of the most commonly used longevity peptides right now. Another one, Thymosin Alpha 1. This is used in many parts of the world actually for immune modulation for viral infection, cancer adjunct therapy. Longevity clinics are using it for immune resilience, inflammation reduction and recovery. Are some data for this peptide that shows improved immune cell function, reduced infection rates in high risk populations, and possible benefit in sepsis and cancer adjunct therapy. Now, for me, someone who works in cancer care, this has me very excited because we can't just depend on antibiotics, antivirals alone. We want to make sure that we're doing something to boost the natural immune system. And there's some data showing that this peptide might actually do it. It actually has more clinical credibility than many of the others. Does it still need more human data? Yeah, of course it does. So if you have someone who is sick or is at risk for infections, yeah, absolutely. Why not consider this? I would love to see more human data and I certainly would like it to get FDA approved because that's how you get even more safety checks. When something is FDA approved, it's not there yet. But for me, this one definitely holds some promise. And it's used in over 35 countries, specifically in patients who have hepatitis infection to help boost the immune system. So I don't know. I like that one. Thymosin Alpha A. Sounds promising to me. Now, what about muscle repair and injury peptides? You know, myself, I've had many, many orthopedic surgeries. And as we age, a lot of people are starting to suffer from degenerative changes. We tend to get a little bit more injured as we try to play sports as we get older. So I have a lot of friends who, you know, asked me about good amount. So these are the most common ones that are used like in athletes, BPC157. And this is might be the most talked about peptide right now because again, you're starting to hear about it from the athletes. It's derived from a gastric, you know, coming from the stomach, a protein that comes from the stomach. Now the claims are it can help promote tendon healing, ligament repair, muscle recovery, anti inflammatory effects and also gut repair. That's an interesting one. Animal studies have shown that it does accelerate tendon healing, improve ligament strength, reduce muscle damage and improved blood vessel growth in areas of injury. Now, but here's the key. There's almost no robust human trials on this, really only based on animal studies and case reports and just anecdotes from athletes. Yet it's widely being injected for rotator cuff injuries, ACL recovery. I've had both of those tennis elbow, Achilles tendon injuries. So does it work? I don't know. Maybe. I'd love to see a study that showed just injecting peptide, randomized control. Some people can't really randomize it, but some people will go and have surgery and some people will just have the peptides and then we see, you know, if they have the same amount of rehab afterwards. We see, you know, based on imaging and just, you know, function how well it does. Or maybe the peptides are used in conjunction with surgery. Do you have better outcomes if you're also injecting peptides after surgery to help with that repair? I don't know. These, we don't really have the answers to these. It sounds if you have animal studies showing that it can help with injury repair, then that seems like a great place to start. Not stop there. Let's now move on to the human trials to show that we're actually having a benefit here and we're not doing something that in 1020 years is going to have a negative effect on that joint. We don't really know. And this is a very expensive industry. If something doesn't really work, we don't want people spending their money on it. TB 500, it's another one. It's often stacked with the one we just Talked about, the BPC 157 people are sending to do it together because it's also supposed to stimulate tissue repair and reduce inflammation. Heavily used in athletes, bodybuilders, orthopedic recovery. Big concern with these ones though, mind you, very limited studies. But of the limited study, the cell growth stimulation, it actually is a concern that there's a theoretical cancer risk. So we have no knowledge of the long term effects here. Obviously the more cells that are created, the higher the cellular turnover. That's when rogue cells can happen and that's when cancer can form. So yeah, we want to stimulate new cell growth when we are healing and in recovery. But you want to be careful, you don't want to overstimulate cell growth because that can lead to cancer. I wish we had a study showing whether or not these peptides that everyone's injecting actually done it. Now, IGF1, LR3, this one's even more aggressive. The mechanism is it stimulates insulin like growth factor which promotes muscle hypertrophy or swelling or making muscles bigger and it increases other cell activations. People use it for muscle gain, recovery from injury and increase their strength. Big concerns with this one is it can cause hypoglycemia because it can stimulate insulin so it can drop your blood sugar. It can also lead to organ overgrowth. So there's actually a congenital condition where you have insulin like growth factor, you have too much of it and organomegaly or too large of organs is one of the side effects. And this can cause cancer signaling pathways to also activate. Now this one actually crosses the boundary into the whole performance enhancing drug territory. So if you're considering taking this and you have to be drug screened or tested or anything like that, you want to be careful with this one. Now another one that you've heard of, I am certain, GLP1 medications. Yes, these are peptides, they've changed everything. Semiglutide, tirzepatide, retrotrutide or something like that, that's still under investigation. Now these have large randomized control trials, clear weight loss benefit data, cardiovascular outcome data showing improves your cardiac risk profile. They also have a lot of safety studies. They don't have a lot of long term safety studies. But you know, we're getting there. Now. This is what evidence based peptides look like, right? We have these large studies and then they went through FDA approval and now people are using them. That's not what's happening with these other peptides that we just talked about. So three things have happened. The way that I see it, the GLP1 success has legitimized peptides as it should. Longevity medicine therefore kind of jumped on this and exploded. And social media is normalizing self injection of these random peptides. And now peptides are being marketed as natural targeted anti aging, performance enhancing and anything else that you know sounds buzzworthy. And many people are just using this before really much data exists. It's all based on a hypothesis, like a maybe it may do something, it may cause cancer or have other huge risks, but we don't know. And also some big issues are there's no standard dosing because they haven't done the studies. So whether you do a huge dose or a small dose, you know, what is the correct dose. And anybody who tells you that they know for certain what it is, they don't know. We also don't know, you know, the online community. Compounding variability, what you get from one pharmacy is probably different than from another. There's a high risk of contamination. Could it be disrupting our hormones? Maybe. Probably. There's an unknown cancer risk and an unknown how our immune system's going to respond. Obviously a risk is an allergic reaction, but it goes beyond that. Does some of these peptides incite an autoimmune response? Could it potentially start new autoimmune diseases or flare existing autoimmune diseases? I mean, the reality is we just don't know. As promising as some of these peptides may sound, we have to remember that new does not automatically mean safe and popular. Certainly doesn't mean that it's scientifically proven. Many of these compounds are being marketed well ahead of any robust clinical data, often bypassing standards that we rely on to protect our health. When something is injected, ingested, or used to alter our own body's physiology, it deserves the same level of scrutiny we would expect from any other medical treatment. Cutting corners in the name of optimization can come at a real cost. So I don't know. At the end of the day, wellness should never outpace evidence. It's worth asking, are we truly improving our health or are we just chasing the illusion of a shortcut? Sustainable health still comes back to fundamentals. You know, good nutrition, exercising our body, keeping it moving, making sure we're getting good quality sleep and just individualized medical care that's grounded in science. So before jumping on the latest trend, I encourage everyone to just take a step back, make sure you're asking questions and make sure the choices you're making today won't become regrets of tomorrow. And with some of these trendy treatments, we just don't know yet. So I say, you know, look into peptides and some of these other things. You know, take them with some caution. And by the way, that includes the GLP1s. Lot of robust evidence on GLP1s, which is why they're FDA approved. But we lack significant long term data. So you know, try to get back to the basics. Making sure that you are eating the best you can, exercising the best you can, talking to your doctor about your individualized needs. If you want to try peptides, try it, but make sure you're doing it under the guide of a doctor, a reputable place, and certainly don't forego standard recommendations in the quest for wellness. I'm Dr. Nicole Safire. Thank you so much for listening to Wellness on Mass. Be sure to listen to Wellness on Mass on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. It's Dr. Nicole Safire from Wellness and Mass. One of the most common challenges I see is that people want to eat healthier, but they don't always know what to cook. That's where Snapshot Recipes becomes incredibly useful. It gives you multiple ways to instantly create a meal. You can snap a photo of the ingredients you have, upload a meal photo that you want to recreate, or simply type in what you're craving. Every recipe includes step by step instructions and complete nutrition facts. It removes the guesswork and makes consistency easier. Download Snapshot Recipes today and get your first month free. Hi, this is Dr. Nicole Safire from Wellness on Mass. Are you struggling to see up close? Make it visible with viz. VIZ is a once daily prescription eye drop to treat blurry near vision for up to 10 hours. The most common side effects that may be experienced while using VIZ include eye irritation, temporary dim or dark vision, headaches and eye redness. Talk to an eye doctor to learn if VIZ is right for you. Learn more@viz.com that's V I Z Z.com