WHY DESPERATE MIDLIFERS ARE INJECTING GREY-MARKET PEPTIDES FOR JOINT PAIN
They’ve been hailed as the latest health cure-all, notching up celebrity fans from Jennifer Aniston to Gwyneth Paltrow and LeAnn Rimes. Now peptides – short-chain amino acids that occur naturally in the body – are being touted as a potential treatment for injuries from back pain to torn ligaments. Where physio and cryotherapy might have failed, proponents insist, injectable peptides provide desperately needed relief.
Popularised by longevity influencers, gym bros and the advent of GLP-1 weight loss medication (the P stands for peptides), the peptide therapeutics market is slated to grow from £31bn in 2023 to £51bn by 2028. The biggest buzz is around BPC-157, a synthetic copy of a protein found in gastric juice, which is purported to improve musculoskeletal injuries, and TB-500 (based on Thymosin Beta-4, another naturally occurring protein), said to aid tissue repair and reduce inflammation. Injecting the two together is known as the “Wolverine stack”, so named for the regenerative abilities of Wolverine, Marvel Comics’ lupine hero.
Neither BPC-157 nor TB-500 is approved for medicinal use in the United Kingdom or United States, though, like vitamins and herbal remedies, they can be sold as “food supplements” provided they aren’t marketed with health claims attached. But that hasn’t stopped a booming grey market filled with products promising to foster angiogenesis – the growth of new blood vessels.
BPC-157 has been shown to enhance the healing process of muscles, tendons, ligaments and potentially even nerves in animal trials, explains Prof Adam Taylor, the director of the Clinical Anatomy Learning Centre at the Lancaster University. “But we don’t have the data to support that function in human models.”
A last resort for chronic pain
For those who believe their pain has been transformed by peptides, however, clinical trials matter little. Personal trainer Rojer White, 65, spent almost four years in agony with his shoulder, during which time “I couldn’t switch my lights off; my left arm almost became useless. I just couldn’t use it for anything – I was always in pain,” he recalls.
He eventually went for a scan, which showed that the cartilage in his rotator cuff had all but gone due to wear and tear. Doctors told him that his “options were to have a shoulder replacement or just endure the pain,” adding that if he did want surgery, he would only be granted it when in a “really, really bad” state. “I said, ‘If I do the surgery, will it make [my shoulder] better?’ They said, ‘No, you still won’t be able to use it, but you won’t be in pain.’”
Dismayed, White turned to peptides, which he had first heard about at his London gym. “I was really sceptical about it, because there’s not much paperwork on it – I didn’t know what it was. But when the only other option was to have a shoulder replacement, I thought I might as well try it because I had nothing to lose.”
White purchased the peptides through a compounding pharmacy he found by asking around at his gym, taking around a quarter of the recommended dose out of caution. Following his first injection, “I don’t know if it was psychosomatic, but I felt like I was feeling better within about five or six days.” He continued injecting every three days for three months, during which time he says his inflammation abated enough for him to be able to do rehab exercises on his shoulder for the first time in years.
He stopped injecting once his shoulder pain was relieved, though he has since used peptide injections for arthritis in his knee (which he says has worked, too). He is now considering returning to injections in his shoulder, which he says is at around 75 per cent of its former capability, to see if he can restore it to its pre-injured state.
Maria Ensabella has also found injecting BPC-157 transformative. The 53-year-old had tried physiotherapy and saunas for persistent pain in her thigh caused by exercise, “and it just wasn’t getting results. I won’t stop training, so I tried injecting BPC-157 directly into the area, and there’s been a big improvement.” Having seen a change after just five days, Ensabella has become so convinced of its benefits that she is due to begin offering peptide injectables at her clinic, LondonCryo, within the next month.
Regulatory pushback on peptides
Not everyone is so gung ho. The World Anti-Doping Agency has banned the use of peptides among athletes, while in the UK, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has ruled that clinics cannot make medicinal claims for peptide treatments (which typically cost around £180 per month). A Guardian investigation recently alleged that a number of UK clinics were making health-related promises about their peptide offerings, prompting the MHRA to say that it “will take action against clinics which are identified as breaching the legal requirements”.
Over in the United States – the main source of information for many UK peptide users – the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has banned 14 peptides, including BPC-157, on the grounds that they could not be confirmed as safe or effective and were being marketed with unproven claims. Yet last month, Robert F Kennedy Jr told Joe Rogan’s podcast that he is pushing for the ban to be overturned, having used peptides for his own injuries “with really good effect”. The conversation – and the requisite groundswell in unverified chatter online – has led to accusations that the promises of peptides are based on “100 per cent bro science”.
This is of particular concern given that the regulatory vacuum means injectors purchasing vials online have no way of knowing what is actually in them. “They are not the same as the therapeutic-grade chemicals in medicines, vaccines – all the things that are tried and tested to put into our body,” Prof Taylor explains. This lack of human clinical data also means that the ways in which synthetic peptides may interact with other conditions or medication is unknown. In July, two women at an anti-ageing festival were hospitalised following peptide injections (the exact types involved are unknown), experiencing breathing problems, swollen tongues and elevated heart rates as a result.
Promise outpaces proof
Dr Mark Mikhail, co-founder of private healthcare consultancy 3 Peaks Health, believes that these injections can hasten recovery time for those with soft tissue injuries by up to 35 per cent, but urges those considering peptide stacks to look at peptide bioregulators first, “which no one really knows about. They’re capsules, and because they’re shorter chains of amino acids they can tolerate the gut a bit better; they don’t get broken down quite so easily.” Bioregulators are thought to be anti-ageing, working on long-term cell health, whereas peptides are generally more for acute repair. There is even less data on bioregulators than peptide jabs, though a 2009 rodent study found that “long-term treatment with some peptide preparations increased mean life span by 20-40 per cent, slow[ed] down age-related changes in the biomarkers of ageing,” and suppressed the development of tumours.
For those dealing with creaky knees or even arthritis, Dr Mikhail recommends peptide bioregulators such as cartalax and sigumir (both are sold as food supplements), which “are synthetic and they can be really effective for joints.” But before considering injections or supplements, it is vital to consider how your diet, movement and sleep are affecting your health, “and really try to hone that, because just throwing peptides at stuff [joint pain] isn’t going to do much to help.”
While he is optimistic about the potential future of peptides for healing soft tissue injuries, the recent swell of interest has created “a pretty cowboy-type space,” Mikhail says. “People are getting a bit willy-nilly with it.” Until rigorous human studies are carried out, peptides can scarcely be considered more than a shot in the dark.
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