What peptides do lifters take?

The census: what lifters report taking, with the legal column and the evidence column that the locker room leaves off

What peptides do lifters take is a question that the honest page answers as a census rather than a recommendation, because the question is descriptive, it asks what people take, and because the word peptides as lifters use it covers six things that have almost nothing in common except a chemistry lesson, three of them food supplements with trials and claims and three of them unlicensed chemicals bought from websites, and the locker room's list runs them together without the two columns that separate them, the legal status of each and where its evidence comes from. The census, with those columns added, runs as follows. Collagen peptides are the first entry and the one this site is about: hydrolysed collagen in a powder or capsule, a food supplement lawful to sell and buy, with randomised trials in skin at 2.5 to 10g, joints at around 10g and tendons at 15g before loading, no muscle-mass claim and no muscle-mass trial that survives a protein control, since collagen lacks the leucine that muscle protein synthesis runs on, and a legitimate place in a lifter's week beside the tendon loading session at the protocol dose, which the three shelves on the peptides for muscle growth page sort out. Whey and the other protein powders marketed with the word peptides, hydrolysed whey, peptide blends, bioactive peptides, are the second entry: complete proteins, food supplements, holding the register's sentences that protein contributes to a growth in muscle mass and the maintenance of muscle mass, and they are what most lifters mean by their protein, with the word peptides on the tub being marketing for a hydrolysis step that changes the speed of digestion and little else. Creatine is the third entry and is not a peptide at all, being made in the body from three amino acids, arginine, glycine and methionine, but not as a chain of them, and lifters list it under peptides because the forums do; it is a food supplement with the strongest performance claim on the aisle, that 3g a day increases physical performance in successive bursts of short-term high-intensity exercise, and the deepest and longest safety record of any sports supplement. Those three are the legal half of the census, and every one of them has trials, claims and a label a pharmacist can read. The healing peptide sold online as BPC-157 is the fourth entry, and the first of the other half: a synthetic fragment of a stomach protein, sold as a research chemical labelled not for human consumption or for research use only, which means that the seller is disclaiming what the buyer is doing, prohibited by the World Anti-Doping Code, with no human randomised trial for any indication, no licensed medicine containing it anywhere, and a testimonial base built entirely on rodent studies in which it accelerated healing in Achilles transection, muscle crush and ligament injury models, the pyramid with a hole where the human evidence should be on the BPC-157 page. The growth hormone secretagogues are the fifth entry, ipamorelin, CJC-1295, the GHRP family and their relatives, compounds that make the pituitary release growth hormone, unlicensed as medicines, prohibited in sport, with the pituitary's own feedback loops as the biological cost and the unknown content of unregulated vials as the practical one. And the prescription peptides are the sixth: insulin and growth hormone, licensed medicines that people with diabetes and growth hormone deficiency depend on, misused by some lifters outside prescription at a risk that for insulin is measured in hypoglycaemic deaths, and prohibited in sport.

The two halves of the census, why this page describes no dose for the second half, what a lifter is deciding, and the legal entry on its true terms

The census has two halves, and the honest page draws the line between them because the locker room does not. The first half, collagen peptides, protein powders and creatine, are food supplements: lawful to sell and buy at any shop, with randomised trials in people, authorised claims or an honest absence of them, labels that state what is inside, third-party assays available for the metals and the contaminants, and a safety record measured in decades for creatine and protein and in year-long trials and centuries of gelatin for collagen; a lifter taking all three is taking what the evidence supports, at doses the trials used, from sources a pharmacist can check, and the legal question is settled before it is asked. The second half, the healing peptide, the secretagogues and the misused prescription peptides, share three properties that the first half lacks. They are unlicensed for the use the lifter is making of them, which in the United Kingdom means that supplying them for human use falls under medicines law and that the buyer has no idea what is in the vial, since independent testing of research peptides has found wrong doses, wrong compounds and contamination. They are prohibited by the anti-doping code, so that a tested athlete who takes them is cheating and an untested lifter is taking something the sport's own body judged unsafe or unfair or both. And their evidence is rodents and forums: no human randomised trial for the healing peptide, a thin and mostly short-term literature for the secretagogues in the conditions they were studied for, and for insulin and growth hormone a licensed evidence base in the diseases they treat that says nothing about a healthy lifter injecting them. This page describes no dose, timing, cycle or protocol for anything in the second half, and not because the information is hard to find, since the forums are full of it, but because the honest page does not hand a reader a protocol for an unlicensed injectable with no human safety data, and a reader who wants one has already left the territory the evidence covers; legal by door, food supplement, prescription, research chemical, is set out on the are peptides legal page. What a lifter is deciding, when they ask what peptides lifters take, is which half of the census to live in, and the honest page puts the decision plainly: the first half gives the gains the evidence supports, protein's muscle-mass claim, creatine's performance claim and collagen's tendon adjunct, at known doses from checkable sources with no legal, sporting or medical exposure; the second half gives rodent results, forum testimony and an unknown liquid in exchange for exposure on all three fronts, and the tendon that a lifter hopes the healing peptide will fix is fixed, in the human evidence, by the loading programme that the first half supports. The legal entry at habit scale is the worked example, stated on its true terms: two capsules, 1200mg hydrolysed type 1 marine collagen with 12mg vitamin C at 15% of its reference value plus zinc, 120 for £16.99 at 28p a day, lab tested and UK made, below the 15g protocol dose, carrying vitamin C's collagen formation sentence for cartilage and bones and no muscle or tendon claim, a food supplement from the first half of the census with its label open. What peptides do lifters take: three legal food supplements with trials and claims, and three unlicensed, prohibited chemicals evidenced by rodents and forums, and the word peptides is what lets the second half borrow the first half's respectability.

What to check on the label