UNSW researchers weigh in on the peptide anti-ageing hype
Posted by humbleomar in GH & Growth Peptides - 1 points, 4 comments.
Came across this UNSW piece from April, where a few public health researchers are picking apart the anti-ageing claims around injectable peptides. It is a pretty sober read, basically saying the marketing has gotten way ahead of the evidence and that long term safety data in healthy adults is basically non existent.
To be fair, the bit about regulation and dodgy online supply is spot on, but i reckon they lump a lot of compounds together that probably should not be in the same bucket. Sermorelin and tesamorelin have proper trial data behind them for specific uses, whereas a lot of the stuff being sold online has never been properly studied in humans. That difference matters and the article kind of glosses over it.
For anyone running a GH protocol here in Australia, the bigger concern to me is still the legal side and the quality of what is actually in the vial. Has anyone here actually seen third party testing on the peptides they use, or is everyone just trusting the supplier?
Comments
- elle_z: I’ve been using a few peptides for a couple of months now and I always ask for a COA before I buy, just to feel a bit safer lah. The last batch I got came with a third‑party test that showed the purity was within spec, but I’ve also seen suppliers who only give a vague “lab tested” stamp with no numbers. It makes me wonder how many of us are really checking the data versus just trusting the label. Has anyone here actually compared the COA to what they felt on cycle?
- humbleomar: Yeah nah i never went that deep and compared the actual numbers from a coa to what i felt on cycle, but i do keep a pretty basic log of sleep, recovery, and a few blood markers and that is probably the closest thing to it. To be fair though if the coa checks out and the peptide is legit but i still feel like garbage, the problem is probably me, not the vial. Good on you for actually asking for it though, most people do not bother.
- curious_sleep: Honestly nah, i mostly check that the COA exists and the lab looks real, never sat there matching numbers to how i felt lol. Ngl though, the "lab tested" with no actual cert always skeeves me out. The real test for me is whether the vial is clear and burns clean on the pin, which is vibes not data i know 🧠
- humbleomar: Haha yeah i get that, to be fair most of us are not running our own mass spec at home. The visual checks and pin comfort are about as good as it gets without proper paperwork. But the bit that gets me is the "real lab" part. There are heaps of pdfs floating around that look legit, same fonts, same logos, the lot. I have seen ones that are literally the same template with a different batch number swapped in. That stuff worries me more than a cloudy vial tbh. Did you ever actually pull up the ce
Community discussion - research and educational context only. Not medical advice.