We’re launching a new weekly segment that takes a closer look at trending health topics on social media — and breaks them down for you.
This week, we’re taking a look at a trend that’s currently all over TikTok and social media: injecting peptides. People report using them for gains in the gym, improved skin appearance and mental focus. We found more than 250,000 videos tagged #peptide on TikTok when we were studying this topic earlier this week.
So, KBIA's Rebecca Smith and Najifa Farhat looked into this issue to find out more.
Have you seen or heard something online that’s left you puzzled? Or something you want to know more about? If so, give us a call or shoot us an email at news@kbia.org.
Rebecca: So, KBIA’s Najifa Farhat looked into the issue. Najifa — what’d you find? What’s a peptide in the first place? And what do they actually do?
Najifa: Peptides are essentially small building blocks of proteins that signal different processes in our body. They can tell our cells how to function — like prompting the skin to produce more collagen or helping regulate blood sugar.
I spoke with Dr. Regina DePietro, a family medicine physician with MU Health Care, who says the “peptides” people are talking about on social media are often perceived very differently from how they actually work.
Dr. DePietro: “Peptide can mean a variety of things. like insulin is a peptide. The GLP-1 weight loss medications are peptides. There's a lot of unregulated peptides being marketed through online vendors and wellness spas. Some of them are growth hormone related peptides.There are other ones that have kind of complicated names that target other things like healing and tissue repair. So I think the term is being used in media to mean a small protein that you take to affect some sort of wellness part of your health.”
Rebecca: Interesting. So it sounds like there’s some real uses for peptides in health and healthcare, but doctors and medical professionals still seem to be concerned about the peptide conversation online. Why is that?
Najifa: Absolutely. Peptides used for obesity treatment — like GLP-1 medications such as Ozempic — are scientifically tested and approved by the FDA, but the ones that are flooding on social media are often created in labs for research purposes and are marketed as wellness products which puts them in the supplement category. And supplements aren’t regulated by the FDA in the same way medications are. Here’s Dr. De Pietro again.
Dr. DePietro: There was a case where I think 450 vials of what was labeled as terzepatide was actually testosterone. And so in that case, you are getting the completely wrong medication. In other cases, the dosing can be off. So when the medication is made in a factory, that's regulated, they're pretty standardized about what dose you're getting when you inject a medication. When they're not, you may be getting a super high dose or a very low dose.”
Rebecca: Geez. Okay, well people are still using them — especially young people — so, are there any side effects of injecting peptides into your body that they should be aware of?
Najifa: These peptides are synthetic chemical products, right? Which primarily interact with our hormones. If something goes wrong, the effects can range from minor to serious — especially for people who already have chronic health conditions. Dr. DePietro says if you find a medication online that doesn’t require a doctor’s approval — that should be a red flag.
Dr. DePietro: So anytime you take a medication, it goes through your liver, which I like to call like the coffee filter of your body. And so when you have things that go through your liver, that we don't know exactly what they are, they can cause potentially bad things to happen in your liver and other parts of your body.
Rebecca: Well Najifa, thanks so much for looking into this!
