In 2025, two women were hospitalized in Las Vegas following peptide injections at an anti-aging conference. One required a ventilator.
The conference was not fringe. The attendees were not reckless. They were health-conscious adults. Exactly the demographic that longevity clinics, wellness influencers, and a rapidly expanding grey market now target with peptide therapies promising muscle preservation, faster recovery, sharper cognition, and extended healthspan.
I’ve been researching peptides for several months for this piece and for my broader study in longevity medicine. What I’ve found is that the field divides cleanly into two categories that the wellness industry has strong financial incentives to blur: peptides with genuine clinical evidence and regulatory approval, and compounds being injected into people at conferences that have never undergone rigorous human trials.
Your ability to distinguish between them may be more consequential than any training protocol or nutritional intervention you’ll consider. Here’s what the research shows.
Before highlighting the things you need to know, it is important to have a grounding in what peptides are, because the term encompasses an enormous range of substances with very different purposes.
Peptides are short chains of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Your body naturally produces thousands of them. They act as biological messengers, signalling cells to perform specific functions: produce growth hormone, reduce inflammation, repair tissue, regulate blood sugar, and modulate the immune response.
The therapeutic concept is straightforward: if the body’s natural peptide signalling declines with age, synthetic peptides might restore it.
The concept is scientifically legitimate. Several peptide-based medications are among the most significant pharmaceutical advances of the past decade. The controversy is not about whether peptides work. It is about which ones, for whom, under what conditions, and who is qualified to administer them.
1. Some peptides are among the most rigorously tested medicines available. Most longevity focused peptides are not.
The distinction the wellness industry consistently obscures is between FDA-approved peptides and the grey-market compounds promoted in the same conversation.
GLP-1 receptor agonists — semaglutide and tirzepatide, sold under brand names including Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro — are peptides. They have undergone large-scale randomized controlled trials demonstrating, for those taking these peptides, 15 to 20 percent body weight reduction, significant cardiovascular risk reduction, and emerging evidence of protection against dementia through anti-inflammatory mechanisms. They are prescribed according to established medical guidelines and have well-understood safety profiles and dosing regimens.
Other FDA-approved peptides treat osteoporosis, irritable bowel syndrome, cancer, and HIV. Sermorelin, which increases growth hormone and IGF-1 levels in older adults, has shown modest clinical improvements in lean muscle mass, skin thickness, and certain aspects of cognition in well-conducted studies — though improvements in sleep, physical performance, and overall well-being have been minimal or inconsistent.
Then there are the compounds that generate the loudest noise in longevity circles: BPC-157, TB-500, CJC-1295, Ipamorelin, and Epitalon. These peptides are generally promoted by clinics, wellness influencers, and the grey market. They are classified by the FDA as unapproved new drugs, lacking robust randomized controlled trials in humans. Most of what is known about their effects comes from animal studies, which have not consistently translated into human outcomes.
In Canada, Health Canada's Health Products and Food Branch plays a similar role here — and has similarly not approved BPC-157, TB-500, or other grey-market peptides sold through wellness clinics and online suppliers. The notable difference is that Canada has not experienced the same political pressure on peptide deregulation that the U.S. has seen under the current Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
A 2025 review in Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy, documenting the expanding landscape of peptide therapeutics, concluded that although the field has grown significantly, the gap between preclinical promise and clinical evidence remains substantial for many compounds. That gap is where most of the marketing occurs.
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2. The regulatory situation is more complicated — and more politicized — than most people know.
In 2023, the FDA added nearly 20 peptides to a list of substances that compounding pharmacies cannot legally use, citing documented safety concerns. Compounding pharmacies — facilities that prepare customized medications for individual patients — had become a primary distribution channel for these compounds, operating in a regulatory environment that made oversight difficult.
The FDA’s decision prompted immediate pushback. Lawsuits were filed. A coalition called Save Peptides warned followers that their “basic human rights to access alternative medical care” were being stripped away. The wellness industry framed a safety decision as a matter of freedom.
In 2026, under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who has described himself as a “big fan” of peptides and promised to “end the war at FDA against peptides” — the agency moved to reverse the 2023 decision.
Three former FDA officials with direct knowledge of the original ruling publicly criticized the reversal. Former acting FDA commissioner Janet Woodcock called it “a disruption of the societal pact we have had since 1962 that drugs will be studied to see if they work before they are marketed.”
Health Canada has not moved to reverse restrictions on compounded peptides, as the FDA was pressured to do in 2026. For Canada, the regulatory situation is slightly more stable — and arguably more protective — than in the US.
There has been little new science on these 19 peptides since the 2023 ban. The reversal is being driven by political pressure, not by clinical evidence. For adults in their sixties and seventies making healthcare decisions, this distinction matters.
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3. The safety risks are real, underreported, and particularly concerning for older adults.
The two women hospitalized in Las Vegas in 2025 are not outliers, but rather the visible end of a largely invisible problem: people receiving unapproved compounds of unknown purity, at unvalidated doses, administered by practitioners with widely varying qualifications, with no post-market safety surveillance because there is no approved market to monitor.
Paul Knoepfler, a cell biology professor at UC Davis who has written extensively on the science of anti-aging therapies, has raised specific concerns about long-term peptide use: the potential cancer risk — because some peptides stimulate cellular growth pathways that, in theory, could accelerate the growth of pre-existing cancerous cells — as well as kidney, liver, and organ damage from sustained exposure.
“There’s no recommended safe dose for these because they aren’t approved as drugs,” he has noted. “I’m concerned that what is commonly used now could be toxic at high doses, and we’ll only realize it years down the road.”
For older adults, the risks compound. Many people over 60 have chronic conditions and take multiple medications. The interaction profiles of unapproved peptides with common medications for hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cognitive health remain unstudied.
Assuming they are safe because they are ‘natural’ amino acid chains is the same reasoning that leads people to take dangerous doses of supplements sold in health food stores.
The FDA label on the approved growth hormone secretagogues — the closest regulated analogues to some popular grey-market peptides — warns of elevated IGF-1 levels, fluid retention, glucose intolerance, potential cancer risks, and unknown long-term cardiovascular effects. If the approved version carries these warnings, the unapproved version, operating without quality controls, carries those risks and more.
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4. If you compete in any regulated sport, several of these compounds will end your career.
This one is personal for me, and worth stating plainly.
BPC-157 is prohibited under the World Anti-Doping Agency Prohibited List as an unapproved substance in the S0 category — the broadest category of prohibition, covering substances not approved by any regulatory authority for human therapeutic use.
The US Anti-Doping Agency and the Department of Defence’s Operation Supplement Safety both prohibit BPC-157. WADA’s Prohibited List also bans growth hormone-releasing peptides and insulin-like growth factor analogues.
As a former competitive cyclist, I care about this directly. Gran Fondo events typically follow UCI or national federation rules that incorporate WADA standards. If you compete in masters cycling, triathlon, running, swimming, or any other sport with anti-doping provisions, you need to know which peptides are prohibited before anything enters your body — regardless of how it was promoted to you.
The ‘I didn’t know it was prohibited’ defence does not apply in anti-doping proceedings. Strict liability applies. The responsibility for what is in your body rests with you.
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5. The placebo effect is powerful, and the wellness industry knows how to use it.
This is the most uncomfortable finding in the research because it applies to people who are genuinely trying to improve their health and who report real improvements in how they feel.
Christopher Mendias, a rehabilitation expert who published research on peptides in late 2024, has made a point worth considering: for people who report that grey-market peptides have worked wonders, the placebo effect is a plausible explanation. “I have yet to find a grey-market peptide that is as safe and effective as an FDA-approved one,” he has said.
The placebo effect on pain reduction, perceived recovery, energy, and cognitive clarity is well-documented and genuinely powerful. People who pay significant sums for a peptide protocol administered by a credentialed-seeming practitioner in a clinical setting, believing they are receiving a cutting-edge longevity intervention, are primed for a strong placebo response. That response is real. The mechanism behind it is not what they think it is.
According to a 2025 review cited by BBC Science Focus, human studies of some of the most popular peptides amount to little more than asking people months after receiving injections whether their pain had subsided. That is not clinical evidence. It is anecdotal and gathered at a distance.
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Here is what the picture looks like in 2026.
Peptide science is a genuinely exciting field. GLP-1 drugs are transforming the treatment of obesity and diabetes and may prove to be longevity drugs in a broader sense, thanks to their anti-inflammatory properties.
Researchers believe there are almost certainly anti-aging peptides with real therapeutic potential waiting to be identified and rigorously tested. The underlying biology is compelling.
For adults in their sixties and seventies — who have chronic conditions, take medications, and have every reason to seek interventions that genuinely extend their healthspan — the cost of getting this wrong is not abstract. The women in Las Vegas learned that too late.
The interventions with the strongest evidence for healthy aging in this age group remain the same ones that don’t require a grey-market supplier, a compounding pharmacy, or an injection at a conference centre: resistance training, adequate protein, quality sleep, cardiovascular fitness, social connection, and blood pressure management. None of them are as exciting as a peptide injection, but all of them have decades of rigorous human evidence behind them.
This article is intended as research and education, not medical advice. If you are considering any peptide therapy, discuss it with a qualified physician who can review your full health history, current medications, and the specific compound being proposed.
Research & sources referenced in this piece
PRIMARY RESEARCH
Xiao, H. et al. (2025). Peptide-based drug development: expanding landscape of delivery platforms and therapeutic categories. Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy. Nature Publishing Group.
Sharma, K. et al. (2023). Status of peptide-based drug discovery. Drug Discovery Today. Elsevier.
Lee, S. & Padgett, D. (2021). BPC-157 clinical pilot: knee pain outcomes. Published clinical pilot data cited in Frontiers in Aging (2026).
Lee, S. & Burgess, R. (2025). Intravenous BPC-157 safety trial: cardiac and renal function. Small trial, n not specified. Cited in Frontiers in Aging (2026).
Goldstein, A. & Kleinman, H. (2015). TB-500 / Thymosin beta-4: actin regulation and anti-inflammatory mechanisms. Cited across the peptide pharmacology literature.
Mendias, C. (2024). Research on grey-market peptide efficacy. Published December 2024, institution not specified in sources reviewed.
REGULATORY & SAFETY
US Food and Drug Administration (2023). Addition of 19 peptides to list of substances prohibited for compounding. FDA.gov.
US Food and Drug Administration (2024). Import Alert 66-78 expansion: 12 additional unapproved peptides added. FDA.gov.
World Anti-Doping Agency (2025). Prohibited List. BPC-157 is classified as an S0 Unapproved Substance. wada-ama.org
US Anti-Doping Agency. BPC-157: Experimental Peptide Creates Risk for Athletes. usada.org
Operation Supplement Safety / US Department of Defence. Peptide classification guidance. hprc-online.org
Hi Greg, what a great piece. I have been using peptides for the past 6 months with incredible results but I admittedly have likely been under appreciating the risks. Just to add to the discourse, I have become much more open to using products and interventions that are not regulatory approved and that do not come from big pharma. This shift (for me) comes as I have lost a tremendous amount of confidence in our health agencies following their handling of the pandemic. The conflicts of interest between the health regulators and pharmaceutical companies became glaringly apparent. I wonder if this is also part of the broader trend into these spaces. If so how does it get resolved?