Peptide Therapy: Everything you need to know

What Are Peptides?

Peptides are short chains of amino acids. Because of their short length, they can be thought of as mini proteins. Just like full-sized proteins, peptides play an important role in many different functionings of the human body. 

Because peptides are made by a series of amino acids strung together, peptides can be extremely diverse. There are 20 structurally different amino acids within the human body. When joined end to end in different arrangements, it allows specific peptides to have a very unique structure that then allows them to interact with the body in a very specific way. 

How Are Peptides Utilized Therapeutically?

Peptides can come in thousands of unique structures and shapes. Within the human body, there are over 7000 naturally occurring peptides. While these small amino acid chains can seem somewhat random and arbitrary, in reality many of these peptides play an important role within the body. 

Therapeutically utilizing peptides involves knowing what system a particular peptide affects, and manipulating the amount of that peptide to provide a desired therapeutic result. Below is a look at some of the ways peptides can be utilized. 

Support Healthy Human Growth Hormone (HGH) Levels

One of the most utilized aspects of peptide therapy is its ability to help increase human growth hormone production in the body. A common trend that is seen is that as people age they tend to experience a drop in their HGH level. 

Peptide therapy offers a way to increase HGH levels without injecting hormones into your body. Instead, the use of specific peptides can enable your body to naturally produce and release the hormone from the pituitary gland. This is extremely helpful in treating low HGH because the body has a very specific pulsating administration of HGH that cannot truly be replicated through a standard HGH hormone replacement therapy. 

HGH promoting peptides include ipamorelin, sermorelin, and CJC 1295. While these peptides have slightly different amino acid configurations and compositions, they can all help your body naturally produce more HGH.

Promote Healing

Healing and tissue repair are important aspects of the human body, and some peptides can help aid in these efforts. BPC 157 and Thymosin Beta-4 are examples of two forms of peptide therapy that aim to assist in the healing process. While they will not allow you to regrow a lost limb, they can assist in the healing process and treatment of injuries by increasing blood flow and promoting tissue growth. 

Promote Immune Function

The immune system is an extremely complex system within the human body with many different signaling molecules and specialized cells that aim to keep foreign invaders at bay. Thymosin Alpha-1 is a peptide that can assist with the restoring and stimulation of the immune response. Through this immune modulation, the peptide can allow your body’s immune system to be better prepared to fight off foreign invaders and infection. 

Promote Fat Metabolism

The metabolism of fat is something that many people look to in order to help with weight loss efforts. While eating a healthy diet and getting regular exercise is a great start, sometimes your body has limitations like low hormone levels of HGH and it’s unable to efficiently target body fat. AOD 9604 is a peptide that is a synthetic analog of HGH. By mimicking a part of the HGH structure, AOD 9604 is able to initiate a faster metabolism which can help your body to utilize fat more efficiently. 

Promote a Healthy Libido

While a large part of romance involves an emotional and mental connection with others, there is definitely a chemical component to it. PT 141 is a peptide that can aid libido by interacting with the chemical cascade of the sexual response cycle. While PT 141 isn’t going to fix relationship issues, it can help you to reignite the sexual arousal and sexual desire that you may have lost by working in the vascular system to help with sexual dysfunction, specifically ED.

What Are The Benefits to Peptide Therapy?

With so many uses of peptides, it is reasonable to wonder what the benefits of utilizing peptides over hormone replacement is. Many of the uses of peptides described above can be accomplished through hormone replacement therapies like HGH HRT and Testosterone HRT. 

The main benefit of utilizing peptides is that for the most part, they simply aid in the natural production of a certain hormone. This can be more advantageous as certain hormones are released slowly and over a long period of time. In contrast, an HRT injection provides a short-term peak that quickly falls off. The slow and steady release offered by peptide drugs is much more helpful and can allow for greater efficacy. 

Another benefit is that utilizing the body’s own cellular mechanisms to produce hormones ensures that the checks and balances within your body can still keep hormone levels in check. Hormones are tightly regulated, and utilizing the cellular messengers and receptors and systems present within the body most likely allows them to be managed more effectively than getting pure hormone injections. 

Peptide Therapy Dosage

Peptide therapy dosage is just as important as any other administration of a drug because the peptides can have powerful and distinct effects on the human body. CJC 1295 for instance can drastically increase HGH levels and administering too much could be potentially harmful. 

The exact dosage for peptide therapy depends heavily on the target for the therapy, weight, age, gender, and can even depend from person to person. Peptides can even have different effects on the body depending on the dose. With the complex nature of peptide dosing, it is important to find a provider with specialized knowledge. 

Elite HRT has a team of specialized physicians in all things hormone replacement therapy. With many years of clinical experience, a physician can help you to navigate the complexities of peptide therapy and find the best treatment for you. 

Limitations of Peptide Therapy

While peptide therapy may seem like the obvious choice, it isn’t always the best option. Like all treatments, peptide therapy has its fair share of limitations. 

The most prevalent across nearly all peptide therapy agents is that they require injections. Peptides are short-chained amino acids that are easily broken down in the digestive tract which renders them useless if taken orally. Because of this most peptides are only offered as an injectable. 

Another pitfall of peptide therapy is that they require more work and upkeep. With a normal hormone replacement therapy plan a physician can periodically order blood tests, observe overall health, and make any changes to the dosage of a hormone administered. In this case the amount administered directly correlates to the amount of the hormone in the body. 

Peptides on the other hand can have a more complex relationship with their target and take more time to dial in. An example that illustrates this difficulty would be if a physician had a blood test come in and they want to increase your levels twofold. With HRT a physician could simply double the dose. With peptide therapy, a physician may only need to slightly increase your dose to yield double the effect. 

Availability is another limitation of peptide therapies. Typically those who utilize peptide therapy go through a hormone-specific clinic like Elite HRT that provides a specialized and tailored plan, versus just walking into your primary care provider’s office and seeking help there. 

Conclusion

In summary, peptide therapy is an area that is undergoing continual research. With the peptides available today, the future for peptide therapy seems bright and will only continue to grow. By observing the chemical peptide messengers within the body and manipulating them in the right way, people can gain therapeutic effects.

Restoring HGH levels, promoting healing, increasing libido, increasing fat metabolism, and bolstering the immune system are all ways that peptide therapy is currently being utilized. This only represents the tip of the iceberg and in the years that follow, peptide therapy will most likely encompass many more aspects of your health. 

Get started today with a member of the Elite HRT staff and we can get you on a path to a healthier and happier future through the power of HRT and peptide therapy. 

Sources:

peptide | Learn Science at Scitable

The Potential Therapeutic Application of Peptides and Peptidomimetics in Cardiovascular Disease

Peptide therapeutics: current status and future directions

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