The Truth About Peptides In Sports (With Dr. Harry)

Dr. Harrison Harry Weisinger is one of Australia's leading medical experts in research and medicine. And prior to studying medicine, he had already completed his master's and doctorate degrees in nutrition and neuroscience and optometry. He completed fellowships at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and the National Institutes of Health in Washington. He has dozens of publications to his name, including those in prestigious journals such as Science, Nature Medicine, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of the USA. But most of all, He's a great friend of the show and Tribelo and has in recent years very much switched his primary focus to the long-term health and longevity of his patients. He's worked with World Tour professional and Masters champion cyclists, national champion triathletes, title-holding MMA fighters, Olympians, and AFL Hall of Famers. Dr. Harry, it's been a while, but welcome back to the podcast.

It's a pleasure, Jordy. Thanks for having me.

I'm so looking forward to this chat. Peptides seem to be slowly taking over the world, or that's how it seems depending on your social media feed and our intent with this episode. is to, is to have a conversation where, you know, a lot of people are jumping onto the peptides train with very little understanding of what they're taking. And we want this episode to be a clear, useful, non-magic-claiming explainer for endurance athletes and the population of peptides. So, could we start with a bit of a broad perspective? What's, what's your philosophical take on peptides at the moment?

I mean, my philosophical take on anything, in fact, is that People should have a right to control what they put in their bodies, whether it be a protein powder or a peptide. I believe it's, it's our own, it's our own right to do with our bodies what we will. But I say that with quite a few caveats. The first is that It's important that people understand the impact of what they do and what they take. And there are obviously ramifications for us as a society when a certain group of people choose to do things that are risky and end up costing the health system or other parts of our infrastructure a lot of money. So Whilst I do overwhelmingly believe that, um, people should have a right to do things, they also need to do so with some education and knowledge of the, of the long-term outcomes. I am non-prohibitionist. I don't believe in prohibition. I believe in, uh, education and good regulation. When it comes to peptides, um, it is a hot topic, isn't it? So I know you're— I'm confident your Instagram feed looks pretty similar to mine, and you would believe that these are the panacea. They're going to save all our lives and help us live forever. Um, I don't quite think that's the case, but there's certainly a lot to talk about. Um, and I'm happy to— I'm happy to talk to you about whatever facet of of peptide medicine you, you want to start with.

Without turning this into a science lecture or a medical lecture, could you give a bit of a quick summary of, of what peptides are and, and maybe a misconception of what they are?

Sure.

Yeah, so a peptide is simply a chain of amino acids put together. In the context that we understand now, the word peptides They refer quite specifically to signaling molecules. So again, chains of amino acids that are signaling molecules, also known as hormones. That is, that is one of the mechanisms by which one part of the body tells another part of the body what to do. Okay. So, so an example of a peptide hormone is insulin. This is the way the pancreas tells the body to take up sugar into, say, the liver or the muscle. Another one is oxytocin. This is what tells the mum to fall in love with her baby and breastfeed. Growth hormone is a peptide hormone. And then more recently, of course, we're all aware of the GLP-1 agonists like Ozempic or Mounjaro. These are peptides as well. So that's, that's, that's what they are. They're, they're hormones, signaling molecules.

And just for those listening, we have a lot of that happening in our body naturally. And, and how is that different when we, when we add a peptide to contribute it to that process that we're already having happen in our bodies?

It's a really interesting question and topic because the— of course, the body, it is— if you stop to think about it, which I don't recommend all that often, but if you stop to think about it, it's amazing that we're alive. Okay. The number of things that have to go right. You know, your blood sugar has got to be kept just so, your temperature has got to be kept just so, everything's got to be kept just so. Well, this is one of the ways that we keep things just so. It's called homeostasis. And hormones, peptide hormones included, are a fundamental part of that. When we take additional exogenous peptides, we are automatically throwing that balance out of kilter. So some of the delicate feedback mechanisms are upset. Now, that is not to say that that's a bad thing. Always. So in the case of GLP-1 agonists, um, well, I might just backtrack just a second. Yeah, my, my other, you know, something I think about a lot is the fact that the, the environment that our bodies evolved for is not the environment we're working in right now. So we, we live in very strange times for our genetics for our physiology. We have, at least here in the Western world, we have an abundance of food. We don't go outside much, work in front of computers. Our stress levels are much higher despite the fact we're not necessarily worrying about survival on a day-to-day basis. Things like our hormone levels are lower. The food we put in our mouths is completely different. than what it was. And so sometimes we actually need to call on these hacks, if you will, to help us navigate these changes, these drastic changes in our environment. One of the, one of the best examples of these are the GLP-1 agonists like Ozempic. What these, what these hormones are doing is they are sending signals to the brain to eat a bit less. Then they have a knock-on effect of lowering insulin, which allows us to burn fat more of the time. It reduces inflammation. It's actually a pretty good hack. And I've said before, I think the GLP-1 agonists will end up saving more lives than penicillin, if they haven't already. Simply because in the environment that we're operating in, I think we operate better with a slightly higher level of GLP-1, which is a naturally occurring peptide.

Can you, can you explain, you said that growth hormone, for example, which has been in a lot of gym and performance culture for a while and athletes taking it even though it's banned, can you explain some of the other main performance enhancers that people might have been taking that are also classified as a peptide? I don't know, testosterone, like what's the difference now? These things have been around. Why is this, this, this, this, um, category of peptide and the term suddenly exploded?

There's a lot to talk about there. Okay, so there's— I think, I think it's because of the, of the profound effect of the GLP-1 agonists. Because you're right, this other stuff's been around forever. EPO is a peptide.

Hmm.

But the focus, you're right, is on peptides. Now, why is that? The potency of GLP-1s is so profound. We all know people that have lost 30 kilograms in 6 months. And up until now, you couldn't do that without starving yourself. And you knew for certain That you would regain the weight the minute you stopped using your willpower on weight loss. Okay, so the it's the potency of these molecules that has that has caught the world by storm, and combined with that, you've had research in peptides for decades. Now the when we talk about peptides, and I'm certain. the people listening to your podcast, when they hear the word peptide, they're not thinking growth hormone, insulin, oxytocin, EPO. They're not thinking that. They're thinking BPC-157, CJC-1295, thymosin alpha-1, et cetera. That refers to a group of peptides that are scheduled medicines. but have no approved use in this country and in many parts of the world have no approved use. So the question then should be, why? What— how did it get this far?

Mm-hmm.

What's—

what, what typically is the case is that scientists have gone fishing around for signaling molecules in the body, in various parts of the body, whether it be the stomach, you know, the gut, the thymus, various parts of the body, and have uncovered— have found these peptides that have a reasonably good mechanism. So reasonably well-understood way of working. have then brought these further along in the research chain. So, discovery, then there's a hypothesis. We think it does this. Let's test the hypothesis. We'll test it on animals. So, in the case of BPC-157, it's probably the most popular peptide.

Why is it? What's the promise of it?

Well, it's found in gastric juice. The purported role of BPC-157 is healing in an area that is often, you know, copping it, right? It's got a lot of acid, it's got bugs, it's got mechanical trauma, and BPC is allowing the stomach to heal itself. So the bright sparks that discovered that then go and induce injuries in animals, like give them an Achilles, you know, rupture, and then inject BPC near the site of the injury and see if it accelerates healing. And lo and behold, in many cases it does. So then it moves to the next phase in the, in the experimental chain, which is to see if, if there are any humans willing to put their hand up. Hmm.

And, um, yeah, there's many, not in trials, but many.

Well, it's really, you know, this is— it's such a— it's such an interesting topic that the topic is not just peptides, guys. The topic is information. The topic is— the topic is information. And I know that's what we're trying to do is we're trying to establish, you know, how information is transmitted? And, and, and how accurate does it have to be to be held as truth? And would it surprise you to know that there are 30— there are, there are 30 humans in published studies on BPC in the history of that peptide, but probably 50 million posts on YouTube? With, with, with even doctors thumping the desk going, this— if you're not taking this, you're a dickhead. I mean, it, it is remarkable. Now, again, I'm not prohibitionist, and I think people should have the ability to use these on themselves cautiously, under supervision, knowing full well what's known and what's unknown.

So So, sorry, sorry, Jordan, jump in. There's going to be 100 questions here, isn't there? Um, so from a basis of logic, if, if I, if I have scientific evidence, I'm more than likely to be on board. And the research, that would be one of the things that you're looking for more information on, aren't you, Harry? You're, you're, you're not quite convinced that there's been enough Research yet, Jerry.

We're in a we've got a real problem here. We've got a real problem, and and here's the problem: is that these these particular compounds are now ubiquitous. You can buy them. You can go online, and you can buy them from China or Thailand or India or whatever for about fifty dollars. Now. If I told you that the research required to prove BPC's safety and efficacy in one condition only, let's say it was Achilles rupture repair. I want to know whether this helped or shoulder tendonitis. Okay. That study alone, to do it properly through proper trials, is about $50 million. To get a drug through the FDA and approved for use, we're talking about $1 billion plus. Is a drug company going to sponsor the research for a drug that everyone can buy for $50 from China already? The answer is obviously no. So where does this leave— where does this leave us? In medicine, we have a hierarchy. of, of evidence. The lowest level of evidence is anecdote. It's I tried it on myself and it worked. That's the lowest level of evidence. Now, don't get me wrong, as humans, we very much relate to this type of evidence. If your brother says to you, I tried this creatine powder and it works a treat, I promise you that is seductive. It's very, very effective. So we are— we're all susceptible to that. But medicine has figured out that part of that is placebo.

Okay.

And, and a lot of it is guff. And so there are levels of evidence that go from anecdote to expert opinion all the way up to multicenter placebo-controlled double-blind trials. That means where neither the experimenter nor the, nor the experimentee know what they're taking, and then they measure the effect. That's the highest level of evidence. It's extraordinarily hard to get that data. And you would think things like nutrition and certain drugs and so forth, it would be categorical. And yet, you know, that's not the case. So that type of evidence is very hard to get. So we are caught in limbo, especially with this type of— with this drug, this— these, I should say, these drugs. It's not even a class. There are many different— peptide just means a chain of amino acids strung together. They're all completely different.

Yeah. So can we just clarify this for a second? As it stands, it is currently not legal to, to be purchasing and ordering peptides, even though it's happening worldwide. Is that, is that correct? And it's all sourced from, from Asia, from China, and that's why it's referred to as the gray market. Can you clarify that right, right now?

It is, it is illegal. It is illegal. And I'm no, I'm, I'm not the fun police here. I'm just telling you what it is, okay? It is illegal to hold a scheduled Schedule 4 medicine without a prescription, but that goes for a cholesterol drug or a blood pressure drug or, or any such drug. So it's not just peptides, it's any Schedule 4 and above drug is illegal to hold without a prescription. Peptides, as I'm— as we're referring to them, experimental peptides, are Schedule 4 medications in Australia. What that means is if you have them in your hand, you're supposed to have a prescription for them. Otherwise, it's illegal. Now, no one's going to— obviously, well, certainly the Victorian government have enough issues with resource now that they're not going to spend any more of our money on chasing down people with illegal peptides, right? But the law is— that is the law.

And so how are doctors currently prescribing these when they're not manufactured in Australia? It is— you have to get a license and then— and medical clinics are shipping them from China. Where's that process coming from?

I can't really speak for others. But the only legitimate way to prescribe— the only legitimate way for a doctor to prescribe a peptide is for them to see a patient, understand the problem that the patient is presenting with, and then if conventional treatments have been found to be effective or inappropriate and the patient is at wit's end, and the patient is informed of the experimental nature of the peptide and the risks associated and is given proper instructions, indications, side effect warnings, escalation channels, etc., etc., then the doctor, at their own risk, can prescribe said peptide. In Australia, there are several compounding pharmacies. They do get their ingredients from overseas, but they're held to very high standards. They are regularly audited. They have— they are not allowed to batch produce. So you're not allowed to make a vat of BPC-157 and then just ship it out for Jerry and Jordan. You actually have to make it specifically for the person. It's prescribed and compounded and sent and tested for that person. The other, the other issue, guys, is that it's one thing to be able to prescribe it. It's another thing to be insured by a professional indemnity insurance company. Needless to say, there's a very low appetite for insurers to be underwriting doctors that, that prescribe experimental treatments to their patients.

It seems like we've got this position where it's just happening, and, and there's, there's almost like we can't afford to track it down, um, and, and doctors are almost going to be liable if something bad happens, so they're going to be reluctant to do it. And this seems to be not enough information to the purchaser and the user. And it's almost anecdotal evidence that they're going by because such and such said it works from the local gym and this is the way I'm going to go. And, and is that a good summary of where you are?

I think you're right, Gerry, because let's think about it here. The doctors are too scared overall. It would really only be doc— if, if doctors were less scared and were not worried about being deregistered and sued, then they would. Doctors want to help their patients, and doctors want to facilitate good outcomes. They want to help their patients.

Hmm.

If a patient has a refractory shoulder injury, it just won't go away. They've had, they've had a cortisone injection. They've had PRP, they've had an arthroscopy, they're being threatened with more surgery, and they don't want to do surgery because that means a year before they're back functional. And they go to the doctor and they say, I've heard this BPC might help. Isn't it a good thing if it's tried? If we know basically its short-term safety— we don't know the long-term safety of many of the drugs. that we prescribe. Okay, so I think you're right, we're driving it underground just like we are with illicit drugs. Instead of having them quality controlled and regulated and education provided, etc., we are driving people underground. And that is obviously not— it hasn't been a good thing in illicit drugs. And it's not a good thing in this either.

Yeah, because let's be real, you know, majority of the people on this wave right now, because it's so early as you've, as you've explained, they're not ordering compounding pharmacy-grade peptides. There's, there's this huge gray market emerging which comes with its own risks. And, and, uh, could you, I guess, could you explain those risks? Um, it might seem obvious, but yeah.

I mean, I think they are obvious, aren't they? Because The— what's happened is Australian consumers have been driven underground. There's no shortage of access. Peptides.com. I mean, I'm guessing peptides.com, peptides.com.au, peptides, whatever. You can have them the same week. What, what is, what is the standard that that supplier is being held to and by whom? No, no standard, and by no one. So we know, um, we know already that there, there have been patients, people, consumers that have been seduced by, um, a particular peptide called retatrutide, which is currently in phase 2 and possibly phase 3 clinical trials. hasn't been approved in any country. That is sort of the next wave of GLP-1 weight loss drugs. But, but the, the misinformation that comes with it is that it spares muscle unlike the others. So, so magically and with no evidence, retatrutide allows you to lose weight and keep muscle. So yeah, it's a seductive story. No doctor here can prescribe it legally because it's not even scheduled. So they get it online, but God knows what's in it. In fact, there have been multiple cases of hepatitis because maybe it was redotrutide, maybe it wasn't, maybe there was something else in it. But, but also the dose may or may not reflect what was actually on the tin. So they may be overdosing, uh, wildly, and that's an issue. There is no legitimate source of redotrutide in Australia, not one, because it's— there's no such thing.

It's a frightening scenario picture that you're painting. And for those listening who are thinking about going down that, that, uh, that pathway, you'd want to be very, very careful about the reasons why you're choosing this pathway. And I think you've given Such good, good examples of someone who's tried everything and, and is, you know, is in still suffering and is in pain and is not, not having a normal, healthy, everyday enjoyable life. That would be fantastic reasons to, to experiment. But again, you're still not— you've got doubt of what, what the product you're getting is exactly what you're ordering. And that's the frightening thing for me. Whether I believe in this or not, it's just The reality of what you're telling me is, is, is incredible.

I think, I think, Jerry, the bottom line is, um, if, if it's not from an accredited sterile compounding facility in Australia, you can't trust it.

That's a really clean, really clean take. I, I don't know, Harry, if you saw the, uh, the creatine gummy scandal, um, that, that happened in Australia where they, um, this guy was— just goes, I don't believe these creatine gummies are what they're cracked up to be. And when independently tested, the top 10 creatine gummy providers in Australia, independently tested with his own labs, and found that 8 out of 10 actually contained 0 grams of creatine, and they were selling for $60 a packet. That's just absolutely absurd. And that's happening. And creatine, you would say, is a relatively safe supplement to be experimenting with.

It's not the most cheap to make, but not as cheap as nothing.

Yeah, yep. And, um, you know, that's just a creatine level. You know, nutrition, you, you're just trusting that, you know, they're batch making it and you have to trust that, that what they say is in it is actually in it each time. That's, that's on, you know, these fundamental levels, let alone the peptide level. So where do you stand on, on all this? Because I know you're not anti-peptide, but I'm really grateful that you've painted a very, very honest picture of what the situation is right now.

I, I I am all for people that have, that have reached the end of the road with conventional treatments and understand the risks and have a doctor to work with trialing cycles of peptides. That's where I stand from a, from a medical standpoint and as a, as a you know, a human with a philosophy that is anti-prohibitionist. I don't believe that people should be told what they can and can't do, can and can't take. I think that's up to them within, as I said, within the many caveats of we are a society. We're not just lone wolves walking around doing whatever shit we like. We've got to understand If I go and give myself liver failure because I took redotrutide, that's going to cost the hospital budget and that affects all of us. So there's— so, so I'm anti-prohibitionist within a framework of what's good for society. And I also think, guys, that often when we wait for the clearest level of evidence to come through, we are waiting possibly our whole lifetime.

Yeah.

I don't know that we cannot. I don't know that we've got that much time sometimes. And maybe in the age of AI and big data, maybe we can pick up the signals from just people, you know, rather than running big center, multicenter trials. Maybe we can let people do it under supervision and have enough data. to watch for the, watch for the signal. I think that's possible. In fact, in fact, I think that's the future of epidemiological research and proper research is historically it's been you've got a group of people, you try and control every variable, and then you add one thing. And that's very hard to do. And it's why research is so expensive and so slow. But imagine if we just say, all right, well, now everyone here understand the risks, you all understand the potential benefit. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to use— we're going to use these. Yeah, you're going to get some of this, you're going to get some of this, and we're going to measure your sleep, your liver function, your blood pressure, your whatever it is. Okay. And I think that is probably the future of research.

I'm also interested in, Harry, your own experiences. Um, and I'm not trying to put you on the spot here, but you had an Achilles tear, uh, rupture, um, playing basketball, um, which, which has kind of impacted your last—

Devastating.

Yes, uh, ability to function was— is something that anybody who's done an Achilles understands how, how limiting it is to, to actually get around. Um, yeah, and, uh, so you would have, you would have been asking yourself, how can I quickly get through this? And Yeah. Was that a question you were putting yourself, you know, is there something that's gonna speed this process up or do I just let nature take its case?

Well, I think, you know, it's not my nature to let nature take its course, Gary. And I don't think there's anyone listening to your podcast that is much interested in the slow and steady path to success. We're all competing at some level You know, every day. I, you know, I'm 55 now, injured myself playing basketball. And yeah, as someone that's also cycling and, you know, trying to be mobile and contribute in my household, it was a bloody awful thing to happen. And, um, I got multiple opinions. So I can tell you the— I'll give you the full list of things that I did and considered. Um, I consulted with, um, experts including our friend Dr. Mitch Anderson, friend of Trivelo and friend of mine. Um, I consulted with team doctors from AFL clubs. I consulted with radiologists. I consulted with surgeons. Do I need surgery or not? That was the first thing. The consensus was yes, although there are a couple of dissenters that thought I might get away with just platelet-rich plasma. And then the others thought you'll be back in a year for surgery if you go that way. So I, I opted for surgery. I had it a week after the injury. Then I've done red light therapy, which has mild evidence for— I would consider it to be weak, weak evidence. But I sat there with my cup of coffee with my leg over the red light panel dutifully every morning for 15 minutes. I undertook 15 hyperbaric chamber sessions, high oxygen flow, 2 atmospheres of pressure. Um, I'm not like— I, I'm not a fast recoverer, as you may remember.

Uh, what a great case study you've built around this injury. This is brilliant.

And I, I tell you what, the wound healed like in front of my eyes, okay? Now, I'm experienced with prescribing peptides, and I know, you know, the 27 common peptides that are used and maybe a few that aren't so common. And I took a couple of weeks of BPC-157 and thymosin beta-4 and then decided I'm not going to know if it works or not. I also took a couple of weeks, maybe a month of human growth hormone at low dose. The the the the the published evidence around the use of human growth hormone is good in burns. It's good post spinal surgery. I figure what could it hurt? I'll do it for a month. So I did that. I asked AI. What my rehab should look like, as well as asking a physio, as well as asking doctors and a surgeon, and then invented my own rehab anyway, where I sort of pushed the boundaries some days and then backed it off because I thought I was going a bit too hard. For I I bought myself a ski erg. Which, which is, it's not a bike. It's nothing like a bike. It's the, it's like the devil's bike. Uh, I had to, I had to do SkiErg seated to try and put it this way. My FTP on a SkiErg is about 110 watts. Uh, it's, it's up now. It's much better now. And I can do about 8 kilometers, but that was painful. But, um, no, I did look, you know, the, of course the problem is, the problem is It's not really an experiment because you don't have a version of you that's not taking peptides, not doing red light, not doing this, not doing that. Most people don't care. Most people don't care if it's an experiment. They just want it to work. I understand that. My brain vacillates between I want to know if it's really this and I don't really care. I just want to get better. And I think most people listening would relate to that. But by and large, I stick to stuff that has evidence. If it doesn't have enough evidence, it won't even work on me by placebo, obviously. If at least if there's evidence, I'll believe, you know, I'll believe in it. And then that's got a good shot of working by placebo, if nothing else.

We're talking about Sort of 2 different groups of the population on this podcast, and, and I wanna address both. And a lot of it so far has just addressed the general population, and we wanna provide some education and just information just from a health perspective. And the great example you, you said was how life-changing this could be for someone that's exhausted all resources. But this podcast audience is endurance athletes and competitive athletes. And so I, I wanna enter into the kind of moral and potential ethical dilemma of, of the anti-doping conversation. You know, and, and peptides potentially being performance enhancers. They might not be banned yet because they're not even past human trial, but, but potentially they'll be, they'll be banned in the future. And the ethical dilemma of an age group athlete or even a pro athlete starting to experiment with these.

Well, you're one of two kind of person. You either believe Lance Armstrong is the greatest cyclist of all time, or you don't. Okay, you got to start there. Now, I happen to believe Lance Armstrong is the greatest cyclist of all time. That's my take. I don't—I'm not asking anyone to agree with me. And and when I watch guys ride up the Alpe d'Huez, I'm not interested in seeing numbers that I might be able to produce for a couple of minutes. I want to see numbers I've never imagined seeing on my power meter. So that's my take. I want to know what humans can do, but that's not, that's not the, that's not the legal case. Okay. That's just the, that's just the me as a, I'm an interested, I'm interested in what humans can do.

Can I ask what your thoughts are then on the enhanced games, just as a sidebar?

Yep. So obviously enhanced games takes the sneakiness out of it. Enhanced games is the games minus the sneakiness, because for sure, for sure, people are doping. Like, if you don't think they're doping, you don't know anything. You haven't been watching, right? It's just— they're doping. Someone's doping in some way. There's There's either drugs that aren't banned, okay, or there's protocols that aren't banned or aren't known. And as you know, 1%, just 1%, is the difference between off the back and the chequered flag, right?

The example, Harry, would be an asthma TUE exemption. Would that be an example?

Sure.

something that's not banned.

Pyroxene, Viagra, there'll be stuff, yeah, HCG. There's been drugs used I wouldn't even know now. Prednisolone, Outokumpul. This is the— but this, the, you know, the What are we talking about? The ethical dilemma. It's, it's a tough one because it— what if I said to you, um, how do you feel about competing clean in a clean race where guys are dirty? Is it the same?

It's, you know, it's absolutely not. People want to be competing on a fair playing field. And—

But what is, what is, what is it? What is it? Okay, so this is— let's get, let's get philosophical. philosophical, right? Is Pogačar's VO2 max fair? Like, do you know what I mean? Is, is that fair? Is that— that's, that's a level playing field? How, how the hell is that a level playing field?

Yeah, the, the term should be, right, the genetics that you have been, uh, handed. And, and that's the level playing field I'm talking about.

Well, what's, what's happening, mate, is that people are starting to select Their progeny. Yes. No, seriously.

No, no, I totally understand.

I have patients, I have patients that have, that they've, that they're, they're, um, have selected a baby, right, that they couldn't have, so they're, they're adopting, but they got to select the egg and the, the donors. So what'd they pick? 6'3, blonde hair, blue eyes, Rhodes Scholar, Okay, so this is, we're kind of headed towards Gattaca in this one. I don't know if you've seen the movie Gattaca, but if you haven't, you need to see this movie. It's a bit dystopian. It's a lot dystopian, but it's setting a level playing field is extremely hard because it's an arms race to outperform and And it's not just for fun anymore. This is people's job. It's there. It's, you could lose your job and then what are you going to do for a living? So it's, it's, it's real money and real stakes now. So the, so it's different now.

I'd like to, I'd like to clean some things up from our point of view with that. While it would be fascinating, you could go down this rabbit hole of, of the top 0.1% of the population that is the poker stars and everything. That conversation is is very fascinating, but I want to just remove that because it doesn't really apply to us here. Because, yeah, I love that argument of, well, we all wanted to be professional athletes. Like, all of us that love cycling and running and triathlon, you know, we would have loved to have been born with that VO2 max of 85. And unfortunately, if you're born with 55, it doesn't matter how hard you train or how much you want it, the reality is that is a dream. You just cannot do it. And same thing with a basketball player, you know, unless you're born 6 foot 5 or above, you probably can't make the NBA. So interesting discussion, but I'd like to park that and take it back to the age grouper because something I have an issue with and our TriVelo stance right now is we're definitely leaning way more anti. We actually have it in our contract with if you sign up to TriVelo as an athlete, you are a clean athlete, complete anti-doping. That is our stance. Um, so I want to be clear on that. This whole peptides discussion, you know, kind of is interesting because they're not illegal at the moment. But I am watching, Harry, you know, a whole— with the running boom, I'm watching a whole subset of, um, of, uh, uh, people from gym culture coming across to running. Heavy guys who have been on testosterone, growth hormone, all these very performance-enhancing substances. coming into marathon running, running 120 Ks a week, which if you have run your whole life, you struggle to handle that load without getting injured, running at unbelievable times. And I'm looking at them going, how is this guy running a 2:50 or a 2:55 marathon? And how are they not injured? They've been running for 2 seconds. And it's because they, they can do all this. And I have, I have a personal big issue with that. So I'm keen to hear your thoughts. And they're free to do what they want. I'm not saying they can't do it. But the fact that it's not disclosed, the fact that it's not open to public knowledge that they're saying, hey, I've run this time, but I've been taking this stack of peptides and testosterone, etc. That's, that's my moral problem with it.

Yeah, I mean, the, the topic is fraught and complicated. Um, so I will correct you just on a couple of things. There are some of these peptides are banned, WADA banned, because they might help recovery. Okay, so in the case of BPC-157, that is banned. in sport because it might— I don't know that it does, but it might assist in recovery. And then any growth hormone secretagogue, so MK-677, CJC-1295, Tesamorelin, they are banned because they increase growth hormone. And growth hormone improves recovery, lean muscle gain, fat loss. Obviously performance enhancing minimally, not EPO, not blood doping, not testosterone. But these are much more subtle. But the but the way you describe it is is right when it when it comes to endurance athletes recovery is as important as your top end. Like it it's everything. It defines the athlete. How quick can you get back? for the interval session next, because that's how we're going to drive up your— that's how we're going to drive up your level of fitness. Um, where do I stand on, on this? I mean, again, the— it's a— we could talk for hours. People compete. People— it's complicated. You, you couldn't actually get the truth out of a person, even if they were telling the truth. Okay, let me explain what I mean by that. If you ask someone, why are you— why are you at 48 years of age training like a professional athlete? They'll tell you, I want to see what my body can do. Okay, and they believe that. The problem is they're measuring it relative to other people. Yeah, they're looking at their own Strava and their own TrainingPeaks and their own PRs. But, but one of the most potent comparators is not yourself, it's the other dudes in your field. So even though they're trying and with all their heart, they're telling you, no, I just want to see what I can do. Can I go faster? Can I get up that hill quicker? The truth is it's both. They still want to beat people. And so there's some self-delusion in it. I've seen it. So I think that doesn't necessarily answer your question with any clarity, but the reality is that there are people out there that are taking performance-enhancing or possibly performance-enhancing substances that are doing it simply to see what their body can do. And that would be okay if you were just doing it by yourself, but if you're going around Sandown with 30 other guys, it's no longer— it's no longer okay.

I said the disclosure is, is my big thing, like Yep. You've— a message you've said this whole podcast is people are free to do what they want, and I agree with that. But if you're gonna go race in the 70.3 and, and try and compete against other people, for me, it, it's crossing a line. And I'm curious, as another example, the GLP-1 group you've spoken about, Ozempic, what are your thoughts on that? As, you know, just in terms of the best interest of an athlete who, who would like to lose weight and still compete, is it in your eyes, is it performance enhancing? Is it healthy? Is it even conducive to an endurance athlete? You know, something that they might consider?

So good, very good question. My, my own philosophy with this is that GLP-1s are a very important tool for some people in that they can induce weight loss that would otherwise be very difficult to achieve. That weight loss may be the difference between them achieving their peak performance and not. It may be— it may lift the glass ceiling. Mercifully, mercifully, it is almost impossible to train or race hard on GLP-1 agonists. Okay. They are, they are absolutely performance limiting in almost every case. I have seen cases of guys that can put out 400 watts on, on high doses of GLP-1, but they are extraordinarily rare. They do favor the concept of periodization. So it goes quite well with a base phase where you could take it. Try and improve your endurance engine at the same time as lose a bit of weight. But once you start hitting the later phases of of your periodization, those drugs are no good to you. Are they healthy? I believe another good another good topic for another day. But there's a continuum between in general. Being athletic is healthy, but, but as, as we all know, it's not a perfect relationship. Being athletic to a point is healthy, and then you reach a peak, and then you come down the other side of that peak. I'll give you an example. If you do 3 to 4 hours cycling, which almost no one on your program will be doing per week, you're almost peak health. You've almost achieved every benefit that you will achieve just from that amount. But that's not, that's not elite performance, that's peak health. As you go, as you increase you are putting yourself at risk of other things— cardiac issues, coronary artery issues, um, and, and, and especially injury from crash and misadventure. Okay, um, so yeah, this is— I find this topic, uh, very interesting, but I, I think in general, um, The GLP-1s are good in the average person because the average person is not athletic. The average person is overweight. The average person has poor metabolic control. Cyclists are a particular category of people that need to be careful with GLP-1s because their bone density is already on the borderline, usually because of a lack of weight bearing. But I would add that people should be doing weight bearing if, even if they are cycling specific, they still should be doing something to stimulate bone density.

What do you say to someone that says, well, this, and this might not apply to the traveler audience as much, although it still could. I already put a lot of shit in my body. You know, I'm not the healthiest. I'm not a, I'm not a pillar of health. Could this really be that bad? You know, trialing this?

Well, the answer, Jordy, is we don't know. Yeah, we don't. The reason they are classified as experimental is, if you're talking about experimental peptides, is we don't know. With GLP-1, all I can say is under supervision of a doctor. is, um, is the, the only approach that I would recommend.

When we, when we talk about, uh, side effects and safety, um, from all the things that we're discussing today, there are a lot of older athletes who may be on medication, um, for hundreds of things that as we get older, um, in my case, it's a lot of, uh, statins and, and blood pressure and, uh, Blood thinning. I can just, you know, name the stuff that, that I'm taking. The risk, Harry, I really want to get that out there, um, the risk of taking some of these peptides in conjunction with the medication you're on could be catastrophic, couldn't it?

I mean, I don't know. I don't know. So yeah, what, what I would say is firstly, we don't know Drug-drug interaction. We don't know long-term effects. I am quite confident that the short-term effects are at very minimum neutral and possibly beneficial of some of these peptides. I haven't seen anything. I haven't seen anything other than a skin rash with any of these commonly spruited peptides. But, Jerry, the bottom line is I don't know the answer, and that could be all you need to know. You know what?

That says a lot.

Well, let me, let me tell you this. This might enlighten you a little bit. When I do see patients and they ask for peptides, I explain they're experimental. We don't know the long-term side effects. They could be catastrophic. Okay. What percentage of my, what percentage of people do you think are turned off by that?

Very few.

Very, very, very few. Do you know, this comes back to something we were talking about earlier, which is information. It is extraordinary to think that my advice and look, I'm not, I'm not Trying to big note myself. I'm, I'm a doctor. I've got 20-something years of experience. I've researched all of these peptides, tried to get to the bottom of all of it. And my word is completely moaned down by some guy on Instagram that goes, that just goes, top 10 peptides for getting stronger.

Number 1. Right.

Number 2, and it does, it doesn't matter what I say, people's minds are made up. My theory on this may or may not be of interest is that particularly here in Australia, but also in the US, we are so scarred from COVID and being forced to take vaccines. Okay, I'm, I am I'm, by the way, I'm pro-vaccine. I'm, I'm not at all anti-vaccine. I believe in vaccine medicine, but I don't believe in vaccine mandates. And people are scarred over being like, here's something relatively unproven and new, not, not completely unproven and new, but new technology. You're going to take this. Okay, 1, 2, 3. Even if you feel sick, you're going to take it. Even if some of you are going to get heart failure, you're going to take it. And then fast forward 5 years and here's peptides which people are demanding access to and regulators are going, no, sorry. No, sorry, they're unproven. You can't have them. And then they've got— but they've got their, their friends at the gym going, oh mate, since I've, since I've been on BPC, my shoulders are better, I've put on more muscle, I've leaned down, it's— I've never felt better. And, and those, those guys, they're not just saying it, they believe it.

There's a bit of hypocrisy both ways, isn't there? From the governing bodies of you must take this, and now actually this is unproven. But then even in the consumer, it's It's weird. I don't want to take something unproven. Actually, I am willing to take these unproven things, you know.

It's, it's, it's, it's— the irony is not lost. It is total whiplash.

Yeah, yeah. So that's not, that's not a, uh, you know, anti-peptide or pro-peptide or, or— no, no, anti-vax. That's just, that's, that it is ironic.

But yeah, but, but, you know, well, I think we're losing, I think we're losing a little bit of the excitement too, like Caution is needed. But Ozempic, okay, has taught us, and it's certainly taught Big Pharma, look out for these potent molecules. So we don't know what's possible now. You wouldn't have thought this possible. 10 years ago.

Yeah.

But you can, you can take someone that is morbidly obese, like they are destined for early death. You can take someone that's more morbidly obese, inject 0.6 of a mil of stuff into their skin over their tummy once a week and transform them completely. These are potent Potent molecules. And now drug companies are looking. And look, there's going to be some great stuff that I do believe when they find something they're convinced works, you don't hear about it until it's licensed.

Yeah. Yep.

Right. Ozempic, you didn't hear about it until it was in a pen. Okay. Whereas BPC-157, that's out in the— that's out in the wild because a drug company picked it up, looked at it, went, nah. Right, CJC? Nah. But but that that doesn't mean peptide medicine isn't coming. It's it's it's huge. It it probably is a big part of the future of medicine. Are these peptides? And then there's other classes of of drugs. You know anti cancer drugs and monoclonal antibodies. These these technologies are all. uh, are all evolving very quickly. Very exciting time in medicine, and all we have to do is survive the misinformation and risk of, of the other stuff.

There could be so many good, valuable, um, additives to our lifestyle, especially with— we've got an aging population pretty much around the world, and, and the— that period of the, the, the human being between technically 50 or 60 up to the— if they last to 70 or 80, which is the average, that 20-year period is really not a functioning, happy time. And, you know, staying fit and healthy enables a lot of those 60, 70-year-olds to, to buck that trend and have a— have an awesome experience, you know, still living their life to the fullest. And traveling and functioning and not having arthritis. And I see this as a really valuable thing down the track for those people who are not having quality of life.

Well, I see it, I see it. I, I think you're exactly right, Gerard, and I think it's now. So what we know, like, if you ever look around at, at a typical 80-year-old, okay, you look at them and you think, you're a bit frail, You know, you look a bit, you look a bit weak. Most 80-year-olds are weak. You know, our life expectancy is 82 for men, 84 for women. And as you say, the last 10, 15 years is often not good. It's often frail. And we should be encouraging people to maintain their physical movement and muscle mass and bone density. And we should, in my view, be willing to risk, to take some risks to do that because we know the endpoint. If you don't, we know what happens. You might get lucky and live with good muscle mass till you're 100. You might. Don't think so. So, so this is again why I'm not against if someone can't lift They can't lift their groceries into their house because of their shoulder injuries, and they want to try thymosin alpha-1 for three months or BPC-157 for three months. I'm not going to say no. Again, you got to know the risks. You got to have someone supervising you. But this this is what we're talking about. This is why the avidity for these things is driven by people's. desire to feel better. They want to feel better. It's— I know this is a performance podcast, and there is an element to that too, but, you know, recovery and feeling better in your joints, in your muscles, that's a huge part of it.

I, I think I'd really like to dig into that word recovery too, and that's one of the things that I suppose I have an issue with is, you know, we spend a lot of our time talking to our, to our listeners about the importance of sleep and, and recovery is really the key to you backing up your training program and getting, getting the most out of yourself each day when you wanna work hard. And if you don't get the sleep and, and the proper recovery, then your program becomes a little bit limited, and you have to take more time and not get to that endpoint in the shape that you want to compared to someone who's actually taking some of these peptides that the primary value of them is that you can actually recover. I don't know the percentage, Harry, but you'll be able to tell me so much quicker so that they can actually— we can only do one high-intensity session on maybe a Tuesday and then maybe a Thursday or a Friday and then possibly on a Sunday. The rest of the time, we're just trying to maintain fitness. We're not growing. and improving our, our performance because we can't back up. And, and this is a game changer for me that, that I do struggle with, uh, ethically, that people are getting an advantage in just age group, you know, events.

I don't know. Well, firstly, I'll say I don't know they're getting an advantage, but, but they might be. And there's probably no population of humans better equipped to evaluate it than your athletes. So the thing about being one of your athletes is, you know, you know what works. You're willing to try lots of things. Okay. You'll try, you'll try, you know, this mattress cover and you'll try this pillow and you'll try this creatine and you'll try this protein.

Temperature of the room.

Yep. Exactly. You'll try all these things. You'll know if your if your FTP goes up six percent, you because you did this, you'll know. You'll know how you feel. I I think it's I think it's a good a good you know ethics aside ethics aside it it is the athlete that is in tune with their body. It's a very good very good candidate to know. The ethics is obviously something else.

To finish this, this part of the podcast, and I say part because we will absolutely be needing a part 2 and maybe a part 67, um, because I know how popular this topic is and is going to be. And my little fear is that, you know, not everyone realized the potential of peptides, and we're kind of bringing to light attention on this. If you weren't already seeing that, my fear is the cat's out of the bag a little bit, and people will do exactly what you said. They, they will ignore everything we said in the first half hour about the risks and just hear results. Um, but we still felt it our duty to get an episode like this out there and start getting more content about this out there and get the right information out there, as you said at the start, to get people informed. And so, um, to kind of finish, I'd like your stance on— for us, we post a lot about performances and results, and we do not want to be in a position where we're promoting someone's results without knowing that they were taking this stuff. Um, maybe they would decide to take it and inform us, and then we could make a decision on that. We haven't been faced with that. Yep. But I guess to finish, something you said to me was, look, let's— you said to me on the phone before when we were organizing this podcast, you said, look, are they promising? For sure. Are they way overblown right now? Absolutely. So could you just finish with that kind of stance to kind of wrap up what we've said?

I mean, the potential for these compounds is enormous. You only need to look at the ones that we already know. I like to say this for a bit of fun, just for a bit of cheek. If I, if I had to kill someone, I'd do it with insulin, which is a peptide, right? 100 units of insulin subcutaneous. They'd fall asleep. Gone. Potent. Okay. Ozempic. Potent. We know the potency of these compounds. What we don't, what we don't know is obviously what we don't know, which at this point is a lot. If, if you are curious, if you are curious but don't want to try it yourself, you could just sit around and watch. Because it is literally tens of thousands of Australians today Taking peptides. So I would—I mean, it's a—it is a fascinating topic. It's—I've—I never set out to be an expert, but being obviously in my—in my practice, where I—where I try to bridge the—the spectrum between longevity and performance, peptides are brought. I can't ignore them because if I do, my patients bring them to me anyway. And I don't have a choice but to become an expert in this stuff. But it's a, look, it's a very interesting, exciting, political fraught area.

Thank you for your time and your wisdom today, Harry. We always love these chats that we always get into some different philosophical realms, which we appreciate. And we're going to have a part 2. And as I said, probably many more parts. If you've got questions for Harry, Please send them through for the next episode. We'll be really keen to hear your stance on things and what you'd like to know. We certainly don't want our athletes coming to us after this and saying, okay, what am I taking? That's not the purpose of this episode, okay? We would rather be the ones that sit on the side right now and watch, okay? So I wanna make that clear. Sometimes in these episodes, that can happen. They— people start going, oh, I should be taking this then. That's not what we're saying.

That's right.

We love your curiosity, Harry, and that's the way you've always been. But for our side, for Tribelo, we'd rather be on the sidelines for now. Watching. So, thank you very much again for coming on, Harry. They can find you at My Performance Doctor. You're specialized in health and longevity now. This is your whole area of expertise. That's myperformancedoctor.com or anywhere online that they'll be able to find that. Yes.

You'll be able to find me there. And I've got a Substack channel too, Jordy, and I've written on peptides on that Substack channel, which is Dr. Harry 1, because I couldn't get Dr. Harry. So Dr. Harry Won.

We'll put that, we'll put that link in the description. It's a great, uh, Substack series. It's— I love to read it. It's, uh, very educational and, and, and very worth it. So if you want to find him there, go do that. Thank you very much again, and we'll see you very shortly, Harry, uh, on another episode on this. And thank you everyone for listening. Uh, we hope you stay safe out there and, and don't jump into anything, as Harry said, uh, without assessing the risks. So that's it for this one, and we'll see you all on the next episode.

Bye.