The Best Peptides for Longevity and Sleep (Human Studies)

Hold on, are these Russian longevity peptides real? In the exploding universe of peptides, I've been hearing these weird claims, rumors that peptides from Russia can increase human lifespan. I know it sounds impossible, far-fetched, but the deeper I went down the rabbit hole, the more interesting the scientific story became. There were data, good data, human data. Then there were confusing paradoxes, then satisfying resolutions that had my brain bouncing between confusion and clarity like it was a ball on a game of scientific ping pong. But this isn't just a story about living a longer life. It's a story in large part about the knowledge hiding right under our noses. Knowledge that gives us insight into how to optimize biology to, yes, live longer, stay healthier, fight cancer, and even sleep better. In fact, when I tried one of these myself, I was gobsmacked by how hard it hit me. In a good way. It was like I just stepped into one of my favorite action movies. I'll tell you about that later. But the story I want to get into is one of mystery, rediscovery, and hope. This is really starting to sound like the Fountain of Youth. It was wild and frankly was kind of fun. Now, here's the paradox. Are you ready? Gila monster venom. So now we're stuck between a rock and a hard place. So what the heck is going on? That's just the tip of the iceberg. Our body? It's just one more machine. Real quick before we begin, the story we're going to go on today is a condensed version, a consolidated version pulled together from bits and pieces of new science in top journals and old science I didn't know existed. But if you want the deeper nuances, I have linked multiple letters below that go into the primary data from our best-selling science newsletter, Stay Curious Metabolism, which is now a top 2 bestseller in science on Substack globally thanks to your enthusiasm. So Thank you. But with that, let's get into our story. It's going to happen in 4 parts. That's 2. 4 parts. We're going to investigate early data on what I'm going to call the Russian longevity peptides. Then we're going to dive into the biology of how they work. We'll identify and resolve some really fascinating paradoxes before getting into part 3, where I tell you about my personal experience with one of these peptides. And finally, we'll wrap it all up by looking towards the future. Okay. Let's start. When I started along the breadcrumb trail of these claims, all roads led back to Russia, and specifically the work of a Russian professor, Vladimir Kavinson. There's a bit about him on the internet if you go Googling, but anyway, one paper in particular caught my attention. It was published in the journal Neuroendocrinology Letters in 2003 and included results from a double-blinded human trial in which adults over 60 were treated with extracts from the thymus and the pineal gland over 6 years. Okay, we're going on a little Stay Curious side quest because you probably haven't thought about the thymus and pineal gland much before. The thymus is a little organ that sits right behind your breastbone, just to the right of your heart. And when you're young, when you're a kid, it's important in developing your immune system. But as you age, it involutes, it decays, it becomes basically a little lump of fat sitting in your chest. So we're taught in medical school that the thymus in adulthood is kind of like an appendix in your chest. It just sits there, doesn't really do much. But new research in top journals has recently reinvigorated interest in the thymus as maybe one of the most underappreciated organs in human longevity. If you want more, you can see this dedicated letter, but the short story is that variations in human adult thymic aging, which you can see with CT scans— basically just slice people like a loaf of bread with an X-ray and look at their thymuses. Basically, thymic aging is a powerful predictor of longevity in humans, overall health, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. We'll get a little bit more into the thymus later in this video, but for you right now, at a high level, you can think of the thymus as regulating the immune system and inflammation. So the thymus, even though we used to think it was like an appendix in the chest, even by modern-day data, Western data, is really important for longevity. Now, as for the pineal gland, this is a little lump of tissue that sits just beneath your brain and controls your circadian rhythm. It's the organ that produces melatonin, which helps you sleep. More on that in a moment too, but let's get back to Cavinson's work. Yeah, you remember that double-blind trial we were talking about where they treated people with extracts of thymus and pineal glands over 6 years? That one. Well, what were the results? Strikingly, the researchers reported significant improvements in overall health, also in mortality, when treating patients with these organ extracts. Treatment with thymic and pineal gland extracts combined annually for 6 years reduced mortality by— get this— fourfold as compared to controls. Yes, this was a small trial, but the effect size was, to use some medical jargon, ginormous. And on top of that, there were improvements in physical functioning, subjective symptoms, blood pressure, and heart disease. This is really starting to sound like the Fountain of Youth, but that's barely the beginning. Now let's fast forward a bit because these data from nearly a quarter century ago effectively used blended-up organ extracts. Pretty crude. But over time, we've refined the process, isolating what are known as peptides. By definition, peptides are just short strings of amino acids, but many have powerful bioregulatory properties—they change how your biology works. You've heard of a few, I'm sure. The most famous right now is GLP-1, the basis of modern weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Others are oxytocin, the cuddle hormone, insulin, glucagon, and so on. Many peptides are just small molecule bioregulators, but they dictate a lot of our biology. And the process of discovery through science in this realm often starts with something like a crude extract, blended up organs of thymus or pineal gland, or in the case of GLP-1 and weight loss drugs, gila monster venom, or in the case of aspirin, willow bark. There are a lot of examples. Basically, you observe a biological effect, then you isolate the smallest sequence possible, that peptide, that can reproduce it. So through this process of discovery, we end up with several peptides that we're going to talk about today. One's called epithalon, the other are going to be what I call broadly the thymic peptides, and then something called pinealon. So remember those three because they're going to show up again. Now for what is usually my favorite part of these videos as a super nerd, how these peptides actually work. Because how could it possibly be that these tiny molecules improve health and lifespan on such a grand scale? And let me be clear here, the challenge isn't just, "Oh, it's a small molecule, so how can it have a big effect?" The paradoxes are deeper when you start digging in. Let me show you one. It has to do with something called telomeres. Maybe you've heard of them. Telomeres are the little caps at the end of your chromosomes, your DNA, that shorten as we age. Every time a cell replicates, your DNA shortens a bit. As we age, this is what's called telomere attrition or telomere decay. They shorten, and this corresponds with biological aging. You can kind of think of telomeres like the plastic tips, the aglets on the end of your shoelaces. When they get too short, the shoelace starts to fray. It wears down. And when this happens, cells enter a state called cellular senescence. It's basically cellular retirement. The cell stops dividing and starts secreting pro-inflammatory signals. In other words, the cell, instead of becoming part of the functional organism, becomes part of the problem. Now, here's the paradox. Are you ready? In theory, you can just activate an enzyme. It's called telomerase that elongates telomeres. It rebuilds those telomeres, which sounds great, right? Then you can achieve cellular immortality. Except for one issue. That's cancer's favorite trick. Unlimited cell divisions. So now we're stuck between a rock and a hard place. You don't want telomeres to shorten, but you don't just want to turn on the pathway that could fuel cancer. Rock and a hard place. It's a bummer, right? But here's something I didn't tell you. In those trials, one of the peptides, epithalon—remember, I said remember that—it activates telomerase. So logically you might think, okay, you're hitting a hallmark of aging, great, but you're also increasing cancer risk. Bummer. Okay, but here's the twist. Treatment in these trials was associated with lower cancer risk, not higher. So what the heck is going on? That's the paradox. Epithelon activates telomerase, so it should increase cancer risk, not lower it. But treatment lowers it. And this is where things get really interesting. There are multiple possible explanations, but I want to focus on something we touched on earlier: the role of the thymus and thymic peptides. Remember, the thymus plays a central role in developing your immune system. Specifically, it plays a central role in developing the adaptive immune system. This is the precise, targeted arm of your immune system that identifies threats with accuracy and gets rid of them, like infections or cancer. One of the key roles of the adaptive immune system is immunosurveillance—your body constantly scanning for abnormalities, including early cancer. So now, maybe you see where this is going. If you combine a system that enhances cellular renewal via telomerase activation with a system that improves immune surveillance and reduces inflammation and weeds out cancers, in theory you get a scenario where cells are more resilient and regenerative while cancer is simultaneously kept in check. Or in simpler terms, one peptide helps cells reach for immortality and the other makes sure cancer doesn't get out of hand. And truly, that's just the tip of the iceberg. When you zoom back out and look at all the hallmarks of aging, you see that these peptides—epithalon, thymic peptides, and pineolon—don't just affect one pathway. They appear to touch multiple hallmarks of aging: telomere attrition, which we talked about, genomic instability, chronic inflammation, cellular senescence, mitochondrial dysfunction, epigenetic alterations, and stem cell exhaustion. You don't need to memorize those. The point is this: these simple small biomolecules seem to plug in to some of the most fundamental processes of aging itself. And when you stop to think about it, that's really amazing. Now, I know what you're probably thinking: Where can I get my hands on these miracle peptides? And you'd be right to ask. It's what I want to know. There are an increasing number of companies and outlets supplying them to people like you and me. But to be clear, I'm not going to tell you where to get your hands on the injectable drugs in this video. I'm not telling you to do anything. But I'll be honest, all this research did provoke my curiosity. And the nice thing is some of these molecules are available in oral form, so you can take them by mouth and they're marketed as supplements. One in particular we haven't discussed yet but is related is pinealon. It's named after the pineal gland, as you probably can guess, which plays key roles in regulating circadian rhythm and actually dovetails nicely with epithalon. Pineolon, because of its small size and specific structure, appears to be orally bioavailable. You can take it by mouth and it'll get into your bloodstream. And what it does is pretty fascinating. It seems to influence neurochemistry and sleep architecture, basically improving your sleep quality. Now, I realize sleep and longevity might seem a little disconnected, but I don't think they are, and I'll come back to that. But let me first be a little bit selfish and bring you on a tangent to my own story. This was the first marketed peptide where I thought, "Okay, I can actually try this." And research on painilon is interesting. There's more in this full letter, but what really caught my attention was the combination of the basic science with anecdotal reports from physicians and scientists who I trust. People were telling me they felt dramatically more rested, even on a few hours of sleep. I even— and I probably shouldn't say this, but I will— I even had surgeons telling me that they could operate better on 4-5 hours of sleep. I know, no comment. There were also people reporting that they were seeing increases in rapid eye movement or REM sleep. Some even claimed they were doubling their REM sleep. Andrew Huberman famously talked about this on the 20/24 podcast. It's doubling the amount of rapid eye movement sleep that I'm getting. Yeah. Doubling. So in the end, I tried it. The brand I used came highly recommended by a friend and colleague. It's called Your Protocols. I didn't have huge expectations, but as someone who's historically a terrible sleeper, I figured it was worth a shot. And I was kind of blown away. It was the most restorative sleep I'd had maybe in a year or more. And I woke up feeling like I had just had 3 cups of coffee and just had a ton of energy. I feel good. And the dreams. I was having these fabled 8K dreams. I was actually having dreams within dreams within dreams. I felt like I was in Inception. I'm still dreaming. I would wake up from a dream and I'd be in another dream. It was wild and frankly was kind of fun. Since then, I've been using Pinealon now combined with Epitalon since they seem to work nicely together to support circadian rhythm and brain function. And my sleep has genuinely never been better. Can't you tell? I'm very high energy. And since we're talking about longevity, I might add as an aside, my biological age is supposedly under 18. Eat your heart out, Bryan Johnson. Although I'm not necessarily attributing that to these peptides. That would be a pretty fast mode of action. Now, if you want to try these peptides, you can, but warning, they're not cheap. This is where I'm a little sheepish because I want to get you the best access to something with the discount code, and I have it for you, it's STAYCURIOUS below, but seriously, no pressure to try any of these things. It's just for those of you who have the means and want to dabble. But let me try to connect these concepts. What does sleep have to do with living a longer, healthier life? Well, when you think about it, sleep isn't just a passive state where nothing happens. It's one of the most biologically active and restorative periods of your entire day. It's when your brain clears out metabolic waste and where your cells repair and recover. It's basically the maintenance and rejuvenation phase of your day. But beyond that, at least for me, this sleep phenomenon was a litmus test for the potency of these molecules because you can't necessarily feel things happening inside your body like thymic rejuvenation. It might improve your healthspan and lifespan, and seriously thymic health is going to be the next big thing in longevity medicine as I explain in this letter, But you can actually feel the effects of having an amazing night's sleep and having incredible dreams. But that's bringing us to our close, so I want to pivot and talk about the future. Because if you've sat through with me to this point, first of all, I appreciate your trust and attention, but I'm sure there's a part of you that's thinking this is all too good to be true. I know, I feel that too, I feel that right now. But I want you to consider this, and this is what I challenge myself to think about. Everything in science and medicine, all the breakthroughs we've had in history, seem fantastical until they happened, then they just became a part of human history. There are multiple times when we've had inventions that have improved our capacity as a species. It could be as simple as something like the invention of the bicycle. Compared to other animals, we're not very efficient at moving around, but give us a bicycle and we become among the most efficient animals at locomotion. The same thing with computers. They were a tool to help unlock the further capacity of our human brains and increase mental work efficiency. And one can say the same of AI. So is it so far-fetched that we're now discovering a set of molecules that can deepen our understanding of the human body and metabolism that would allow us to level up our physiology, make us faster, stronger, smarter, leaner, and better sleepers? Because our body, it's just one more machine, and we're learning how to toggle it. When framed that way, none of this sounds impossible. It's just the next level. On the Stay Curious journey. Thank you for taking it with me.