Compounds explained simply
Compounds explained simply: 15 articles from What Are Peptides. Plain-English answers about peptides.
What Is Ipamorelin?
Ipamorelin is a tiny laboratory-made peptide that knocks on a particular door of the pituitary gland, the one normally answered by the hunger hormone ghrelin. Here is what that door is, what "selective" means, and what has and has not been studied.
What Is Melanotan II?
Melanotan II is a laboratory-made copy of the hormone that tells your skin to darken. It was invented in the 1980s, tested briefly, and never approved as a medicine anywhere. Here is what it copies, why it does more than tan, and why two of its relatives became medicines while it did not.
What Is Retatrutide?
Retatrutide is an experimental molecule that switches on three hormone receptors at once. It has finished its main late-stage trials but is not approved anywhere. Here is what it copies, why the third hormone is a surprising choice, and what "Phase 3" does and does not mean for it.
What Is Semaglutide?
Semaglutide is one molecule sold under several names. It is a copy of a gut hormone with three small edits, and those edits are the whole reason it lasts a week. Here is the molecule itself, what it copies, what it is approved for, and what it is not.
What Is Tirzepatide?
Tirzepatide is one molecule built to do the work of two gut hormones at once. Here is what the second hormone is, why anyone would want to copy both, how the molecule is put together, and what it is approved for.
What Is AOD9604?
The idea behind it is genuinely clever: take the one part of growth hormone that seems to burn fat, throw the rest away, and you get the benefit without the baggage. It worked in mice. Then it was tested in people, and that is where this story gets useful.
What Is CJC-1295? And What Does DAC Mean?
Almost every page about this compound mentions "with DAC" and "without DAC" and then moves on as if you already knew. You almost certainly do not, and nobody explains it. It is a difference in how long the molecule lasts, and here is the whole of it.
What Is Selank?
It began with a four-link fragment that your own immune system produces, discovered by accident in a Boston laboratory in 1970. Selank is what happened when Russian researchers took that fragment and made it last longer.
What Is Epitalon?
A peptide of only four amino acids, taken from a gland the size of a grain of rice, and attached to some very large claims about ageing. The compound is easy to describe. The evidence behind it is the part that needs care.
What Is MOTS-c?
To explain this one properly we have to start with a fact most people never get told: the tiny power stations inside your cells carry their own separate set of DNA. MOTS-c is a peptide whose instructions are written there.
What Is Growth Hormone?
Growth hormone has been sold as an anti-aging treatment for more than thirty years, largely on the strength of one small study. Here is what the hormone actually is, and why replacing a deficiency and topping up a healthy person are not the same thing at all.
What Is TB-500?
The honest answer starts with a wrinkle in the name, so we will start there too. Here is what TB-500 is, what the natural molecule behind it genuinely does, and where the evidence stops.
What Is GHK-Cu?
GHK-Cu is three amino acids with a copper atom attached, and it turns up on skin product labels. Here is what it actually is, why the copper is the interesting part, and what the evidence really supports.
What Are GLP-1 Medications?
They are copies of a hormone your gut already releases after every meal, rebuilt to last about a week instead of about two minutes. Here is what that hormone does, what the large trials actually found, and what the honest downsides are.
What Is BPC-157?
You have probably met this name attached to some very confident claims, in both directions at once. Here is the plain version: what BPC-157 is, what researchers think it might do, and how much of that has actually been shown.