Peptides for longevity (research paper)
I'm researching peptides (and some corollaries) for a term paper I'm drafting for a post-college course focused on modern health & wellness. I find this area fascinating so I'm trying to do actual research (no AI!). What I've found so far is that a lot of the knowledge here is not in medical journals but from communities like this.
With that in mind, I'd really appreciate thoughts as well as additional reading (books, papers, etc) that would be beneficial. Not all of these are peptides but they all kind of fall into that health & longevity category. While I realize there are people leveraging peptides purely for physical appearance, that is not my focus. I have no issue with that but my paper will be about public health and how our current system neglects promising treatments when they can't be monetized - or worse, prioritizes unnatural drugs with major side effects vs natural strands of amino acids already built for our bodies.
The peptides/compounds I plan to focus on are the biggies I've read about in health & wellness:
- Mitochondrial Health:
- NAD+
- MOTs-C
- SS-31
- Visceral fat reduction
- Tesamorelin
- HGH production:
- Ipamorelin & CJC 1295
From a research perspective, I'm curious about the safety profiles of these peptides/enzymes (including risks and common side effects), why these compounds have promise for health, wellness & longevity, whether they are routinely stacked together (if so, are any synergistic? and/or is combining all of these risky?), and any real-world evidence (or even anecdotes) showing efficacy or even the potential promise of efficacy.
I'm hoping to correlate the potential promise with the frustrating realities we face where Big Pharma only researches drugs & compounds that can turn a profit. While understandable (nobody works for free), it's still frustrating that right now, the only solution seems to be for people to serve as their own guinea pigs. I find it a minor miracle that GLP-1s made it to through Big Pharma at all. But once they did, it fueled massive growth (2/3rds of Eli Lilly's revenue is from GLP-1s). There is a sad irony that they're now trying to squash alternative access to natural compounds that they can't even patent. From what I have read, the patents held on many GLP-1s focus on the delivery mechanism (i.e. the shot) rather than the compound itself. I think it's crazy if true. All the extra money people spend for their brand-name GLP-1 is actually just for an intentionally overly-complicated shot. There has to be a better way. At least that is what I intend to write.
If there are other peptides or corollaries (like Blue Methylene for example) with real promise for health & wellness (not so much beauty), I'm curious about these as well. Although I'm cautious to delve too far into a man-made chemical as it seems counterintuitive that injecting yourself with an artificial dye would have health benefits.
I realize this is just a paper that will probably only be read by a handful of people but I am hoping the topic resonates with many of the members here. Thank you in advance!