Jun 11, 2026 · 40 min · 13 segments
Are peptides safe? And is it possible that with their growing interest for everything from injury recovery and exercise performance to weight management and healthy aging, it's no surprise that…
Elena ZinkovGuestJennifer FugoHost
And just like we use... hormone replacement therapy, and some of the other therapies that we have access to, I got to a point in my practice where I was just hitting a wall with my patients.
But they have the experience of a typical woman who's going through perimenopause or menopause where the metabolism is not the same.
And this is where I started to use peptides a while back before they blew up and are everywhere now.
But this is where I would use them very selectively to improve metabolism, to reduce inflammation because we know GLP-1s and the different varieties that we have of GLPs.
They're not just for weight loss, but we have cardiovascular benefits, cancer protective properties, as well as the improvement metabolism that we see.
One of the things that is frequently ignored in women's health is actually growth hormone.
So frequently when a woman is going through perimenopause and the other hormonal transitions, We look at estrogen, progesterone, we're lucky if the testosterone actually gets addressed, but rarely does anyone actually talk about growth hormone.
And when I started looking into my patient's growth hormone levels, because let's say they were not recovering well after a workout, yet they're on testosterone, they're eating well, Their other hormones are balanced.
When I started looking at their growth hormone levels, and it's hard to measure growth hormone directly, but we can use markers like IGF-1 as an example to understand what are the potential growth hormone levels, I realized that in a lot of my patients, both men and women, that IGF-1 was low and that potentially it's not just the other hormones that are struggling, but growth hormone is one of the first hormones that actually starts to decline and potentially before even the sex hormones start to decline.
So I would use... gentle growth hormone, releasing hormones and peptides to stimulate our own ability to produce growth hormone.
And then we see improvements in skin, in sleep, in hair, in recovery, in lean muscle mass.
So for me, peptides, they are another tool that I use when I the outcomes are plateauing and I'm not seeing the results that I want to see in my patients.
So I think this is a good question to ask because I do think there is the question of safety, which I want to get to in a little bit.
So that people understand where we are right now, are peptides actually legal? And I've heard things about the FDA kind of reclassifying them, that there's a whole reclassification process.
And just like we use... hormone replacement therapy, and some of the other therapies that we have access to, I got to a point in my practice where I was just hitting a wall with my patients.
But they have the experience of a typical woman who's going through perimenopause or menopause where the metabolism is not the same.
And this is where I started to use peptides a while back before they blew up and are everywhere now.
But this is where I would use them very selectively to improve metabolism, to reduce inflammation because we know GLP-1s and the different varieties that we have of GLPs.
They're not just for weight loss, but we have cardiovascular benefits, cancer protective properties, as well as the improvement metabolism that we see.
One of the things that is frequently ignored in women's health is actually growth hormone.
So frequently when a woman is going through perimenopause and the other hormonal transitions, We look at estrogen, progesterone, we're lucky if the testosterone actually gets addressed, but rarely does anyone actually talk about growth hormone.
And when I started looking into my patient's growth hormone levels, because let's say they were not recovering well after a workout, yet they're on testosterone, they're eating well, Their other hormones are balanced.
When I started looking at their growth hormone levels, and it's hard to measure growth hormone directly, but we can use markers like IGF-1 as an example to understand what are the potential growth hormone levels, I realized that in a lot of my patients, both men and women, that IGF-1 was low and that potentially it's not just the other hormones that are struggling, but growth hormone is one of the first hormones that actually starts to decline and potentially before even the sex hormones start to decline.
So I would use... gentle growth hormone, releasing hormones and peptides to stimulate our own ability to produce growth hormone.
And then we see improvements in skin, in sleep, in hair, in recovery, in lean muscle mass.
So for me, peptides, they are another tool that I use when I the outcomes are plateauing and I'm not seeing the results that I want to see in my patients.
So I think this is a good question to ask because I do think there is the question of safety, which I want to get to in a little bit.
So that people understand where we are right now, are peptides actually legal? And I've heard things about the FDA kind of reclassifying them, that there's a whole reclassification process.
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3 of 8
Can Peptides Fuel Cancer?
Her clinical example makes the risk concrete
The Unknown 0.1 Percent
That purity claim may hide serious unknowns
Avoid Peptide Cocktail Mixes
Popular peptide blends may not be safe
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