Research
Skin is one of the few areas where peptides have real human trials. Topical copper peptides and oral collagen both improve measurable skin properties — modestly, over weeks, in studies mostly funded by the people selling them.
Recovery is the most-marketed peptide benefit and the least proven. This separates the recovery claims with human trials behind them from the ones resting entirely on rodent studies — and names what would change the verdict.
Peptides are credited with dozens of benefits. Some are proven in large trials, some are modest and real, and some have never been tested in a person. This is every major benefit claim, sorted by how strong the human evidence is.
Semaglutide and tirzepatide have now shown benefits in cardiovascular events, kidney disease, liver disease, heart failure and sleep apnoea — each in its own trial, in its own population. Here is what each one actually demonstrated.
Collagen peptides have more randomised human trials than any other supplement peptide. The benefits are real, small, and take 8–24 weeks to appear. Here is what each one is worth in measurable terms.
Semaglutide and tirzepatide are the best-evidenced peptides in medicine — for specific uses. We separate the approved indications with large trials from the emerging research (kidney, liver, heart failure, sleep apnoea, Alzheimer's) and the open questions about regain, muscle loss and compounded products.
BPC-157 has hundreds of positive animal studies and almost no controlled human data. We separate what the rat research shows, what the few human reports show, what the FDA has said, and what would have to happen for the evidence grade to change.
A certificate of analysis is the main reassurance offered by 'research peptide' vendors. Here is what a CoA can and cannot tell you — identity, purity, quantity, sterility, endotoxin — why '99% pure' is not what it sounds like, and what independent testing of grey-market peptides has found.
The 'CJC/ipa' stack is sold for muscle, fat loss, sleep and anti-aging. The human evidence is a handful of short hormone-level studies, two abandoned development programmes, and no outcome trials — plus a set of risks that have never been studied because the trials were never run.
Tesamorelin is the one GHRH analogue that finished phase 3 and won FDA approval — for excess abdominal fat in HIV-associated lipodystrophy. We separate that established evidence from the off-label uses it is now marketed for: general visceral fat, liver fat, and cognition.
