Last night I watched the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's "Forever Young," a documentary on Age Hacking: The health trends outpacing regulation and putting people at risk | Four Corners Documentary (YouTube) 📺
It was super interesting, especially the second half where we were taken to the leading edge of longevity research and investment in San Francisco 🌉. If you follow this area of research, it brought up many questions, not just about what's coming, but also how consumers are already accessing new products and technologies, like peptides — the "Wolverine Stack," anyone? 💉
Darcy and I have been reading a lot 📚 about peptides and their use in ageing. This is not so we can bring synthetic peptide products into Zestt, but because by learning about what is happening at the leading edge and understanding the biology and mechanisms of action, we can find plant-based alternatives 🌱 that might be gentler and, over time, as effective.
One of the interesting challenges facing regulators is that the channels for some of these products are well and truly open and active. Take a look at what happens in the gym community 🏋️ to see the "early adopters."
The challenge is that unless the regulators keep up (which they are not ⏳), people may be injecting all sorts of substances into their bodies that are quite different to what the label states. Purity and quality control are real issues here ⚠️. There is little transparency in unregulated (illegal) markets.
A more interesting question is: Do these products have any use? 🤔
In some cases probably; in others they may be damaging. This short clip from Dr Nick Norwitz is an interesting answer to the question Do Peptides Cause Cancer? (YouTube) 🎥. In short, in some cases maybe, in other cases they might lessen the probability of cancer — we don't have enough data, so we just don't know! 🤷
Where do I land?
Our bodies are made of trillions of cells (if we include the microbes) 🦠, which drive many biochemical pathways. Your lifestyle influences those pathways, including ageing. Ageing itself is multi-faceted. Intervening (or biohacking) in one or more biochemical pathways within the many may slow aspects of cellular ageing. However, most pathways have multiple functions, so in trying to stop ageing, we may inadvertently be changing other pathways and functions 🔄.
I would want to see more safety and efficacy data before injecting myself, but that doesn't mean that these peptides are not very interesting! 🔬
In the meantime, as the Wolverine Stack works its way through the gyms 💪, I'll continue to get my peptides from the plate 🍽️. Lunasin and glutathione, carnosine and anserine from meat and fish 🐟, the collagen peptides released from a slow-cooked shank 🍖, and the thousands of bioactive peptides our gut releases from legumes, oats and seeds 🌾 every single day.
Gentler, cheaper, and with a much longer safety record. ✅