Peptides: Rewiring Performance

Peptides are having their moment.

Until recently, these barely discussed biological messengers were the stuff of endocrinology textbooks and elite clinical trials. Now, they’re being whispered about in Soho House saunas and sprayed under tongues in boutique gyms across London. A niche curiosity is quietly becoming a cultural moment.

So what exactly are peptides? Why are they seemingly everywhere in 2025? And should you be paying attention?

Peptides Explained

Biochemically, peptides are short chains of amino acids; think of them as micro-proteins. If proteins are bricks in the house of your body, peptides are the instructions for the builders.

Unlike proteins, which typically build structure or mass, peptides act more like signals. They can tell your body to start regenerating tissue, release a particular hormone, suppress appetite, reduce inflammation, or trigger fat breakdown. They nudge you.

Your body naturally produces over 7000 peptides, handling everything from sleep cycles to immune response. The cultural shift happening now isn’t just in understanding them (we’ve got that down), the value is emerging from copying, enhancing, and, crucially, injecting or absorbing them, in ways that let us take control of these internal instructions.

The OG: Insulin

To understand how game-changing peptides can be, look at insulin.

Discovered in the 1920s after being isolated from canine pancreas tissue, insulin was the first therapeutic peptide to transform a chronic condition. Before its arrival, a diabetes diagnosis was a slow, unavoidable decline. After insulin, patients could regulate blood sugar with precision. And survive.

More than just a medical breakthrough, insulin proved that a synthetic peptide could act exactly like the real thing in the human body. It set the stage for everything that followed.

Image Source: Oral delivery of protein and peptide drugs (Chen et al., 2022)

GLP-1: Breaking the Internet

Fast forward to today and GLP-1 receptor agonists like Ozempic and Mounjaro drugs originally developed for type 2 diabetes have become headline news for another reason: dramatic weight loss.

We covered them in-depth last year but, in short, GLP-1 is a naturally occurring peptide that tells your brain you’re full, slows digestion, and enhances insulin secretion. The synthetic versions (like Ozempic) mimic this signal, reducing appetite and recalibrating metabolic pathways.

GLP-1s work because they don’t just treat symptoms, they adjust signalling. That’s the magic trick peptides offer. Instead of adding more to the body, peptides offer instructions to the body on how to use what it’s already got.

In our understanding, GLP-1s are the first time where a mass population have felt comfortable administering injections into themselves. This speaks both to the power of peptides and also society as a whole’s changing attitudes towards wellbeing, drugs and performance.

Insulin’s been studied for around one hundred years, though. Every other peptide in this piece has far less research… but they’re exciting, so let’s talk.

Wolverine Healing

One of the most fascinating (and controversial) branches of peptide use is in tissue regeneration, the so-called “Wolverine peptides.” Chief among them is BPC-157, short for Body Protecting Compound.

Originally isolated from gastric juice, BPC-157 is thought to support healing by:

• Accelerating angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels
• Increasing collagen production in connective tissue
• Supporting gut integrity (it’s being studied for inflammatory bowel disease)

In real-world terms, BPC-157 is being used, typically off-label and almost always unregulated, by people recovering from tendon tears, ligament damage, rotator cuff issues, and other injuries that would traditionally take months to heal.

Mitchell Hooper, one of the strongest men in the world, swears by it and claims that his peptide stack quadrupled the speed of his recovery time when managing a torn hamstring. He’s not the only one either, countless people are espousing the benefits. As the evidence builds, the potential benefits could be enormous.

However, we are still very much in anecdotal evidence stage, which means that before you open your internet browser, remember caveat emptor. There's a reason that BPC-157 is currently banned by USADA: a total lack of human studies. 

Growth Hormone Peptides

Another class making waves: growth hormone secretagogues like CJC-1295 and Ipamorelin.

Rather than injecting growth hormone directly (which can wreak havoc on your endocrine system), these peptides stimulate your pituitary gland to release more of your body’s own supply. The idea is subtler and safer: nudge, don’t override.

Users report increased lean muscle mass, improved strength and enhanced physical performance.

Unlike anabolic steroids or testosterone replacement therapy (TRT), these peptides work with your body’s rhythms, not against them. One human study from 2006 found a “2 to 10 fold increase” in growth hormone levels following the use of these peptides. But again, proper research is sparse at best, and some argue the benefits can be modest unless you're clinically deficient.

Both CJC-1295 and Ipamorelin, as of last year, are now banned by the FDA due to “risk for increased heart rate and cardiac events… and harmful immune responses” for the former, and “a study in which serious adverse events including death occurred” in the latter.

So yeah, serious stuff.

What Else Is Out There?

Peptides are becoming a pharmacological Swiss Army knife.

There are compounds designed to tan your skin (Melanotan II), boost libido (PT-141), reverse hair loss (GHK-Cu)... if you can think of it, there’s probably a peptide for it.

Some of these are approved drugs in specific countries, but typically, like in the UK, they are sold as “research chemicals,” still legally murky and medically unregulated.

It's not uncommon to find peptides being sold in gym WhatsApp groups, often with vague dosing guides and warnings like “don’t overdo it or it’ll make you nauseous.” Technically, many of these can be purchased legally, but only under the pretence that you’re procuring them for a roster of pet rats.

Safety Warning

As tends to be the case, regulators are far slower than creators. Many peptides are sold exclusively online and marked “not for human consumption.”

This prompts all kinds of legal gymnastics whereby vendors and influencers (with discount codes, of course) tell you how the products impact animals rather than humans to cover their backs. 

Now, before you get too excited about the idea of a new magic bullet for performance or wellbeing, it’s worth noting that while peptides are starting to generate buzz (and some early adopters are experimenting with them as they’re willing to take the risk), much of the evidence is still emerging. 

Findings are near exclusively pre-clinical or anecdotal, and long-term data remains scarce. Even in more researched categories, like GLP-1s, we’re still unpacking the deeper implications, such as how they affect reward circuitry and behaviour in ways we don’t yet fully understand.

Why Now?

Though peptides have been around for decades, we find ourselves in the middle of a cultural and technological convergence:

• The rise of longevity science has made performance-enhancement aspirational, not just remedial.
• The democratisation of biohacking—via YouTube, Reddit, and influencer doctors—has normalised self-experimentation.
• Drugs like GLP-1s have shown the general public that small molecules can do big things, fast.

There’s also something psychological at play. Peptides are seen as cleaner than steroids, more bespoke than supplements, and smarter than surgery. They appeal to the high-performance mindset not just because they offer physical gains, but because they represent control over ageing, healing, and metabolic fate. 

Throwing Forward

Peptides may turn out to be vital in the emerging and remarkable world of adaptive physiology. What insulin did for diabetes could be just the beginning. We now know we can intervene in the body’s signalling processes and thrive. With countless peptides now being explored, we’re entering a new era.

As we shift from the substrate model of “take more X,” towards “encourage the body to create more X,” we change the question from “what can I add?” to “what signals could be strengthened?”

Our ambitions as a species are only intensifying. The idea that we can recover faster, move better and feel sharper is no longer science fiction; it’s evolving into pure science.

Not every peptide will live up to the hype. Some will undoubtedly be snake oil. But all we need are a select few to rewrite how we approach the industry at large. 

If insulin was chapter one, GLP-1 might be chapter two. What comes next is yet to be determined. But peptides appear to be a real page-turner in the ever-burgeoning manual of performance.