Philosophy - Peptides/PEDs and Thinking About Risk
Overview
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard about peptides. They’re often marketed as being safer — and therefore a potential game changer — compared to traditional performance-enhancing drugs.
You might ask ❓, why would I write about this topic, given that I try to compete in bodybuilding naturally (not particularly well, I might add 😂)?
The answer
Like many people, I’ve heard about peptides but never really given them much thought. Recently, while chatting with a gym buddy, he mentioned that he had started experimenting with them and was seeing good results.
That got me thinking — perhaps it’s time to form a more structured opinion.
In my younger years, I read a bit about traditional performance-enhancing drugs, and like most people, I formed some opinions. But peptides seem to sit in a grey area — newer, less studied, often marketed aggressively, and discussed casually in gym circles.
Another question that came to mind was this:
What sort of heuristic or framework should we use when evidence is scarce, yet we still need to make decisions that ideally turn out to be correct more often than not?
bag of salt 🧂.
What are peptides?
Peptides occur naturally in the body and are byproducts of protein digestion. In simple terms, they are short chains of amino acids — essentially smaller fragments of proteins.
You might think 🤔, “It’s natural and already found in your body, so it must be safe.”
Hang on — testosterone is also natural and found in your body. Toxicity is often dose-dependent, meaning that higher concentrations can increase risk.
The term “natural” is also slippery. Many compounds are synthesized in a lab but chemically identical to what occurs in nature. That doesn’t automatically make them safe — or unsafe. What matters is dose, context, and evidence.
Well-Studied (Medical Use)
These are peptides that have undergone extensive human clinical trials, are prescribed by physicians, and have relatively well-documented efficacy and safety profiles.
I will link studies from reputable publications describing what these drugs are and how they were tested.
I am not qualified to dissect any of these studies for bias or methodological flaws, so I generally defer to the broader scientific consensus rather than trying to outthink specialists in their own field.
Semaglutide - Wegovy / Ozempic
Semaglutide seems to be a good example of a peptide with strong human data behind it. It has been tested in large randomized controlled trials (generally considered the gold standard), approved by regulatory agencies, and prescribed under medical supervision.
Less Studied (Fitness / Experimental Use)
Again, I am not an expert — but based on conversations with gym buddies and some time spent reading online forums (yes, Reddit included), BPC-157 comes up time and time again.
BPC-157
Often marketed as a healing peptide, particularly for tendon, ligament, and gut repair.
Healing Properties
The review cites multiple preclinical studies showing healing effects in rodent models. That tells me there is probably something biologically active happening.
But the real question is: how well do rodent results translate to humans? Some systems translate well. Others, not so much.
Wound healing? Not so much. The following study goes into detail on how different it is between humans and rodents.
Based on this, the effects of BPC-157 observed in rodents may not translate directly — or as strongly — to humans.
Now you might say — hang on 🤨. There are tons of people using this stuff who swear it works. Shoulders and knees suddenly feeling better. “Recovery miracles.”
What’s going on there?
One possibility is the placebo effect.
My interpretation of that conclusion is:
- Placebo will not generally cure serious medical conditions.
- It can meaningfully influence subjective outcomes — particularly pain.
That matters, because most BPC-157 claims revolve around pain, recovery, and “feeling better.”
I am not saying BPC-157 does nothing. I am saying it is difficult to distinguish between placebo, the compound itself, natural healing, training adjustments, or expectation effects when someone reports improvement.
Ultimately, we need well-designed human clinical trials. Until then, we’re mostly guessing.
Risks
Even though few side effects have been reported following administration, long-term human trials have not been performed. As a result, the true safety profile in humans remains uncertain.
The same review still emphasizes the need to better define potential side effects, warning that the compound’s complex biological activity could carry unintended risks — including processes such as angiogenesis.
After revisiting the literature, I found another paper that pushes back on some of these concerns — particularly around angiogenesis. The authors argue that criticisms related to cancer risk and angiogenic stimulation are misplaced, and they report no observed toxicity across multiple organs at a wide range of doses.
However, even if those criticisms are overstated, we are still left with limited long-term human data.
The absence of observed toxicity in certain models does not automatically translate to long-term safety in healthy individuals using the compound outside of controlled medical settings.
I’m not trying to win an argument — I’m trying to improve the quality of my own decisions.
Even though BPC-157 and traditional performance-enhancing drugs are not marketed for the same purposes, there is some evidence that traditional anabolic agents can influence tissue repair.
Importantly, many traditional PEDs have well-established dose-response relationships. That allows risks to be monitored and partially mitigated through biomarker tracking.
With experimental peptides, that dose–risk relationship does not appear to be clearly defined.
Framework
Making decisions based on incomplete or limited information is something we all have to do — constantly.
Like many others, I’ve found myself in situations where the evidence is unclear but a decision still needs to be made. The following is my attempt at outlining a framework that, while imperfect, may help tilt decisions toward being correct more often than not.
1. Default to Being Unconvinced
The best starting position is neutral skepticism.
Being unconvinced does not mean automatically agreeing or disagreeing — it simply means withholding judgment until sufficient evidence is presented.
You need evidence to say “yes” — and you also need evidence to say “no.”
2. Evaluate Only Specific Claims
Claims must be precise. Vague promises are impossible to evaluate.
If a claim cannot be clearly defined, it cannot be meaningfully tested — and the appropriate response is to remain unconvinced.
3. Look for High-Quality Evidence
To move from unconvinced to convinced, look for strong evidence. Prioritize:
- Human clinical trials
- Randomized controlled trials
- Meta-analyses
- Regulatory approval
Anecdotes are rarely sufficient. Personal experiences and feelings can be compelling, but they are also prone to bias and misinterpretation.
4. Adjust the Evidence Threshold to the Risk
The higher the potential downside, the stronger the evidence should be.
For low-risk decisions, weaker evidence may be acceptable. For high-risk decisions, the bar for evidence should be much higher.
5. Align with Scientific Consensus More Often Than Not
Yes, yes—I know. Everyone is an armchair expert on issues that affect their lives, and that absolutely includes me. However, I would wager that we (armchair experts—and even individual experts) get things wrong more often than the broader scientific consensus does.
Experts are human and therefore not infallible. Like anyone else, they can be influenced by financial incentives, institutional pressures, and personal biases.
However, broad consensus—built across many experts, institutions, and independent lines of evidence—is generally far more reliable than isolated studies, individual opinions, single experts, or confident internet takes.
History shows this pretty clearly. Most scientific progress comes from improving and refining what we already know, not scrapping it entirely. Big revolutions—like germ theory, relativity, or plate tectonics are rare and only happen when the evidence is overwhelming and the new explanation works better.
Even then, the old ideas usually still work in everyday situations. Newton’s physics is still used all the time, despite Einstein giving us a deeper understanding. So while scientific consensus can be wrong, overturning well-established consensus is uncommon.
Reading back over what I’ve written here, it becomes fairly clear that my philosophical stance leans toward Naturalism and Empiricism — the view that our best guide to truth is evidence grounded in observable reality.
I’m not an expert in philosophy, so this is my interpretation. It’s an area I’d like to explore in more depth over time.
Am I on PEDs yet?
If I were ever to consider using performance-enhancing drugs, my approach would be as follows:
- Use well-documented, pharmaceutical-grade compounds (e.g., testosterone enanthate).
- Use the lowest effective dose possible (remember: risk is often dose-dependent).
- Consistently monitor biomarkers to detect and mitigate emerging risks.
However, point number two is the real constraint.
In most healthy individuals with normal testosterone levels, a “low” dose is unlikely to produce the kind of dramatic muscle mass seen in elite or enhanced bodybuilding circles. At best, it may result in modest improvements.
As discussed here: The Muscle and Strength Pyramid – Training 2, elite natural bodybuilders may only add around 0.5 kg of muscle per year. Even if we assume that a conservative dose meaningfully improves that rate — doubling or even tripling it — we are still talking about a few kilograms over multiple years.
That would certainly make a visible difference on stage. The real question is whether that improvement justifies the additional risk.
To significantly move beyond natural limits, higher doses are typically required — and as already discussed, higher doses generally increase risk.
That becomes a classic risk–reward trade-off. The balance is highly individualized. As mentioned earlier, I am naturally risk-averse — especially when the potential consequences involve long-term health.
This type of asymmetric long-tail risk — where the potential benefits are modest but the downsides are low probability and severe — shows up in many domains: high-leverage margin trading, experimental drugs, and other forms of “small upside, large downside” decisions.
Perhaps I should spend more time studying how to reason about these types of risks properly and write about it in a future post — be on the lookout.
For me, the risk–reward equation simply does not justify the trade.
Closing thoughts
Some of the peptides currently being researched may well prove valuable in the future. Still, history suggests that many experimental compounds do not.
My view on exercise is centered around promoting healthspan, not merely lifespan. Healthspan refers to living well until death — maintaining the ability to move, think, and function independently. Lifespan alone is of little value if you cannot live normally or do the things you care about. As such, any potential downside to long-term health means the burden of proof should be high.
Risk tolerance is personal — but preserving health and functional independence into old age is something most people value deeply.
Links
- Protein Metabolism
- Therapeutic Peptides: Recent Advances in Discovery, Synthesis, and Clinical Translation
- The multifaceted effects of semaglutide: exploring its broad therapeutic applications
- Multifunctionality and Possible Medical Application of the BPC 157 Peptide—Literature and Patent Review
- A biological membrane-based novel excisional wound-splinting model in mice
- Placebo interventions for all clinical conditions
- BPC 157 Therapy: Targeting Angiogenesis and Nitric Oxide’s Cytotoxic and Damaging Actions, but Maintaining, Promoting, or Recovering Their Essential Protective Functions
- Naturalism and Empiricism
- The Structure of Scientific Revolutions