Peptides: The Science, Uses & Safety | Dr. Abud Bakri

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People are now stacking their GLP-1 as their insulin sensitivity tool, their growth hormone or their GHR >> and their androin modulation therapies as this trinity stack >> trinity stuff >> to get very fit, very healthy quickly. So a lot of these transformations you see in CEOs and celebrities and stuff is using a combination of those three things. You know your TRT plus teptide or retride whatever it may be and then using a growth hormone modulation whether if you can afford growth hormone or testimon. And you’re seeing people lose a lot of fat gain a lot of muscle in short amounts of time. Is that healthy?

We’ll find out. But [snorts] that is like the celebrity protocol. Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science [music] and science-based tools for everyday life. >> [music] >> I’m Andrew Huberman and I’m a professor of neurobiology and opthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr.

Abu Bakri, an internal medicine physician who is also extremely knowledgeable on the science and use of peptides. When I say peptides, I mean both FDA approved peptides such as the GLP agonist. You probably know these as things like Ompic, Monaro, and Retatrutide, as well as peptides such as body protection compound 157 or BPC57, which as you’ll learn today has a very long history of being used in humans for gut health and tissue repair, and many interesting studies in animals supporting its potential use in humans, but a minimum of formal studies in humans, meaning one. We discuss BPC-157, what it does and how, as well as things like growth hormone secrets like tessamarellin, MK677 and others. And we talk about things like GHK copper, which nowadays many people are using to promote collagen synthesis and repair for aesthetic reasons like improving skin, hair, and so on.

We also talk about peptides that have been studied for the purpose of DNA repair and longevity like epithelen and pinealin which also have been touted to improve REM sleep and for improving cognitive function. You’ll also learn what is known and what is not known about these peptides both in terms of function and safety. During today’s episode, you will come to appreciate that Dr. Bachri has truly encyclopedic knowledge about these peptides. He is also formerly trained as a physician and as a consequence you will learn how to think about peptides based on whether or not they have known receptors or not.

That turns out to be very important and what their real safety profiles are as well as what particular concerns you ought to have if you are considering using peptides of any kind. As a formerly trained board-certified physician, he comes at this topic through the lens of a physician, but also somebody who is very interested in the current status and future of peptide medicine. Today’s discussion, thanks to Dr. Bacher, is a true masterclass on peptides. By the end of today’s discussion, I promise you, again, thanks to him, that you will be among the most informed, doctor or otherwise, about peptides from the GLPS to BPC57 and all the others that I mentioned, including some that I didn’t mention here in the introduction.

So, it is a real gift and honor to have this knowledge presented to all of us. So, buckle up. You’re about to learn a lot about peptides. Before we begin, I’d like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public.

In keeping with that theme, today’s episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Abu Bakri. Dr. Abu Bakri, welcome.

Good to be here. Peptides, huge topic and huge category of biology and medicine. So, we should start off by breaking this into categories so that people can wrap their minds around it because that word peptides has come to mean stuff people buy and take and maybe should or shouldn’t buy and take. But there’s a lot of important and quite simple biology to understand before anyone should even be thinking about any of that. So if I just push the word peptides towards you, how do you carve that up in terms of thinking about it as an MD as a clinician and maybe also put yourself into the mind of a interested let’s call it a peptide curious person out there.

So scientifically I would say it’s one of the languages of the human body right so the body likes these different languages to communicate between cells going from DNA to RNA to proteins which are can be broken down as polyeptides and peptides and peptides are one of these languages steroid hormones are another language and then peptides can be broken down further into subcategories whether or not they have receptors or they have no receptor >> and that kind of changes the clinical effects we’ll see like the GLP1’s which have a very strong clinical effect compared to these obscure peptides like BBC57, TB500, TB4 that don’t have a clear target. >> They have receptors but they just have many of them or they don’t even have receptors. >> We don’t have a receptor identified for BBC57 or TB4. Just stopping you right there. There’s a very interesting distinction.

I don’t think anyone else has described peptides this way. >> Let’s take BPC57 for the moment. We’re going to talk a lot about it today. If it doesn’t have a receptor, what are some ways that it could impact cells and organs and so forth? Or is it that there are receptors, we just don’t know what they are?

It could be that the latter [clears throat] that maybe the the receptor is still elusive or it could be that it’s modifying certain proteins that already exist or linking different pepi uh proteins together in a more favorable fashion for gene transcription. The Russian peptides are all epigenetic modifiers that they bind to the groove of the DNA in certain spots that either open up or close the chromatin to certain areas of genetic expression. And they’ve modeled this out >> like a steroid hormone. So steroid hormones bind like they bind to a like the andro receptor binds DHT or testosterone goes into the nucleus turns on all the androgenic genes. >> Yeah.

Like puberty is a good example of that. >> Yes. Exactly. Exactly. So like pinealon that we’ve talked about uh shuttles uh heat shock proteins with androen receptors.

Got it. So if I just pause us for a second, we should think about this word peptides in two major categories at least. Yep. >> One is has known receptors >> plural like the GLPS. Y >> the other category would be does not have known receptors might have receptors but can definitely impact biology in interesting ways or so say the animal data.

Yep. >> Okay. >> A lot of animal data. >> All right. I know a lot of people are interested in GLPs and I want to go there.

But because I know most people are probably listening to this foremost because they want to hear about the other stuff. Let’s start with BPC57. What is it? What do we know about it? We’ll explore safety and what is your stance on it from the perspective of a consumer and a clinician.

So first of all, what is BPC57? >> The best way to look at it is, you know, as humans, we’ve been looking for medicines in plants for thousands of years. And in the last, let’s say 150 years, we’ve been looking for medicines in cells. So animal derived versus plant plant derived medicines is the way to think about it. You think about aspirin, you think about metformin, the statins, those were all discovered in you know plant tissues.

um stats more so fungi but you get the point. Now we’ve been looking into animal tissues to find cures, medicines, treatments. So a group in Croatia in the ’90s looks out for this peptide called BPC that they they and eventually named BPC. It’s a $40,000 dolton giant peptide called BPC.