00:00:08
Speaker 1: You're listening to a mom with Mere podcast.
00:00:14
Speaker 2: You don't even know what you're taking.
00:00:17
Speaker 3: That's the scary part is there's no way to even assure that this peptide is in there or if there are other things and the amount of the peptide that's in there. It's not approved for sale or use as a turning agent in Australia and has never been assessed for quality or safety. So essentially, people are injecting a unregulated peptide that can affect your kidneys and swell your brain to achieve something that a bottle of Bondi Sands can do.
00:00:46
Speaker 2: On a Sunday afternoon.
00:00:53
Speaker 1: Hello there, welcome to Well Your Full Body Healthyack.
00:00:56
Speaker 3: I'm Claire Murphy and i'm doctor Marriam and.
00:00:59
Speaker 1: Today we're talking about something you might have seen scrolling or maybe even you've been talking about it in your circles. We're talking about the peptide boom. With the introduction of glp ones, which I yes, a peptide and natural hormone produced in the gut that regulates blood, sugar and appetite, we've been introduced to this notion that we can control our hormones to some degree and that in turn has led to a bit of a scary trend that has grown from the gymbro scene into something that's been exploited by influencers and then in turn created this massive, unregulated and unsupervised human experiment as people start to inject substances that they have no way of knowing exactly what they contain. That is coming up today. We also have a quick consult today for Marianna who has a very painful butt issue that she's wondering might have something to do with her very long hair. But next, it's med school time and I want to address something you might have seen in your feed about the internal contents of your pad. We're going to do a little bit of mythbusting today. Welcome to med School, Mariam. There's a TikTok video that's been going viral. It kind of comes around the internet every now and then. Yeah, late last year it was doing the rounds again and so you might have seen it. Have a look. So guys holding up a sanitary pad. It's new, it's out of the box. It still has the adhesive sticker still on it, and as he holds it up to the light, it looks like there is green and black mold growing inside. Now, what they do not do, and neither does any of the accounts that end up stitching that and also talking about it holding their own pads up to the light, is cut the damn thing open and have a look inside, which we have done on our Instagram and TikTok if you want to go and check it out. This is not molt. This is the absorbent material. Sometimes it is plant based. There is cotton, for example, in there and other fibers that they use to absorb period blood. It will appear darker underneath yellow light in particular, and that yellow light also makes some of the internal layers look a little bit yellow or greeny. So when you cut it open, there is no molt. And while there can be very rarely contamination in the production process of sanitary ice, that's for everything, right, That is, for every single thing that's manufactured food, sanitary items, like anything that's manufactured for men as well for men as well. Anything can be contaminated at any particular time. They do take very strict measures to make sure that that doesn't happen. And at this very moment, as of us recording this podcast, no souantry pad producer has recalled their product due to mold contamination.
00:03:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, so for anyone feeling worried after seeing this trend, your sanitary pads are safe. I've been wearying one every day because I've got some urinary incontinents.
00:03:41
Speaker 1: They're not all just for blood, So I mean, the message here on med School today is just really be careful when you do see stuff going viral on social media. But sometimes we go through these phases, and it's been like this for the last couple of years, especially when it's to do with women's health. It's deliberately scary, and I'm not sure what the motivation is for us to be scared of sanitary pads. Maybe it's just another thing for us to worry about on top of all the other things. Perhaps, But they are safe to use. I really don't understand what the benefit of this is because it's not a public service announcement. It's just literally making people scared for no good reasons. So please know your sanitary pads are safe. Check up time next Today we are checking in on a biohacking trend that seems to be everywhere all at once right now, So Mariam and I are going to break down what the heck peptides are, why they're the current talk of the town, and whether you can as these online influencers continue to claim hack your own hormones, it's time for the checkup. So before we do kick this off today, we do want you to know that the information that we are discussing regarding unapproved peptides and prescription treatments is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute medical advice because these substances carry significant health and legal risks that we need to tell you about and make sure you always consult a qualified medical professional at all times when you hear any advice that we talk about here.
00:05:14
Speaker 2: What is word for doctor?
00:05:16
Speaker 1: That is what you go to medical school. If you have not gone to medical school, go find someone who has. So the word injectable has come to mean something a little bit different to us in twenty twenty six, because it used to be something that was sort of secretive that bodybuilders did when we're talking about things like steroids, and if you go back to say the early two thousands, they were talking about steroids still, but there was this little shift happening where the conversations and journalists have looked into this by going into message boards from the past and they've found a shift in conversations in these bodybuilding forums that shifted from steroids to peptides.
00:05:54
Speaker 2: Yep.
00:05:55
Speaker 1: Now in the twenty tens, this is when the biohacking bros caught on to this peptide trend. So they started to pick it up and started to talk about it amongst themselves. But this is still pre podcast era, so the Internet is growing, but this is still like pre Instagram days, So twenty tens biohacking brows are starting to catch onto peptides. In twenty twenty, this thing happened, I don't know if you remember, the pandemic, and this changed the way that we look at our health system as a whole. So we started to distrust our government, We started to distrust the medical health professionals that worked around us. The whole system. Really it felt like unraveled in a way, and we were looking at it differently with a little bit less trust. And that's when people decided to take health into their own hands. And this is where we started to hear the phrase do your own research right, and that has a lot of connotations around the healthcare system. And I'm sure Mariam you've heard this many many times in the course of you doing your job. Then in twenty twenty three, there's another shift. This is the rise of injectable weight loss medications. And that's not to say that they were knew at that time. They weren't. They had been in use for about twenty years by that stage by type two diabetics to help them maintain insulin levels, but this is when they understood better the side effects of that included weight loss, and they started to be marketed towards people to lose weight. And so as the rise in people using those increased, it also normalized self injection. That's not something that we were used to doing at home by ourselves. It's something that people did in a medical setting, like in a doctor's office or a hospital, or it was something that people who had maybe type one diabetes did regularly to give themselves insulin. But it normalized that. Also because people were doing this thing where they were taking health into their own hands and doing their own research, they started to look beyond the Australian medical system to source some of these medications, especially where it came to these weight loss injections because as we all know, they became in very short supply. Not long after they became very popular, and so people started reaching out to try and find how they could get their hands on them, so so conventing the austrandi in safety regulations. And when you put all of that together alongside this absolute influx of social media influencers who are now on this peptide trend, the biggest one seems to be one of these podcasts bros in the US. And I'm not going to tell you his name because I really don't want you to go and seek him out. But he's the kind of guy who has people like RFK Junior, the guy who's now currently in charge of the US Health Department and who is you know, has some questionable cue vomit, Yeah, some questionable takes on the healthcare system. Those people started selling peptides. So they are hosting a podcast talking about how great peptides are, but also selling them on the side as well. So it's a business model. It's not just talking about health. The chances are any peptides that you purchase, regardless of who you've sourced them through, they are manufactured somewhere in China. Even just the raw ingredients, if they're assembled somewhere else, they've probably come from China. And so that's why a lot of these people now are telling you to cut out the middleman and go straight to the source, which is another scary thing in itself, because you just don't know where it's come from, what's actually in it. Exactly right, Marrion, Let's take it back to basics first, What even is a peptide?
00:09:21
Speaker 3: Okay, So at a basic level, so a peptide is basically a short chain of amino acid, so like a mini protein, it's got a very simple structure. They occur naturally in the body, So think of things like insulin growth hormone oxytocin, which we know is the love hormone. So your body uses them as chemical messengers. So they basically dock into cells and they tell them this is what you're going to do. So when someone is selling a peptide supplement, basically what they're saying is the molecule mimics one of those natural signaling systems in your body. Now, experimental peptides, they're the ones that we're talking about today. They haven't been tested in any clinical trial. Processes. They're often purchased from manufacturers in other com trees. These include growth hormone adjacent peptides, copper ones that online claims say supposedly help with skin. There are some that are said to supposedly help with sleep, and one you might have heard quite a bit about is melanotan. Yeah, and people are using that to tan from the inside through an injectable or even a nasal spray. O. They're easy to manufacture and they often sit in a great regulatory zone unless they're developed as formal drugs, which isn't happening anytime soon.
00:10:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so you mentioned one there, can you the tanning one?
00:10:40
Speaker 3: Can you get melanotan? So this is actually really interesting and actually start it's a synthetic peptide. Started as a love story. It's got a love origin stuff. I talked to you about this. So it was actually invented by scientists who were trying to prevent skin cancer. The idea was that if we could give people a tan without the sun. So it sounds noble, right, but the side effects in the early trials were a lot. So I think of things like nausea, headaches, facial flushing, loss of appetite. And I'm going to mention one because it's interesting spontaneous erections, which I mention only because it accidentally led to a whole separate drug for sexual dysfunction.
00:11:20
Speaker 1: Okay, that's really interesting because there's one of these looks Maxing Bros. Who did a podcast who said he was using this and was getting in his words, raging bonus.
00:11:29
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:11:30
Speaker 3: Okay, and so anyway, that led to a separate drug for sexual dysfunction. Okay, but here's where it went wrong. So in trials they found that it was stimulating moles and freckles in ways they couldn't predict or control. Okay, So for a drug designed to prevent skin cancer, that's a serious problem, right, serious enough that the TGA, so that's the Therapeutic Goods Administration has issued a formal warning with skin cancer listed as a primary concern. It's also been linked to things like kidney dysfunction and brain swelling. So it never got approved anywhere. So that's the TGA. The FDA in America hard no across the board, and then the Internet found it of course, so now it's sold online with zero quality control and no verified dosing.
00:12:20
Speaker 2: So Essentially you don't know how much. You don't even know what you're taking.
00:12:25
Speaker 3: That's the scary part is there's no way to even assure that this peptide is in there or if there are other things and the amount of the peptide that's in there. It's not approved for sale or use as a turning agent in Australia and has never been assessed for quality or safety. So essentially people are injecting a unregulated peptide. So I'm doing that inverted comments with people that are listening and not seeing that can affect your kidneys and swell your brain to achieve something that a bottle of Bondi Sands can do on a Sunday afternoon. I just like I can't understand that we can. Bondi Sands is the fake Oh that's.
00:13:07
Speaker 2: A fake tan. We're not do that in doctor Okay, I take that back.
00:13:13
Speaker 1: Marion would never tell you to go out away the son. That's awful. There's a lot going on there and we literally don't know enough about it and we just have not even got it approved for people to use here in Australia. And I think we need to point out too that that is the case, and so if you are caught using or possessing this, it could be in breach of state and territory laws. So you could find yourself in criminal trouble for even possessing these things. I want to run through some of the other peptides that I've been seeing quite a bit on social media. People are experimenting like cocktails of these things, which is terrifying. So these unapproved substances. Influencers say they're stacking them, which is common slang that you'll hear when talking about that, but it's essentially putting a bunch of these so called in inverted commas peptides together with a promise that it's going to optimize your entire body from top to tail essentially, And so they talk about it like a true science, which is the part that's really misleading. It sounds like it's backed up by medical claims and sounds legitimate. It's not, and that's something we need to make really clear. These people are in no way accountable for what can potentially happen to you if you do use these things. So these people might be doing whatever it is they're doing and seem fine, they might also not be. They might be lying to you about whatever the side effects might be that they're experiences.
00:14:30
Speaker 2: It's what they're injecting.
00:14:31
Speaker 3: It might just be normal saline and they're getting the commission like you don't know.
00:14:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's very true. Okay, let's talk about one of these that's often mentioned for skin in particular, is GHKCU. What do we know about it? Why is it dangerous to self administer these? So we call the research chemicals?
00:14:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, so GHKCU. It's a naturally occurring copper binding peptide. So it's best known for roles in wounds, healing, skin and hair regeneration. It's in skin products like creams that we put on our face and broad pro repair signaling. But there is no credible human clinical evidence to support claims. Frustration about injectable Yeah, so, yes, we have it in topical forms, but there's no claims to support it being injected. Using them essentially is equivalent to being an unregulated human labrat.
00:15:28
Speaker 1: Because even labrets have better.
00:15:30
Speaker 2: Exact conditions monitoring them.
00:15:33
Speaker 3: Yes, so essentially you're out in the open world and no one's looking after you, and no one's looking at your bloods, no one's monitoring it, and.
00:15:39
Speaker 1: We're going to presume that maybe you're not telling your gp about using these kinds of things either. I mean, that's you could be. But still, I did actually look through some of the websites that sell peptides to Australians and I'm not going to name them obviously because that is not the right thing to do, but I look through their products and they claim that this peptide that we just talked about, it is extensively studied for its role in wound healing, tissue remodeling, and antioxidant research applications. What can we take from that, though, marrim And they say it's been extensively staid.
00:16:09
Speaker 2: I'm rolling my eyes like my eys have come off the back of my head.
00:16:13
Speaker 3: Eyes now face back with Okay, so the result that these claims are basing the statement on is pre clinical, so only tested on cells or rodents, not on humans.
00:16:26
Speaker 2: Okay, so that's a big thing.
00:16:27
Speaker 1: So maybe like a human cell, but never an entire path No, of course not.
00:16:31
Speaker 3: So the moment you see pre clinical research or research applications on one of these websites, that's your telltale sign, right, Okay, it's never been tested in humans in any meaningful way. So the language sounds sounds like legit right, sounds rigorous. It's designed to sound that way, but it is a very long way from we know this is safe and effective in your body.
00:16:53
Speaker 2: Okay.
00:16:54
Speaker 3: So we know reported side effects with the limited data that we have include skin irritation, redness, rash, but the systemic ones, that's the ones we want to know about, aren't documented because we have no there's no trial that's right.
00:17:07
Speaker 1: This one I've been seeing everywhere. BCP one five seven, or Body Protection compound. Sellers of this claim it helps blood vessel formation and tissue repair. But Marriam, is there any truth for that for humans?
00:17:20
Speaker 3: Yep, So BPC one five seven, that's probably one of the most hyped peptides in the stacking world right now.
00:17:27
Speaker 2: For starters.
00:17:28
Speaker 3: The peptide has only been tested on animals. Again, human data is so sparse and it's low quality. So we're talking about a phase one trial that was canceled in twenty fifteen and in twenty twenty five are pilot study. So pilot studies like the lowest level of studies, and that only included two adults. Okay, okay, so no large, randomized controlled trial that shows any clear benefit for any human conditions as of right now. Okay, and here's what doesn't get talked about enough. So when you artificially promote blood vessel formation, so that's something we call angiogenesis and cell growth, you're activating the same biological mechanisms involved in tumor developments.
00:18:10
Speaker 1: Okay, sometimes they have their own blood, yeah, right.
00:18:13
Speaker 3: So when people are self administering this with zero medical supervision, that uncertainty is so scary, right, they'll.
00:18:23
Speaker 2: Take it deeper, take it deeper.
00:18:24
Speaker 1: Mary's getting so wound up in here. I mean if you came in here right now and told her what you were doing with these things, I think she would sit you down and give you a very stern lecture. All right. Another one that's getting a lot of attention is REDDA too dried or redter radder as it's commonly referred to as online. What do we know about this? I understand this one has an effect on hormone.
00:18:44
Speaker 3: Yes, So this is another one that impacts GLP one receptors. So one's currently on the market, approved by the TGA for the management of type two diabetes and weight loss. It's officially being created by a pharmaceutical company who also makes other weight loss drugs, but it's not yet approved. Okay, that doesn't stop people from sourcing it through these gray markets that we've talked about. So, Yeah, some of the websites you mentioned before say explicitly that it's shown promise in pre clinical metabolic research, which means again only tested on animals or cells only. The new experimental compound currently in trials is even more complex and people are taking it without again any medical supervision or understanding of the long term impacts. So we know that GLP one receptor agnus can work on hormonal pathways. Now with this new REDTA compounded peptide, we don't know essentially what hormonal pathways it may work on and what side effects can occur as a result, And that's going to be the issue in like five to ten years from now, who knows what's going to come around. And same thing with vaping. We're going to see all these side effects pop out long term.
00:19:55
Speaker 1: There was that recent research on vaping too there.
00:19:58
Speaker 2: Now it's considered a cast synergen.
00:19:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, that it potentially can cause cancer, and the fact that because it's only really been around since about two thousand and eight. We don't have enough people who've just vaped their entire life to know what the long term impacts are, but we know what smoking ended up doing.
00:20:13
Speaker 2: What brats.
00:20:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't want to be a giant science experiment that no one is paying attention to, because that's essentially what we're doing right now. No one is overseeing it. The results are n't tracked unless you count asking your gym buddies exactly and what the impacts are.
00:20:26
Speaker 2: The crazy thing is.
00:20:28
Speaker 3: Right when we go back to COVID, everyone was so hesitant about the vaccine because we didn't have phase four trials.
00:20:35
Speaker 2: We don't even have phase one trials. Yeah, what is happening? Yeah?
00:20:39
Speaker 1: With so many influencers pushing it though, it gives it an air of safety or legitimacy, when realistically it's the exact opposite.
00:20:48
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, And this is what frightens me the most. I know, I look worked up, and you do.
00:20:54
Speaker 1: Look really and actually those times I've actually seen you really angry.
00:20:56
Speaker 3: But I'm scared because when you see someone with one hundred thousand followers injecting something confidently on camera, your brain's reading that as evidence. It's not it's anecdotal, it's dressed up as data. Essentially, we're running the largest uncontrolled human trial in history. There's no ethics committee to approve it. Nobody is tracking the outcomes, nobody's following you up in five years. And I say this with genuine empathy, like people doing this aren't stupid. They're frustrated, frustrated that conventional medicine is slow, answers are hard to come by.
00:21:32
Speaker 1: And they also take an interrupt We understand that there are certain drugs that may not be created or explored further because it's not in the best financial interest of a pharmaceutical company to do so, because it is an expensive thing to do to get a drug from its initial form through into an approved one that we can give safely to humans. It's a wildly expensive processes and they're not going to do that for everything.
00:21:57
Speaker 2: No, of course not.
00:21:58
Speaker 3: And that frustration is completely valid. But here it's being exploited deliberately and profitably, because feeling legitimate and being safe are not the same thing, and right now that distinction is costing people their health.
00:22:13
Speaker 1: Look next, it is quick consult time. Today, Marianna has a condition that is causing her a lot of pain. But what she actually wants to know is not so much about the condition itself, but maybe whether her choice of hair style contributed to it. Okay, it is time, doctor, marian Please lure us into your chambers. Okay, sorry, invite us into consulting rooms. The doctor will see you now.
00:22:42
Speaker 3: Just through here to consort room one.
00:22:45
Speaker 2: Thanks for reading, Marianna. How can I help you?
00:22:49
Speaker 1: So? Marianna has a very painful butt problem.
00:22:52
Speaker 4: She wrote this, I've recently been diagnosed with an anal fisher and it is so painful. It could be from when I gave birth.
00:23:02
Speaker 1: To one of my kids, but I think I was having issues before even then.
00:23:06
Speaker 4: A friend of mine told me it can be caused by hair getting stuck in your butt crack when you've had a shower and washed it. And I've got super long hair, and I'm wondering if that's true. Anal fishes, I'm not sure if you've ever had one. They are incredibly painful, So I'm really glad we're talking about this.
00:23:26
Speaker 3: Anal fishes, I'm not sure if you've ever had one. Incredibly painful, So glad we're talking about this. First off, the main causes for anal fishes are things like constipation, passing, very hard stores, straining, or sometimes trauma during childbirth. They're like little tiny tears in the lining of the anal canal, but they can be really uncomfortable, so they're not hemorrhoids or polyps or anything of that sort. Now, the idea of hair can cause fishes, honestly, no medical evidence to suggest that hair that gets caught there is going to cause enough irritation to cause a fissure. I believe that's more of a myth that's circulating online. Long hair might occasionally irritate the skin, but it shouldn't penetrate or tear the lining. Best approach for anyone who has anal fissures is to focus on things we know do help. So that's keeping your stools soft with hydration and fiber, remembering you need both water and fiber to make your stool soft, not one or the other. And gentle laxatives if needed, taking those warm sitz baths to relax the area, and in some cases you might need some topical over the counter medication. And for anyone who has a fissure that isn't healing or they think they might have an anal fisher. Make sure you check it with your friendly GP.
00:24:42
Speaker 1: I will say, though, you do have to be mindful if you do have long hair, because I kind of wrap around things and you can get stuck in places. And even I don't have long hair, but even I end up with it in my butt crack after I've washed it.
00:24:54
Speaker 2: Like to surprise. You'd be surprised how much can sit there as well.
00:24:59
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's just decent my hand.
00:25:03
Speaker 2: Was this butt hair? Or was this from my head?
00:25:05
Speaker 1: Please don't be butt hair? But also too like I spoke to someone just recently who said that she had an irritation around her volver, and when she got a boyfriend to have a look, he discovered that like a single hair had like grabbed hold of just like a little bit of laby and wrapped itself around so many times that it had caused like a little so I see it blister.
00:25:26
Speaker 3: So I see it probably was an ingrown. So I see a lot of females who shave. They'll come in with like a little lump and then I'll have a look at it, and you know, I'll pop it and then a hair will emerge, but it will be a really long hair that's wrapped around and it's just been an ingrown hair that hasn't been able to reach the surface.
00:25:46
Speaker 2: And it's very very good to see my have I lot those consultations. Someone is satisfied.
00:25:55
Speaker 3: And then the femalees off. They're often oh my god, thank god, I feel so relieved. But yeah, shaving, obviously, we've had a podcast about that. Ye, getting filickylitis from shaving is very common.
00:26:07
Speaker 1: Just be careful down there with hairs and shaving and whatnot. Thank you so much for hanging out with us again today. Friends. Remember the advice you've heard here today, it's of the general kind. Make sure you take what you learn, get it to your own doctors. Figure out what your story is next week. Marin the Peel. It's been getting a bit of a bad rap of late, and one headline in particular that claims it shrinks a certain part of your anatomy has a few of us raising our eyebrows, like right off the top of our heads. We'll get into that also with doctor Jen Gunter, she is by far the hardest working misinformation corrector where women's health is concerned. We're very lucky to get five minutes with her to talk about this that is coming your way next week. Until then, if I'm fun, we'll catch you for your appointment then bye Bye Well. Is produced by me Claire Murphy, our senior producers Grace Rufray and Sally Best, with audio production by Scott Stronik, Social production by Ellie Moore and video production by Julian Rosario. Mamma Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of the land. We've recorded this podcast on the Galligal people of the Urination and the Wannerooer people. We pow our respects to their elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torrestrait islander cultures.
Speaker 1: You're listening to a mom with Mere podcast.
00:00:14
Speaker 2: You don't even know what you're taking.
00:00:17
Speaker 3: That's the scary part is there's no way to even assure that this peptide is in there or if there are other things and the amount of the peptide that's in there. It's not approved for sale or use as a turning agent in Australia and has never been assessed for quality or safety. So essentially, people are injecting a unregulated peptide that can affect your kidneys and swell your brain to achieve something that a bottle of Bondi Sands can do.
00:00:46
Speaker 2: On a Sunday afternoon.
00:00:53
Speaker 1: Hello there, welcome to Well Your Full Body Healthyack.
00:00:56
Speaker 3: I'm Claire Murphy and i'm doctor Marriam and.
00:00:59
Speaker 1: Today we're talking about something you might have seen scrolling or maybe even you've been talking about it in your circles. We're talking about the peptide boom. With the introduction of glp ones, which I yes, a peptide and natural hormone produced in the gut that regulates blood, sugar and appetite, we've been introduced to this notion that we can control our hormones to some degree and that in turn has led to a bit of a scary trend that has grown from the gymbro scene into something that's been exploited by influencers and then in turn created this massive, unregulated and unsupervised human experiment as people start to inject substances that they have no way of knowing exactly what they contain. That is coming up today. We also have a quick consult today for Marianna who has a very painful butt issue that she's wondering might have something to do with her very long hair. But next, it's med school time and I want to address something you might have seen in your feed about the internal contents of your pad. We're going to do a little bit of mythbusting today. Welcome to med School, Mariam. There's a TikTok video that's been going viral. It kind of comes around the internet every now and then. Yeah, late last year it was doing the rounds again and so you might have seen it. Have a look. So guys holding up a sanitary pad. It's new, it's out of the box. It still has the adhesive sticker still on it, and as he holds it up to the light, it looks like there is green and black mold growing inside. Now, what they do not do, and neither does any of the accounts that end up stitching that and also talking about it holding their own pads up to the light, is cut the damn thing open and have a look inside, which we have done on our Instagram and TikTok if you want to go and check it out. This is not molt. This is the absorbent material. Sometimes it is plant based. There is cotton, for example, in there and other fibers that they use to absorb period blood. It will appear darker underneath yellow light in particular, and that yellow light also makes some of the internal layers look a little bit yellow or greeny. So when you cut it open, there is no molt. And while there can be very rarely contamination in the production process of sanitary ice, that's for everything, right, That is, for every single thing that's manufactured food, sanitary items, like anything that's manufactured for men as well for men as well. Anything can be contaminated at any particular time. They do take very strict measures to make sure that that doesn't happen. And at this very moment, as of us recording this podcast, no souantry pad producer has recalled their product due to mold contamination.
00:03:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, so for anyone feeling worried after seeing this trend, your sanitary pads are safe. I've been wearying one every day because I've got some urinary incontinents.
00:03:41
Speaker 1: They're not all just for blood, So I mean, the message here on med School today is just really be careful when you do see stuff going viral on social media. But sometimes we go through these phases, and it's been like this for the last couple of years, especially when it's to do with women's health. It's deliberately scary, and I'm not sure what the motivation is for us to be scared of sanitary pads. Maybe it's just another thing for us to worry about on top of all the other things. Perhaps, But they are safe to use. I really don't understand what the benefit of this is because it's not a public service announcement. It's just literally making people scared for no good reasons. So please know your sanitary pads are safe. Check up time next Today we are checking in on a biohacking trend that seems to be everywhere all at once right now, So Mariam and I are going to break down what the heck peptides are, why they're the current talk of the town, and whether you can as these online influencers continue to claim hack your own hormones, it's time for the checkup. So before we do kick this off today, we do want you to know that the information that we are discussing regarding unapproved peptides and prescription treatments is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute medical advice because these substances carry significant health and legal risks that we need to tell you about and make sure you always consult a qualified medical professional at all times when you hear any advice that we talk about here.
00:05:14
Speaker 2: What is word for doctor?
00:05:16
Speaker 1: That is what you go to medical school. If you have not gone to medical school, go find someone who has. So the word injectable has come to mean something a little bit different to us in twenty twenty six, because it used to be something that was sort of secretive that bodybuilders did when we're talking about things like steroids, and if you go back to say the early two thousands, they were talking about steroids still, but there was this little shift happening where the conversations and journalists have looked into this by going into message boards from the past and they've found a shift in conversations in these bodybuilding forums that shifted from steroids to peptides.
00:05:54
Speaker 2: Yep.
00:05:55
Speaker 1: Now in the twenty tens, this is when the biohacking bros caught on to this peptide trend. So they started to pick it up and started to talk about it amongst themselves. But this is still pre podcast era, so the Internet is growing, but this is still like pre Instagram days, So twenty tens biohacking brows are starting to catch onto peptides. In twenty twenty, this thing happened, I don't know if you remember, the pandemic, and this changed the way that we look at our health system as a whole. So we started to distrust our government, We started to distrust the medical health professionals that worked around us. The whole system. Really it felt like unraveled in a way, and we were looking at it differently with a little bit less trust. And that's when people decided to take health into their own hands. And this is where we started to hear the phrase do your own research right, and that has a lot of connotations around the healthcare system. And I'm sure Mariam you've heard this many many times in the course of you doing your job. Then in twenty twenty three, there's another shift. This is the rise of injectable weight loss medications. And that's not to say that they were knew at that time. They weren't. They had been in use for about twenty years by that stage by type two diabetics to help them maintain insulin levels, but this is when they understood better the side effects of that included weight loss, and they started to be marketed towards people to lose weight. And so as the rise in people using those increased, it also normalized self injection. That's not something that we were used to doing at home by ourselves. It's something that people did in a medical setting, like in a doctor's office or a hospital, or it was something that people who had maybe type one diabetes did regularly to give themselves insulin. But it normalized that. Also because people were doing this thing where they were taking health into their own hands and doing their own research, they started to look beyond the Australian medical system to source some of these medications, especially where it came to these weight loss injections because as we all know, they became in very short supply. Not long after they became very popular, and so people started reaching out to try and find how they could get their hands on them, so so conventing the austrandi in safety regulations. And when you put all of that together alongside this absolute influx of social media influencers who are now on this peptide trend, the biggest one seems to be one of these podcasts bros in the US. And I'm not going to tell you his name because I really don't want you to go and seek him out. But he's the kind of guy who has people like RFK Junior, the guy who's now currently in charge of the US Health Department and who is you know, has some questionable cue vomit, Yeah, some questionable takes on the healthcare system. Those people started selling peptides. So they are hosting a podcast talking about how great peptides are, but also selling them on the side as well. So it's a business model. It's not just talking about health. The chances are any peptides that you purchase, regardless of who you've sourced them through, they are manufactured somewhere in China. Even just the raw ingredients, if they're assembled somewhere else, they've probably come from China. And so that's why a lot of these people now are telling you to cut out the middleman and go straight to the source, which is another scary thing in itself, because you just don't know where it's come from, what's actually in it. Exactly right, Marrion, Let's take it back to basics first, What even is a peptide?
00:09:21
Speaker 3: Okay, So at a basic level, so a peptide is basically a short chain of amino acid, so like a mini protein, it's got a very simple structure. They occur naturally in the body, So think of things like insulin growth hormone oxytocin, which we know is the love hormone. So your body uses them as chemical messengers. So they basically dock into cells and they tell them this is what you're going to do. So when someone is selling a peptide supplement, basically what they're saying is the molecule mimics one of those natural signaling systems in your body. Now, experimental peptides, they're the ones that we're talking about today. They haven't been tested in any clinical trial. Processes. They're often purchased from manufacturers in other com trees. These include growth hormone adjacent peptides, copper ones that online claims say supposedly help with skin. There are some that are said to supposedly help with sleep, and one you might have heard quite a bit about is melanotan. Yeah, and people are using that to tan from the inside through an injectable or even a nasal spray. O. They're easy to manufacture and they often sit in a great regulatory zone unless they're developed as formal drugs, which isn't happening anytime soon.
00:10:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so you mentioned one there, can you the tanning one?
00:10:40
Speaker 3: Can you get melanotan? So this is actually really interesting and actually start it's a synthetic peptide. Started as a love story. It's got a love origin stuff. I talked to you about this. So it was actually invented by scientists who were trying to prevent skin cancer. The idea was that if we could give people a tan without the sun. So it sounds noble, right, but the side effects in the early trials were a lot. So I think of things like nausea, headaches, facial flushing, loss of appetite. And I'm going to mention one because it's interesting spontaneous erections, which I mention only because it accidentally led to a whole separate drug for sexual dysfunction.
00:11:20
Speaker 1: Okay, that's really interesting because there's one of these looks Maxing Bros. Who did a podcast who said he was using this and was getting in his words, raging bonus.
00:11:29
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:11:30
Speaker 3: Okay, and so anyway, that led to a separate drug for sexual dysfunction. Okay, but here's where it went wrong. So in trials they found that it was stimulating moles and freckles in ways they couldn't predict or control. Okay, So for a drug designed to prevent skin cancer, that's a serious problem, right, serious enough that the TGA, so that's the Therapeutic Goods Administration has issued a formal warning with skin cancer listed as a primary concern. It's also been linked to things like kidney dysfunction and brain swelling. So it never got approved anywhere. So that's the TGA. The FDA in America hard no across the board, and then the Internet found it of course, so now it's sold online with zero quality control and no verified dosing.
00:12:20
Speaker 2: So Essentially you don't know how much. You don't even know what you're taking.
00:12:25
Speaker 3: That's the scary part is there's no way to even assure that this peptide is in there or if there are other things and the amount of the peptide that's in there. It's not approved for sale or use as a turning agent in Australia and has never been assessed for quality or safety. So essentially people are injecting a unregulated peptide. So I'm doing that inverted comments with people that are listening and not seeing that can affect your kidneys and swell your brain to achieve something that a bottle of Bondi Sands can do on a Sunday afternoon. I just like I can't understand that we can. Bondi Sands is the fake Oh that's.
00:13:07
Speaker 2: A fake tan. We're not do that in doctor Okay, I take that back.
00:13:13
Speaker 1: Marion would never tell you to go out away the son. That's awful. There's a lot going on there and we literally don't know enough about it and we just have not even got it approved for people to use here in Australia. And I think we need to point out too that that is the case, and so if you are caught using or possessing this, it could be in breach of state and territory laws. So you could find yourself in criminal trouble for even possessing these things. I want to run through some of the other peptides that I've been seeing quite a bit on social media. People are experimenting like cocktails of these things, which is terrifying. So these unapproved substances. Influencers say they're stacking them, which is common slang that you'll hear when talking about that, but it's essentially putting a bunch of these so called in inverted commas peptides together with a promise that it's going to optimize your entire body from top to tail essentially, And so they talk about it like a true science, which is the part that's really misleading. It sounds like it's backed up by medical claims and sounds legitimate. It's not, and that's something we need to make really clear. These people are in no way accountable for what can potentially happen to you if you do use these things. So these people might be doing whatever it is they're doing and seem fine, they might also not be. They might be lying to you about whatever the side effects might be that they're experiences.
00:14:30
Speaker 2: It's what they're injecting.
00:14:31
Speaker 3: It might just be normal saline and they're getting the commission like you don't know.
00:14:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's very true. Okay, let's talk about one of these that's often mentioned for skin in particular, is GHKCU. What do we know about it? Why is it dangerous to self administer these? So we call the research chemicals?
00:14:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, so GHKCU. It's a naturally occurring copper binding peptide. So it's best known for roles in wounds, healing, skin and hair regeneration. It's in skin products like creams that we put on our face and broad pro repair signaling. But there is no credible human clinical evidence to support claims. Frustration about injectable Yeah, so, yes, we have it in topical forms, but there's no claims to support it being injected. Using them essentially is equivalent to being an unregulated human labrat.
00:15:28
Speaker 1: Because even labrets have better.
00:15:30
Speaker 2: Exact conditions monitoring them.
00:15:33
Speaker 3: Yes, so essentially you're out in the open world and no one's looking after you, and no one's looking at your bloods, no one's monitoring it, and.
00:15:39
Speaker 1: We're going to presume that maybe you're not telling your gp about using these kinds of things either. I mean, that's you could be. But still, I did actually look through some of the websites that sell peptides to Australians and I'm not going to name them obviously because that is not the right thing to do, but I look through their products and they claim that this peptide that we just talked about, it is extensively studied for its role in wound healing, tissue remodeling, and antioxidant research applications. What can we take from that, though, marrim And they say it's been extensively staid.
00:16:09
Speaker 2: I'm rolling my eyes like my eys have come off the back of my head.
00:16:13
Speaker 3: Eyes now face back with Okay, so the result that these claims are basing the statement on is pre clinical, so only tested on cells or rodents, not on humans.
00:16:26
Speaker 2: Okay, so that's a big thing.
00:16:27
Speaker 1: So maybe like a human cell, but never an entire path No, of course not.
00:16:31
Speaker 3: So the moment you see pre clinical research or research applications on one of these websites, that's your telltale sign, right, Okay, it's never been tested in humans in any meaningful way. So the language sounds sounds like legit right, sounds rigorous. It's designed to sound that way, but it is a very long way from we know this is safe and effective in your body.
00:16:53
Speaker 2: Okay.
00:16:54
Speaker 3: So we know reported side effects with the limited data that we have include skin irritation, redness, rash, but the systemic ones, that's the ones we want to know about, aren't documented because we have no there's no trial that's right.
00:17:07
Speaker 1: This one I've been seeing everywhere. BCP one five seven, or Body Protection compound. Sellers of this claim it helps blood vessel formation and tissue repair. But Marriam, is there any truth for that for humans?
00:17:20
Speaker 3: Yep, So BPC one five seven, that's probably one of the most hyped peptides in the stacking world right now.
00:17:27
Speaker 2: For starters.
00:17:28
Speaker 3: The peptide has only been tested on animals. Again, human data is so sparse and it's low quality. So we're talking about a phase one trial that was canceled in twenty fifteen and in twenty twenty five are pilot study. So pilot studies like the lowest level of studies, and that only included two adults. Okay, okay, so no large, randomized controlled trial that shows any clear benefit for any human conditions as of right now. Okay, and here's what doesn't get talked about enough. So when you artificially promote blood vessel formation, so that's something we call angiogenesis and cell growth, you're activating the same biological mechanisms involved in tumor developments.
00:18:10
Speaker 1: Okay, sometimes they have their own blood, yeah, right.
00:18:13
Speaker 3: So when people are self administering this with zero medical supervision, that uncertainty is so scary, right, they'll.
00:18:23
Speaker 2: Take it deeper, take it deeper.
00:18:24
Speaker 1: Mary's getting so wound up in here. I mean if you came in here right now and told her what you were doing with these things, I think she would sit you down and give you a very stern lecture. All right. Another one that's getting a lot of attention is REDDA too dried or redter radder as it's commonly referred to as online. What do we know about this? I understand this one has an effect on hormone.
00:18:44
Speaker 3: Yes, So this is another one that impacts GLP one receptors. So one's currently on the market, approved by the TGA for the management of type two diabetes and weight loss. It's officially being created by a pharmaceutical company who also makes other weight loss drugs, but it's not yet approved. Okay, that doesn't stop people from sourcing it through these gray markets that we've talked about. So, Yeah, some of the websites you mentioned before say explicitly that it's shown promise in pre clinical metabolic research, which means again only tested on animals or cells only. The new experimental compound currently in trials is even more complex and people are taking it without again any medical supervision or understanding of the long term impacts. So we know that GLP one receptor agnus can work on hormonal pathways. Now with this new REDTA compounded peptide, we don't know essentially what hormonal pathways it may work on and what side effects can occur as a result, And that's going to be the issue in like five to ten years from now, who knows what's going to come around. And same thing with vaping. We're going to see all these side effects pop out long term.
00:19:55
Speaker 1: There was that recent research on vaping too there.
00:19:58
Speaker 2: Now it's considered a cast synergen.
00:19:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, that it potentially can cause cancer, and the fact that because it's only really been around since about two thousand and eight. We don't have enough people who've just vaped their entire life to know what the long term impacts are, but we know what smoking ended up doing.
00:20:13
Speaker 2: What brats.
00:20:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't want to be a giant science experiment that no one is paying attention to, because that's essentially what we're doing right now. No one is overseeing it. The results are n't tracked unless you count asking your gym buddies exactly and what the impacts are.
00:20:26
Speaker 2: The crazy thing is.
00:20:28
Speaker 3: Right when we go back to COVID, everyone was so hesitant about the vaccine because we didn't have phase four trials.
00:20:35
Speaker 2: We don't even have phase one trials. Yeah, what is happening? Yeah?
00:20:39
Speaker 1: With so many influencers pushing it though, it gives it an air of safety or legitimacy, when realistically it's the exact opposite.
00:20:48
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, And this is what frightens me the most. I know, I look worked up, and you do.
00:20:54
Speaker 1: Look really and actually those times I've actually seen you really angry.
00:20:56
Speaker 3: But I'm scared because when you see someone with one hundred thousand followers injecting something confidently on camera, your brain's reading that as evidence. It's not it's anecdotal, it's dressed up as data. Essentially, we're running the largest uncontrolled human trial in history. There's no ethics committee to approve it. Nobody is tracking the outcomes, nobody's following you up in five years. And I say this with genuine empathy, like people doing this aren't stupid. They're frustrated, frustrated that conventional medicine is slow, answers are hard to come by.
00:21:32
Speaker 1: And they also take an interrupt We understand that there are certain drugs that may not be created or explored further because it's not in the best financial interest of a pharmaceutical company to do so, because it is an expensive thing to do to get a drug from its initial form through into an approved one that we can give safely to humans. It's a wildly expensive processes and they're not going to do that for everything.
00:21:57
Speaker 2: No, of course not.
00:21:58
Speaker 3: And that frustration is completely valid. But here it's being exploited deliberately and profitably, because feeling legitimate and being safe are not the same thing, and right now that distinction is costing people their health.
00:22:13
Speaker 1: Look next, it is quick consult time. Today, Marianna has a condition that is causing her a lot of pain. But what she actually wants to know is not so much about the condition itself, but maybe whether her choice of hair style contributed to it. Okay, it is time, doctor, marian Please lure us into your chambers. Okay, sorry, invite us into consulting rooms. The doctor will see you now.
00:22:42
Speaker 3: Just through here to consort room one.
00:22:45
Speaker 2: Thanks for reading, Marianna. How can I help you?
00:22:49
Speaker 1: So? Marianna has a very painful butt problem.
00:22:52
Speaker 4: She wrote this, I've recently been diagnosed with an anal fisher and it is so painful. It could be from when I gave birth.
00:23:02
Speaker 1: To one of my kids, but I think I was having issues before even then.
00:23:06
Speaker 4: A friend of mine told me it can be caused by hair getting stuck in your butt crack when you've had a shower and washed it. And I've got super long hair, and I'm wondering if that's true. Anal fishes, I'm not sure if you've ever had one. They are incredibly painful, So I'm really glad we're talking about this.
00:23:26
Speaker 3: Anal fishes, I'm not sure if you've ever had one. Incredibly painful, So glad we're talking about this. First off, the main causes for anal fishes are things like constipation, passing, very hard stores, straining, or sometimes trauma during childbirth. They're like little tiny tears in the lining of the anal canal, but they can be really uncomfortable, so they're not hemorrhoids or polyps or anything of that sort. Now, the idea of hair can cause fishes, honestly, no medical evidence to suggest that hair that gets caught there is going to cause enough irritation to cause a fissure. I believe that's more of a myth that's circulating online. Long hair might occasionally irritate the skin, but it shouldn't penetrate or tear the lining. Best approach for anyone who has anal fissures is to focus on things we know do help. So that's keeping your stools soft with hydration and fiber, remembering you need both water and fiber to make your stool soft, not one or the other. And gentle laxatives if needed, taking those warm sitz baths to relax the area, and in some cases you might need some topical over the counter medication. And for anyone who has a fissure that isn't healing or they think they might have an anal fisher. Make sure you check it with your friendly GP.
00:24:42
Speaker 1: I will say, though, you do have to be mindful if you do have long hair, because I kind of wrap around things and you can get stuck in places. And even I don't have long hair, but even I end up with it in my butt crack after I've washed it.
00:24:54
Speaker 2: Like to surprise. You'd be surprised how much can sit there as well.
00:24:59
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's just decent my hand.
00:25:03
Speaker 2: Was this butt hair? Or was this from my head?
00:25:05
Speaker 1: Please don't be butt hair? But also too like I spoke to someone just recently who said that she had an irritation around her volver, and when she got a boyfriend to have a look, he discovered that like a single hair had like grabbed hold of just like a little bit of laby and wrapped itself around so many times that it had caused like a little so I see it blister.
00:25:26
Speaker 3: So I see it probably was an ingrown. So I see a lot of females who shave. They'll come in with like a little lump and then I'll have a look at it, and you know, I'll pop it and then a hair will emerge, but it will be a really long hair that's wrapped around and it's just been an ingrown hair that hasn't been able to reach the surface.
00:25:46
Speaker 2: And it's very very good to see my have I lot those consultations. Someone is satisfied.
00:25:55
Speaker 3: And then the femalees off. They're often oh my god, thank god, I feel so relieved. But yeah, shaving, obviously, we've had a podcast about that. Ye, getting filickylitis from shaving is very common.
00:26:07
Speaker 1: Just be careful down there with hairs and shaving and whatnot. Thank you so much for hanging out with us again today. Friends. Remember the advice you've heard here today, it's of the general kind. Make sure you take what you learn, get it to your own doctors. Figure out what your story is next week. Marin the Peel. It's been getting a bit of a bad rap of late, and one headline in particular that claims it shrinks a certain part of your anatomy has a few of us raising our eyebrows, like right off the top of our heads. We'll get into that also with doctor Jen Gunter, she is by far the hardest working misinformation corrector where women's health is concerned. We're very lucky to get five minutes with her to talk about this that is coming your way next week. Until then, if I'm fun, we'll catch you for your appointment then bye Bye Well. Is produced by me Claire Murphy, our senior producers Grace Rufray and Sally Best, with audio production by Scott Stronik, Social production by Ellie Moore and video production by Julian Rosario. Mamma Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of the land. We've recorded this podcast on the Galligal people of the Urination and the Wannerooer people. We pow our respects to their elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torrestrait islander cultures.
