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Gorby2025

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Hi everyone, this community is fantastic—so many resources, plenty of feedback, and solid guidance. I signed up not long ago and have been reading constantly. I can't wait to get more involved and start contributing.

A bit about myself: I'm a 52 yo male dealing with an auto-immune condition known as Ankylosing Spondylitis (essentially a form of Rheumatoid Arthritis that targets the spine and certain other joints). Right now I'm on biologics (Humira equivalent), which has been a big help, but I'm exploring peptides as a possible long-term fix so that I won't need biologics for the rest of my life. I'm doing plenty of research on anti-inflammatory peptides (BPC, TB, KPV) plus TA-1. I'm also definitely aiming to drop some pounds, so GLPs are on my radar too. If anyone here has a similar RA condition, I'd really like to hear your experience and would appreciate any suggestions!

Cheers
 
The biologic your doctor prescribed comes backed by solid human clinical trial data showing it does what it is supposed to do. When it comes to the peptides you listed, though, that same level of rigorous evidence simply is not there, and aside from the GLP's, the majority have not undergone testing in people for any indication at all. GLP agonists do carry some anti inflammatory activity, yet next to a typical biologic prescribed for autoimmune conditions, that effect is fairly small.

I do not mean to sound like I am shooting you down, but what you really want is evidence from human clinical trials, not merely cell work or mouse results that happen to look encouraging, and with 95% of the chinese peptides, that evidence is absent. Those peptides certainly do something, and in mouse studies they frequently appear quite promising, the problem is that our understanding of them remains limited, and safety data is generally missing, which means unforeseen and potentially severe side effects will always remain a possibility.

Ultimately it is a question of how much risk you are willing to accept weighed against what you might gain, but with the exception of the glp's and a handful of others, any treatment built around these peptides amounts to an experiment. That holds true even when it is hugely popular and highly praised online.
 
lessthanhalf said:

The biologic your doctor prescribed comes backed by solid human clinical trial data showing it does what it is supposed to do. When it comes to the peptides you listed, though, that same level of rigorous evidence simply is not there, and aside from the GLP's, the majority have not undergone testing in people for any indication at all. GLP agonists do carry some anti inflammatory activity, yet next to a typical biologic prescribed for autoimmune conditions, that effect is fairly small.

I do not mean to sound like I am shooting you down, but what you really want is evidence from human clinical trials, not merely cell work or mouse results that happen to look encouraging, and with 95% of the chinese peptides, that evidence is absent. Those peptides certainly do something, and in mouse studies they frequently appear quite promising, the problem is that our understanding of them remains limited, and safety data is generally missing, which means unforeseen and potentially severe side effects will always remain a possibility.

Ultimately it is a question of how much risk you are willing to accept weighed against what you might gain, but with the exception of the glp's and a handful of others, any treatment built around these peptides amounts to an experiment. That holds true even when it is hugely popular and highly praised online.
Click to expand...
I'm completely on the same page, and thanks for sharing your thoughts! What I intend to do is stop taking biologics for a short period while I try out peptides. That way I can see whether there's anything promising there. On top of that, I'll get blood work done to track the direction my markers are moving (CRP, etc.), which for me tends to be a solid signal about whether inflammation is under control. Normally, if I miss 1 weekly dose of biologics, the effects show up within a few days without question - so blood markers combined with pain level are what I'll use to judge any possible benefit. My hope is that even if it doesn't fully replace what I'm on, it could still be a helpful addition for better energy and activity levels overall.
 
Everything you said makes sense. Sadly, much of what gets shared here and in other places fails to draw a clear enough line between rigorous evidence, individual anecdotes, and early-stage lab findings — largely because telling those apart is genuinely difficult, even for someone with a scientific background. That is why I sometimes jump in when I spot something that might be risky, pushing back on claims that a given peptide regimen will do X or Y when, in truth, that peptide has never been studied in people. Reaching the level where you can read the research accurately takes far more effort than most folks can or want to invest. Running an N of one on yourself is not especially risky, above all when you have objective markers to measure the outcome.
 
Gorby2025 said:

Hi everyone, this community is fantastic—so many resources, plenty of feedback, and solid guidance. I signed up not long ago and have been reading constantly. I can't wait to get more involved and start contributing.

A bit about myself: I'm a 52 yo male dealing with an auto-immune condition known as Ankylosing Spondylitis (essentially a form of Rheumatoid Arthritis that targets the spine and certain other joints). Right now I'm on biologics (Humira equivalent), which has been a big help, but I'm exploring peptides as a possible long-term fix so that I won't need biologics for the rest of my life. I'm doing plenty of research on anti-inflammatory peptides (BPC, TB, KPV) plus TA-1. I'm also definitely aiming to drop some pounds, so GLPs are on my radar too. If anyone here has a similar RA condition, I'd really like to hear your experience and would appreciate any suggestions!

Cheers
Click to expand...
Hey there! Autoimmune disease is something I deal with too. My path into peptide research began after Humira gave me brain lesions and, for a while, took away my ability to walk. My hope is to repair as much as possible from within, so that biologicals won't have to be a lifelong necessity for me. I'd love to see a growing body of human studies focused on peptides and autoimmune conditions. Please keep sharing how things go for you!
 
CBird said:

Gorby2025 said:

Hi everyone, this community is fantastic—so many resources, plenty of feedback, and solid guidance. I signed up not long ago and have been reading constantly. I can't wait to get more involved and start contributing.

A bit about myself: I'm a 52 yo male dealing with an auto-immune condition known as Ankylosing Spondylitis (essentially a form of Rheumatoid Arthritis that targets the spine and certain other joints). Right now I'm on biologics (Humira equivalent), which has been a big help, but I'm exploring peptides as a possible long-term fix so that I won't need biologics for the rest of my life. I'm doing plenty of research on anti-inflammatory peptides (BPC, TB, KPV) plus TA-1. I'm also definitely aiming to drop some pounds, so GLPs are on my radar too. If anyone here has a similar RA condition, I'd really like to hear your experience and would appreciate any suggestions!

Cheers
Click to expand...
Hey there! Autoimmune disease is something I deal with too. My path into peptide research began after Humira gave me brain lesions and, for a while, took away my ability to walk. My hope is to repair as much as possible from within, so that biologicals won't have to be a lifelong necessity for me. I'd love to see a growing body of human studies focused on peptides and autoimmune conditions. Please keep sharing how things go for you!
Click to expand...
That is quite a story, and I'm truly sorry you went through that reaction to Humira. I had never come across anything like that before. When I began taking it myself, I was honestly very anxious and spent several years putting off the decision over concerns about possible side effects, until the pain became unbearable. I do have to acknowledge that it helped me a great deal—my inflammation dropped right down into the normal range, and the relentless, disabling pain I lived with every day finally eased. At my worst, I couldn't get out of bed from the agony, couldn't lie down, couldn't stay seated for long, and I was taking Advils constantly. Humira brought me the relief I badly needed, and I'm thankful for it.

Still, the idea that biologics are always interfering with my immune system and that I'd need them for life was frightening to me, so once I found out about peptides, I chose to try them.

Here's the interesting bit: it's clearly too soon to call this a success... but I can say that I haven't had a biologic injection in the past 3 months and I feel great, with no flareups. Of course, biologics are said to remain in your body and possibly keep working for 2 -4 months after the last shot, so I'm not making any final judgments yet. Even so, in the past, if I missed a biweekly dose, the pain would definitely begin creeping back within a week or two—and that hasn't happened so far. I realize this could be placebo and all... but I also had a blood test recently for my CRP value, and it fell even lower, from 1.6 to 1.2. So I'm hopeful I'm on the right track, and I'll keep researching.
 
TNF alpha inhibitors, Humira included, are legitimately beneficial and effective biologic treatments.

Not long ago, my gastroenterologists proposed moving me off mercaptopurine—an older, less fashionable immune-modifying medication—and onto a newer biologic like Humira. Had I been beginning treatment fresh, that calculus would differ, and the newer agent would be the favored choice. After doing a great deal of reading, I concluded it was safer for me to remain on the older medication, accepting a higher risk of particular cancer types, because it had kept my ulcerative colitis well controlled and, across 15 years, I had basically no adverse effects. By contrast, TNF alpha inhibitors carry not insignificant side effects, plus heightened chances of the disease returning during a switch or from losing effectiveness later on, which happens fairly often. Naturally, no direct studies exist on this question, but they did not push back very hard against my position.
 
I figured I would post an update to my first thread, because it has now been 7 months since I stopped biologics and started trying to handle my AS with peptides instead. So far this has been a wild experiment, and at this point I am fully off adilumamab/humira. I have no pain, and I have gotten blood work done two times so far to look at inflammation markers, with results that are the best I have seen in years. The peptides I stack are Reta (currently on maintenance after hitting my weight goal), TA-1, BPC/TB/KPV, and I ran two cycles of ARA-290. I also tried some others along the way (the mitochondrial enhancement ones), though I doubt they played a role in how much I have improved. I just wanted to share this, since for anyone in a similar situation it is definitely worth a shot.

Attached is a graph of my CRP tests (CRP being an inflammation marker) going all the way back to my AS diagnosis (10 years ago). The normal range is supposed to be under 3mg/l. My highest ever was a ridiculous 80mg/L (for those of us who are not math majors, that is 2,500% above the normal range). At first I attempted to handle things naturally (I tried various diets, weeks of only juicing, carnivore, supplements, and so on) and got it down to roughly 12, which is far better but still 4 times the normal level, and I was in terrible pain the whole time. Eventually I began biologics, which for me worked like magic, bringing my CRP into the normal range and (for the most part) ending the pain. But whenever I quit biologics, symptoms would return within two weeks. Now it has been 7 months since my last biologics injection, and I have no pain, with CRP at its lowest point ever.
 
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