Erin O'Hara: naturopath and wellness expert on whether or not peptides live up to the hype

Peptides can benefit health by offering targeted benefits, such as weight loss (semaglutide), injury healing (BPC-157), and immune support - but there's risks involved too.

While FDA-approved peptides are generally safe under medical guidance, many others lack safety studies, and improperly sourced peptides may contain contaminants, leading to severe reactions.

Naturopath and wellness expert Erin O'Hara explained further.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
I'db Aaron O'Hara is with me now to talk wellness.
Good morning, Good morning. You're gonna talk about peptides today,
and we're hearing a lot about peptides. I mean, they've
been kind of around for a while, but they've become
very trendy. Maybe you can talk us through what they
actually are.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Yeah, they've been really trendy probably the last three years.
I'd say, more and more people ask me about them
and they think that I'm going to have a whole
lot of them in my dispensary my clinic, which I
do not, because peptides are something that are very actually
new research or no research, and there's a lot of
controversy around peptides. Now. Some of the peptides have a

(00:48):
lot of clinical research, like your weight loss drugs like
a seema glue tides which is your things like we're
GOV and there's a lot of other peptides out there,
like your BPC one five seven, which is all through
social media. I'm around injury injury healing that actually doesn't
have a lot of significance clinical research, and I think

(01:09):
the biggest problem that I will see is that people
come to me and they're like, Oh, I've cheted gp
ted it and it said this, And I'm like, what
kind of research is actually backing it up? And that's
where sometimes your AI research tool can pull up lots
of mice studies or rat studies or even studies of
one person.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Right, So a peptide can be consumed, it can be topical,
it can be in a skincare, it could be injected,
it's used in different it comes in different sort.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Of Yeah, so peplids are actually naturally occurring, and we
do eat peptides, so they actually come in our foods, toots.
Whenever you're eating protein, you're actually getting amino acids. And
aminio acids are part of the building blocks of peptides,
and peptides are short chains of amino acids. So, for instance,
insulin is a fifty one amino acid long peptide hormone.

(02:02):
So there are lots of naturally occurring ones in the body.
The main difference is peptides are shorter string chains and
protein are bigger globules of molecules that are binded together.
Now peptides have an amazing action in the body. They're
really the building blocks of the body, and that's where
these peptides kind of supplements or injectibles are used around

(02:23):
signaling molecules in particular things like tissue repair, immune response, metabolism,
and that's where people are really looking for getting the
benefits for really long deevities to things like skin health,
muscle growth, weight loss, inflammation management, that kind of thing.
And the reason they've become really controversial is that a

(02:43):
lot of them haven't got the clinical research to back
them up. Some of them are made in non FDA
approved labs. So what are you buying online? Is the
question that I always have is that how well are
they going to work? What sort of contaminants in them?
Particularly if you are self injecting these sorts of things,
in which a lot of people are doing is they're

(03:04):
buying them online, get them ship to their house, and
then injecting all sorts of things into themselves. Obviously, it
comes with massive risk factor when you're kind of doing
this yourself, very different to medically regulated peptides, So things
like people using the GLP one type peptides where they've

(03:25):
got a clinician monitoring them, they're getting checkups, they're doing
it in a safe way and also has FDA approval
as well that that's had a lot of recent.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Are they easy to get your hands on?

Speaker 3 (03:36):
Yeah? Online, the online you can buy pretty much anything
shipped from or ship from overseas generally, and that's where
people go, oh, look for like a proper sort of
good source, but it's actually like, well, what are you
really buying? And I think the other risk factor that
I have around these is that if you're improving cellular function,

(03:57):
you're also improving cellular function. For even if you have
a small tumor could become a big tumor if you're
up regulating cellular function. So that's where there's that risk
to there. And also how do they all work in together?
Because a common one that's used in particularly Joe Rogan
was promoting was using a combination known as the Wolverine

(04:18):
stack around inflammation management. And it's like, well, yes, they
can be used together, but what sort of long term
effect are these things are going to have Because the
clinical research is still in the development phase. So maybe
these are all going to be big things for management
of information and helping to longevity. But right now I
think be my the moment, cautious, do your research. I

(04:41):
also know what you're taking fascinating. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Erin For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudgin,
listen live to news talks there'd be from nine am Sunday,
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