Hello Reader,

Gus started limping on his back left leg two weeks ago. Before I let anyone put a needle near him, I wanted to know what was in it, where it came from, and whether anyone had actually studied it on a dog his size. The vet appreciated the questions. Most people extend that kind of scrutiny to their dog and skip it completely when it's their own arm.

An FDA advisory committee voted to widen access to four peptides after its own staff scientists recommended against clearing any of them. BPC-157 gets sold as a joint and gut healer, sometimes stacked with TB-500 under the name "Wolverine stack," which tells you something about who's doing the marketing. TB-500 was developed to make racehorses run faster and has almost no human data behind it at all. MOTS-c gets pitched for weight loss and blood sugar on the strength of animal and cell studies, nothing published in humans yet. Epitalon is marketed as a longevity compound because it may lengthen telomeres, which sounds good until you remember longer telomeres have also been flagged as a cancer risk in other research, a concern the FDA's own report raised specifically about long-term epitalon use. The committee voted to expand access anyway.

The same week that vote happened, the country crossed 2,300 confirmed measles cases, the worst year since 1991. South Carolina has logged over 600 cases. Utah is past 500. The United States is on track to lose the measles elimination status it earned in 2000 and held for twenty-six years. That didn't happen on its own. The federal vaccine advisory panel got overhauled last year and stopped recommending the combined measles vaccine for young children, and vaccination rates have been sliding since. One compound with sixty years of safety data behind it got harder to access. Four compounds with almost none got easier.

None of this changes what actually rebuilds tissue at our age, and none of it was ever going to be a vial. It's protein at every meal, ideally 1.6 to 2.0 grams per kilogram of bodyweight, more if you're in a deficit. It's sleep you protect on purpose, since one bad night alone can drop muscle protein synthesis by 18 percent and spike cortisol the next day. A cup and a half of cottage cheese before bed does more for you at 2 a.m. than anything shipped in from a lab nobody's ever inspected. And it's time under a bar, doing work your body still remembers how to do. Slow, unglamorous, and it doesn't come with a nickname borrowed from a comic book.

Ten years in the Navy, I got used to a chain of command that told me what was safe and who was accountable if it wasn't. That doesn't exist here. Nobody is checking this stuff for you. "It's marketed as safe" was never the same thing as safe.

You wouldn't let anyone inject your dog with something nobody has studied. Why are you willing to do it to yourself?

If you want more reads like this one, the kind that cuts past the marketing and tells you what the actual reports say, the free newsletter is right here: proudboomerwellness.kit.com​

$5.00 Not Done Yet - Key Takeaways Each Chapter in Not Done Yet ends with the Key Takeaways. This is your "cheat sheet" to all of them. Get it now!

​

$2.00 Not Done Yet Glossary of Terms Not Done Yet has a trove of information. This Glossary will help you navigate it. Get it now!

​

Strength After 50 Dave Durell I help people over 50 get and stay strong with online workout programs that are safe, effective, time-efficient, and sustainable. Get stronger at any age without getting hurt or wasting time. Subscribe​