I just started down this rabbit hole a few weeks ago. It started because my insurance would not approve my Zepbound. I tried thru Lilly direct and it was still too expensive. (I don’t qualify from a weight perspective, but I have a lot of autoimmune issues.) I’m so glad I found this group. There seem to be very level headed people here.
A bit about me… I’m an MD, and I never thought I’d go for the peptide market. I drank the ‘straight and narrow Western medicine’ kool-aid pretty hard my whole life. But learning what I have learned these past few weeks has been quite enlightening. Before med school, I have a background in bench science (biochemistry and genetics), so it helps that I have done research on rats in that past life. My new rat I’m researching on currently is named Maynard.
I ordered tirz and Reta through vendors from this site and message board. Now I’m interested in taking it a step further for Maynard’s longevity and quality of life. This will be interesting.

@Randy I am super interested in the possible autoimmune benefits of the new GLP1 classes. We already know they have literature proven benefits in the heart and kidney literature. There is promising literature in the cancer prevention field as well. My friend who runs the medical weight loss clinic for our large healthcare organization has personally told me that she has seen a lot of benefit in the autoimmune community. Her patients have been able to come down on steroid doses and even come down on DMARDs, which blew my mind. And she is very much the ‘inside the box’ type.
After Maynard is stable on reta, I think he’s interested in the mitochondria stack. From the antidotes I have read, that seems to have some impressive quality of life results.
But I don’t know. I am still reading a lot on which may have the most auto immune benefits.

@Shaqdiesel yes that’s one I’m definitely looking into!!

This guy Hunter Williams has a series of Masterclass videos on individual peptides all posted within the past two months.

https://youtu.be/V_Yd07NqXYM?is=H6xPX2zbHYy8N7lm

@Eleanor I bought 3 of them last night with no fourth one free indicated. I just thought it must be limited to GLPs. But I wrote to them to see if the fourth free applied to non GLPs just now after seeing this post.

@Stones67 very eye-opening! Oh, I used to roll my eyes pretty hard at this stuff. But that’s the way we were trained, and I had the privilege of sitting in my ivory tower quoting The Science. All that changed for me over Covid. And I knew about peptides somewhat before, but I never had the opportunity to look into the field with an open mind until insurance declined zepbound. And in looking how to get it from a compounding pharmacy with my prescription, I stumbled into this whole new field! I’m plenty skeptical, don’t get me wrong. But I’m just so very intrigued! And there is plenty of actual science here. I’m loving the journey.

@Trex I have it fairly bad. It feels like a sunburn on the top of my thighs and the sides of my arms. Clothing or a blanket will bother me. So far I live with it because they say it goes away between one and two months. I have only been on it for about one month, so I’m hoping it will start to fade. I’ve only read one plausible explanation for why this happens and it is in this YouTube video. This guy who is supposedly an MD says it’s because there are glucagon receptors in nerve cells, and that this skin thing is actually a sign that your glucagon receptors are getting activated. I’ve never heard of that, but I haven’t heard of a lot of things. Regardless, I’ve read the data, and at 4 mg, 8% of people have it. But at higher doses, up to 20% of people have it. If it feels like it does with me, this is not going to be a side effect many people would put up with. Lilly is going to have to do something about that.
Anyway, this YouTube video is pretty interesting. He found a tidbit of data somewhere that seems to imply that the glucagon receptor doesn’t get activated until you get to higher doses like 4 mg. If that’s true, that is a pretty significant piece of information for those people that microdose this.

https://youtu.be/oUL18iO18Oc?is=kZofD9_WawjoiSm4

The stuff I talked about above is at the two minute mark.

@darlenewestby my RS has limited scleroderma but ended up with pulmonary arterial hypertension and interstitial lung disease. I am hoping to minimize the use of steroids (very bad in scleroderma but I had no choice) and cellcept. I doubt I’ll ever come off rituxan, but I can live with that one. The steroids really helped my PAH and ILD, but I am playing Russian roulette with steroids having scleroderma. They can precipitate something called scleroderma renal crisis. I have already titrated myself off pred after a month of tirz and reta. I am either going to flare or not flare. It’s a gamble. But between the risk of prednisone and the prednisone side effects (most notably food noise, and weight gain), I was just feeling like the disease would kill me or the treatment would kill me. I needed another option. So I went and found one. I am hoping the anti-inflammatory effects of these GLP1 medicines are real. I have plenty of anecdotes from traditional western medicine that says they are. And I have read plenty of anecdotes online. Maybe I found my lifeline.
I couldn’t get the GLP one prescribed through traditional channels since even with my steroid weight gain, I didn’t meet the criteria. But now I’m kind of glad, because I’ve discovered other possible options now in these communities that could help me with other aspects of my health.

Sorry for the long rant, when I got going, I just couldn’t stop. You had mentioned thyroid and Hashimoto’s. While I am thinking that the GLP’s can help reduce inflammation and the need for certain disease modifying antirheumatic drugs, I am pretty sure darn they are not going to replace a thyroid. If you lack a thyroid, that is not a matter of inflammation reduction. That is a matter of thyroid replacement, ie your levothyroxine. But they may help other aspects of the autoimmune disease, if there are other manifestations
.

@MyB yes, compression worked for me. Antihistamines did not. But it’s still a side effect I wouldn’t put up with if not for appreciating the underlying mechanism. I don’t know if the general population will tolerate it if Lilly brings it to market like this. 5-20% risk of this side effect is nuts. And I have a rise in resting heart rate of about 10 beats, and I don’t think that’s a side effect most can avoid due to the glucagon agonist. I think our population is more forgiving of these things than when doctors start pushing it in the same breath as statins. I think people would have loved statins as a class if they had no side effects that impacted quality of life.

@JustinWalker2002 yeah I guess anything that hits the glucagon receptor hard will have the potential to trigger this. I’m not looking forward to it happening again with ghetto reta or just a different vendor. Whatever I try next, I’ll go waaay slower. I did more of the higher dose that was in the studies instead of starting with 0.5.
My resting heart rate average also jumped 10 point per my watch data. That hasn’t gotten any better off reta yet either. More glucagon receptor activation issues.

@toddmertes That’s how I started in peptides. I used TrimRx. They sent me 3 months of reconstituted tirz/B12, NAD, and semorilin. After month 2, all that stuff is likely garbage. But it cost me $1700 so I’m using it all anyway. Lol. Man, I got taken for a ride!!
It just slowed down me from being tempted to stack anything that catches my eye cuz I have all this stuff to finish. (I did end up stacking reta anyway and got real bad skin side effect so stopped it.)
Love this group, this blog, and this entire site. I’ve learned so much!

@bfuller I’m only halfway through this, but wow what a find! Hearing the perspective of peptide research from one of the pioneers is truly fascinating! Makes you appreciate how truly little we know…

@bfuller He literally had to say that about RUO. He has access to lab certified motsc he uses on rats. Ya think he doesn’t use that himself? I bet he does. Lol

@mikebricker I’d heard to run Cartalax only 20 days at a time?