Ask Me Anything (About Peptides) With Dr. Abid Husain

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There’s so much going on “out there” on the internet, which makes it completely impossible to know what’s real and what’s just hype. We’ve decided to turn straight to the source to answer our burning questions directly. Ask Me Anything is giving us 1:1 access to credible experts across beauty, lifestyle, wellness—well, everything. Go ahead, ask away.

If a tree falls in LA, and no one is there to hear it talk about peptides, did the tree ever optimize its longevity and cellular health at all?

These are the things I find myself thinking about these days in the torrential downpour of peptide chatter across the internet, my text threads, and my sauna sessions with friends whose vocabularies are starting to sound like a cross between Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century, Björk (if she were a scientist), and some of Elon Musk’s children’s names.

In the Age of Aquarius, peptides are the new AI of wellness—they’re here, they’re causing a stir, and they could potentially have a huge beneficial impact on anything from skin to hair to gut health to recovery to performance to—blah, blah, blah, and yada, yada, yada.

However, as quickly as they’ve shaken up perceptions around what is possible in the world of optimization, the peptide portal has also opened itself up to “dark energy,” which includes unregulated products that are riddled with unknown materials (think: heavy metals, plastics, etc.) that can actually create long-lasting damage in the body.

Aside from “black market” peptides being sold across social media platforms, some promising peptides that you’re definitely seeing out in the world—like BPC-157—have been known to encourage metastasis of healthy and carcinogenic cells in the body (which can potentially encourage cancer cells to proliferate and spread in people who have active malignancies). 

Because this space is so overwhelming and hard to discern, we turned to Dr. Abid Husain—a Boulder, Colorado-based triple-board-certified cardiologist and integrative medicine physician, specializing in prevention, longevity, and peptide medications.

As a consulting physician and scientific Advisor for Hone Health, Dr. Husain combines his background in traditional cardiology with functional medicine to offer a unique, multi-faceted modality of care.

Given his expertise, we turned to him during our latest Ask Me Anything series, so he could answer community-led questions about all things peptides. Here’s what we know: peptides should not be taken without the guidance of a professional, who is working in lock step with you and your personal biochemistry / needs (*logs off of Instagram immediately*).

‍What are the best peptides for women to be taking??

AH: There aren't really best peptides for men or women, but there are really good peptides depending on what you're trying to treat. Do you have a gut issue problem? Maybe you have some chronic inflammatory conditions. Maybe you want to lose some weight. That should be the better question—not what's better for men or women, but more what is it that you're trying to achieve?

I hear good things about muscle recovery in the gym, but are they a daily dosage? Seems like a lot of shots to deal with. Is the benefit worthwhile?

AH: A lot of people do take peptides for muscle recovery at the gym. Unfortunately, because peptides are so short-acting, they usually do require a daily dose. The better question is: how is your muscle recovery? 

If you're getting soreness on the day after, that's significant—or even two days after, then that may be an indication that the peptides really will benefit you. If you're not getting soreness, then you may not get as much out of it. And maybe you want to not use as much of those peptides, and stay away from all those shots.

WHAT is a peptide?! What does it do?

AH: You can think of a peptide as a small mini hormone. It's a mini hormone, or a molecule that doesn't require a middleman to convey its message. Hormones usually require a middleman or a messenger to help get its message into the cell or other places, whereas peptides are much more efficient. 

And because they're so small, they can go directly to where they need to to do their action and then implement the action. Peptides have been used therapeutically for more than a hundred years. Insulin is the oldest one that we know of, and the most common one that we know of now is Ozempic (or semaglutide, which is the GLP1s).

Is it unnatural to be injecting foreign substances into your body from a metabolization perspective? And can you get too much of something your body doesn’t actually need?

AH: So many peptides that are available are ones that our body already makes naturally. It's just that, as we get older, we can't make them as effectively or make them in the same quantity. So when we buy peptides—yes, they are formulated in the lab and they are synthetic—but they are similar, if not identical, to some of the peptides that they are replacing in our body. 

Now, keeping that in mind, if you're putting something into your body that it knows how to metabolize, it won't be able to push your body to do something more than it should be doing. Your body's natural checks and balances remain in place, and you can allow the peptide and your body to regulate as much as your body can do.

Thoughts on DSIP to improve deep sleep for those suffering with insomnia…

AH: DSIP, also known as deep sleep-inducing peptide (or Emideltide), is one of those peptides that requires some nuance. It's not as easy to use as we might think. Just simply injecting at bedtime doesn't necessarily work. It requires a little nuance and knowhow, and how to time it with sleep.

Are there different types? Like one for your face / improving skin appearance vs. one for building muscles ?

AH: There are many different types of peptides. Just like our body makes many different proteins and many hormones, there are a wide variety of peptides. There can be some that optimize the ability to build muscle, and there are some that help skin texture and collagen deposition. So, it really depends on what the use is and how we can target it to optimize that process.

I want to know if there’s another way to take them without injecting them?! 😅 Because there ain’t no way I’m doing that.

There are a wide variety of peptides and not all of them need to be injected. There are some that can survive the gut environment and then make their way into our system, but still have to get metabolized through the liver—so that may reduce some of the efficacy. Peptides are really fragile. 

They're sensitive little proteins—mini protein molecules. And so because of that, they don't survive the gut, and they don't have a very long lifespan. So, unfortunately, injecting them is going to be the optimal way to use them. There are some that are oral, but they may not be as effective, depending on what use you want to apply them to.