Are BPC-157 Effects That Great? How Legal and Safe Is It

BPC-157 is an experimental peptide that has recently grown in popularity due to its purported soft tissue healing effects.

The peptide has never been tested on humans except for one small trial that was never published. Therefore, all the scientific information on its effects is only available from animal and in vitro studies.

Selling BPC-157 for human use is against the law. However, many sellers label it “for research use only,” and individuals can purchase it for peptide therapy without any regulation.

In other words, BPC-157 is considered an experimental peptide and is legally available only for scientific research, similar to IGF-1 LR3. Thus, no conclusions can be made about the safety and therapeutic potential of this peptide

That is despite the several lab studies that suggest BPC-157 may have a wide range of regenerative and other beneficial effects in animals such as:

• tendon healing
• alkali-burn wound healing
• bone healing
• ligament healing
• gastrointestinal tract healing

It is also important to note that the lack of control over the quality of research peptides available online creates a serious risk that you may be purchasing expired, contaminated, or counterfeit products.

What is BPC-157 Peptide?

BPC-157, also known as L 14736, PL-10, or Bepecin, is a pentadecapeptide made of 15 amino acids. The abbreviation BPC stands for ‘Body Protection Compound’ and stems from its potential to enhance regenerative processes in animals.

Although the peptide is often labeled as a “gut peptide,” and some even claim that it shares a similar structure to gastroprotective peptides found in the human digestive system, the BPC-157 sequence is not known to occur in nature.

The patent of the BPC peptides, including BPC-157, also reveals that the compound is fully synthetic. It is reportedly produced from various organic and inorganic products.

How Does BPC-157 Work?

BPC-157 may have a wide range of therapeutic potentials and speed up the healing process of various tissues in mice, especially connective tissue, thanks to its effects on fibroblasts.

Fibroblasts are cells that produce connective tissue components and other molecules. They are crucial for collagen production and actively regulate collagen organization, ensuring proper alignment and strength of connective tissues.

This is why BPC-157 is currently under investigation for its potential protective effects in a variety of organs with high levels of connective tissue. Specifically, BPC-157 may exert beneficial effects for healing processes in skin tissue, tendons, and bone tissues.

It is also studied for its potential to speed up gastrointestinal tract healing and nerve tissue healing in brain lesions and traumatic brain injury models. These actions are likely due to the potential of BPC-157 to simulate vasodilatation and angiogenesis (new blood vessel formation) due to its action on peptidergic growth factors such as endothelial growth factor,

Consequently, the peptide has demonstrated significant protective effects against gastric mucosal injury in rat models. The peptide has also been successfully tested for vascular injury and blood flow disturbances in rats, particularly in cases of lab-induced vessel occlusion of the mesenteric vein and pancreaticoduodenal vein.

By improving local and general blood flow, the peptide is posited to exert stomach cell protection against ischemia and damaging agents, therefore facilitating gastrointestinal tract healing.

According to available animal research, BPC-157 does not have any effects on hormones.

Only one study suggests that the peptide may upregulate the receptors of the human growth hormone (hGH), particularly in tendon fibroblasts. A higher growth hormone receptor expression may potentially enhance its proliferative stimulus and contribute to healing effects on these tissues.

Is BPC-157 Legal?

Due to the lack of human trials, BPC-157 is not FDA-approved, and it can’t be legally sold as a dietary supplement or possessed for human use. That’s because neither its therapeutic potential nor its safety has been tested on people.

Therefore, BPC-157 is not available as a medication or provided by any legitimate healthcare provider in the US.

Instead, it bears the status of a research compound that can be legally obtained only by scientists and used for research.

Yet, since research peptides are not subject to any regulation, they can be purchased freely for research purposes without any requirements for documentation or any form of prescription.

According to the majority of studies, the peptide appears to be well tolerated by animals, but the potential BPC-157 side effects in humans remain unknown.

Furthermore, the lack of regulation means that there is no guarantee that you will receive a genuine and safe product that is free of dangerous substances.

How Long Does It Take for BPC-157 to Work

There is almost no human data on how long it takes until BPC-157 exerts any potential beneficial effects. Thus, there isn’t any established timeline for its effects.

According to animal research, it takes anywhere between 4-7 days until the various potential beneficial effects of BPC-157 occur.

For example, one study revealed that 7 days of therapy in rats led to a significant increase in serotonin synthesis in their brains. A similar trial also showed faster angiogenesis with a week of injections in lab animals.

Another experiment also suggests that BPC-157 significantly speeds up the healing in rats within 4 days following a surgical procedure.

Most of these effects appear to outperform placebo. However, it is unknown if they are permanent, whether the organism may develop tolerance to the peptide, and what may happen to the results after stopping the treatment. It’s also unknown if these beneficial effects extend to humans.

Purported Beneficial Effects of BPC-157

As reported, BPC-157 has no clinical applications as there is not enough scientific evidence to suggest it as an effective therapy for healing or recovery.

Nevertheless, here is a short list of all the potential beneficial effects of BPC-157, most of which are poorly studied or not studied at all:

• connective tissue recovery, including tendon healing, joints, skin, etc.
• pain reduction
• radical scavenger and antioxidant actions
• gastric mucosa healing
• stomach cell protection against noxious agents
• improving the healing of intestinal tissues
• increased vessel recruitment following injury induction
• improving short-bowel syndrome

Unofficially, the peptide has also been claimed to help burn fat, increase muscle, heal the heart, lower blood pressure, help with erectile dysfunction, and increase HGH levels, but there is no data to suggest that, even from lab studies.

Furthermore, there aren’t any plausible pharmacological mechanisms to support such effects.

Beneficial Effects of BPC-157 in Skeletomuscular Injuries

Laboratory experiments suggest that BPC-157 may speed up healing in tendon injuries, arthritis, and after injuries.

In vitro studies suggest that BPC-157 can enhance the tendocytes growth which may speed up tendon outgrowth and ligament healing. Also, studies in rats with injury of the Achilles tendon report a faster rate of healing and recovery.

The only human trial with BPC-157 involved the intra-articular (inside the joint) administration of the peptide in 16 patients with knee osteoarthritis. The researchers reported improvement in more than 80% of the patients, but there was no control group.

Scientists also report that local application of BPC-157 may speed up the healing of surgical wounds in rats. They reported an improved rate of collagen formation.

It’s unclear whether the beneficial effects are due to a potential healing effect of BPC-157 on human cartilage or the pain-reducing effects of the peptide previously reported in animal research.

Further experimentation also suggests that BPC-157 may speed up bone healing in vivo. A comparative study investigated the potential of the peptide in rabbits with bone defects.

BPC-157 was found to significantly improve bone healing, whether applied locally or given intramuscularly. Its effects were comparable to standard methods for bone healing such as bone grafts and bone marrow application.

BPC-157 and Gastrointestinal Tract Healing

Animal studies also suggest that BPC may have beneficial effects on the gastrointestinal system and the liver in animals. More specifically, BPC-157 was shown to protect against stomach ulcers and other gastrointestinal disturbances in rat models caused by ulcer-inducing agents.

Research reveals that BPC-157 may also speed up healing in the gastrointestinal tract including anastomosis in rats after gastrointestinal surgeries such as esophageal anastomosis, and intestinal fistulas in rat models of inflammatory bowel disease.

Animal trials also suggest it may ameliorate models of short-bowel syndrome and speed up the healing. In cases of injury in rats involving the mesenteric vein and pancreaticoduodenal vein, the blood vessel recruitment and angiogenesis induced by BPC-157 potentially contributed to reducing ischemia and mucosal injury in the abdominal organs.

Beneficial Effects of BPC-157 in Other Systems

In another study, BPC-157 was suggested to have protective effects following traumatic brain injury in rats. After injury induction, BPC-157 reduced brain lesions, including hemorrhages and edema, and improved the overall recovery of the rats.

The study highlights BPC-157’s ability to counteract such neurological disturbances in rats by acting as a radical scavenger, which helps neutralize damaging agents in the test animals.

Through this process, BPC-157 positively influenced the bodily response in the test animals to traumatic injury, although the research on the practical applicability of these findings remains limited.

BPC-157 Side Effects

The evidence on BPC-157 risks and adverse reactions is extremely scarce. Potential side effects from unofficial reports reveal that BPC-157 may:

• speed up cancer growth in cancer patients
• dizziness
• flushing
• racing heart
• blood pressure changes
• mood swings

Currently, all available animal studies do not report any potential side effects of toxicity of BPC -157. It’s unknown if the peptide can lead to acne, water retention, hair loss, headaches, fatigue, or lethargy.

However, the lack of clinical trials means that there could potentially be serious BPC-157 side effects in humans, which remain unknown. The long-term safety of the peptide is also unknown since it’s been investigated only in short-term animal trials.

Unofficial reports by people who have taken it illegally and without qualified medical advice reveal that it may cause dizziness, flushing, racing heart, blood pressure changes, and mood changes.

BPC-157 Cancer Risk

Apart from the unknown effects of the peptide on healthy individuals, there is also no data on how BPC-157 may affect individuals with chronic diseases or whether it may interact with any foods and medications.

For example, animal studies suggest that BPC-157 promotes neovascularization and speeds up the formation of new blood vessels that may be at risk for faster disease progression in cancer patients.

The process of vessel recruitment to a tumor site, known as tumor angiogenesis, is considered one of the hallmarks of tumor progression.

Currently, no animal studies have conducted BPC-157 cancer risk evaluation. Only a couple of preliminary experiments have involved BPC-157 and animals with pre-existing cancer, which have investigated the potential effects of the peptide on tumor cells.

Specifically, one small in vitro experiment reported that BPC-157 may have exerted suppressive effects on skin cancer cells. However, this study is available only as an abstract, and its reliability is largely unknown.

Future animal trials are needed to fully elucidate any potential BPC-157 cancer risk and its potential effect on cancer progression.

How to Administer BPC-157

As a research peptide, BPC-157 is primarily available as a lyophilized powder. Since peptides usually aren’t well-absorbed in the digestive system, their effects are often limited when taken orally,

It is important to note that the same may apply to BPC-157 and it may only have local effects on the stomach when taken orally.

However, some comparative studies in animals suggest that oral ingestion of the peptide can also have systemic effects. This means that oral delivery may also provide good peptide absorption through the stomach mucosa, following intragastric application.

Thus, the peptide has been tested in animals both orally and via injection. It can also be applied topically to wounds.

Recommended Dosage

Since there are no clinical studies, some researchers have suggested that the dosage recommendation of BPC-157 can be based on rat studies and then extrapolated to humans.

Animal studies have reported the intragastric application of 10 μg/kg BPC-157 as an effective dose, which is estimated to be equivalent to 1.6 μg/kg in humans, based on standard dosage conversions.

Thus a 70 kg (150 lbs) person would be given around 110 μg a day in hypothetical future research trials involving BPC-157 as an oral supplement.

Is BPC-157 as Effective as HGH?

While the main reason for BPC-157’s popularity is its potential for speeding up recovery, there is no evidence that the peptide can exert any of these effects in humans. The only human study of BPC-157’s effects is small and lacks comparison to a placebo.

In contrast, HGH is studied extensively in clinical trials, and it shows clear potential to speed up cell division and tissue healing.

HGH therapy is also approved for human use. That’s because it is proven effective for the management of various conditions and can be legally obtained from licensed pharmacies with a medical prescription.

The safety of HGH is also guaranteed thanks to the extensive human research and the strict quality control of all HGH medications.

Because both the safety and the effectiveness of BPC-157 in humans are unknown, the peptide cannot be labeled as more effective for recovery than HGH. Data on their combined use is also lacking, as there is only a single preliminary study suggesting BPC-157 enhances growth hormone receptor expression.

Compared to other research peptides, BPC-157 stands out as one of the most well-tolerated by test animals. Yet, the lack of human research is a major disadvantage that can hide a wide range of BPC-157 side effects and health risks.

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