Testosterone Replacement Therapy restores testosterone to the normal range in people with clinically confirmed androgen deficiency. It is a registered, well-studied medicine — but it works by switching off the body's own production, the symptom benefits in trials were more selective than the marketing suggests, and the cardiovascular safety question took a decade and a dedicated trial to settle only partly.
Read the guide →Semaglutide is a TGA-registered, prescription-only GLP-1 receptor agonist used for type 2 diabetes and chronic weight management. The trial evidence is unusually strong — roughly 15% average weight loss over 68 weeks, and a genuine reduction in cardiovascular events in the SELECT trial. The parts that get less airtime: most of the weight comes back when it stops, a meaningful share of what is lost is lean tissue, gastrointestinal side effects drive real discontinuation, and compounded copies sold in Australia have been a documented safety hazard.
Read the guide →Tirzepatide is a TGA-registered, prescription-only dual GIP and GLP-1 receptor agonist approved for type 2 diabetes, chronic weight management and obstructive sleep apnoea in adults with obesity. It produced the largest average weight loss yet seen from a medicine — around 20% in trials, and more than semaglutide head-to-head. The honest caveats: the GIP mechanism is still not fully understood, the withdrawal trial showed most of the benefit reverses when it stops, its cardiovascular outcome evidence is less mature than semaglutide's, and it interferes with oral contraception.
Read the guide →BPC-157 is a synthetic 15-amino-acid peptide with a large and reasonably consistent animal literature behind it for tendon, muscle and gut repair — and no completed large randomised trial in humans. In Australia it is not registered on the ARTG, is handled as a prescription-only compounded preparation, and is prohibited in sport at all times.
Read the guide →TB-500 is a synthetic fragment marketed as a version of thymosin beta-4, a naturally occurring protein that binds actin and regulates how cells move into damaged tissue. The parent protein has been through early human trials for specific conditions; the fragment sold as TB-500 has not been shown to work for the muscle, tendon and recovery uses it is promoted for. In Australia it is unregistered, prescription-only, and prohibited in sport at all times.
Read the guide →CJC-1295 is a synthetic analogue of growth-hormone-releasing hormone, engineered to resist breakdown and — in the DAC form — to bind albumin so it stays active for days. Early human trials showed it raises growth hormone and IGF-1. What no trial has shown is that raising those markers produces the body-composition, recovery or anti-ageing outcomes it is marketed for. In Australia it is unregistered, prescription-only, and prohibited in sport.
Read the guide →Ipamorelin is a synthetic pentapeptide that acts on the ghrelin receptor to trigger a pulse of growth hormone. Its distinguishing feature is selectivity — it raised GH without the cortisol and prolactin rises seen with older secretagogues. Selectivity is a pharmacological advantage, not a demonstrated clinical benefit: the uses it is promoted for have not been established in human trials. In Australia it is unregistered, prescription-only, and prohibited in sport.
Read the guide →NAD+ is a coenzyme every cell depends on, both as an electron carrier and as a consumable substrate for sirtuins and PARPs. Levels fall with age, and precursors like NMN and NR reliably raise them in humans. What has not been shown is that raising the number changes how you age — and that gap between a biomarker and an outcome is the whole argument.
Read the guide →PT-141, also called bremelanotide, is a melanocortin receptor agonist studied for low sexual desire. Unlike the familiar erectile dysfunction tablets it does not act on blood flow — it acts centrally, on the brain pathways involved in wanting sex. It is approved in the United States for one specific diagnosis in premenopausal women, and in Australia it is prescription-only and compounded rather than registered.
Read the guide →SLU-PP-332 is an academic research chemical that activates the estrogen-related receptors and, in mice, switches on some of the genetic programs endurance exercise switches on. It has no completed human clinical trials of any kind — the entire evidence base is rodent and cell work — and it is not approved for human use anywhere.
Read the guide →MOTS-c is a peptide encoded inside the mitochondrial genome that circulates naturally and rises with exercise. That biology is genuine and interesting. It is not the same claim as 'injecting MOTS-c does something in humans' — which has not been demonstrated, and which is what is actually being sold.
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