Dr Terry Dubrow: Peptides are about to change everything. Are we ready?

What happens when millions of people want drugs their doctors can’t prescribe?

Very few doctors become household names. Dr Terry Dubrow is one of them.

For more than two decades, the board-certified plastic surgeon and star of Botched has sat at the intersection of medicine and popular culture, becoming one of the most recognizable doctors in America.

Then peptides changed the direction of his career.

Decades into an already established surgical career, Dr Dubrow went back to study, became board-certified in obesity medicine, and developed what he describes as an obsession with peptides, longevity and what could become the next frontier of medicine. 

He believes peptides could transform healthcare. But as unapproved compounds move online, patients bypass doctors and regulation struggles to keep pace, he is warning that the same revolution could also produce a serious medical backlash. 

He explains:

■ Why GLP-1s changed the direction of his career and pulled him into peptide medicine 
■ Why he believes peptides could eventually change how we age
■ Why retatrutide is already being accessed before FDA approval 
■ Why pushing peptides outside the medical system could make them more dangerous, not less
■ The peptide safety event he fears could trigger a major backlash

Chapters

• (00:00) - Intro
• (02:07) - From GLP-1s to peptides
• (05:07) - Can peptides reverse aging?
• (07:54) - Peptides and the regulatory Wild West
• (09:59) - Retatrutide and the next GLP-1s
• (14:00) - Microdosing GLP-1s for longevity
• (16:14) - The biggest myths about peptides
• (18:12) - Why doctors need better peptide data
• (19:57) - The danger of unregulated peptides
• (21:52) - The future of peptides and longevity

 

Watch the full episode on YouTube
 

Further reading

FDA: July 2026 Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee meeting covering BPC-157, TB-500, MOTS-c and other peptide-related bulk substances: FDA PCAC July 2026 meeting

ClinicalTrials.gov: Phase 3 TRIUMPH-1 study of retatrutide in obesity and overweight: Retatrutide TRIUMPH-1 trial

 

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Instagram: Instagram.com/drdubrow
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Website: DrDubrow.com

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardskaife/

The Peptide Show

Website: Peptide.Show

The Peptide Show explores the science, medicine, business and people shaping the rapidly evolving world of peptides.

Presented by Longr: longr.io

Follow The Peptide Show for new episodes every Tuesday.

This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Some compounds discussed in this episode are investigational, unapproved for the uses discussed, or subject to changing regulatory requirements.

Creators and Guests

Host

Richard Skaife

Entrepreneur, Venture Capitalist and CEO of Longr, focused on longevity, health technology and emerging science.

Guest

Dr Terry Dubrow

Board-certified plastic surgeon, author and television personality, best known as co-host of Botched.

Editor

Toby Sorabjee

Co-founder and COO of Longr, working across longevity, health technology, investing and media.

What is Peptide Show?

Welcome to the world of Peptides. New episodes every Tuesday.

The problem is the cat is out of the bag

and you can get Reta online

you can get it down the street

people buy peptides online

they buy them on TikTok shop

they buy them from unknown sources

I'm concerned there's gonna be a Sentinel event

this is not going away this is just getting bigger

we are just on the cusp of this

and peptides is leading that charge

this is the future of medicine

this is going to change everything

welcome to the very first Peptide Show from Longr

where we speak with the people who matter most

in the business of peptides

I'm Richard Skaife venture capitalist and entrepreneur

we've got some brilliant guests lined up

and some big conversations coming

each and every Tuesday if you enjoy the episode

you could really help the channel grow with a like

and subscribe and if you really enjoyed the episode

why not share it with someone who's peptide curious

you can find us across socials with links in the bio

very few doctors become household names

Doctor Terry Dubrow is one of them

for more than two decades

he's occupied a rare place

at the intersection of medicine and popular culture

now he believes

we may be approaching

one of the biggest transformations

in medicine itself

the impact of GLP-1s fascinated him

so much so that

decades into an established

career as a plastic surgeon

he went back to study obesity medicine

what followed was an obsession with peptides

longevity and what he believes

could be the next frontier of medicine

but there is a contradiction

doctor de Bro

is optimistic about where science could take us

yet he believes that

unless doctors

are brought back into the centre of this market

something could go badly wrong

so how much of the peptide revolution is real

and are we watching the future of medicine arrive

before medicine itself is ready for it

my guest today is Doctor Terry Dubrow

welcome to Peptide Show

Terry

thank you very much for joining us on Peptide Show

thank you for having me

I'm very excited to talk about this

tell us a little bit about your journey from television

to peptides um

when did you uh

discover uh these

these therapeutics and

and what have you been doing with them in the

in the space

so my first discovery of these therapeutics was really

when every

everyone else heard about them with the GLP-1 drugs

I had heard of injectable peptides

that weren't approved before

but because you know

I'm board certified surgeon and licensed in California

I really wasn't interested in the idea

of injecting things that weren't

well tested and weren't approved by the FDA

but once the GLP-1 drugs got FDA approved and became

like the biggest

game changing

pharmaceuticals in the history of medicine

I became so obsessed with this area

that I actually studied for

and took the American Board of Obesity Medicine

certification exam

became board certified in obesity medicine

and then after that

just got obsessed with all things peptides and this

this new frontier field of medicine

that's going to change everything

and in this news frontier field of medicine

what do you think is the

kind of the most exciting thing

setting aside GLP-1

which have clearly been absolutely revolutionary

but what what do you think is most exciting

in terms of what comes next

well I think it's all about the longevity

escape velocity concept

this concept that you can use things like peptide

and targeted short chain amino acids to theoretically

and I believe

this is gonna happen in the next one to three years

reverse aging I mean the idea

the ability to alter the DNA

we are just on the cusp of this

and peptides is leading that charge

now you're at the cutting edge of medicine you know

and you you talked about you know

going away and studying uh

you know specifically so you can you know

become more proficient with working with peptides for

for our for our listeners and viewers who are

who are not in the United States

where would you say the

the US sort of healthcare system is

in terms of its awareness of peptides

and how much work needs to be done

before there are more doctors

um because I think

you know probably we agree that patient demand is

is gonna be exceptional uh

people are talking about 50% of

you know advanced populations

could be accessing some type of peptide therapy

well this is a very interesting time

this field scientifically is a little bit in limbo

right now it's the wild

wild west

because we've been using peptides in this country for

now five

six seven years

they've exploded in their popularity

but our federal government has changed

the ability to have medicines access

licensed physicians ability to prescribe these drugs

in 2023 the Biden administration took these peptides

and essentially

recategorized them to what's called category 2

in other words we can't prescribe them okay

so in category 1 we were allowed to prescribe them

follow the patients

monitor them and see what the result was

but they changed that to a position where

those same peptides that weren't FDA approved

but we were allowed to prescribe

were now completely unapproved

and actually strictly illegal to use

and so we were able

then

to prescribe them to our patients through a loophole

where it's called Fuo for research purposes only

so we still do prescribe them

but it's not exactly allowable

but our administration

the new administration with RFK Jr

at the helm of the FDA is trying to change all that

in fact you probably know that last month

the FDA advisory panel

decided and voted and allowed the top

sort of seven

so we physicians can prescribe them again

the problem is when you make them unapproved

like in Australia okay

I just recently did 60 Minutes Australia

where they treat them like opioids

they're completely unapproved

they're illegal all that does is send the peptides

into the black market

now you don't know who's prescribing them

you don't know where they're coming from

you have no idea about their purity

absolutely so in many ways um

you know

they they've they've really sort of helped create uh

the the genie

which is now well and truly out of the bottle you know

I think there's sort of

sensible conversation around this being a

sort of a potential 2027 um

reclassification going back to where you were um

what do you think that looks like for you

in terms of the the

the the volume of people are gonna want to ask

do you have to access these therapeutics

and what are you most commonly being asked in terms of

you know guidance and

and peptides people are most interested in

so it's interesting in terms of the volume as you said

all that did restricting them

was sort of advertise that these things could be useful

a year using peptides in this country to

which is estimated

that it's like 3 to 5 million people use them okay

I'm one of the most searched terms on Google

I mean it's every

practically

every patient I have who comes in for a consult says oh

I'm on this peptide that peptide what do I think about

we spend most of the time

not really talking about plastic surgery procedures

but peptides

I think these are so effective in so many ways

the problem is they're not

they haven't been really

truly studied in the human model

are never gonna spend the billions of dollars required

and FDA approved

because they can't have a patent on them

they won't get a return on their investment

so it's gonna be it needs to be reclassified so we

physicians can prescribe them again

and figure out how to use them

I mean in a way

they're sort of

they're sort of in the realm of over the counter drugs

right where the studies aren't actually clear

how to use Tylenol for this

for that I mean

because Tylenol was originally

FDA approved for one very specific purpose

but as you know

we use Tylenol for a whole host of things

we have figured out how to use these drugs

the same thing needs to happen for things like BPC 157

TB-500

those are sort of

the two most common ones that people want

to use to reduce inflammation if you have injuries

and then there's of course MOTS-c

we need to have these medications

allowed to get back to our purview

and allow us to represcribe them and get lab tests

get feedback from the patients

because as I've said many times elsewhere

the black market you know

the alley of the gym

gym bros and TikTok influencers are gonna

are gonna sell them and then it

it all hell has broken loose

and we have no control at all

when when you look at

and I'm gonna call it the GLP-3s and the

the prominence of use

I don't think there's ever been a therapeutic

which has actually yet to be approved

through its final stages of clinical trials

and when you stand back and you look at you know

I can't put my pin on anything which is similar

anything that's ever occurred in the past

it's really mind blowing I mean

you're talking about with that GLP-3

you're talking about retaglutide

which is commonly known as Reta

you're gonna see Reta everywhere

and you are seeing it everywhere

it's it's interesting

I was listening to this brilliant podcast

of these scientists talking about AI

and they just happened to chat on the podcast

two of them we're on Redda and this is

Redda is the new drug coming out from Eli Lilly

that's gonna be a trillion dollar drug

which is like the ultimate version of a GLP-1 drug

it's like Mounjaro with glucagon

so it's gonna be a fat burning

weight loss drug that is much more effective'cause

they've already gone through phase 3 clinical trials

but it's not FDA approved

but as your audience should know

this is one of the

the drugs that's being the most compounded

even though

Eli Lilly has already sent out notices to everyone

saying we're gonna sue you

this is illegal stop using this drug

and you can get Rada online

you can get it down the street

someone went into a Bodega a

a market in Manhattan

and at the front of the cash register

including Retta that you could get right there

so yeah it is

it is pretty wild and I

I think you know

it is we talk to people all around the world

and it is very much a a US phenomenon

but you can start to see it's happening in

in other markets as well um

this awareness of a let's say

a medication of which is

yet to have formal market access approval

and let's go into protocols and dosings

what what do you

where do you sit in terms of GLP-1s and

and microdosing is it always about the macro dose

okay so

as a licensed physician who does prescribe these drugs

I of course stick to the FDA protocols right

where you start a patient who's doing it

hopefully for the right purposes

for obesity with a BMI over 30 or a BMI over 27

with a comorbidity like diabetes

you can prescribe them for them

and you start them at the lowest dose

let's take Monjaro or Zepbound

same drug 2.5 mg

you do it for four weeks

then you go up to 5 mg and so on and so on

but it's very clear that these drugs have effects

that are positive far beyond what they do for obesity

in fact they actually have indications by the FDA

to prevent recurrent heart attacks

they're very good for reducing fatty liver disease

or for patients with NC especially GL yeah

especially the GLP-3s

I mean that I think is one of the most outstanding

and I mean there's been some

pretty astonishing studies on semaglutide

and alzheimer's and dementia

sadly didn't get the sort of reads

I think a lot of people were hoping

but there

there really is so much that's just not known beyond

beyond weight loss and so to that point

to your point it's very clear

that minimizing the effects of blood sugar

making insulin more sensitive

allowing the body to have less inflammation

related to circulating sugar in your blood

has far reaching effects

so it makes sense that for some individuals

who are not diabetic

might consider using even smaller doses

what are called microdoses

maybe half the starting dose for obesity

and try to reduce what we call inflammaging

meaning the inflammatory effects of sugar on aging

coined inflammaging and so

if you can reduce the sort of chronic

by potentially microdosing these GLP-1 drugs

maybe that's part of what I call preservation longevity

maybe ultimately

that you'll just have a lot less of those sugar

and it'll be an important part of the sort of

you know

aging process and even potentially reverse aging

fantastic now

you're a well known well respected uh

you know spokesperson in the media

uh what do you think is the most common misconception

that the the mainstream media

not the specialist media um

you know have about peptides

what what

what frustrates you the most

I I think that they're just generally dangerous okay

that if even the the approved ones

the GLP-1s like you're cheating

and this is a shortcut and it's not safe

and in 15 years all of our

we're gonna grow third heads

and terrible things are gonna happen

and cancer is gonna result from these unknown

long term effects that is complete BS

first of all

the approved GLP-1 drugs have been around for 15 years

and been used on diabetics

we have more than enough data to know

not only they're safe they're very effective

in terms of the other peptides

these peptides

once appropriately figured out and studied

these are targeting all of those systems in our body

that we want to do positive things for us

physiologically this is the future of medicine

this is going to change everything

and you know there are scientists and researchers now

like David Sinclair at Harvard

that very well known anti aging researcher

once we figure out what to attach to these peptides

that's going to change everything

you should know that Reta

retouched as it's called okay

that's about to come out

that are actually being studied by Eli

Lilly and others

and they're attaching things like muscle maximizers

things that are

but they're gonna give you muscle development okay

they're gonna add things to these that potentially

could make you smarter could turn back the clock

could reduce arthritis inflammation in your body

could take grey hair back to black hair

all of this stuff is coming

so my message is stop restricting this

if you nobody's gonna study this

nobody's gonna spend billions of dollars

you've got to put it back in the hands

of the physicians so that we can at least

figure it out in the safest way possible

when that happens

what do you think physicians sort of need to do

is there commonality of standards protocols

do people need to build technology

if we got technology entrepreneurs

and can be managed and can be reported on

what's missing so

I think what's missing is a centralized

physician reporting site like a website or a program

where physicians can enter their experiences right

their empiric experiences with their patients

and share information and that look

if if we can't spend $1 billion

actually studying these drugs on randomized

controlled placebo trials like they do at the FDA

and when you've got a lot of money well

there's another level of investigation

where we basically share our doses

and that from that will come out

what we call the standard of care

we will learn just like

when we know how to do a new operation

and other physicians interact at meetings

and papers are published in our peer reviewed journals

of our experiences let's go to the physician

peer experience and figure it out

on that level

that's a way we do a lot of things in medicine

let's do it at the clinical level

it's been done for many

many different things and that will work

so less of the randomized control trials

because they are gonna be very difficult to fund

more of the real world evidence

uh advancing

you know good

common standards and protocols and safety disciplines

uh things which really need to be enshrined in this

you know amazingly interesting category

is it sort of

continues to expand and explore in 26 and beyond

yeah it's true

I mean if you think about

remember when we went from open surgery

to surgery done less invasively laparoscopy

where we remove your gallbladder

by making three little incisions

and putty scopes in

those weren't put through randomized

clinical placebo controlled trials

we study it we tell our experiences

we write up papers

let's do exactly that with peptides

that works and that will work

what scares you most about peptides at the moment

what keeps you keeps you thinking or keeps you worrying

or challenges you well

they buy them on TikTok shops

they buy them from unknown sources sources where

you know these ingredients come from

where where do they come from

they come from China

they come from Pakistan and they may have heavy metals

I mean look

in a drug that a person thought they were taking

but at least

they sort of thought they knew how to use it

and lo and behold

it had it was laced with fentanyl and they die

I'm afraid the peptide boom is getting so big

that it's gonna start to be laced with some

not necessarily a fentanyl

but some heavy metal or some endotoxin

that slowly starts to erode the

our ability to control these things

and people are gonna suffer greatly

I mean people have been put into the ICU

from the use of these peptides

ask any ER Doc they have seen them

they're gonna see them more

so I'm concerned there's gonna be a Sentinel event

just like there's going to be

I'm sure in artificial intelligence

where some

for LLM escapes and breaks into a nuclear power plant

and takes over and leaks radiation

I'm concerned this Sentinel event

could happen with peptides

and that's gonna be that's very scary yeah

and of course

it would be the peptides that get the blame

because that's the

way the media tends to report these things

uh it's not the adulterant um

it's it's the molecule

well uh

we won't finish on a gloomy note

uh we asked the same question to all of our guests

um 10 years from now

what do you think the pet world looks like

could be in general could be for yourself

could be for patients where do you think it will be

well paint us hopefully a rosy picture OK

by the way it is a rosy picture

I am so excited

this is why I've coined this phrase preservation

longevity do whatever

if you're alive

and you're listening this or seeing this

which by definition you are

this is the most exciting

time in the history of humanity

to be alive if you can keep yourself preserved

it's very clear that in the next few years

there's going to be peptides

there's gonna be injectables

there's gonna be solutions

that allow you to stop the aging process

arrest cancer in its tracks

and make you look better and feel better

and imagine okay

there already is a drug that can alter the DNA

in the cholesterol forming cells in your liver

to instantly lower your liver

uh liver's cholesterol

your cholesterol in your blood okay

imagine a drug we can inject in you right

that turns your cells that make collagen

back to the way they did it when you were nineteen

all of a sudden you've got

instead of needing a facelift

by doing a simple injection

maybe once a month under the surface of your skin

the future is amazing so take care of yourself

preserve yourself because if you're not preserved

things that are gonna come to us

this is so exciting and it's in the form of peptides

and peptide related molecules like that

Terry this truly was a fascinating conversation

thank you very much for joining us on plattside show

thank you for having me