The Food and Drug Administration received reports in recent months that two people died after taking bootleg versions of an experimental weight-loss drug, according to documents reviewed by CBS News.

The masses have responded with "OMG it was caused by black market peptides."

At no time has anyone said what the actual cause of death was, however.  Obese patients never die of a heart attack though, right?

The first death reportedly occurred in July, when a healthcare professional informed the FDA that a 41-year-old woman with obesity went into cardiac arrest. The report lists retatrutide as a "suspect product," noting the woman had obtained it "from an unreliable source." 

Then in September, the FDA received a report that a 49-year-old patient died after a licensed nurse "convinced" her to buy retatrutide from an online peptide vendor and she experienced severe dehydration, malnutrition and cardiac arrest.

Who's got the best options out there for me?  Thoughts?  Opinions?

But no more.  Two discoveries.

A beard comb's rough side does a perfect job on thyme.  So fast, very thorough.  Some small leaves stay behind, maybe 10%.

And I'm printing these now, to do a variety of herbs.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/10/02/lilly-novo-amylin-obesity-drugs.html

That's the early potential of a new slate of injections, pills, and combination regimens targeting the amylin pathway, which involves a hormone released in the pancreas alongside insulin that helps regulate hunger and fullness. Amylin gives Eli Lilly, Novo and several other companies another biological lever to pull in treating obesity and Type 2 diabetes, either as an independent treatment or layered on top of existing drugs. 

Novo's experimental amylin-based drug, cagrilintide, has shown meaningful weight loss as a standalone treatment in a late-stage trial. Combining it with semaglutide – together dubbed CagriSema – has produced even greater weight loss in clinical studies. CagriSema is expected to launch early next year, followed by standalone cagrilintide and a higher-dose version of CagriSema in 2028.

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/friday-favorites-the-exercise-myth-and-secret-for-weight-loss

Don't look it up:  How many Oreos do you burn by climbing the Empire State building and back down?

No reason for this to get political, it's just opening the market a bit more.  Which is both good and bad obviously.

Since I’m out of my zepbound samples and the group buy hasn’t commenced I decided to pull the trigger on an email I got from RO. 
 

Their offer was, as I understood it, $39/mo for the membership and $149/mo for the zepbound medication(or cheaper if I committed to 3-6-12mo purchases) I clicked on the link in the email and it took me to their website and it showed the same information that was in the email. 
 

Figured the group buy would come around in 3 months I opted to do a 3 month subscription and continued to answer all their questions. At the end “good news you’re approved” and I had to download the RO app and wait for the next steps. 
 

Almost immediately I got notification to answer a few more questions and wait for the next steps. I answered all the questions in this section and immediately got taken to the checkout page which showed a breakdown of the cost and coverage of the Zepbound at which point it showed the membership cost to be $1200/yr and the medication $500/mo. 
 

Uh what happened to the prices from the email and the previous pages in the questionnaire

 I backed through all the pages to find the prices and when I got back to the prices page it showed the original prices that lured me in. 🤔 

So I go through all the steps again and in the end get the same jacked up price without any explanation as to why the price is so much higher. 
 

I go to their help section to see if I can find an answer. No luck. I call their customer service number only to get someone who barely speaks English. I couldn’t understand her so I asked to speak to the mgr. Apparently that didn’t translate to her because she hung up on me. I call back and get a guy who equally doesn’t speak English. Again I ask to speak to mgr and get hung up on. Wtf 

Cautionary tale

These syringes are excellent:  https://a.co/d/054H3D7m

For some reason, sometimes Amazon will have a multi-week back order on them.  Those are also sold under the Sam's Club house brand (Member's Mark) for a shitload less.  I think under $11/box.  You can only get them in store, cannot order or even see them online.

These suck:  https://a.co/d/06Y7Ye3O

These are ok, middle ground:  https://a.co/d/04Lh3DUD

These injector pens are nice, super convenient.  Just dial a dose and go.  Particularly great if you decide to do any daily peptides.  A little more work to set up, but then you have many doses ready.  For example, GLOW/KLOW is in one of those, as a 25-shot (25 day) cartridge.

https://thepeppen.com/product/the-black-peppen-v2-pro/

Bacteriostatic water can be a pain to find.  As a general rule, peptide people trust Hospira/Pfizer brand.  I have personally tested some vendor supplied water that was ridiculously bad.  It's not to say that there are not other good ones, but they should all be suspect, and the Hospira is the gold standard.  It's hard to get because Lilly pressured to get it restricted as an RX-only product to try to stop people from using gray market peptides.  Fuck those people.

A true miracle drug?  Also this is specifically about Semaglutide, but probably applies equally to Tirzepatide and Retatrutide.  Almost surely doesn't correlate with Cagrilintide or Eloralintide however.

Clinical Takeaway

I have a follow up with my PCP the week of Thanksgiving…I go in for blood work Monday.  My endoscopy indicated GERD and hiatal hernia…not bad enough to demand immediate intervention, but I’ll be inquiring about my treatment options.

Dining out is near impossible for now.  Need to keep it simple and small portions.  I’m wondering what prepackaged items in the store would do well as “on the go” meals for work or travel.  Real food, not processed junk, if possible.

So roadkill should be vegan right?  It's already dead, you didn't cause anything.  In fact maybe it's unethical to not eat it, since now you're just wasting the life.  And you have to eat something else.

Honey is an animal product, but it can be produced either with or without harm to the bees.  Local, natural honey with minimal bee disruption should be vegan.  Mass factory honey farming however causes great harm to both bees the the environment.

Blowjobs?  Well, there's some controversy there too.  Here's a great post summarizing it:

The usual question is, "Sperm is an animal product. What do vegans think of blow jobs? Do they just not swallow?"

The point is not magical sequences of proteins or animal sources. It's about exploitation and while humans are animals we can give informed consent.

Nobody is going to strap me down and steal my sperm without quite a lot of romancing and a safe word.

According to my new doc, this is a “stunning” result that he’s never seen before.  But he’s never had someone take plant based eating so seriously.  What’s your ratio?

No statins or anything like that.  I simply went from the standard American diet (SAD) to 100% whole plants, then tempered that to mostly plants but also some variety as I learned what does and doesn't fuck me up.  But still no dairy, no beef/chicken/pork, no fried shit other than a rare sidelining for events or travel.  I haven't purchased any of those things for home usage since late 2015.  I've been eating more fish lately also, as there's evidence that a few critical things that really need to be obtained from it.  

Root:  I have a dual gene defect that affects the ability to use B vitamins, and the DOPA>Dopmamine>Serotonin chain.

Start with the methylation foundation (Pure TheraPro daily + Thorne 2–3×/wk) since you may already be sourcing those. Then layer in the BH4 cofactors — vitamin C and NMN are cheap and low-risk with immediate relevance. NA Semax Amidate is the highest-impact add on the peptide side and should be your first peptide given it directly addresses the BH4/neurotransmitter signaling deficit rather than just precursor-loading. BPC-157 is a natural second peptide to run concurrently or sequentially given the D2 receptor upregulation and protective effects.

Methylene blue specifically: The mechanism is genuinely useful for your situation — it acts as an alternative electron carrier that can directly reduce the BH3 radical back to active BH4, meaning it partly addresses the root deficiency rather than just compensating downstream. The real risk vector is the MAOI activity, which at 1–10 mg is mild but real. Since you don't use 5-HTP, your main exposure is L-tryptophan in the evening and SAMe in the morning. Structure it as: MB days = no tryptophan that evening, conservative on SAMe. Non-MB days = tryptophan and SAMe freely. The G6PD check is worth doing if you haven't — it's a standard item on a comprehensive blood panel or 23andMe data can tell you (rs1050828, rs1050829).

Dairy is high in galactose, which is used by researchers to accelerate aging in lab rats, for one.

The accelerated D-(+)-galactose-induced aging model is widely accepted; it is based on metabolic theory, and presents many aspects similar to the natural aging process [9]. In the body, D-(+)-galactose is oxidized by galactose oxidase to form hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂). In addition, this monosaccharide can react with amine groups in various proteins, forming advanced glycation products, and promoting oxidative stress [10]. Recent studies have demonstrated that chronic administration of D-(+)-galactose also leads to immune system dysregulation, sex hormone deficiencies, increasing inflammatory cytokine levels, cellular apoptosis, and diminished total antioxidant capacity [10, 11]. Taken together, these effects mimic aging and impel the subject toward development of age-related diseases [12].

Milk contains a lot of galactose indirectly, because lactose breaks down into glucose and galactose during digestion. In whole or reduced-fat cow’s milk, the measured free galactose is usually near zero to about 0.02 g per 100 g, while the total galactose equivalent is about 2.3 to 2.6 g per 100 g of milk.bmj+1

Practical amount

A typical glass of milk around 200 mL contains roughly 8.5 to 9.3 g of lactose, which corresponds to about 4.3 to 4.7 g of total galactose equivalents after digestion.stud.epsilon.slu

The other things you'll need are bacteriostatic water, and syringes.

It's getting worse with the processed food scourge, now, 

The Mineral Intake Recommendations Only 1 in 6,000 U.S. Adults Meet

https://nutritionfacts.org/blog/the-mineral-intake-recommendations-only-1-in-6000-u-s-adults-meet

And it’s so damn easy to fix…

https://amazon.com/dp/B0183RU7VI?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback

Any suggestions on otc drugs that have helped you prevent that coughing response so you can sleep.  Using DM cough syrup has been what I have been using.

I have two food tags related to this.

"High sodium" is obvious, right?  Normally I have very low sodium intake.

"Junk" is the standard American diet such as fatty meat, fried foods, dairy.  This specific alert was triggered by having a Cornish pasty a few days ago, which while delicious, is obviously junk food and so fucking salty.

The method they are trying to use is this:

The GLP-1 medications have been classified as peptides, not biologics; peptides that are FDA approved are considered drugs and allowed to be compounded if legal requirements for compounding have been met. Lilly has argued that retatrutide should instead be considered a protein; proteins and products that are “analogous” to proteins are included under the definition of “biological products” in the amended Public Health Service Act.

A requirement for an agent to be classified as a biologic is that it must be greater than 40 amino acids in size. Lilly says that this particular GLP-1 has 41 amino acids,” Dr. Rumore said. Lilly describes retatrutide as having a backbone chain of 39 alpha amino acids connected via an isopeptide bond to a second backbone chain that has two or more amino acids, one of which is an alpha amino acid and one of which is not. The FDA determined that only alpha amino acids are counted toward the “greater than 40 amino acids” threshold, and further ruled that retatrutide did not qualify as “analogous to a protein” either, because it did not share the “fundamental defining property of a protein [of] being greater than 40 alpha amino acids.”

https://www.pharmacypracticenews.com/Policy/Article/04-25/GLP-1-Lilly-FDA-Lawsuit/76663?omnisendContactID=6615b0d5671207aff36a8954