Reference

Glossary

The vocabulary you need before any of the rest of this makes sense. Several of these entries exist because misreading the term is what produces the dosing errors this category is known for.

Adherence

Whether doses were actually taken as planned. The gap between a schedule and a record.

Bacteriostatic water

Sterile water containing a small amount of benzyl alcohol, which stops bacteria multiplying and allows a vial to be used more than once.

Batch number

An identifier for one production run. It is what makes a certificate of analysis mean anything about the vial in your hand.

Bioavailability

How much of an administered dose actually reaches the bloodstream. Injection is close to complete; swallowing a peptide is usually close to nothing.

Blend

One vial containing several peptides at a fixed ratio, reconstituted and drawn together.

COA

A certificate of analysis: a laboratory report stating what a batch of material was found to contain.

Cold chain

Keeping something refrigerated at every step from manufacture to use. Peptides ship without one far more often than the storage instructions suggest.

Concentration

How much peptide there is in each millilitre of solution, once the vial has been reconstituted.

Cycling

Running a compound for a defined period and then stopping for one, rather than taking it continuously.

Dead space

The liquid left in a syringe's hub and needle after the plunger is fully depressed. Small, and it comes out of every dose.

Duration of action

How long an effect lasts. This is not the same as half-life and often much longer.

Evidence level

The category of human evidence behind a compound, from preclinical through to approved. Stated on every profile here as a category, not an adjective.

GHRH analogue

A synthetic version of the hormone that tells the pituitary to release growth hormone. One of the two receptor routes into a growth hormone pulse.

GLP-1 agonist

A drug acting on the receptor for glucagon-like peptide-1, a gut hormone that signals fullness and slows stomach emptying.

Half-life

The time it takes for half of a compound to be cleared from the body.

Injection site

Where on the body an injection is given. Rotating between sites is standard practice for anything given repeatedly.

Insulin syringe

A small syringe graduated in units rather than millilitres, most commonly with a U-100 scale.

Intramuscular

Into muscle rather than the fat beneath the skin. A faster and better-perfused route, needing a longer needle.

IU

An international unit: a measure of biological activity, not of mass. How many milligrams an IU corresponds to depends entirely on the substance.

Khavinson bioregulator

A family of very short peptides from one St Petersburg institute, each assigned to a different organ, on the claim that they act directly on DNA rather than through a receptor.

Lyophilised

Freeze-dried. The process used to turn a peptide solution into a stable dry powder for shipping and storage.

Peptide

A short chain of amino acids: the same building blocks as a protein, in a chain short enough to behave differently.

Reconstitution

Adding liquid to a freeze-dried peptide powder to turn it into a solution that can be drawn into a syringe.

Research chemical

A legal label, not a quality grade. It describes what a seller is permitted to sell you, and says nothing about what is in the vial.

Secretagogue

A substance that makes the body release something it already produces, rather than supplying that thing from outside.

Sterile technique

The handling that keeps a vial and an injection free of contamination: clean hands, an alcohol-wiped stopper, a fresh needle every time.

Subcutaneous

Into the layer of fat beneath the skin rather than into muscle. The route almost every peptide on this site uses.

Titration

Raising a dose in planned steps rather than starting at the target, so side effects appear at a dose small enough to retreat from.

Unit

A mark printed on an insulin syringe. A unit is not a fixed volume. What it represents depends entirely on the syringe's scale.

Vial

The small sealed glass container a peptide is sold in, holding a stated mass of freeze-dried powder under a rubber stopper.