Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / My Experiment with Peptides (BPC-157) for Shoulder Recovery (Confounding Variables) | Ep 255

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My Experiment with Peptides (BPC-157) for Shoulder Recovery (Confounding Variables) | Ep 255 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: If you're curious about BPC-157 or any other peptides or supplements for injury recovery and you want the truth about what I learned using it for my shoulder, but, more importantly, if you've ever tried self-experimentation and struggled to figure out whether something is actually working or not, this episode is for you.
• 0:19
  Philip Pape: I'm breaking down my real experiment using BPC-157 peptides for my shoulder what went right, what went wrong and the crucial lesson about confounding variables that will change how you evaluate any protocol or supplement.
• 0:35
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique.
• 0:52
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, philip Pape, and today I'm talking about my personal experience with BPC-157.
• 0:58
  Philip Pape: This is a peptide, and I did this for my left shoulder, where I had rotator cuff surgery last year, and I'm going to go through that process, but with an important twist.
• 1:09
  Philip Pape: Instead of just telling you whether it worked or not, we're going to use this as a case study in confounding variables, those pesky factors that make it nearly impossible to determine what's actually causing our results.
• 1:24
  Philip Pape: It nearly impossible to determine what's actually causing our results Because when I tried BPC-157, I made some classic mistakes that created a messy data set.
• 1:35
  Philip Pape: Understanding these mistakes will help you avoid them in your own experiments, whether with supplements, training protocols or changes to your nutrition.
• 1:40
  Philip Pape: And I do want to say that none of what I share today constitutes any sort of advice, medical or otherwise, for you.
• 1:45
  Philip Pape: It is simply for educational purposes.
• 1:47
  Philip Pape: And before we get into it, I do want to mention something a little bit new that I haven't talked about much lately, and that is a brand new podcast we launched called Nutrition Science Daily.
• 1:57
  Philip Pape: This is a daily weekday morning five-minute podcast.
• 2:02
  Philip Pape: I'm trying to get every single episode under five minutes.
• 2:04
  Philip Pape: Some come in at five and a half or six, and this is an examination of a recent study, finding news article or happening in the world of nutrition, how to analyze it and how to apply it to your life in a nuanced, evidence-based way.
• 2:19
  Philip Pape: So that's called Nutrition Science Daily, links in the show notes.
• 2:23
  Philip Pape: I highly encourage you to check it out.
• 2:25
  Philip Pape: If you like it, follow it and share, but just give it a shot and see if you like it.
• 2:28
  Philip Pape: Let's talk about my experiment with peptides, and I want to first explain what the heck these are.
• 2:33
  Philip Pape: What is BPC-157?
• 2:35
  Philip Pape: Because I've talked about peptides a couple times on the show, once long ago with Dr Rand M, another time with Christian Gem.
• 2:42
  Philip Pape: I may have talked about it a few other times and you can go check those out, but peptides are well.
• 2:48
  Philip Pape: Bpc-157, specifically, is a synthetic peptide which is derived from a naturally occurring protein found in gastric juices.
• 2:59
  Philip Pape: Research shows it can accelerate healing in muscles, tendons and ligaments by promoting blood vessel formation and collagen production.
• 3:05
  Philip Pape: Studies, mostly in animals so that is a big caveat primarily in animals demonstrate it may have the potential to reduce inflammation and oxidative stress, particularly in tissue repair, which would then help with accelerating that tissue repair.
• 3:22
  Philip Pape: And the reason I decided to try these out is, first of all, I'm working with a qualified professional.
• 3:25
  Philip Pape: Her name is Kristin Gemme here in Avon.
• 3:28
  Philip Pape: She was on the show and she helped guide me through this process.
• 3:32
  Philip Pape: I had rotator cuff surgery in 2023.
• 3:36
  Philip Pape: So this was last year, as I'm recording this episode and I recovered through that pretty nicely over about six to 12 months, got back into lifting, things started to feel well and then I got some bursitis, some really strong painful inflammation that just would not go away.
• 3:50
  Philip Pape: I worked through various protocols to get that down naturally and then I decided to have a cortisone shot to just massively reduce the inflammation.
• 3:58
  Philip Pape: It worked wonders to allow me to slowly build back in, reintroduce load, get back to shoulder pressing all the things that I love to do in the gym in a very reasonable, appropriate way.
• 4:10
  Philip Pape: And now I'm training pretty hard and it's feeling good.
• 4:13
  Philip Pape: However, throughout that process I thought is there anything else I can do to support this?
• 4:17
  Philip Pape: And I had heard about peptides several times.
• 4:20
  Philip Pape: I talked to a former coach of mine who said you know, I've used it.
• 4:24
  Philip Pape: This was him talking.
• 4:25
  Philip Pape: I've used it for my shoulder, others have used it for their knees, for their hips, used it after surgery, and there's all these anecdotal stories of people having faster recovery.
• 4:34
  Philip Pape: And I looked into it I talked to Kristen and I talked to some other professionals.
• 4:37
  Philip Pape: It seems to be the very not just efficacious for a lot of people, but safe as well, and so I considered taking it because it is a fairly natural product, although it is in its infancy with regards to the research.
• 4:52
  Philip Pape: And the protocol is very simple.
• 4:53
  Philip Pape: You inject I think it's 500 micrograms Don't quote me, I don't have my notes here Uh, basically daily.
• 4:57
  Philip Pape: For me, I did it five out of seven days for six weeks, so it's 30 doses.
• 4:59
  Philip Pape: With a very tiny syringe, you put it into fatty tissue.
• 5:00
  Philip Pape: Um, I did it five out of seven days for six weeks, so it's 30 doses.
• 5:03
  Philip Pape: With a very tiny syringe you put it into fatty tissue, I did it into the fat near my triceps and so you hardly feel it.
• 5:12
  Philip Pape: You probably need someone to help with that.
• 5:15
  Philip Pape: And the recommendation was alternate my shoulders for each dose.
• 5:19
  Philip Pape: If you were to put it in your hip or buttocks or stomach or wherever again, you could do it in the same spot every day.
• 5:24
  Philip Pape: You can alternate.
• 5:25
  Philip Pape: It's systemic, but it also is supposed to be local as well.
• 5:28
  Philip Pape: And that's it.
• 5:29
  Philip Pape: And the idea there was that I would track how I feel, how I perform, my mobility, my range of motion as I went forward.
• 5:37
  Philip Pape: And I did but hold that thought, because now we're going to talk about the sticky situation you can get yourself in if you don't do it right.
• 5:48
  Philip Pape: Let's talk about controlled versus confounding variables.
• 5:51
  Philip Pape: Now, this is a fundamental concept when you're designing any experiment, and what we do here on Wits and Weights and in my coaching practice, is we're always experimenting on ourselves.
• 6:00
  Philip Pape: We start from a known base of knowledge.
• 6:03
  Philip Pape: We start from best practices and our best guess.
• 6:06
  Philip Pape: Like, we know how much protein we should be eating, but we don't know if it should be a little bit higher, a little lower for you.
• 6:12
  Philip Pape: We know you should be training in a certain way generally, but we don't know if you need more or less volume, more or less intensity and more or fewer days per week.
• 6:19
  Philip Pape: So we figure those out later on, but we start with a baseline and we identify these variables.
• 6:24
  Philip Pape: A controlled variable is something that we intentionally keep constant or we manipulate in a very specific way to understand its effects.
• 6:33
  Philip Pape: So think about scientific studies where researchers control factors like diet, exercise and sleep and they want to isolate the impact of a supplement.
• 6:43
  Philip Pape: So they are controlling these things.
• 6:45
  Philip Pape: They are either manipulating them to keep them steady or they are not touching them, if you will, if they're expected to remain stable.
• 6:52
  Philip Pape: So those are control variables.
• 6:54
  Philip Pape: Confounding variables are the wild cards.
• 6:57
  Philip Pape: These are the factors that can influence our results but are not part of what we're trying to test, and they can mask or they can amplify the true effect of our intervention.
• 7:09
  Philip Pape: And when it comes to health fitness, common confounding variables are all over the place, because we're human beings, we live messy lives, our stress levels change, our sleep quality changes, we have seasonal variations in our activity.
• 7:22
  Philip Pape: We have life events that come along that affect everything recovery, everything else.
• 7:27
  Philip Pape: We are constantly changing our supplements and medications, we're constantly modifying our training program and our intensity, and the list goes on and on.
• 7:35
  Philip Pape: And the challenge of biological systems, especially our bodies, is that true control, variables, or I should say variable control is nearly impossible.
• 7:45
  Philip Pape: We just have to acknowledge that Everything interacts with everything else.
• 7:48
  Philip Pape: Hormones affect sleep, which affects recovery, which affects performance, which affects hormones.
• 7:53
  Philip Pape: You get the idea.
• 7:54
  Philip Pape: There's sometimes chicken and egg effects that go both directions.
• 7:58
  Philip Pape: So when I apply this specifically to my situation, the timeline was such that, as I was starting the BPC-157 protocol, I just happened to be changing a few other very big variables at the same time.
• 8:11
  Philip Pape: Now, those were more under my control, I will admit, and this is where I made the mistake.
• 8:16
  Philip Pape: There are lots of things that happen to us, but there are things that we control, such as our diet.
• 8:20
  Philip Pape: Well, at the time I was starting this, I also decided to come out of my fat loss phase into maintenance and then into a bulking phase.
• 8:27
  Philip Pape: Now, part of that was intentional, so that I could get more out of the recovery, knowing that I was taking peptides, but it still introduced an extra major change to a variable that was no longer in control, although it became controlled in a new sense, in that now I was in a consistent bulk, but it was a change.
• 8:46
  Philip Pape: Also, I switched from a bodybuilding style program to a more strength building style program, knowing again that I would be in a recovery phase, that I would also have more food coming in, and I'm like, well, heck, yeah, now I want to improve my strength base and go after PRs again.
• 9:01
  Philip Pape: I've been wanting to do that ever since before my surgery.
• 9:03
  Philip Pape: So now I'm in a more volume heavy training program at the same time, and all these things are changing while I'm taking the protocol.
• 9:12
  Philip Pape: So now the question is how the heck do I know that if my shoulder starts feeling better or has better mobility, it's because of the peptides?
• 9:22
  Philip Pape: And how do I avoid the placebo effect here as well, where I start saying, oh, I'm feeling better, it's because of the peptides, because I want them to be.
• 9:31
  Philip Pape: And so when we modify several factors at once like this, we create what scientists call a multivariate problem.
• 9:36
  Philip Pape: Right, each change introduces its own effects and potentially interacts with other changes in ways that we just cannot predict.
• 9:45
  Philip Pape: For example, in my case, increasing calories improves recovery and provides more resources for tissue repair.
• 9:53
  Philip Pape: I wanted that to support the peptides, but it also means I don't know if it's the peptides that's really doing the job.
• 9:59
  Philip Pape: Modifying my training reduces stress on injured areas, even though I might be training more intensely and building strength.
• 10:06
  Philip Pape: So it's like, eh, again, am I hitting myself harder and now the peptides are helping me feel better to counteract that, or I'm actually supporting that by reducing stress because I am getting stronger?
• 10:18
  Philip Pape: You see what I mean.
• 10:19
  Philip Pape: Peptides themselves, of course, might accelerate the healing processes.
• 10:23
  Philip Pape: That's really the ultimate thing I'm trying to figure out.
• 10:25
  Philip Pape: Better nutrition might optimize hormones that affect all of this, and then my training volume could affect my recovery time.
• 10:33
  Philip Pape: Now, to be honest, I increased my volume, so I technically have less potential recovery, but that's a whole separate topic because of the interaction between stress and fatigue and all that.
• 10:45
  Philip Pape: So this is where understanding confounding variables becomes absolutely critical.
• 10:49
  Philip Pape: So you don't make assumptions and don't make anecdotal claims, because when multiple factors change simultaneously, we have to have a more systematic approach, and we're all about systems, we're all about analysis and there are still ways that you can kind of tease out the data.
• 11:03
  Philip Pape: So the first thing is to document everything you care about, even things that you might not think you should care about and seem unrelated but could be affected.
• 11:14
  Philip Pape: So you want to care about those as well, all right.
• 11:17
  Philip Pape: So documenting everything, looking for patterns in the timing between changes and improvements.
• 11:22
  Philip Pape: So, for example, if you made a change and then something improved, look at everything that changed and were they all overlapping, in which case it's kind of hard to figure out what it is, or is there a distinct association, time-wise, between something changing and something improving?
• 11:39
  Philip Pape: Another thing is to compare to similar situations in the past.
• 11:43
  Philip Pape: So, for my example, I've bulked in the past and I've done strength programs in the past and I know how my shoulder has felt.
• 11:50
  Philip Pape: So if my shoulder actually feels a lot better this time under those same conditions, that could be a clue that, oh yes, it might be the peptides, and then consider the biological mechanisms going on and how everything might interact again.
• 12:03
  Philip Pape: So you don't make any assumptions.
• 12:04
  Philip Pape: So what did I actually observe?
• 12:06
  Philip Pape: You're like, okay, get to the point.
• 12:07
  Philip Pape: What did you feel?
• 12:08
  Philip Pape: Well, I'm not really sure.
• 12:09
  Philip Pape: I will say that my shoulder is feeling stronger, it hurts less and it cracks less, like there was a lot of cracking going on, but I had also had the cortisone shot.
• 12:22
  Philip Pape: I had recovered from that.
• 12:23
  Philip Pape: I had been training and stretching, working on mobility all of that as well.
• 12:28
  Philip Pape: So is it the peptides?
• 12:29
  Philip Pape: I've been able to progress my bench press and my overhead press, which is phenomenal.
• 12:36
  Philip Pape: I really missed doing those.
• 12:37
  Philip Pape: But at the same time, I'm using smarter approaches and tools, like I use a slingshot for my standard bench, I use spotto presses which stop an inch above my chest, I support my overhead pressing, with days where I do seated overhead pressing, all of which can be supporting and improving the strength of my shoulder, independent of the peptides.
• 12:59
  Philip Pape: And so at the end of the day, you're going to get a disappointing answer, but I'm not really sure Now.
• 13:04
  Philip Pape: I've had, I've heard of people who went through recovery from surgery, took the peptides and the recovery was super fast.
• 13:10
  Philip Pape: The question is, would it have been slower or faster without them?
• 13:13
  Philip Pape: Like, would it have been slower without them or were they motivated Cause they're on the peptides, thinking this is going to recover faster and they push themselves more in a good way?
• 13:21
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 13:21
  Philip Pape: We just?
• 13:22
  Philip Pape: It's just so hard to say because of this idea of confounding variables.
• 13:26
  Philip Pape: So if I did this next time, and I am going to do this next time, but I'm going to do it for my hip.
• 13:31
  Philip Pape: So I've had a torn labrum in my right hip for quite a few years.
• 13:35
  Philip Pape: Don't know what caused it.
• 13:36
  Philip Pape: It causes a little bit of stiffness.
• 13:38
  Philip Pape: Sometimes in the morning it causes some clicking and it's just a little bit annoying.
• 13:44
  Philip Pape: I do find that if I squat regularly and if I walk regularly, the pain goes away, which is another signal to always be moving and using your body.
• 13:52
  Philip Pape: It tends to be better for your health and your joints than not doing that.
• 13:55
  Philip Pape: When I sit around a lot, that's when it hurts.
• 13:57
  Philip Pape: But I'm going to use peptides there because that part of my body seems to change not a lick.
• 14:04
  Philip Pape: No matter what I do Like, no matter what I'm eating, no matter what I'm sleeping, no matter what, it's been super, super stable, no matter what Like, all these other things can change and my hip will still be a little bit problematic.
• 14:15
  Philip Pape: So my reasoning, of course, is if I take the peptides and all these other things in my life are more or less as they've been and all of a sudden that starts to improve, ah, that might be an indicator that these things work.
• 14:28
  Philip Pape: And if everything stays the same, I'll be like, okay, I tried the peptides and, honestly, for me they didn't have a big deal, like I'm getting much more out of just hitting the gym hard, working out, eating right, all those fun things A lot of what I tell my clients to do.
• 14:41
  Philip Pape: I say, look, don't focus so much on these hacks, these supplements, these one percenters.
• 14:45
  Philip Pape: Just focus on the big things and then, once you get there, you can focus on optimization and experimentation with the little things.
• 14:52
  Philip Pape: So the fascinating thing about all of this, about this confounding variable thing, is, while they make clean data pretty much impossible, as a human, they actually mirror real life accurately.
• 15:05
  Philip Pape: Right, because in the real world, healing and recovery don't happen in isolation.
• 15:10
  Philip Pape: Right, our bodies respond to the totality of our environment, not just single interventions.
• 15:17
  Philip Pape: So we need to care about all of it and we need to just not make excuses and also not rely on one solution or another and just go after it.
• 15:26
  Philip Pape: I, for one, am rather entertained by the messiness of life, and I talk often about how that messiness is what allows us to create resilience around it knowing that it's messy, like knowing that we can't be perfect and knowing that things are going to happen all the it, knowing that it's messy, like knowing that we can't be perfect and knowing that things are gonna happen all the time.
• 15:41
  Philip Pape: It's liberating.
• 15:43
  Philip Pape: It allows you to then set up your system, to assume that that's the case and to set up your environment rather than any single intervention.
• 15:51
  Philip Pape: And don't get hung up and don't overthink is this the best training program?
• 15:54
  Philip Pape: Is this the best diet?
• 15:55
  Philip Pape: Just think about your environment as a whole and start to nudge things in the direction you think.
• 15:59
  Philip Pape: Work for you, Track it, measure it, see how you feel, see how you perform, and you'll get there.
• 16:03
  Philip Pape: And if we understand this, then we understand self-experimentation.
• 16:07
  Philip Pape: And now, instead of seeking perfect isolation, we focus on creating the environment conducive to our goals, while we still carefully document the things that change.
• 16:15
  Philip Pape: We document our results, we track, we measure, of course, and carefully document the things that change.
• 16:19
  Philip Pape: We document our results, we track, we measure, of course, and overall, we have a more nuanced approach.
• 16:21
  Philip Pape: It's not going to give you clear-cut answers it never will but it's going to lead to better real-world outcomes and that's what matters.
• 16:27
  Philip Pape: All right, if you want to learn more about the little corners and the nooks and crannies of nutrition science, follow my new podcast, nutrition Science Daily.
• 16:38
  Philip Pape: It's wherever you get your podcasts.
• 16:40
  Philip Pape: Check it out.
• 16:40
  Philip Pape: It's five minutes every weekday morning by 6 am Eastern.
• 16:43
  Philip Pape: It's only in the weekdays right now so you can catch up on the weekends if you miss a few during the week and you might love some.
• 16:50
  Philip Pape: You might not Check it out.
• 16:51
  Philip Pape: Follow and submit a five-star rating and review if you enjoy it, or reach out to me on Instagram at witsandweights five-star rating and review if you enjoy it, or reach out to me on Instagram at witsandweights.
• 16:59
  Philip Pape: And until next time, keep using those wits, keep lifting those weights and remember sometimes the best data comes from understanding why your experiment was not perfect.
• 17:13
  Philip Pape: I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.