— Anti-Aging · Reference
Do You Need Bloodwork Before Starting Peptides? Which Labs and When
Which peptides warrant baseline labs and which usually do not, the specific markers a physician looks at and why, how at-home collection works, and why "no bloodwork ever" is a warning.
— Treatments mentioned
Bloodwork is required before some peptide prescriptions and optional before others, and a physician should tell you which applies before prescribing rather than after. Labs matter most for growth-hormone-axis peptides and for GLP-1 medications, because those act on systems that blood markers describe directly. They matter least for a short course of repair peptides aimed at a defined injury. A recent panel from your own doctor can often be used instead of new testing. A provider that never mentions bloodwork for anything is not running a clinical assessment.
— Do You Need Bloodwork Before Starting Peptides? Which Labs and When
The short answer
| What you are starting | Are baseline labs usually wanted? | The markers that matter | Price a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Growth-hormone axis: sermorelin, CJC-1295 / Ipamorelin, tesamorelin | Yes, and again on follow-up | IGF-1, fasting glucose, HbA1c, lipids, thyroid | $229, $239, $249 |
| GH-axis blends: ASCEND, TITAN | Yes, and again on follow-up | Same, plus anything your history raises | $279 |
| GLP-1: semaglutide, tirzepatide | Yes in most cases | Fasting glucose, HbA1c, lipids, thyroid, liver and kidney function | $99 and $159, dose dependent |
| IGF-1 LR3 | Yes, this is where growth-signalling caution matters most | IGF-1, fasting glucose, HbA1c | $259 |
| Repair for a defined injury: BPC-157 + TB-500, KLOW | Not routinely, physician's judgement | Only what your history prompts | $259 |
| Skin focused: GHK-Cu, RADIANCE | Not routinely | Copper status if a copper disorder is suspected | $239, $249 |
| Fatigue, mood or hair as the presenting complaint | Yes, before anything is prescribed | Thyroid panel, ferritin and iron studies, B12, vitamin D | Varies by what is prescribed |
Medication prices are all-in monthly. At-home blood testing is priced separately, because most patients do not need it and pricing it into every prescription would charge the majority for the minority.
What "required" actually means here
No federal rule says a compounded peptide may only be dispensed after a particular panel. What exists is a physician's obligation to have enough information to prescribe safely, which for some of these molecules is hard to discharge without numbers. The useful test is whether anyone can name the decision a panel informs: "I want your fasting glucose before a growth hormone secretagogue, because the approved drugs in that class carry a glucose warning" is a panel doing work; "let's see where your levels are" is not.
Every row above is a default your history overrides. A treated thyroid condition, a family history of medullary thyroid carcinoma, a previous malignancy, chronic kidney disease or insulin on your medication list changes the answer.
— Do You Need Bloodwork Before Starting Peptides? Which Labs and When
Why labs matter more for some peptides than others
| Category | What the medication does | What the marker tells the prescriber |
|---|---|---|
| GH secretagogues | Prompt your own pituitary to release growth hormone in a pulse | IGF-1 is the downstream marker of that release, and is how a physician judges whether the dose is doing anything |
| GH secretagogues | Growth hormone reduces insulin sensitivity | Fasting glucose and HbA1c say whether that is a concern for you before you start |
| GLP-1 agonists | Act on insulin, glucagon, gastric emptying and appetite | Baseline metabolic markers make follow-up results interpretable, and screen for reasons not to prescribe |
| GLP-1 agonists | Rapid weight change stresses liver and gallbladder | Liver function gives a starting point rather than an alarming number with nothing to compare it to |
| Repair peptides | Act locally on tissue repair | No marker describes tendon healing, so a panel usually adds nothing |
| Any category, fatigue as the complaint | Nothing, if the cause is untreated thyroid disease or iron deficiency | Thyroid and ferritin explain a large share of fatigue, and treating around them helps nobody |
That last row is the most important one on this page. Fatigue, low mood and hair shedding are the three complaints most likely to have an ordinary, treatable cause a peptide will not touch. A prescriber who checks first is doing you a favour, even when the answer delays treatment.
— Do You Need Bloodwork Before Starting Peptides? Which Labs and When
The growth hormone axis: why IGF-1 is the marker
— What sermorelin, CJC-1295 / Ipamorelin and tesamorelin actually do
These are secretagogues. They do not supply growth hormone; they prompt your own pituitary to release it, at the GHRH receptor for sermorelin, CJC-1295 and tesamorelin, or at the ghrelin receptor for ipamorelin. Measuring growth hormone directly is close to useless here: it is secreted in bursts, largely overnight, so a single draw catches whatever part of the curve you hit. IGF-1 is made mainly by the liver in response to that exposure, has a far longer half-life, and integrates it.
— What the approved labels say about IGF-1 monitoring
The approved tesamorelin product's label carries a warning titled "Elevated IGF-1 Levels," states that the drug "stimulates GH production and increases serum IGF-1, a growth factor," that "the effects of prolonged elevations in IGF-1 levels are unknown," and instructs prescribers to "Monitor IGF-1 levels during EGRIFTA SV therapy" and to "Consider discontinuing" in patients with persistent elevations. Among patients treated for 26 weeks, 47% had IGF-1 above 2 standard deviation scores.
Somatropin labels say the same from the other direction, instructing that the adult dose be titrated "based on the clinical response and serum insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) concentrations," and decreased on adverse reactions or IGF-1 "above the age- and gender-specific normal range." The compounded peptides Pepti dispenses are not those approved products and are not FDA approved as finished drug products. The monitoring logic transfers because the axis is the same.
— What the tesamorelin label reports about glucose
The same label carries a separate warning for glucose intolerance. It states that treatment "can result in glucose intolerance," reports 5% of treated patients versus 1% on placebo reaching an HbA1c of 6.5% or above by week 26, and instructs prescribers to "Evaluate glucose status prior to initiating." That is a baseline lab instruction written into an approved label for a molecule Pepti compounds. If you are starting tesamorelin, or a blend containing it such as PHYSIQ or TITAN, fasting glucose and HbA1c are not optional.
— The malignancy question, stated plainly
The approved tesamorelin label instructs that pre-existing malignancy be inactive and its treatment complete before starting, that patients with active malignancy not be treated, and that treatment be discontinued on any evidence of recurrence — because the drug induces release of endogenous growth hormone, a known growth factor. This is a history question, not a lab question. No blood test screens for occult cancer, and any provider implying one does is wrong.
— What the guidelines add, and where the assay bites
The Endocrine Society's clinical practice guideline on adult growth hormone deficiency, in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism in 2011, frames dose titration around serum IGF-1 with clinical response; the AACE and ACE guidelines in Endocrine Practice in 2019 take the same approach. Both address diagnosed deficiency treated with growth hormone itself and neither endorses secretagogue use in healthy adults. What they establish is narrower: within endocrinology, nobody titrates this axis blind. A consensus statement in Clinical Chemistry in 2011 documented how much IGF-1 results vary between assay methods, which is why a follow-up is most informative run by the same laboratory as your baseline.
— Do You Need Bloodwork Before Starting Peptides? Which Labs and When
IGF-1 LR3 is the sharpest case
Why it is different from a secretagogue
IGF-1 LR3 is not a secretagogue. It is a modified analog of insulin-like growth factor 1 itself — the downstream molecule, supplied directly, with an amino acid substitution and an N-terminal extension that reduce binding to IGF binding proteins. A secretagogue's effect on IGF-1 is bounded by your own pituitary; supplied analog is not, and the pharmacology literature on N-terminally modified IGF-1 analogs describes that increased potency as the design goal.
What the human IGF-1 literature describes
A 1987 study in the New England Journal of Medicine described the short-term metabolic effects of recombinant human IGF-1 in healthy adults, including its insulin-like action on blood glucose — the basis for wanting glucose markers. A systematic review in the Lancet in 2004 examined circulating IGF-1, IGF binding protein-3 and cancer risk across observational cohorts; that is an association study of endogenous levels, not of a prescribed peptide. Both are why IGF-1 is the marker a physician wants with IGF-1 LR3. If that monitoring is not for you, the answer is not to go unmonitored — it is to ask about a secretagogue such as sermorelin or CJC-1295 / Ipamorelin.
— Do You Need Bloodwork Before Starting Peptides? Which Labs and When
GLP-1 medications: what the baseline is really for
— What the labels contraindicate outright
Approved semaglutide and tirzepatide products carry a boxed warning for thyroid C-cell tumors and are contraindicated in patients with a personal or family history of medullary thyroid carcinoma or with Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia syndrome type 2. In rodents these molecules cause dose-dependent, treatment-duration-dependent thyroid C-cell tumors at clinically relevant exposures, and it is unknown whether the same applies in humans. That is a history question, answered on the intake, that no panel replaces.
— Why serum calcitonin is not the screening test
People assume the thyroid warning implies a thyroid blood test. The labels say the opposite: "routine monitoring of serum calcitonin or using thyroid ultrasound is of uncertain value for early detection of MTC," and "such monitoring may increase the risk of unnecessary procedures, due to the low test specificity for serum calcitonin."
This cuts both ways. A provider that never asks about your thyroid history is missing a contraindication; one selling a calcitonin screen on the strength of the boxed warning is selling a test the label calls of uncertain value. TSH and free T4 are on the baseline for a different reason — to find untreated thyroid disease that would explain fatigue or weight complaints on its own.
— Kidney, liver, gallbladder and pancreas
Both labels warn of acute kidney injury and instruct monitoring of renal function in patients reporting adverse reactions that could lead to volume depletion. The mechanism is dehydration, not a direct kidney effect. Creatinine and eGFR sit on the baseline so that if you have a difficult first fortnight, the question is answerable.
They also describe acute gallbladder disease in clinical trials, with gallbladder studies indicated if cholelithiasis or cholecystitis is suspected, and acute pancreatitis with instructions to discontinue if suspected. Neither is diagnosed by a routine panel; a baseline liver panel simply gives the pain you might report in month three a starting point.
— Glucose, HbA1c, lipids and the interaction that matters
The labels warn that concomitant use with insulin or an insulin secretagogue may increase the risk of hypoglycemia, including severe hypoglycemia, and that reducing those doses may be necessary.
That is the most consequential single fact before a first semaglutide or tirzepatide prescription, and it comes from your medication list as much as your labs. Lipids are there because they move with weight, and a panel six months in with nothing to compare against is uninterpretable.
— Do You Need Bloodwork Before Starting Peptides? Which Labs and When
Where labs usually add nothing
— Repair peptides for a defined injury
There is no blood marker that describes a healing tendon. If you are starting BPC-157, TB-500, the BPC-157 + TB-500 stack or KLOW for a recent, well-localised injury, a panel typically tells your physician nothing the examination did not. The measures here are functional, which is why the BPC-157 page lists bloodwork as not routinely required.
— Skin and connective tissue
GHK-Cu is a copper-binding tripeptide, and the one lab question it raises is copper status — relevant if a copper metabolism disorder is suspected, and not otherwise. For most people starting GHK-Cu or a blend containing it such as RADIANCE or GLOW, the useful record is photographs at fixed intervals under fixed lighting.
— NAD+ and the nutrient injectables
NAD+ is the clearest "usually not." There is no clinically actionable blood test for tissue NAD+ status, and the human trial literature on NAD+ precursors — in Nature Communications, Science and Cell Metabolism — treats blood NAD+ metabolites as a research endpoint. Offering to "check your NAD level" before selling you NAD+ is selling a number nobody can act on. Glutathione and L-Carnitine likewise have no routine marker that changes prescribing.
— The one exception: B12
Methylcobalamin is the exception, and the lab is informative before rather than during. Serum B12, and a methylmalonic acid where it is ambiguous, separates real deficiency from a normal level, which changes what the injection is for. The literature in the New England Journal of Medicine and in Nature Reviews Disease Primers describes a defined deficiency state, while a randomised trial found surplus B12 did not reduce fatigue in replete patients.
— Do You Need Bloodwork Before Starting Peptides? Which Labs and When
What a baseline panel typically covers
Panels vary by physician and by what you are starting. A broad baseline generally includes:
| Group | Typical markers | Why it is there |
|---|---|---|
| Metabolic | Fasting glucose, HbA1c, insulin | Glucose handling, and the system GLP-1s and GH both touch |
| Lipids | Total cholesterol, LDL, HDL, triglycerides | Cardiovascular context, moves with weight change |
| Thyroid | TSH, free T4, sometimes free T3 | The commonest hidden explanation for fatigue and hair change |
| Growth axis | IGF-1 | The marker for GH secretagogue dosing and follow-up |
| Hormones | Total and free testosterone, oestradiol, SHBG where relevant | Context for energy, libido and body composition complaints |
| Nutrients | Ferritin, iron studies, vitamin D, B12 | Deficiencies that mimic what people hope a peptide will fix |
| Organ function | Liver enzymes, creatinine and eGFR | Baseline before any medication, and relevant to dosing decisions |
| Blood count | Full blood count | General screening |
The single purpose of a baseline is comparison. A result six months from now with nothing to compare it against tells your physician very little. With a baseline, the same result is information.
Note what is absent: no peptide level, no "cellular age" score, no heavy metals screen, no food sensitivity panel. None change a prescribing decision, and a provider bundling them into a mandatory panel is selling tests rather than ordering them.
Why the nutrient and thyroid rows earn their place
A randomised controlled trial in CMAJ in 2012 studied iron supplementation in non-anemic menstruating women with low ferritin and reported a reduction in fatigue in the treated group — a common, treatable cause of the complaint that brings people to a peptide clinic, found with one blood draw.
The thyroid side is more nuanced. A study nested within a randomised placebo-controlled trial, in the Journals of Gerontology in 2020, examined thyroid hormone therapy in older adults with subclinical hypothyroidism and found no benefit on fatigability. Overt disease still needs finding, but a mildly abnormal TSH is not automatically the explanation.
— Do You Need Bloodwork Before Starting Peptides? Which Labs and When
How it works without a lab visit
You have three routes, and the cheapest one is usually the one people forget.
- Use labs you already have. A panel from your own physician in the past twelve months is frequently enough. Upload it during the intake. No second test, no second bill.
- Ask your own physician to order them. If you raise the underlying concern rather than the product, this billing is ordinary and often covered by your plan. How to frame that conversation is in how to talk to your doctor about peptides.
- At-home collection. A device you use yourself, returned by post, with results going to your physician and into your chart. This is the route when you have no recent labs and no easy way to get them.
Insurance generally does not cover labs ordered inside a telehealth programme: see does insurance cover peptide therapy.
What at-home collection involves, and what it does not do well
A small collector applied to the upper arm draws a capillary sample into a sealed tube rather than requiring a venipuncture, which is why it can be done at a kitchen table. You seal it into the prepaid mailer, post it, and the laboratory returns the result to the ordering physician, where it sits in your chart beside your intake. At-home blood testing covers the current panel.
The caveats: capillary collection is not equivalent to venous collection for every analyte, the volume is smaller, and a poorly filled device can need repeating. If your physician needs a venous draw they will say so. The order that saves the most time is to complete the assessment first, upload what you have, and let the physician say what is missing.
— Do You Need Bloodwork Before Starting Peptides? Which Labs and When
When repeat labs are worth it
| Point in treatment | What is usually rechecked | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Before starting a GH-axis or GLP-1 prescription | The full baseline | Screening, and a comparison point |
| After the first few months on a GH secretagogue | IGF-1, fasting glucose | Whether the dose is producing a measurable effect and whether glucose has moved |
| Periodically on a GLP-1 | Metabolic panel, lipids, liver function | Tracking the thing you are treating |
| When something changes | Whatever the change points at | A new symptom is a reason to measure, not to speculate |
| On repair peptides for a defined injury | Usually nothing | There is no blood marker for a healing tendon |
Labs are also how you avoid the commonest self-assessment error, judging treatment by how you feel in a given week: see how do I know if peptides are working.
The first recheck on a GH secretagogue
IGF-1 says whether the prescription is producing measurable activity on the axis. Fasting glucose, and HbA1c once enough time has passed, says whether the glucose effect described in the approved tesamorelin label is showing up in you. Treatment is long-term and runs on 28-day refills, so the pattern is a recheck at an interval your physician sets rather than a panel with every fill.
— Do You Need Bloodwork Before Starting Peptides? Which Labs and When
Reading your own results without alarming yourself
Reference ranges are not targets
A reference range describes where most results in a reference population fall. It is not a target or a diagnosis. For IGF-1 the meaningful expression is an age- and sex-adjusted standard deviation score, which is why the approved tesamorelin label talks in SDS rather than raw units. One mildly abnormal number is not a diagnosis; the usual response is to repeat the marker.
Collection conditions matter too. Fasting markers need a genuine fast, a hard training session can move liver enzymes, and ferritin reads normal in an iron-deficient person with a cold. If any of that applied, say so.
— Do You Need Bloodwork Before Starting Peptides? Which Labs and When
Why "no bloodwork, ever" is a warning sign
— What the intake is supposed to do
A medical intake gathers what a physician needs to decide whether to prescribe and what to warn you about. For most of this catalog that is sufficient. For the growth-hormone axis and for GLP-1 medications it is not, because the approved labels tell prescribers to evaluate glucose before starting and to monitor IGF-1 during therapy. A four-week course for a sore tendon and a long-term growth-axis prescription are not the same category, and a process that cannot tell them apart is not evaluating anything.
— The three things a lab-free provider cannot rule out
An untreated metabolic problem before a growth-axis prescription whose approved-label analogue says to evaluate glucose beforehand. An ordinary, treatable cause of the complaint that brought you — thyroid disease, iron deficiency, B12 deficiency. And a starting point: without a baseline, every future result floats in space.
Labs are one signal among several. The others are checkable: a physician licensed in your state named on your prescription, a named state-licensed compounding pharmacy rather than an unnamed "partner lab," certificates of analysis you can read at quality and lab results, and a route back to the prescriber after you have paid.
— Being declined is the system working
A real assessment can end in no. If your labs or history show a reason not to prescribe — active malignancy for a growth-axis product, a family history of medullary thyroid carcinoma for a GLP-1 — the correct outcome is a declined prescription, refunded. A service that never declines anyone has no gate, and the gate is what you are paying a physician for.
— Do You Need Bloodwork Before Starting Peptides? Which Labs and When
What the evidence shows, honestly
There is no published guideline that specifies a required pre-treatment panel for compounded peptides, because these are not approved products with labelled monitoring requirements. What physicians use instead is ordinary internal medicine practice applied to the mechanism: check the axis the drug acts on, check the systems it stresses, and screen for the conditions that would explain the complaint better.
That means the panel you are asked for is a clinical judgement, not a rule, and reasonable physicians differ. It also means two honest limits are worth stating. Normal labs do not predict that a peptide will help you: for most of these molecules the evidence is preclinical and response varies. And IGF-1 is a useful marker of GH secretagogue activity, but it is not a measure of benefit. A number moving is not the same as your sleep or recovery improving.
Compounded medications are not FDA approved. A physician ordering labs before prescribing them is applying more care than the category legally requires, which is the point.
Where the borrowed evidence comes from, and its limits
Everything cited above about IGF-1 monitoring and glucose evaluation comes from the labels of FDA-approved products — tesamorelin, somatropin, semaglutide and tirzepatide — and from endocrinology guidelines about approved therapy. An approved product's label is not a compounded preparation's label, and the FDA treats bulk drug substances used in 503A compounding under a separate interim policy. Applying that logic to a compounded peptide acting on the same receptor is a reasonable clinical inference, not a trial showing that monitoring improves outcomes.
Before your consultation, three things cost nothing: find whatever labs you already have, write down your full medication list including anything for glucose, and write down your family history of thyroid and endocrine disease — those two histories change a GLP-1 decision outright.
— References
What this is based on.
References
- Chang CH, Tsai WC, Hsu YH, Pang JH. Pentadecapeptide BPC 157 enhances the growth hormone receptor expression in tendon fibroblasts · Molecules (2014) · PMID 25415472
- Krivic A, Anic T, Seiwerth S, et al.. Achilles detachment of rat and stable gastric pentadecapeptide BPC 157 · Journal of Orthopaedic Research (2006) · PMID 16583442
- Sikiric P, Seiwerth S, Rucman R, et al.. Stable gastric pentadecapeptide BPC 157: novel therapy in gastrointestinal tract · Current Pharmaceutical Design (2011) · PMID 21548867
- Cerovecki T, Bojanic I, Brcic L, Radic B, et al.. Pentadecapeptide BPC 157 (PL 14736) improves ligament healing in the rat · J Orthop Res (2010) · PMID 20225319
- Sikiric P, Seiwerth S, Rucman R, Turkovic B, et al.. Stable gastric pentadecapeptide BPC 157-NO-system relation · Curr Pharm Des (2014) · PMID 23755725
- Cox HD, Miller GD, Eichner D. Detection and in vitro metabolism of the confiscated peptides BPC 157 and MGF R23H · Drug Test Anal (2017) · PMID 28035768
- Thomas A, Görgens C, Guddat S et al.. Simplifying and expanding the screening for peptides <2 kDa by direct urine injection, liquid chromatography, and ion mobility mass spectrometry · J Sep Sci (2016) · PMID 26578461
- Farrar JT, Young JP Jr, LaMoreaux L, Werth JL et al.. Clinical importance of changes in chronic pain intensity measured on an 11-point numerical pain rating scale · Pain (2001) · PMID 11690728
- Meyer JD, Ho B, Manning MC. Effects of conformation on the chemical stability of pharmaceutically relevant polypeptides · Pharm Biotechnol (2002) · PMID 11987755
- Xu C, Sun L, Ren F, Huang P, et al.. Preclinical Safety Evaluation of Body Protective Compound-157, a Potential Drug for Treating Various Wounds · Regul Toxicol Pharmacol (2020) · PMID 32334036
- He L, Feng D, Guo H, et al.. Pharmacokinetics, distribution, metabolism, and excretion of body-protective compound 157, a potential drug for treating various wounds, in rats and dogs · Front Pharmacol (2022) · PMID 36588717
- Lee E, Padgett B. Intra-Articular Injection of BPC 157 for Multiple Types of Knee Pain · Altern Ther Health Med (2021) · PMID 34324435
Citations are provided for educational purposes. They do not constitute medical advice. Always discuss any peptide protocol with your prescribing physician.
— Common questions
Do You Need Bloodwork Before Starting Peptides? Which Labs and When, answered.
Usually not, for a short course aimed at a defined injury. There is no blood marker that describes tendon repair. Your physician may still want labs depending on your history, and BPC-157 is $209 a month all-in. What is judged instead is the injury, your medication list, and your history.
In most cases yes. Baseline metabolic markers, thyroid, liver and kidney function screen for reasons not to prescribe and give follow-up results something to be compared against. Personal or family history of medullary thyroid carcinoma or MEN 2 is a specific reason a GLP-1 will not be prescribed — that is the boxed warning on the approved semaglutide and tirzepatide labels.
Yes, in most cases, if it is recent. A panel from the past year is often enough and saves you both a test and a bill. Upload it during the intake and your physician will say whether anything is missing. Upload the whole report rather than a photo of one line.
It is the main downstream marker of growth hormone activity. Because sermorelin, ipamorelin, CJC-1295 and tesamorelin work by prompting your own pituitary rather than supplying hormone, IGF-1 is how a physician judges whether the prescription is producing a measurable effect. The approved tesamorelin label instructs prescribers to monitor IGF-1 during therapy, and approved growth hormone labels instruct that the adult dose be titrated against serum IGF-1.
That depends on the collection route and the laboratory. Your physician reviews them when they arrive and they go into your chart. If a prescription is waiting on labs, the labs are the gate, not a formality. The commonest cause of delay is a sample that has to be recollected.
The opposite. Requiring labs where they are clinically indicated is a sign someone is evaluating whether the medication suits you. "No bloodwork needed, ever, for anything" means nobody is assessing anything except whether your payment clears.
For the GH axis and for metabolic treatment, labs are the most reliable evidence available, and better than how you feel in a given week. For repair and skin treatment there is no marker, and you are relying on function, imaging where relevant, and photographs at fixed intervals. Even so, IGF-1 moving tells your physician the axis responded, not that your sleep or recovery improved.
Usually not. There is no clinically actionable blood test for tissue NAD+ status, and the human trials of NAD+ precursors treat blood metabolite levels as a research endpoint. If someone offers to measure your "NAD level" before selling you NAD+, ask what decision the number would change.
Your physician reads them in context and tells you. Treatment may proceed as planned, proceed at a different dose, wait on a repeat, switch product, or be declined with a referral back to your own physician. A single mildly out-of-range value most often leads to a repeat rather than a decision.
That is a physician's decision and depends on the product and your current treatment. The approved GLP-1 labels warn that concomitant use with insulin or an insulin secretagogue may increase the risk of hypoglycemia and that reducing those doses may be necessary. The approved tesamorelin label instructs that glucose status be evaluated before starting.
For the markers on the panel it is run by an accredited laboratory and reported the same way. The caveats are that capillary collection is not equivalent to venous collection for every analyte, and a poorly filled device may need repeating.
No, and a provider that did would be over-testing. The distinction runs down the first table on this page: growth-hormone-axis products and GLP-1 medications usually yes, repair and skin products usually not, and your history overrides both. At-home blood testing exists for cases where labs are wanted and you have none.
Because untreated thyroid disease is one of the commonest ordinary explanations for fatigue, weight change and hair shedding, and finding it costs one blood draw. The nuance is that a mildly abnormal TSH is not automatically the explanation: a nested randomised placebo-controlled study in the Journals of Gerontology in 2020 found no benefit of thyroid hormone therapy on fatigability in older adults with subclinical hypothyroidism. The free assessment goes to a physician licensed in your state. A consultation does not guarantee a prescription.
The growth-hormone-axis products — sermorelin, CJC-1295 / Ipamorelin, tesamorelin, IGF-1 LR3 and blends built on them such as ASCEND and TITAN — and semaglutide and tirzepatide. Everything else is a physician's judgement based on your history.
Your physician sets the interval. The broad baseline is a screening exercise done once; the follow-up is the markers that actually move — IGF-1 and fasting glucose on a growth-axis prescription, the metabolic panel and liver function on a GLP-1. On repair peptides for a defined injury, usually nothing.
— Next step
See what a physician
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A licensed physician in your state reviews your intake and decides what is appropriate. A consultation does not guarantee a prescription.
Important legal & safety information
The assessment process available on the Pepti website asks a series of medical questions, and the answers provided are reviewed by an independent licensed physician affiliated with our partner physician network. The licensed providers have established exclusionary criteria, and the answers provided determine if the individual is screened out of eligibility for treatment. The licensed clinicians retain the sole decision to prescribe peptide therapy and other compounded medications to patients. Treatment may be denied at the physician's sole discretion. If a prescription is not approved, you will not be charged for the medication.
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