This Peptide Reverses Osteoarthritis!

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Peptides are like so in right now, but instead of focusing on fat loss and metabolic health, which are critically important, but they don't cover all the benefits of peptides, because there's emerging evidence that peptides can not only reduce osteoarthritis, but reverse it. And in humans, too. You may not see it, but it's shown here. And the way that it does is especially fascinating. There are three major factors that plague us when we have osteoarthritis. The three headless horsemen of osteoarthritis. Pain, inflammation, and destruction.

[00:00:40]On the pain front, when we look at preclinical studies that allow us to measure all three more rigorously, we can test the impact the peptide laglutide, which is in the same class of peptides as the main one that we'll be discussing, the impact that it has on reducing pain in osteoarthritic animals.

[00:00:57]seen here. We're looking at a bunch of conditions, but we're more interested in seeing those lines move up. That indicates that there's a greater threshold before pain is experienced.

[00:01:09]Higher doses of laglutide, the peptide leads to improvements in pain. So, horsemen one laglutide and like peptides reduce pain in preclinical data for osteoarthritis. As for the second headless horseman, inflammation, we can look at the direct impact these peptides have on specific cells found in your joints called condraittes. They're responsible for releasing collagen and other structural proteins inside the joint structure, but they also signal inflammation molecules to attract immune cells into the region, which can cause damage to the joint structure. As I mentioned, in osteoarthritis, there's increased inflammation, which leads to more immune cell invasion and destruction, which we'll get into in more detail shortly. When researchers measure condraight inflammatory molecules, as we see here, don't worry, I'll explain this. There's a predictable reduction in these inflammatory molecules produced by the joint associated condraittes. Here we're measuring PGE or prostaglandin which is a molecule made of fat that when it accumulates contributes to swelling, pain sensitivity and more inflammation.

[00:02:19]So we want less PGE. If you see a plus next to any of the interventions, the inflammation protein interlucan one beta or IL1 beta, the peptide laglutide or the peptide receptor inhibitor extend that means that the intervention has been added in that condition. So the furthest left condition is our control.

[00:02:43]No intervention added and we see PGE is rock bottom. Then one over from that when adding the inflammatory molecule alone there's a huge rise in PGE. Then simply co-adding le glutide peptide cuts the PGE levels in half. That's really all we need to see as the rest of that relates to more experimental methods that we don't need to bother ourselves with except they confirmed that llutide drops inflammation. Horseman 2 inflammation is reduced with leer glutide and like peptides in preclinical studies on osteoarthritis.

[00:03:20]Now a final horseman to be slain destruto.

[00:03:26]Here again the same study measured the amount of structural loss in the joint as in the architectural molecules lattised together via condraittes can be destroyed. These molecules called glycosaminoglycans can be measured if they're cut or broken off the cartilage structure shown here.

[00:03:45]And you can see in both conditions with the peptide the blue conditions there's reduced release of these glycosaminoglycans indicating less of the architecture is being destroyed. So the third horseman destruction is also dampened with lel glutide in preclinical evidence. Now, speaking to that last one, if we return to the data that I flashed on screen earlier, we're looking at images of cartilage shown in the reddish pink coloring. The DMM condition there is osteoarthritic condition and the SG condition is the peptide included. So, notice that middle image, there's loss of cartilage as expected with osteoarthritis. But when we compare that with the image to the right, note that there's more cartilage present indicating preservation and possibly renewal of cartilage. This is confirmed in averaged data too. The orange bar is the osteoarthritis alone and the blue bar is the treatment with peptide. Okay, we get confirmation in another study using different but similar peptides.

[00:04:48]But everything that we've been over has been in mice. And the wonderful thing about this most recent study is that they conducted a small clinical trial to see if these results remain true in humans as well. As I get into that evidence as well as get into more on the peptides themselves, you might be interested to know some of the mechanisms by which peptides have this osteoarthritis recovery effect. Here's a hint. it has to do with metabolism or a deeper dive on the peptides and osteoarthritis, including severity of osteoarthritis. If so, then check out the full version of this video that you're watching. It's included as a physionic insider. Plus, you get all these perks right here, like an accompanying article, everything delivered to your private email, including one paragraph summaries of the most actionable information, a monthly private podcast, and more. Check it all out using the link in the description for that. The researchers used this design where they gave their control group an injection of hyaluronic acid and they gave the peptide group well the peptide obviously but also an equal injection of hyaluronic acid. Then they measured what we're interested in the WMAC score which is a measure of pain and function related to arthritis arthritis. We see those results here.

[00:06:07]After 24 weeks, though both conditions seem to experience some benefit, implying hyaluronic acid may be effective, the greater benefit was experienced in the peptide co-administration.

[00:06:18]And this confirms in a small study that the peptide can improve osteoarthritis.

[00:06:23]But we needn't stop there because when measuring cartilage thickness like we did in the mice here, we can see the specific impact of the peptide in green.

[00:06:33]The higher the bars, the more of an increase in cartilage. Now, I want to hang here for a second. Increase that means we are seeing a rejuvenation of the cartilage. These data indicate that this peptide reduces osteoarthritis symptoms and improves life with osteoarthritis, but also rejuvenated joint cartilage affected by osteoarthritis. in a small clinical trial. That peptide's name is semiglutide and it belongs in the same family as lagglutide that we discussed earlier. I have a few critiques of the study that I think are important for us to understand to get a complete context.

[00:07:14]As far as I could tell for the animal and human data, the assessments of cartilage were unblinded. This means that the assessors know which condition the data belong to and that can introduce significant bias. In addition, this study makes the claim that semiglutide imparts these osteoarthritic benefits independent of weight loss, which would be quite a bombshell as weight loss is a major stressor to osteoarthritis. However, the human data is improperly controlled to indicate that to be true or not. This, not to mention how small of a study that we're talking about, isn't to discourage you, but to offer a bit of sobriety to otherwise rosy results. Now, I'm still quite excited because there are long-term studies that corroborate these results. They're associative, so not in the clinical setting, but they confirm the mechanistic and early clinical data, including arguing that the effect is independent of weight loss, which I think it's just too cool. I'll get more into that in my full analysis for the insiders if you're interested on hearing more on that. So while evidence is still early, there's enough to indicate that semiglutide and like peptides lean in the direction of having a osteoarthritis benefit at least in overweight individuals that may even extend into recovery from osteoarthritis that may be independent of weight loss effects. I'd also add that this study was focused on a metabolic ideology of osteoarthritis.

[00:08:42]So it's possible that the effects may not be uniform across all causes of osteoarthritis. I suppose it shouldn't shock you when I say that there's more research needed. You know, there are other peptides that also have pretty miraculous effects, especially this one right here. Or if you're looking for other ways to address arthritis, then check this out right here. I hope this is just as fascinating to you as it is to me and equally helped. And I hope to catch you in the next one. Bye.