[glp1guide]

If you think Ozempic (Semaglutide) is good, Retatrutide is going to blow it out of the water:

https://glp1.guide/content/a-new-glp1-retatrutide/

Currently the only people experimenting with it are the underground gray market peptide enthusiasts (you can find them on reddit and elsewhere), but the results are quite intense.

[EDIT] Just to be clear, gray market Retatrutide is illegal, I'm not encouraging you to buy it or do even take GLP1s in general. The point is that we have a preview of anecdata from people (with obviously high risk tolerance) taking this drug.

[bethekind]

If Eli Lily is the only producer, how is the gray market being supplied? This makes no sense...

That being said, I'm waiting for oral GLP1 agonists. Injections are a hassle and gray market ones even more so

[glp1guide]

> If Eli Lily is the only producer, how is the gray market being supplied? This makes no sense...

It turns out enterprising chemists and pharmacists are capable of reverse engineering.

I don't think it's that hard to figure out how someone might do it -- imagine having to reverse engineer food you've received, given many samples. Imagine some of those samples might have "fallen off the back of a truck".

> That being said, I'm waiting for oral GLP1 agonists. Injections are a hassle and gray market ones even more so

This is really going to be the second leg of adoption and will catapult GLP1s even further IMO. Rybelsus has not really seen a ton of popularity compared to the injections. That said, Orforglipron is Eli Lilly's upcoming oral GLP1 and it looks to have really good results:

https://glp1.guide/content/updates-from-maritide-orforglipro...

[WithinReason]

Wikipedia has the exact formula: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retatrutide

[ajb]

Yes, chemists don't need to reverse engineer that (although they can) because it will be in the patent. I'm not sure if the production process is though.

[toomuchtodo]

What's the difficulty level of obtaining Retatrutide through non traditional channels?

[gavinray]

Quite easy, a single Google search

That will show you peptide sellers though with prices x10 higher than getting it directly from manufacturers in China

[glp1guide]

It's completely illegal -- the drug is not for sale, obviously is not FDA approved, and is not manufactured anywhere, the only safe/legal way to get it is a via an ongoing trial:

https://trials.lilly.com/en-US/trial/580035

As one might imagine though, capitalism found a way. A LOT of compounding pharmacies are now very good at manufacturing GLP1s (not necessarily the case that the knowledge transfers, but I imagine networks/knowledge sharing groups do), so gray market has sprung up to supply adventurous people with Retatrutide.

[ifwinterco]

I don't know about how hard it is to manufacture GLP-1 agonists specifically, but there's an existing enormous grey/black market for peptides for bodybuilding.

It started in the 90s with synthetic GH and since then the number of research peptides has exploded, all of which are readily available on the grey market.

So all the infrastructure for producing and distributing peptides was already there before GLP-1s were a thing, which probably explains why it didn't take long

[globular-toast]

Why is it illegal? Are drugs illegal by default or has it been specifically controlled/scheduled?

I looked up which drugs are scheduled in the UK and found the list is about 100x longer than I thought it was and in fact the government don't even publish a definitive and exhaustive list of all substances.

[ifwinterco]

At least in the UK, drugs are legal by default in the sense that a specific chemical has to be classified under the misuse of drugs act to be a "drug".

However, specific classes of drugs (synthetic cannabinoids and substituted phenylethylamines etc.) are banned in their entirety by designer drug legislation. This is to stop people producing stuff like mephedrone etc., because there's an almost endless potential for minor chemical substitutions while still retaining the effects.

AFAIK peptides are not covered by any of that legislation, so they are a grey area, hence why they get sold as "research chemicals" "not for human use" etc. Separately it's probably illegal to produce patented drugs like semaglutide through non-official channels, but that would be a civil/commercial matter, not a drugs offence per se

[glp1guide]

Well for one they're flying in the face of the patent protection in place for Retatrutide -- that said the legalities around distributing prescription drugs or unknown chemical substances is murky (hence "gray" market).

[biosboiii]

difficulty level: google search

[chhxdjsj]

Why use something which appears to have very similar results to tirzepatide/mounjaro but hasn’t been used by tens of millions on people without obvious issues like tirzep?

[glp1guide]

Well there's no reason, except it's even more effective.

And 100%, using Retatrutide right now is illegal/not a good idea. It is super risky.

That said, anecdata from people with that risk tolerance is certainly worth looking at.

[gavinray]

I've used Retatrutide and wasn't that impressed

I used 5mg/wk

(Have used Semaglutide, Tirzepatide, and Retatrutide. For Sema/Tirz, I've had both RX and grey market.)

[glp1guide]

Interesting -- would love to hear anything more you have to share! The research numbers would suggest that Reta was top, results wise.

Any other significant differences you felt/noticed? Also, do you find Tirz to be an imiprovement over Sema?

[gavinray]

Yes, so far my preference has been Tirz. Though cost for Sema is significantly less.

It could also be the case that the dose on the Reta I used was too low. I've had a few people mention that they also felt it was fairly weak mg-for-mg, maybe 10mg would have been better.

There is a newer formulation, combining Sema with Cagrilintide that is probably the most effective option atm:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2502081

Price wise, this should give a general idea what Chinese sources sell at:

  Semaglutide 10mg/vial x 10vials $80
  Tirzepatide 10mg/vial x 10vials $72
  Retatrutide 10mg/vial x 10vials $130
  Cagrilintide 5mg + Semaglutide 5mg 10mg/vial x 10vials $170

(Note that even though Tirz is a few dollars cheaper, 2.5mg Sema = 15mg Tirz or thereabouts)

[glp1guide]

Sorry a bit late here, but the numbers for CagriSema are actually not as good as Retatrutide's were. Unless I'm missing something:

Reta 8mg -22% body weight at 48 weeks

CagriSema -20.4% body weight at 68 weeks

CagriSema has been on my radar for a while, and it's certainly going to be exciting.

Here's a slightly better link for the curious:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40544433/

https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05567796

[b112]

The problem with online is, were all those Reddit posts you saw just astroturfers? And the whole point, to drum up funding for Reta? Or buzz?

One person can easily turf as 1000 too, posting from a few accounts every day over the course of a year.

[cthalupa]

The studies for Reta are showing gangbusters results. And it's being developed by Eli Lilly, so they hardly need funding.

I swapped to Reta from Tirz and have found it to be a significantly better option myself.

[glp1guide]

This is a valid concern but the subreddits I'm thinking about are not quite that -- no one is selling or trying to push you to some distributor, it's a lot of the bodybuilding/peptide crowd. More like walking into a classic forum thread than modern reddit. You can tell by the comments.

[mmmpetrichor]

No need for trials, just inject it now!

[glp1guide]

I'm incredibly interested -- it's just not legal yet, and the drug is in trials by Eli Lilly:

https://trials.lilly.com/en-US/trial/580035

Just to be very explicit here, my profit incentive is selling newsletter subscriptions not selling drugs, if that was the worry.

The thing is that we just won't get any high quality data from the official trials for a very long time, but it looks like it's going to be even better than Tirzepatide which is the current king.

Outside of being simply well-researched, the best thing about GLP1s is that they are safe enough to be taken by millions of people (and they are) -- so anecdata is valuable. It's valuable to know what the "first adopters" are doing and what they're finding and what trends show up there.

[EDIT] Maybe I'm reading the comment wrong -- to answer with good intent assumed, I think GLP1s are basically the answer to obesity on any reasonable time frame.

GLP1s not the answer we wanted (most people would have preferred better food ingredient regulation, more people choosing healhtier lifestyles, etc), but it's the solution we're getting, it seems like.

Right now the only thing I think most can do to help this wave along (unless you're a drug manufacturer, insurer, or politician) is to share as much information as possible on positive and negative side effects, how the drugs work, why they work, etc.

[EDIT2] - Clearly there was no positive intent. I guess it's my own fault I took the time to seriously respond.

The original comment (now edited) was a question about me seeming like a disinterested third party and asking why I am discussing a gray market drug.

[RataNova]

The gray market stuff makes me nervous