What are peptides? A plain-English primer
Peptides are short chains of amino acids your body already uses as signals. Here’s what that actually means for therapy.
Peptide science6 min read
A peptide is a short chain of amino acids — the same building blocks that make up proteins, just fewer of them. Your body makes thousands of them, and many work as precise signals: telling tissue to repair, the pituitary to release growth hormone, or the gut to calm inflammation.
Therapeutic peptides borrow that signalling. Rather than flooding the body with a hormone, they nudge a specific pathway and let your own physiology do the rest. That precision is the appeal — and the reason they’re prescription-only and worth doing under clinical supervision.
Peptide vs. protein vs. hormone
The line between a peptide and a protein is mostly length: peptides are generally under ~50 amino acids, proteins are longer and fold into complex shapes. Some peptides are hormones (insulin is a peptide hormone); others are signalling fragments that mimic or block a natural messenger.
What matters clinically is the target. A growth-hormone-releasing peptide like sermorelin asks your pituitary to pulse more of its own growth hormone — it doesn’t replace it. That’s a different risk profile than taking the hormone directly.
Why they’re injected, not swallowed
Most peptides are fragile. Swallow one and stomach acid plus digestive enzymes break it into useless fragments before it reaches the bloodstream. So the common route is a small subcutaneous injection — the same kind of tiny needle people use for GLP-1s or insulin.
A few peptides are formulated as nasal sprays or troches, but injectable remains the most reliable way to deliver an intact, predictable dose.
Where Meto fits
Meto is built around one idea: your labs should decide your protocol, not a podcast. Therapy starts with a Peptide Readiness Panel, a clinician reviews the markers against your goals, and only then is a protocol matched and prescribed — compounded at a licensed 503A pharmacy and shipped cold-chain.