Longevity builds audience and appeal to peptides therapy

Jay Campbell has been taking and writing about peptides for more than 20 years. He has six books on Amazon, all of them touching on peptides. He’s also been watching the market evolve, who’s coming in, what they are asking for, and where it’s all going next.

And what he sees is longevity.

“All the other peptides outside of GLPs are some form of longevity, right? Because it's cognition; it's fat loss; it's immunity, it's healing. Anything you can think of that peptides can do to help an aging cellular organism is part of it, and I would consider all of that as longevity.”

Combining peptide therapy and longevity practices, practitioners say, is transforming both markets.

Let’s dive in.

There has been a transition in wellness universe from fitness and optimization in the immediate time frame to fitness, optimization, cognitive preservation in the very long term. Everybody wants to live longer, Campbell says, and they want to look good, feel good and perform well at every step. In 2023, Campbell published his first book on peptides, Optimize Your Health with Therapeutic Peptides. A year later, he launched a site to sell research-grade peptides.

The name? BioLongevity Labs.

Other practitioners and clinic operators might put a lower percentage on the share of the peptide market represented by peptides, but outside of the GLP-1s and weight loss, they still call longevity the primary driver of interest in peptides. James Chao MD, co-founder and chief medical officer at Veda Nu Wellness in San Diego, says, “I’d peg somewhere around 60% of current peptide demand as falling under that healthy-aging umbrella.” The patients might not put the word “longevity” on their intake forms, Chao says, but their goals line up precisely. “Sleep, joints, recovery … they are the words I hear.”

Alexandra Zubowicz has watched the same shift Campbell describes from her vantage as the owner of Thrive Medical Spa in Haymarket, Va. “Five years ago, most patients sought treatment after a specific problem developed — obesity, low testosterone, chronic pain, or injury. Today, a growing share of patients arrive asking how to maintain energy, preserve muscle, optimize cognition, improve recovery, and stay functional as they age.” Zubowicz says longevity-oriented patients are highly informed, coming into her spa with shopping lists, or at least ideas about their stack taken from social media, ads and influencers. “Patients walk into clinics already familiar with terms like BPC-157, CJC-1295, ipamorelin, MOTS-c, and GHK-Cu — often asking for them by name.”

What that means for peptide practitioners is that the pitch and the playbook need to shift in the same way. It’s not BPC-157 for sports recovery or gastrointestinal health. It’s KP1 for cognitive health and blocking senescent “zombie” cells. What it means for longevity clinics is that they need to get smart on peptides and the FDA’s position on peptides. They’d be even smarter to follow state prosecutors too.

After the Revolution Against Aging and Death festival (RAADfest) in Las Vegas four months ago, the Nevada Pharmacy Board levied $10,000 fines against a doctor, a pharmacist, an integrative life coach and a Texas group that promotes medical freedom and also sells peptides on its site.

The Ohio State Board of Pharmacy revoked drug distribution licenses for several med spas for allegedly purchasing unapproved peptides for use in anti-aging treatments. Longevity was part of the treatment plans at each.

None of that means the FDA and state authorities are specifically targeting clinics selling longevity programs. As a primary driver of interest in peptides, longevity-focused practitioners comfortable with the level of prosecution in their state are likely already at least talking with their patients and clients about peptides.

 The longevity appeal in peptides means that patients are already highly interested and likely seeking long-term relationships with other services to accompany their peptide regimen. It will undoubtely vary by how a clinic is positioned in the market, but Campbell contends that longevity is already oriented toward an affluent patient population. He speaks of ultra high-end fitness centers like Equinox as examples of companies that will eventually offer a full-on healthspan approach for wealthy patients who have the money and the motivation. “You come into the gym, and you want peptides; you want testosterone; you want growth hormone; you want a full body scan; you want red light therapy; you want oxygen and ozone therapy. You want anything that you could possibly have under the sun for biohacking and anti-aging.”

The results possible with peptides are part of what keeps patients coming back and asking for those additional treatments, practitioners say. Gynecological surgeon David Ghozland doesn’t practice directly in longevity, but he knows patients want quick results as much as they want the long-haul aspirations promised in the longevity movement. “More than healthy aging as the driver, I think it’s more about anti-aging. Most peptide enthusiasts, from what I see, are those who don't want to age well over decades but rather want to feel and look better fast.”

El Paso plastic surgeon Frank Agullo says peptides have transformed his practice. Patients don’t pay for surgery and then end visits after the follow-up exam. The relationship becomes long term in a way that is highly unlikely with cosmetic surgery. “We put them on a protocol. They visit monthly, get bloodwork done every 3 to 6 months and we titrate their medication as we go, over a period of years. As the patient stabilizes on his therapy, our relationship continues long term,” Agullo says. “This fundamentally alters the business model for practices previously dependent on procedures patients would infrequently (if ever) need to repeat.”

Concierge doctors who work with patients wealthy enough to pay for private care without insurance may be in a particularly good position to prescribe a peptide program that will require repeat visits on a regular basis. That same dynamic is true for peptide practitioners in med spas, clinics and telehealth.

Practitioners prescribing peptide regimens could also loop in wearable self-quantification tech. Patients are able to constantly track their progress, and practitioners can monitor that progress from afar, creating additional contact points that could be used to broaden the regimen to include other fee-based treatments. Such treatments might include IV therapy, body composition scans and hormone therapy. "People ask you for peptides, and then they trust you so much that they ask about their skin or removing fat after losing weight or a facelift," says Argullo.

Additional purchases and services that could be layered on top of the peptide therapy, might include accessories could include supplements, which represent a needed and natural fit for peptide therapies and could be labeled with the name of the clinic. Peptides can provide benefits but those benefits might best be augmented by nutrition. Health coaching and personal training might also be part of a peptide therapy program.

Beverly Hills aesthetic and reconstructive oculoplastic surgeon Raymond Douglas puts it simply. “It’s easier to sell a car accessory to someone who recently bought a car.”

The supplement solution

Q&A with Nuritas founder Nora Khaldi

The peptides Nora Khaldi discovered and commercialized don’t fit in a syringe. They don’t face enforcement actions. They don’t require a pharmacy license to sell. Ingredients from Nuritas like PeptiStrong and Peptisleep are derived from peptides found in plants and are sold as ingredients for dietary supplements. Nuritas has been educating the supplement industry about the potential in peptides for more than a decade. We asked her about what she sees in the current buzz around peptides, and how that fits into the longevity market.

How much of the current peptide craze is driven by healthy aging concerns? I don't think of it as a craze. So many people are on GLP-1s right now, losing weight, and also losing muscle without realizing it. That's brought muscle health into a conversation it was never really part of it before. So when I look at the interest in peptides right now, I don't see hype. I see people asking better questions about their own aging than they ever had the tools to ask before.

Which peptides are getting the most attention in longevity and why? There's a distinction I think about a lot, and I wish it came up more in these conversations. There are peptides that are synthetic, made in a lab, often injected, ordered online. Those are getting a lot of attention right now, and a lot of scrutiny. That scrutiny is warranted. And then there are peptides like the ones we work with at Nuritas, from fava bean, from rice, plants people have been eating for thousands of years. The body already knows what to do with them. Within that category, muscle-preserving peptides are getting the most attention, mostly because of the GLP-1 connection. Sleep is right behind it. Cortisol, recovery, resilience, these used to be wellness extras. Now people understand they're actually central to how well you age.

How big is the potential for peptides in supplements? We've identified over 9 million peptides in our library so far. That's the largest natural peptide library that exists. And that's not a ceiling. That's a starting point. Muscle. Sleep. Skin. Metabolic health. These are all different systems that affect aging on different timelines, and all of them have molecules in nature that could support a healthy response and that we haven't found yet. The potential isn't really a number. It's the size of everything we haven't looked at.

How could peptides help longevity clinics build long-term relationships with patients that seek recurring treatments? Clinic operations and patient retention is not my world, and I don't want to speak past what I actually know. What I can tell you is what I believe drives any long-term relationship in this space, whether it's a clinic or a consumer product. It's proof people can see for themselves. A clinic that can show someone their own sleep score improving, or their own strength trend, has something much stronger to build on than a claim on a label. That's the piece I understand deeply, because it's what we build toward at Nuritas. What a clinic does with that, structurally, is really a question for people who run clinics.

Are your peptides typically part of a deeper stack in longevity? Yes, and I think this matters. A peptide isn't a replacement for sleep, movement, or eating well. It's not a shortcut around the fundamentals. What it does is close a gap the fundamentals alone can't close. The stack that actually matters to me is a natural ingredient with real clinical evidence behind it, and a way to measure whether it's working in your own body. Without that second part, you're just trusting a label again, which is the exact problem I started Nuritas to solve. So the peptide is one input. The measurement is what makes the whole stack mean something.

Is there a self-quantification and recurring testing angle to this for longevity clinics? This is where I think the whole industry is heading, and honestly it's the part I find most exciting. People aren't going to just trust that something works anymore. They want to watch it work, on their own wrist from a smart watch, in their own data. For a longevity clinic, recurring testing, whether that's wearables or periodic biomarker checks, turns a one-time purchase into an ongoing relationship built on evidence. That's a completely different kind of retention than a supplement subscription. That's retention built on proof.

Nutrition Spotlight

Ilana Schachter, registered dietitian

Peptide: CJC-1295

What nutritional challenges and deficiencies can use of CJC-1295 cause? There is currently limited evidence demonstrating that CJC-1295 directly causes specific vitamin or mineral deficiencies. Because human clinical data are limited, I would be cautious about attributing nutritional deficiencies directly to the peptide. However, individuals using CJC-1295 for muscle growth, recovery, or changes in body composition still need to ensure that their diet provides adequate energy, protein, essential fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, and fluids. Focusing heavily on the peptide while overlooking basic nutritional requirements can undermine the very goals the individual is trying to achieve.

What should users of CJC-1295 be thinking about in their diet? Adequate protein should be a major consideration, particularly for individuals combining CJC-1295 with resistance training. Protein provides the amino acids required for muscle protein synthesis and maintenance. Good sources include eggs, poultry, fish, lean meats, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, tofu, beans, and lentils. I would also caution against aggressively restricting calories while simultaneously expecting a peptide to support muscle development or recovery. Adequate overall energy intake is necessary for normal physiological function and training adaptation. A balanced diet is more appropriate than relying on the peptide as the primary intervention.

Which supplements should users consider taking? I would not recommend a standard supplement regimen simply because someone is using CJC-1295. Supplementation should be based on an individual's dietary intake, laboratory results, medical history, and identified nutritional needs. For someone who has difficulty meeting protein requirements through food, a protein supplement can be a practical option. Other supplements, such as vitamin D, B12, iron, calcium, or magnesium, may be appropriate when there is inadequate intake or an identified deficiency, but they should not be assumed to be necessary for every CJC-1295 user.

How can those supplements improve the outcome from peptide therapy? I would distinguish between supporting nutritional adequacy and enhancing the effects of the peptide. There is currently insufficient clinical evidence to conclude that a particular vitamin, mineral, or supplement enhances the effectiveness of CJC-1295. However, correcting an established nutritional deficiency can support normal muscle function, energy metabolism, tissue maintenance, and recovery.