Glossary
Jargon, translated
Complicated language is how bad claims hide. Here is the vocabulary you need, written the way you'd explain it to a friend.
20 terms
- Agonist
- A molecule that switches a receptor on, mimicking the body's own signal.
- Most GLP-1 medicines are agonists — they imitate a natural hormone rather than block it.
- AMPK
- A cellular energy sensor that switches on when fuel runs low.
- Central to exercise and fasting biology, and to claims made for mitochondrial peptides.
- Angiogenesis
- Growing new blood vessels.
- Essential for healing, and also exploited by tumours — which is why it appears in both benefit and risk arguments.
- Antagonist
- A molecule that blocks a receptor so the natural signal can't get through.
- Blocking and activating the same receptor can both be therapeutic, depending on the disease.
- Bioavailability
- How much of a dose actually reaches your bloodstream in an active form.
- Most peptides are destroyed by digestion, which is why so many are injected.
- Confidence interval
- The range of values the true effect plausibly sits within.
- A wide interval crossing zero means the headline number could be nothing at all.
- Conflict of interest
- A financial or professional stake in the result of a study.
- It doesn't automatically invalidate findings, but it changes how much benefit of the doubt is fair.
- Half-life
- How long it takes for half of a drug to clear from your system.
- It drives dosing frequency. A days-long half-life means mistakes stay with you for days.
- IGF-1
- Insulin-like growth factor 1, the main downstream messenger of growth hormone.
- It drives tissue growth, and higher levels are linked in epidemiology to some cancer risks — the core concern with GH-axis peptides.
- Incretin
- A gut hormone released after eating that helps manage blood sugar and appetite.
- GLP-1 and GIP are incretins; the whole modern metabolic drug class is built on them.
- Mechanistic evidence
- Evidence about how something could work, from cells, receptors or models.
- Necessary for developing drugs, insufficient for recommending them. Level 1, not Level 5.
- mTOR
- A cellular growth switch that turns on when nutrients are plentiful.
- Growth and longevity often pull in opposite directions here. More growth is not always better.
- Pharmacokinetics
- What your body does to a drug: absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion.
- Without human pharmacokinetic data, nobody honestly knows what a dose is doing.
- Phase 1 / 2 / 3
- Phase 1 checks safety in small groups, Phase 2 looks for signals of effect, Phase 3 tests it properly at scale.
- Most compounds sold online never completed Phase 1. That is not a technicality.
- Placebo
- An inactive treatment used for comparison.
- Pain and recovery respond strongly to expectation, which is why uncontrolled injury reports mislead.
- RCT
- Randomised controlled trial — participants are assigned by chance to treatment or control.
- Randomisation is what separates 'this works' from 'these people got better'.
- Receptor
- A protein lock on or in a cell that a specific molecular key fits.
- Which receptors a peptide hits largely determines what it does — and what it does by accident.
- Replication
- Independent researchers repeating a study and getting the same answer.
- One dramatic result is a hypothesis. A replicated result is knowledge.
- Surrogate endpoint
- A measurable stand-in for the outcome you actually care about.
- Raising IGF-1 or shrinking a scan is not the same as living better or longer. Surrogates sometimes mislead.
- Telomerase
- An enzyme that rebuilds the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes.
- A longevity target, but also reactivated in most cancers. Enthusiasm needs a caveat.