Skip to the reading

The care handbook Physician-led peptide therapy

Read at your own pace. Keep a question in the margin.

What is it? Who leads care? What happens? What will I pay? What could go wrong? How do I decide?

Name the medicine

Find out which kind of product is being discussed

The shared word peptide can hide very different choices.

Bring the concern you want help with Find out which kind of product is being discussed Ask what was approved Ask why a medicine would be made to order Weight medicines need their own set of questions

Ask for a name before a verdict

Record the ingredient and product names. Add the form: tablet, injection or another form.

Is this an approved medicine, or is it made specially for a patient? Making it this way is called compounding.

Pause at a research label. Ask the person who would order your medicine why a product labelled for research has been suggested for your treatment.

Prescriber means the health professional ordering your medicine. The written medicine order is the prescription.

Amino acids join together in a peptide; the term describes its makeup rather than a whole course of care.

A note to keep

The ingredient name and the finished product are separate things to record. Leave space for both.

Keep the categories apart

Semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) has approved US products in the record checked September 26, 2026. So does tirzepatide (Mounjaro, Zepbound).

Compounding prepares medicine for a patient’s particular need instead of providing the drug maker’s finished product.

The FDA, short for Food and Drug Administration, does not approve the medicine made by compounding; this is the position as of September 26, 2026.

Some sellers advertise products for people to use while the labels say they are only for research. In letters available by September 26, 2026, FDA told sellers that these were unapproved drugs being sold unlawfully. Putting “research” on the label cannot make a treatment product lawful.

Ask about this product for this purpose

Which condition is this product meant to address?

Is the evidence about the same product and the same form?

What is still unknown about the choice being discussed?

Carry this thought

Keep the ingredient, finished product, form and intended purpose on the same page.

Ask what was approved Ask why a medicine would be made to order

This is a reading guide for patients; it offers neither clinical care nor medicines.

Chapter map Further reading Your notebook Read as text