Optimization — what's actually worth it

Pinning this and adding it to the category README. Everyone — keep it civil, keep it specific. If you say "X works" tell us for what, at what dose, for how long.

I'll be the skeptic you invited. MOTS-c human data is two trials and a handful of n=small studies. The mouse data is gorgeous. The human data is "maybe." I'm not saying it doesn't work, I'm saying the confidence interval on "does it work" is enormous and we should say that out loud when we recommend it.

Good list. I'd add Thymulin to the immune bucket — less data than TA-1 but I've seen it help in people who don't tolerate TA-1 for whatever reason. And I'd demote Semax from "real" to "real acutely, unclear chronically." The acute effect is so strong people project chronic effects onto it that I don't see in the limited literature.

NAD+ precursor person here. NR and NMN do something measurable to my HRV and sleep, but the effect ceiling is low and it's expensive per unit of benefit. I'd put it below MOTS-c on the value list.

MOTS-c user here, ~18 months on and off. Run 10mg 2x/week for 6-8 weeks, off 4-6. What I notice: VO2 doesn't move on a treadmill test but perceived exertion at the same HR is lower. Body comp shifts slightly leaner at same calories. Not magic. But I keep going back to it which tells me something.

Epithalon is the one that earned a permanent place in my rotation. 10mg/day for 10 days, twice a year. Sleep architecture improves in a way I can feel and my Oura partially confirms. Everything else it's claimed to do I can't verify.

Username-relevant. I tried dihexa for 8 weeks. Oral. Various sources to rule out a bad batch. Noticed nothing. The mechanism story is interesting, the human evidence is "a guy on a podcast said." Until there's a real trial I'm out.

Cerebrolysin is weird because in actual stroke/TBI populations there is real evidence. In healthy people as a nootropic stack item? Thin. I ran two 10-day courses a year apart. First one felt like something, second one felt like nothing. That's either tolerance, placebo fading, or genuine individual variance. I don't know which.

Semax every weekday morning for almost two years. Take weekends off. Acute focus lift is reliable. Chronic? I honestly can't separate it from the routine itself. If I had to give it up tomorrow I'd miss it but I don't think I'd collapse.

Selank for anxiety, Semax for focus, rotate. Selank surprised me — I expected mild anxiolysis and got what feels like a floor on my anxiety instead of a ceiling on my arousal. Hard to describe. Less reactive to stressors rather than less stressed.

Sleep person here. For me, in order of impact: (1) consistent bedtime, (2) Epithalon cycles, (3) DSIP only when I'm truly desynced from travel, (4) exogenous melatonin almost never. Peptides can't fix bad sleep hygiene and I wish more people started there.

I've stopped chasing the optimization stack. One peptide at a time, 8-12 weeks, decide if it earned a permanent seat. Most don't. The ones that did for me: BPC-157 (healing only), TA-1 (winter), Epithalon (twice yearly). Everything else rotates in and out.

Good thread. One meta-point: when people say "I notice X" after taking a compound, the prior probability that's the compound vs. placebo/routine/seasonal is much lower than we feel it to be. I'm not accusing anyone here of lying. I'm saying the human nervous system is a terrible instrument for measuring small effects on itself. Use wearables, use labs, use blinded A/B where you can.

+1 to citation_required. I make people on my Discord keep a pre-registered outcome they'll measure before starting, and a length. Cuts the "it works — for something I didn't originally care about" rationalization in half.

Seven years of this nonsense. Keep a very small list. Cycle hard. The people who stack 8 things and claim they all work are either rich, delusional, or selling something.

Quiet endorsement for humanin. Harder to source, harder to dose, less literature than MOTS-c. But in the same mitochondrial peptide family and I'm not convinced MOTS-c is the only interesting one. Early days for me.

Epithalon lowered my resting HR about 4 bpm over two cycles. I don't know what to do with that information but it's the most consistent wearable signal I've had from any peptide.

DSIP works for me maybe 1 in 3 nights. When it works I sleep like someone turned off my head. When it doesn't it's indistinguishable from placebo. No idea what the variable is. I've stopped using it weekly and save it for nights where I'm too wired to sleep.

Great discussion. Flagging for the general compendium. Please keep bumping this with new experiences as they come in — the category needs a living document more than it needs ten separate threads.

Updating my own take 30 days in: the signal I keep coming back to is "one thing at a time, measure something." Everything else is noise. Thanks everyone for keeping the tone here where it should be.

Bookmarking. New to this whole category and this thread alone saved me probably a thousand dollars.

Lurker chiming in to thank the veterans for not being elitist. Seen plenty of other places where this conversation goes differently.