Stephanie Corn was shopping for shoes in Houston when a terrifying realization stopped her cold: She had no idea where she was.
Frightened, she ducked into a dressing room and called her now-ex-husband to pick her up.
“He asked me where I was and I couldn’t tell him,” Corn, 56, told The Post. “I had never been so scared in my entire life.”
It was the culmination of memory problems Corn had battled since doctors put her into chemically induced menopause. Hot flashes, fatigue, low libido, aching joints and stubborn weight gain followed, compounding chronic pain from herniated discs.
Months later, a Facebook comment about peptides caught her eye.
Peptides are short chains of amino acids that send signals to cells throughout the body, doing things like regulating hormones and supporting tissue repair. They occur naturally, but synthetic versions have grown in popularity in recent years.
Some are FDA approved as medical treatments for humans — like insulin, semaglutide and tirzepatide — but many are not. Without that approval, some are still sold with labels that they are for “research use only.”
But just because they’re labeled that way doesn’t mean regular people aren’t buying these peptides and trying them on themselves — including a growing number of women hoping they can ease the menopause transition.
Corn spent two months scouring the internet and consulting ChatGPT before ordering her first peptides online. Today, she says they’ve transformed her quality of life.
“Has my depression lifted? Absolutely. Do I have more energy? Yes. Can I go to the grocery store and follow that up by hitting Neiman Marcus because I want to go smell perfume and I’m not in pain? Yes,” she said. “I can do all of those things now, not because of my doctor, but because of peptides.”
Dr. Rachel Pessah-Pollack, an endocrinologist at NYU Langone, said stories like Corn’s reflect a broader frustration among menopausal women.
“I have patients come in on a daily basis with questions about what they’re seeing online,” she said. “There are a lot of menopausal symptoms that are undertreated, and as a result, you have people turning to different pathways to potentially get treatment.”
Jay Campbell, a co-founder of BioLongevity Labs, an e-commerce seller of peptides and bioregulators, said he has seen the benefits firsthand in women navigating menopause, including his own wife — with one caveat.
“Peptides are not magic bullets. They’re not exercise in a bottle. They are tools,” Campbell said. “They can be absolutely transformative when used responsibly.”
Yet many women in the “gray market” are ordering peptides online and devising their own protocols with little or no medical oversight.
“I own a restaurant. I’m not a doctor,” said Darla Allison, 45, who credits research-use peptides with helping her through perimenopause. “You’re really like a little guinea pig pin cushion.”
The secret language of online peptides
Navigating the world of research-use peptides isn’t always easy. The online community has developed its own slang, in part to evade content moderation on Instagram and TikTok.
Peptides become “peppers,” users “pepper farmers” and experiments “research projects.” Individual products have nicknames, too, including “ratatouille” for retatrutide and “semolina” for semaglutide.
“We have to speak in code now,” said stay-at-home mom Lacretia Riekeberg, 47, who posts about her peptide use. Videos can be taken down if they don’t, “but I think it’s important to get the message out.”
Riekeberg began using peptides after she gained weight following the death of her daughter. When insurance wouldn’t cover a name-brand GLP-1, she got a compounded version from a telehealth provider.
She eventually added experimental products to her “stack” for perimenopause symptoms, including hot flashes, insomnia, brain fog, fatigue, low libido, mood swings and frozen shoulder. She’s tried 13 since March, sourcing, reconstituting and injecting them herself.
Now, Riekeberg is in a “glow-up phase.”
“This is the season of life to be working with your body and your hormones, not against them. For me, that’s utilizing peptides,” she said. “We’re all an experiment … do what feels right for you.”
“If it wasn’t for the influencers, I don’t know what I would have done, because not a single doctor I [saw] knew anything about peptides.”
Darla Allison
Meet the ‘pepper farmers’
Allison’s peptide journey began after someone saw her struggling with severe joint pain and inflammation at work and left a vial of “Wolverine Blend” — BPC-157 and TB-500 — in the refrigerator of her Georgia restaurant.
“I was so desperate, I injected a little bit that day and then I had immediate relief,” she said. “The pain came back three days later. But then I was persistent. I kept doing it.”
Soon, she was searching online for peptides to ease her perimenopause symptoms. She’s since tried 10, crediting them with helping her slim down, improve her skin and ease brain fog, night sweats and fatigue.
“It’s been a game changer,” Allison said. “If it wasn’t for the influencers, I don’t know what I would have done, because not a single doctor I have or was seeing this time last year knew anything about peptides.”
Christinia Cherry approached the world cautiously.
The Wisconsin phlebotomist and medical assistant gained 20 pounds during menopause and struggled to shed them despite repeating strategies that had worked previously.
“I tried everything,” Cherry, 51, said. “It just wasn’t budging.”
Her doctor told her about Wegovy — a GLP-1 and one of more than 100 FDA-approved peptides — but insurance wouldn’t cover it and she couldn’t afford to pay out of pocket.
So Cherry went looking online.
“You’re worried about it being wrong,” the mother-of-three said. “It’s a little scary to be putting something in your body.”
But after about a month of research, she bought a vial of retatrutide. Unlike Ozempic and Zepbound, retatrutide is an experimental drug that targets three hormones involved in appetite and metabolism. Eli Lilly’s treatment has shown promise in clinical trials but isn’t FDA-approved, though it’s sold online by third-parties for research use.
“Within two weeks, I lost my first four pounds,” Cherry said. “My bloating finally went down, and I started to feel a little bit normal.”
She has since tried other experimental peptides, which she says have helped with night sweats, hot flashes, memory, mood and energy.
“I’m not a doctor, I don’t play one on TV, I don’t know where the nerve clusters are. How would I know that? Nobody does.”
Stephanie Corn
“We’re aging in reverse,” Cherry said. “We’re not going forward — we’re going backward. I see that in a lot of women.”
When promise meets peril
But the DIY approach can come with pitfalls. For one, the FDA has warned about products containing the wrong ingredients, incorrect doses and substances that don’t match their labels.
“There are many scammers and money grabbers in the space,” Campbell said, “and because of the lack of regulation and oversight, there are plenty of people making fake peptides.”
There’s also user error for buyers who simply aren’t experts, no matter how many TikToks they’ve watched.
“And then there are people stacking multiple compounds that we’ve never studied in humans, using these very high doses that are potentially harmful,” Pessah-Pollack added.
Riekeberg learned that lesson firsthand when she tried CJC-1295. “I gave myself three times the dosage that I should have,” she said. “I blew up like a puff ball.”
The swelling took three days to resolve, but she continued using the peptide after figuring out what went wrong.
Corn, meanwhile, hit a nerve while injecting a copper peptide into her rear. Burning pain shot down her leg, leaving her barely able to walk for two days.
“I’m not a doctor, I don’t play one on TV, I don’t know where the nerve clusters are. How would I know that? Nobody does,” Corn said.
The gray unknown
For Gina Nacnac, the promise of peptides came at a time when she was desperate for answers.
The marketing consultant had initially attributed her symptoms to burnout. But testing revealed she had low testosterone, and doctors told her she was perimenopausal.
Around the same time, she began working with a peptide-industry client on his brand strategy.
“When you do the basics — you’re eating well, exercising — and nothing is happening, then people are talking about the signaling molecules that can give you a boost, it’s very enticing,” she said.
Before long, Nacnac was using them herself. Looking to lose stubborn belly fat, she turned to Tesamorelin, a peptide approved by the FDA to reduce excess belly fat in adults with HIV-associated lipodystrophy, but not for general weight loss.
She soon developed intense fluid retention, joint aches and painful carpal tunnel.
“I later learned that I was on an extremely high dose,” she said.
The symptoms subsided after she stopped taking it. But by then, she said, “I’m drinking the Kool-Aid,” and added other research-use peptides to her protocol.
Later, Nacnac tried Tesamorelin again and suffered what she described as a “terrible food poisoning-like reaction.”
“Talking to people that are in the space, they said, ‘Oh, we’ve never heard of anyone getting a reaction like that,’ so it was kind of dismissed,” she said. “This is the problem with peptides. Nobody really knows.”
Some products have genuinely helped her perimenopause symptoms, she said, but her experiences have changed her view of the industry.
“In the beginning, I was a big advocate of peptides, but after going on my journey, I’ve seen that there can be real adverse reactions,” she said.
Those who venture into the gray market should work with a medical professional experienced with peptides that they’ve vetted and trust, Nacnac suggested.
“A lot of these telehealth companies are just popping up,” she said. “They are outsourcing care to these physicians’ networks where they don’t even see the patients.”
“I don’t agree with that,” Nacnac continued, “and I know this because I’m helping build them.”
