A few months back, I got diagnosed with a torn rotator cuff, a torn labrum, and a torn supraspinatus.
If you’ve been following me, you know this already. If you’re new here, I’ll just say it plainly. It sucked.
I’m 53-years-old and I haven’t slept on my left side in a year. Training has been limited and focused on work arounds. Simple things started to hurt and continue to hurt. Recovery wasn’t happening. And for someone who prides himself on being strong, capable, and consistent, it’s been a gut check.
The tears in my shoulder were slightly less than 50 percent, so I made the decision to forgo surgery and go the PRP injection route. I’ve done PRP once before. Years ago, I had it in my elbow. For reference, I went from being able to do almost 30 unbroken pull-ups, to not being able to blow my nose without excruciating pain, and then back to pull-ups again within about 90 days post injections and rehab.
So I believe in it. I trust it. And I’ve got high hopes for my shoulder.
But like a lot of guys in this position, I started asking the next question.
What else can I do?
How do I speed this up?
How do I recover faster, get back to full strength sooner, and not just sit around waiting for time to pass?
Because there’s a fine line in midlife between doing nothing and doing everything. Doing nothing isn’t acceptable. Doing everything is overwhelming, expensive, and usually unnecessary.
I’m always looking for that sweet spot in the middle.
And lately, you can’t have a conversation about recovery without hearing about peptides. Specifically BPC-157.
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It’s everywhere right now. Podcasts, articles, locker room talk. Guys I respect talking about it. High performers swearing by it. The so-called “Wolverine stack.”
But at the same time, it feels like the Wild West.
It’s unregulated. You don’t always know what you’re getting. You don’t know where it’s coming from. You don’t know who’s prescribing it or why. And that matters to me.
I’m very careful about what I put in my body. Especially at this stage of life.
I don’t go online and order random drugs and I don’t listen to opportunists and influencers, so I called my doctor.
Dr. Keshav Grover is a concierge physician I work with. I trust him. He knows me. He understands how I train, how I live, and what I’m trying to accomplish.
We talked through BPC-157. Where he sources it. What he’s seen. What the potential upside is, and just as importantly, what we don’t know.
Here’s What We Know
I took this from some information provided to me by my doctor. Obviously, I’m not an expert in this field, so here’s the background I got:
BPC-157 is a synthetic peptide based on a protein found in human stomach acid, often marketed for its potential to accelerate the healing of tendons, muscles, and the gut. While it has shown impressive results in animal studies (mostly on rats and rabbits), there is a significant lack of large-scale human clinical trials. Because of this, its long-term safety and actual effectiveness in humans remain unproven, and many experts warn that the benefits seen in labs may not translate perfectly to the human body.
Crucially, BPC-157 is not FDA-approved for any medical use and was recently categorized as a substance with “significant safety risks,” which prevents compounding pharmacies from legally producing it. Since it can’t be sold as a regulated medication, most of what is available online is sold as an unregulated “research chemical.” This means there is no oversight on purity or quality, and products can be contaminated with heavy metals or bacteria. Without definitive human studies or a regulated supply chain, using it involves a high degree of “buyer beware”, so proceed with extreme caution.
Knowing all of this I still committed to a 30-day trial.
The Protocol
While the PRP injections were directly at the site in my shoulder, I had to inject the BPC-157 peptide into my abdomen. It wasn’t a great experience. I’m under 10% body fat so there’s only so much area on my abdomen that I can pinch and inject into. So every morning I’d be looking for a new place to pinch and I ended up with my abdomen swollen and bruised.
I did the first injection on a Zoom call with my doctor, to make sure I was doing it right. Because it’s different from TRT, you have to mix it with bacteriostatic water before using it. Also, you have to inject yourself every morning.
And that was the other thing, testosterone is mixed with oil so it’s a very different consistency than the BP157. With the peptide because it’s mixed with water, so you draw it and it kinda goes everywhere. When that happens, I think I’m losing some of it and it’s frustrating. I admit, this is likely on me for doing something wrong, but still, I can’t be the only one this happens to.
Needless to say, none of this is glamorous or particularly fun.
But I was willing to do it if it meant better, faster healing. And if you’re curious about the price, I paid wholesale, which was about $100 for the month, but I’ve heard that it’s usually around $250/month.
Now, I’m not the kind of guy who just goes out and signs up to be a walking lab experiment. I did this for a very specific reason: I wanted to see if it helped with my shoulder.
I injected every morning for 30 days and here’s the kicker:
I didn’t see or feel any noticeable benefit. None.
No noticeable improvement in my shoulder. No acceleration in healing to the best of my knowledge. No change in how I felt day-to-day. No added energy. No “wow, this is working” moment.
Now, you could make the case that because I combined it with PRP, I really don’t know which is working or not working, or if the combination actually did accelerate healing.
If and when I opt to try peptides of any kind in the future, I wouldn’t “co-mingle” so I could get a more accurate assessment of each’s effectiveness (or lack thereof).
I do think I handled the process, due diligence and 30 days pretty well, but at the end of the day, in my experience, it did not make any discernible positive impact, ie: the squeeze isn’t worth the juice. And I’m not rushing to do it again without any real hard new data.
Not because anything bad happened. I didn’t have any negative reaction. I just didn’t have a net positive one either. And at this stage of life, I’m not interested in adding complexity, cost, and effort for no clear return.
What I did have was a bruised midsection from daily injections, and a new daily task that required consistency, attention, and a willingness to stick myself with a needle.
That’s my experience.
And I think it’s an important one to share.
You see the guys online who wake up and first thing in the morning they spend two hours injecting themself with all these different things. I don’t want to spend my time doing that..
There are guys taking these peptides for muscle growth, for hair loss, to lose weight, for their immune system, metabolism, all of that. And they’re waking up in the morning taking 6-7 injections and hoping that any one of these will be the magic elixir that solves all of their problems.
And what you mostly hear are the success stories. The guys who say it changed everything. The guys who swear by it. And a lot of them are selling the stuff or getting paid and free peptides from the guys that are.
What you don’t hear enough from are the people who did it the right way, sourced it properly, worked with a doctor, followed the protocol… and got nothing, or worse had real negative side effects and adverse reactions.
That’s a big part of the reality.
This is where we need to be smart.
If you’re considering peptides, think long and hard. Understand that the science is still developing. The results are inconsistent. And what works for someone else may not work for you.
If you’re going to do it, do it safely. Work with someone you trust. Make sure what you’re getting is actually what you think you’re getting.
Because ordering something off the internet and injecting it into your body every day without knowing the source, the quality, or the oversight is not a risk worth taking.
For me, I’ll stick with what I know works.
PRP. Rehab. Consistency. Patience.
Not sexy. Not fast. But proven.
The middle, once again, wins.
In Health,
Greg Scheinman
Founder, Midlife Male
Husband. Father. Entrepreneur. Coach.
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