Beginner's Guide to Peptides

Peptides are not a category to dabble in. The four guides below are sequenced because each one assumes the answers from the previous. Skip a step and you risk choosing a peptide your body should not have, injecting it incorrectly, or sourcing it from a vendor that ships degraded or counterfeit material.

Most readers finish all four guides in under thirty minutes. There is no app, no signup, and no gatekeeping — just an honest induction.

1. § 01

   What Are Peptides?

   Foundations

   Foundations — amino acids, receptor binding, the five working categories, and which class fits which goal.

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2. § 02

   Can I Take Peptides?

   Screening

   Health screening — absolute contraindications, GLP-1-specific exclusions, and when to consult a clinician first.

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3. § 03

   How To Use Peptides

   Protocol

   Mechanics — reconstitution, dose calculation, subcutaneous technique, rotation, and a timing table per peptide class.

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4. § 04

   Choosing Suppliers

   Sourcing

   Sourcing — green-flag criteria, red flags, price vs quality, and a five-step verification checklist before buying.

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Most peptide content online is written for Americans buying from US-based research-peptide suppliers, with US shipping, US customs, US clinics, and US pharmacy networks. None of that maps cleanly to Manila. The four guides above are the universal foundation — what peptides are, whether you can take them, how to inject them, and how to evaluate suppliers — but the operational reality in the Philippines bends in specific ways you need to know up front.

On the regulatory side: FDA Philippines maintains a registered drug products database that you can search at verification.fda.gov.ph. The GLP-1 class (semaglutide as Ozempic and Wegovy, tirzepatide as Mounjaro) is registered and prescribable through endocrinology clinics at Makati Medical Center, St. Luke's BGC, The Medical City, and Manila Doctors Hospital. Recombinant somatropin and tesamorelin are registered for specific indications. The rest of the peptide universe — BPC-157, TB-500, GHK-Cu, the GH secretagogues, the longevity peptides — is not registered, lives in research-grade territory, and is sourced through compounding routes or personal import. Bureau of Customs treats single-vial research peptides under personal-import rules; bulk volumes draw scrutiny.

On the supply side: Mercury Drug and Watsons stock the FDA-registered pharmaceuticals plus syringes and BAC water in some branches; they do not stock research-grade peptides. Compounding pharmacies clustered in Makati and BGC handle BAC water, sterile syringes, and doctor-requested oral compounds. The bloodwork ecosystem at Hi-Precision and Makati Med outpatient is genuinely strong — full hormone panels, IGF-1, HbA1c, DEXA scans, lipid panels at prices that would shock a US user. The constraint here is the supply chain, not the lab infrastructure. Read the four guides in order, then return here and the peptide library with the operational reality in mind.

I landed in Manila in late October 2025, having moved from Austin. The first peptide I touched here was tirzepatide — picked it up on my first Saturday at the Mercury Drug at Glorietta 4 with a written endo prescription from a 90-minute consult at Makati Medical Center earlier that week. Ozempic and Mounjaro were both on the shelf. I paid roughly USD 290 for a 4-pen Mounjaro 5mg box; the same box runs USD 1,000+ in Texas. The pharmacist behind the counter asked one question — “refrigerated van or insulated bag?” — handed me a small foam cooler with two ice packs, and that was the whole transaction.

The bloodwork loop is what convinced me Manila is genuinely a strong base for this work. Two weeks before that first injection I walked into the Hi-Precision branch in Makati at 7am, no appointment, paid USD 95 for a starter panel — TSH, free T4, fasting insulin, HbA1c, IGF-1, full lipid panel, CBC. Results were in my email by 4pm the same day. Eight weeks later I ran the same panel as a follow-up: same branch, same time, same price. The same protocol with the same monitoring would have cost me USD 600+ per panel in Austin and required a referral.

On research-grade peptides — separately I ordered a vial of BPC-157 from a research supplier I've since mentioned in the supply index, paired with bacteriostatic water from a compounding pharmacy along Pasay Road in Makati. The compounder asked for a written request from my endo, prepared a 30 mL multi-dose vial in about 90 minutes, charged USD 12. The shipment of the BPC-157 itself cleared Bureau of Customs in 11 days from order — single vial, declared as personal use, no holdup. That's the operational reality. None of it is theoretical.

• SRC-01FDA Philippines Verification Portal. verification.fda.gov.ph — primary registry for confirming Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, Tesamorelin, and recombinant somatropin registration status in the Philippines.
• SRC-02Bureau of Customs Philippines, Customs Memorandum Order on personal-use importation of pharmaceutical products. customs.gov.ph — operational basis for single-vial personal-import treatment.
• SRC-03Jastreboff AM et al. Tirzepatide once weekly for the treatment of obesity (SURMOUNT-1). NEJM 2022;387:205–216. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2206038 · PubMed: 35658024
• SRC-04Wilding JPH et al. Once-weekly semaglutide in adults with overweight or obesity (STEP-1). NEJM 2021;384:989–1002. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2032183 · PubMed: 33567185
• SRC-05Sikiric P et al. Stable gastric pentadecapeptide BPC 157: novel therapy in gastrointestinal tract. Curr Pharm Des 2011;17(16):1612–32. PubMed: 21548867 — foundational mechanism reference for BPC-157.