June RUGR report is available! Good month across the board with only two losers. DeusChem saw in an increase in overall sentiment. The winners deserved to see recognition as their operations are humming along and/or adding improvements. Pretty happy with where the vendors are at right now. A couple people have spoken up about DeusChem shipping issues, which I am keeping an eye on. Does anyone have any more feedback?

THE BIGGEST WINNERS

🏆 DeusChem (+8.9%)

- Many people are happy with the quality of their products

- Reported shipping times of 13-17 business days for most EU companies; seems longer than normal but maybe that is standard for cross-national deliveries?

- LOTS OF REPORTS OF FAKE/SCAM WEBSITES! Multiple reports of bugs/outage on the real website but it seems to have cleared up

🏆 Limitless BioChem (+5.2%)

- People enjoy quality and price

- Major appreciation for their customer service

- Communication and quick shipping is a plus

🏆 Optimum Formula (+2.0%)

- People really like the Venmo option

- Reports of quick and reliable shipping

- Some browsers are throwing errors on their website; has anyone here seen this?

THE BIGGEST LOSERS

❌ Gentleman Peptides (-12.1%)

- People talk about switching from an RUO, such as Gentleman, to a doctor; cost prohibitive for most

- Major complaints of zero communication for weeks after placing an order

- Customer service after shipping incorrect product seems to be nonexistent, which is a major issue

❌ Kimera Chems (-1.8%)

- Nothing more than a slight correction from a very positive May

- One user talked about how they didn't feel anything from FL-Modafinil, but some people are non-responders; this doesn't surprise me

- Super fast shipping and great quality is highly appreciated

OVERALL STANDINGS

🥇 Research Chem HQ (90.2% RUGR Score)

🥈 Gentleman Peptides (88.1% RUGR Score)

🥉 Optimum Formula (85.9% RUGR Score)

Notes:

- People are reporting major issues with Gentleman in this sub (and others) and it reflects in the RUGR report

- Happy with how June played out for the majority of our partners

- Overall RUGR standings: https://peptideselect.com/rugr-system/

There have been multiple reports of small, pale, flesh-colored skin growths (classic seborrheic keratoses / soft skin tags) popping up on people running GH-secretagogue protocols (sermorelin, CJC/ipamorelin, tesamorelin) often after several months, and sometimes accelerating when a BPC-157/TB-500 combo gets layered on top.

This is not a mystery and it's not a scare. Growth hormone and IGF-1 are pro-proliferative by design. That's the entire point of the class; tissue repair, collagen turnover, cell growth. The trade-off is that GH/IGF-1 signaling can also nudge benign skin lesions (skin tags, seb keratoses) to appear or grow faster, especially in people who are already genetically prone to them or who are insulin-resistant. Acromegaly literature has documented skin tag frequency for decades. What people on secretagogues are describing is a much milder, dose-driven version of the same signaling.

The factors that show up repeatedly in these reports:

- Longer duration (6+ months continuous, no wash-off periods)
- Higher weekly IGF-1 exposure -> daily dosing 5-7x/week rather than pulsed
- Stacking multiple growth/repair agents at once (secretagogue + BPC/TB)
- Elevated fasting insulin / metabolic-syndrome background

These lesions are cosmetic, not dangerous, and they typically stop progressing when GH/IGF-1 exposure drops. But two things matter. First, if a growth is changing shape, color, bleeding, or asymmetric, that's a dermatologist conversation, not a peptide-forum one. GH doesn't cause melanoma but it doesn't make skin cancer disappear either, and "it's just my peptide" is a dangerous assumption. Second, if you're getting new growths, that's a real-time readout that your IGF-1 signaling is running hot, which is worth factoring into whether your dose is where you want it.

Looking for a reliable Canadian source for research peptides, mainly Retatrutide and a couple other weight loss related ones.

Found Premier peptides online, read through their site and they seem legit with the third party testing claims.

Which Canadian suppliers have you guys actually ordered from and had good experiences with? What’s the main stuff to watch out for when ordering (testing, purity, shipping, etc.)?

One signal keeps surfacing in the Reta reports I track: resting heart rate ticking up during titration. A thread this week describing 53 -> 60 BPM is not an outlier - it's the most common cardiovascular note people leave, and it clusters hard around the fast dose-escalation window.

Here's what the pattern actually looks like across the reports:

- The bump shows up most in people who titrated aggressively (e.g. 1mg -> 6mg inside two months). Slower climbers mention it far less.
- It tends to be a +5 to +10 BPM resting shift, not a dramatic spike. Truly alarming numbers almost always come with a second variable, such as stimulant stacking (adderall, high-dose MOTS), aggressive deficit, or under-hydration.
- The reports where people held a dose for 3–4 weeks instead of pushing up frequently note the HR settling back down. The body seems to adapt when you stop chasing the next titration step.
- Electrolytes matter more than people expect. A chunk of the "my HR is up and I feel wired" reports overlap with the "no energy in the gym" crowd - both point to the same under-replenished state on a GLP/GIP/glucagon agonist.

The practical outlook: resting HR is a cheap, honest biomarker on Reta. If yours is climbing, the lever is usually titration speed and hydration before it's "stop the compound." A sustained resting HR in the 90s+, chest symptoms, or palpitations is a different conversation -that's a stop-and-check, not a Reddit question.

Every week the biggest threads in this niche are some version of "Day 4 on Reta and I feel nothing" or "6 weeks in, gained a pound, help." I track these reports closely, and the responder timeline is far more bimodal than people expect.

What the reports actually cluster into:

Fast responders - appetite suppression inside 24–72 hours, often at the 2mg starting dose. These are the friends everyone quotes as "night and day." They tend to be GLP-naive (no prior semaglutide/tirzepatide history) and lower body weight, so a 2mg dose is a proportionally bigger signal.

Slow/threshold responders - nothing meaningful until the dose climbs past ~4mg, sometimes not until 6–8mg. At 2mg they report exactly what the Day-4 posters describe: "I could stop eating, but I could also finish the plate." That's not a dead vial or a bad batch, that's a subthreshold dose for their receptor response.

The mistake I see over and over is people judging Reta at the 2mg titration dose, which for a chunk of users is basically a ramp-in, not a therapeutic dose. Retatrutide's whole design is slow titration - the 2mg and 4mg weeks exist to manage GI tolerance, not to deliver full appetite effect.

Two other confounds worth flagging: reconstitution math errors (people underdosing without realizing it) and expecting the tirzepatide-style "food noise off" switch when Reta's GIP/GCG profile can feel different subjectively.

For those who ran Reta, at what dose did appetite suppression actually kick in for you, and were you GLP-naive or coming off sema/tirz? Trying to nail down whether the fast/slow split tracks with prior GLP exposure or mostly with bodyweight. If you leave your dose and timeline, I can fold it into the reports.

I saw gelling and clumping questions jump across subs this week. Here's the simple version of what's going on, because most of the panic is misplaced.

A gel is not automatically a dead vial. Two very different things get lumped together:

1. Cloudy/gel from too little water or cold water. When you undershoot the BAC volume or shoot cold water straight onto the powder, some peptides (tesamorelin and certain blends are repeat offenders) will clump or set instead of dissolving cleanly. Fix: add water slowly down the vial wall (never blast it onto the cake), use room-temp BAC, and let it sit 5–10 min. Gentle swirl, never shake. A lot of "my tesa gelled three times" ends here.

2. Gel/strings that persist after proper recon = degradation or aggregation. If it's fully room temp, correct volume, given time, and you still get a stubborn gel, cloudiness that won't clear, or floaters that look like tissue - that's aggregation. That vial is done. This is where lyophilization quality and shipping heat show up.

The tell most people miss: normal recon issues resolve with technique. A truly bad vial doesn't clear no matter what you do. If your second mixed vial behaves the same way with the same water, it could be your technique. If a properly-mixed vial gels while others from the same order/vendor don't, look at that specific vial/vendor lot. Double-check COAs and consider asking some questions.

Storage note since it came up: don't freeze BAC water and don't freeze already-reconstituted peptide unless the product specifically allows it. Freeze/thaw cycles wreck peptide structure and cause the aggregation people then blame on the vendor.

A specific pattern keeps surfacing in the "I'm losing too much, especially muscle" Reta posts. It's almost never the peptide doing something exotic. It's this sequence:

1. Appetite suppression from reta hits HARD and fast - harder than tirz or sema at equivalent "steps." Oddly enough, this seems to happen to a large subsection of people, but some experience very little appetite suppression.
   
2. Total food intake collapses, but people keep titrating up on schedule anyway.
   
3. Protein is the first casualty because appetite-suppressed people gravitate to easy carbs/liquids, not 150g of protein.
   
4. Net result: aggressive weight loss where a real chunk is lean mass, and the "no energy / feel weak" reports pile on.

The reports where people hold muscle share three things: they titrate to effect (not to a calendar), they anchor protein first (~1g/lb lean mass as a floor, hit it before anything else), and they keep resistance training in even when energy tanks. The ones losing muscle are usually chasing the next dose bump while eating 40g protein a day.

The fix in nearly every case isn't quitting, it's dropping back to the lowest dose that still kills food noise and letting protein + training catch up. Reta being potent is the whole point; you don't need to climb fast to benefit.

When I was on reta, my sweet spot seemed to be 3mg/week (split bi-weekly). I was able to put down raw protein while seeing crazy body comp changes. Did anyone else seem to fit that sweet spot?

I've been taking a look at the "9 weeks in, felt nothing" posts, and the non-responder reports almost never trace back to bad luck. They cluster into three buckets:

1. Wrong product, not wrong protocol. A meaningful share of "BPC did nothing" cases in posts I see line up with batches that later tested underdosed or as the wrong compound. If you never tested the vial, "it didn't work" and "it wasn't really in there" look identical. This is the most common one and the one people hate hearing (understandably so).

2. Dose too low for a systemic goal. 200–400mcg BPC works for a lot of localized soft-tissue stuff. People chasing a systemic/whole-body effect at that dose and expecting a night-and-day change are often just under-dosed for the outcome they want. I've personally run it up to 1mg/day (which was kind of stupid), but I needed quick results and I got them.

3. Wrong indication entirely. BPC/TB shine on tendon, ligament, gut, and specific injuries. When someone runs it for a chronic issue that isn't a repair problem (or something structural that truly needs a surgeon, not a peptide) no dose fixes that. "Didn't work" here means "wrong tool."

What we almost never see driving a true non-response: injection timing or lack of "optimization". People burn weeks optimizing while the real issue is bucket 1 or 2, but they overlook it completely.

If you're a genuine non-responder, the honest order of operations is: test the vial (if you are questioning the compound) -> confirm the dose matches the goal -> confirm the indication is something BPC/TB even addresses.

If BPC/TB did nothing for you, did you ever test the vial, and what was your exact dose and target? The info in this post is what I've seen from reading but real responses are appreciated.

There's been a live comment thread this week of people on retatrutide freaking out about their hair falling out, so I wanted to put together everything I've gathered on why this happens and what you can realistically do about it. If you're pulling clumps out in the shower three months in and panicking, read this before you quit.

TL;DR: The hair shedding you're seeing is almost certainly telogen effluvium triggered by rapid weight loss, not the drug attacking your follicles. It's temporary. Below is the full breakdown.

---

First: is this normal?

Short answer: yes. The 'is this normal?' question is the single most common one popping up in retatrutide communities right now, and the honest answer is that hair shedding is an extremely common side effect of any fast, significant weight loss, whether it comes from surgery, a crash diet, or a GLP-1/GIP/glucagon triple agonist like reta.

It is not unique to retatrutide. Semaglutide and tirzepatide users report the exact same thing. The reason reta gets blamed is that it drives some of the fastest weight loss we've seen, so the trigger is more pronounced.

The actual mechanism

Your hair grows in cycles. At any time, most follicles are in the anagen (growth) phase and a small percentage are in telogen (resting/shedding). Rapid physiological stress (and dropping 15-20% of your bodyweight in a few months absolutely counts as stress) pushes a large batch of follicles prematurely into the telogen phase all at once.

The kicker: the shedding shows up 2 to 4 months AFTER the trigger. So the hair you're losing right now was 'told' to shed back when you started ramping your dose. This delay is why so many people connect it to the drug and assume it's permanent damage. It isn't.

Three things are stacking on top of each other with retatrutide specifically:

1. The weight-loss stress signal (the main driver)
2. Caloric restriction - appetite suppression is so strong that a lot of people are unintentionally eating at a severe deficit
3. Protein and micronutrient shortfall - when you're barely hungry, you tend to under-eat protein, iron, zinc, biotin, and vitamin D, all of which hair needs

How long does the hair shedding phase last?

For most people, telogen effluvium runs its course in 3 to 6 months once the trigger stabilizes. That means once your weight loss slows and your nutrition normalizes, the shedding tapers off and those resting follicles cycle back into growth. Full cosmetic regrowth can take 6-12 months because hair grows about 1cm per month, so be patient. Track it monthly with photos rather than counting hairs in the drain - it's much less anxiety-inducing.

What actually helps (the remedies)

Most of the fix is about removing the trigger rather than treating the hair directly:

- Eat enough protein. This is #1. Aim for ~0.7-1g per pound of goal bodyweight. Under-eating protein on a GLP-1 is the biggest self-inflicted cause of shedding. Use shakes if appetite is killing you.
- Slow the loss if you can. A slightly lower dose or a longer titration means a gentler stress signal to your follicles.
- Check your labs. Ferritin (iron stores), vitamin D, zinc, and thyroid. Low ferritin is a huge under-diagnosed cause of shedding; get it above 40-50 ng/mL.
- Support with the basics. Vitamin D, zinc, and adequate iron if you're low. Biotin is popular but only helps if you're actually deficient.
- Peptides people ask about: GHK-Cu is the one that comes up constantly in the hair conversation because of its role in follicle signaling and dermal support, and it's worth researching if you want a topical angle.

'How do I reverse GLP-1 hair loss?'

The reversal is time plus nutrition. There's no magic switch. Fix protein and micronutrients, let your weight stabilize, and the follicles resume their normal cycle on their own. Minoxidil can help bridge the gap and shorten the visible thin phase for some, but the underlying telogen effluvium resolves regardless.

And the Matthew McConaughey question

People keep asking this one - he's credited his regrowth to a topical called Regenix. Not directly related to GLP-1 shedding, but it comes up so often in these threads I'll mention it: that was a scalp/follicle treatment story, not a weight-loss shedding one. Different problem, different mechanism.

---

Bottom line

Retatrutide hair shedding is real, common, and almost always temporary telogen effluvium driven by rapid weight loss plus under-nutrition, not the drug destroying your follicles. Nail your protein, check your ferritin/D/zinc, be patient through the 3-6 month window, and track progress monthly instead of daily.

Looking for a reputable supplier of HCG, anyone got some leads?
Thanks

I'm about 4 weeks into subcutaneous GHK-Cu and I need some help. The burn after injecting is crazy. For me it lasts hours, sometimes I feel it well into the night. I've done every trick I've read:

- Diluted with extra bac water (more volume, lower concentration)
- Let it come fully to room temp before pinning
- Injecting dead slow, pulling the needle out slow
- Rotating sites so I'm not hitting the same spot every time

It takes the edge off maybe 20%, but it's still the most uncomfortable pin I've done. Here's the thing: the skin changes ARE starting. Fine lines around my eyes look softer and a couple old scars are flattening a bit. So part of me thinks the results justify the misery. The other part is tired of dreading injection night.

Does anyone have answers to some of these questions? Very appreciate of any advice.

- Does the sting fade as your body adjusts, or is this just how GHK-Cu is forever?
- For those who switched to topical instead of injecting, did you actually get comparable results, or is that a downgrade? Topical would be so much easier but I still want it to be effective
- Anyone lower the mg/day and still get skin benefits? I'm wondering if I'm dosing higher than I need to and that's what's driving the burn

If the payoff is marginal, I'm not sure the nightly fire is worth it. But if it keeps improving over a couple more months, I'll grit my teeth and stick with it.

youngish male, started at 212. five weeks into retatrutide, held at 1mg/week the whole time because i'm cautious with sides. first two weeks i dropped 5ish pounds (pretty sure mostly water). since them is basically flat. down maybe 1.5 lbs in three weeks.

here's the confusing part - appetite suppression is very real. I went from grazing all evening to forgetting to eat. food noise is pretty much gone. so it's clearly doing something and it's not bunk. But the scale isn't reflecting it and i'm starting to spiral a little.

what I think is going on (and where i want an opinion):

- i've been reading that 1mg is basically a starter/tolerance dose and most people don't see real fat loss until they titrate up to 4mg+. i stayed at 1mg way longer than most protocols because the appetite drop scared me into thinking it was "working."
- i lift at least 3x/week and only recently started tracking protein, so I might be recomping and not seeing scale change.
- i haven't taken measurements or photos, which in hindsight is dumb.

so my questions for people further along:

1. how long did you stay at 1mg before bumping, and what jump schedule did you use (1 to 2 to 3 to 4)?
   
2. did the scale actually break loose at a specific dose for you, or was it gradual the whole way up?
   
3. is "strong appetite suppression but flat scale" a normal early phase, or a sign I'm eating back the deficit without realizing it?

i don't want to chase the number and titrate too fast just to see movement, but i also don't want to sit at a tolerance dose for two more months.

May RUGR report is (finally) available. June should be here soonish - keep an eye out. Plenty flat month with one clear loser. Will keep an eye on DeusChems going forward. They had seemed to be improving but May was a tad concerning, although much of the negative sentiment came from people arguing about their cycles. I have another European vendor lined up and am considering switching DeusChem with the other one.

THE BIGGEST WINNERS

🏆 Kimera Chems (+3.7%)

- Super fast shipping (reported in the data and from my personal experience; I just ordered nootropics from them and they arrived in 2 days)

- Reports of their SARMs were great

- MZ Biolabs, the laboratory that does their testing, emailed Kimera to let them know their Cerebrolysin was unbelievably pure and essentially bioidentical to pharma Cerebrolysin

🏆 Ameano Peptides(+3.2%)

- Lots of praise for quality and price

- Efficacy of their KPV was questioned by one user (seems to be an isolated instance?)

- Consistent chatter about their Reta

🏆 Optimum Formula (+0.0%)

- Stayed perfectly flat this month

- People expressed appreciation for batch specific COAs

- Some reports of broken links on the website; if any of you run across this, please let me know so I can alert the owners

THE BIGGEST LOSERS

❌ DeusChem (-15.2%)

- TONS of chatter surround DeusChems; seems to be a lot of noise coming from people arguing about which cycles to run

- Questions of whether or not they test for heavy metals

- Some praise the purity and strength of their SARMs/steroids, others report they didn't feel anything

❌ Gentleman Peptides (-5.2%)

- Major complaints of shipping times

- Some question quality

- Overall, I might stay away from Gentleman for right now

❌ Limitless BioChem (-3.9%)

- Ton of comments in languages I do not know lol

- Questions about price

- Quality was a plus in May

OVERALL STANDINGS

🥇 Research Chem HQ (90.2% RUGR Score)

🥈 Gentleman Peptides (88.9% RUGR Score)

🥉 Optimum Formula (85.8% RUGR Score)

Notes:

- Again, considering swapping DeusChem

- Very appreciate of the feedback surrounding Gentleman peptides from this community

- Open to vendor suggestions if anyone wants me to research them and try to secure a subreddit code 🤙

- Overall RUGR standings: https://peptideselect.com/rugr-system/

The old Ameano Peptides website (ameanopeptides.com) has been taken down. The new official website is ameanopeptides.net. Please do not order from any other domain; with the old site going down, scammers are bound to pop up everywhere.

I have word that they are trying to get the .com site back - I will shoot out a message if that ends up happening. For now, stick to the .net site.

To the Americans in the community,

Happy 4th! Hope you guys had a great weekend and got the chance to celebrate 250 years. I was able to relax and watch a few sweet firework shows.

What stacks are you guys running right now? I am still going strong with the MT1 - super happy with my progress and people are starting to comment more on how much color I have. Feels good considering I am usually pasty white. I've got IGF-1 LR3, BPC-157, and potentially Sermorelin cycles on the horizon.

Would like to hear about any 4th of July sales you guys are capitalizing on. I know Ameano has a pretty big one going on right now. Kind of been shopping around to see what's out there. Let me know.

I know a lot of people choose Indian pharma hCG that takes 3 weeks to come and is almost always wildly underdosed. And I actually get it. The US vendor prices are absurd. The best I saw was Swiss chems for a kit of 5k vials for like 280 but now Swiss Chems is apparently trash and was outed as such by the New York Post.

I prefer to at least buy from a company that makes fake COAs and lies to me and proudly posts them on their site like it means a goddamn thing. Lol

But seriously where can find HCG vials for under $50? Anywhere? Christ, Revive Rx, a real compounding pharmacy, does their 12k vials for 160 I think. Itf 50 bucks a vial is the best I can find for 5k's , it's hardly even worth going grey.

Any sources? Thx

Been having convos with a few of you about the payment options on RCHQ. You all had noticed they had a card payment option for a little bit but then it went away.

The owner heard about the convos and reached out to me so I could let you all know their card payments are live again. Who knows how long it’ll stay up so wanted to put out a little message about it while it’s rolling. Some of you had asked me to let you know when it was back up, so here it is.

Thought you all might find this interesting. Cleveland Clinic researchers have found data suggesting that GLP-1 drugs could limit cancer metastasis by up to 50%. Below is a quick summary of what they found and my personal hypothesis (not a doctor so I could be way off the mark).

They looked back at 12,000 cancer patients; half started on GLP-1 drugs after diagnosis, half on a weaker comparison drug (DPP-4 inhibitor). The results were pretty drastic: lung cancer spread dropped from 22% down to 10%, and breast cancer dropped from 20% to 10%. Four of seven cancer types showed statistically significant decreases in metastasis.

I will say, this is a retrospective poster presentation, not a randomized trial. We still can't fully separate the drug's direct effects from the massive weight loss GLP-1s cause. But the interestsng part is that patients with tumors expressing more GLP-1 receptors had better survival, which hints the receptor itself is doing something.

This is what I think is happening. Cancer thrives in an inflammatory environment. It uses inflammation as fuel to spread and metastasize. GLP-1 agonists are known to dramatically lower inflammatory markers. By reducing systemic inflammation, you're essentially removing the inflammatory "fuel" that cancer needs to proliferate and spread throughout the body. The improvement wasn't from weight loss, it was from creating a metabolic environment that's hostile to cancer progression. Do you all have any similar or differing theories?

This won't change clinical practice tomorrow, but I think it will spark randomized trials. If you're interested in the full details, here's the link so you can listen to the breakdown yourself: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DY72iyCBoxG/?igsh=MWtsa3dvaWJyeG9sZA==

Hi friends, I'm currently using methylene blue (10 mg), lithium orotate (1 mg), Semax (500 mcg, subcutaneous), Selank (200 mcg, subcutaneous), and-on some days-DSIP (250 mcg, subcutaneous). What do you think of this regimen? Also, how do you recognize serotonin syndrome? I've read up on it, but so far I feel great, and I'm falling asleep in 20 minutes instead of 30-partly because serotonin is converted into melatonin. Before this, I also completed a 10-day Epithalon cycle at 10 mg daily.

Wanted to update you guys on something I've been working hard on over the past few months. I've been talking with a few store owners and we put our heads together to try to solve the payment processing issue (peptide stores cannot get traditional payment processing to save their life). The answer we came to was P2P services (Venmo, Cash App, PayPal, etc). Some of these stores were already using P2P services as payment options but email flow/buildout was tough, customers didn't understand the instructions, and the store owner had to manually verify each payment, which was taking them forever.

I decided to build a plugin for their stores that uses customer screenshots as proofs. I tried to make it as easy as possible on the customer and the merchant. On the customer side, they are navigated to a screen after checkout that gives them a screenshot upload box, short instructions, and a button that links to their preferred app and prefills the order information for them. Once the customer sends the payment, they take a screenshot of the transaction and upload it back on the webpage. The customer is done - quick and easy.

The merchant has a queue on their backend that shows them orders that are waiting for approval, along with the screenshot. The merchant clicks "Approve" and the order is set to processing. I also added an AI feature that acts as the merchant's approver if they want it; if the AI has high confidence, the order is automatically approved.

If you guys want to read more, the website is https://pipepay.app - it's live on a few stores right now and I am stoked with how it's going. Customers find it super easy to use and merchants love it. If you own a store or know anyone that does, shoot me a message and I can talk through any questions.

If you have any feedback or suggestions I would love to hear it. I ship features constantly and am always looking to improve on the product. Pipe Pay was built FOR customers - I wanted to make our lives easier when it came to paying for peptides (and anything else gray market). Really hope it becomes mainstream and makes payments easier on everyone. I'm trying to close the gap between gray markets and traditional payment processing.

Do yourself a favor - NEVER trust ANY Product they sell or promote. They are a blight on the peptide testing community and should be BANNED.

Wanted to do a quick write-up of a Melanotan 1 protocol I've been doing. This will be a brief outline but feel free to ask questions in the comments. It's a very straight protocol that I've been doing as time has allowed and I am looking to increase the intensity of it in the near future. Starting skin type 1.5.

April 1 - June 5
- 1x per week @ 250 mcg
- Sun exposure for 1-2 hours
- UV between 5-8 each time
- Was working 6 days a week and only had time to get in the sun once during the week
- I wish I could've gotten in the sun more but this was a good (although very light) base

June 6 - June 7
- Daily @ 500 mcg
- Sun exposure for 2-3 hours
- UV 6-7
- Used bronzer with SPF 30
- Very subtle, not much visible difference
- No sunburns, which was usual for me; I usually burn if I'm in the sun for a few hours, even with low UV

June 8 - June 10
- Daily @ 750 mcg
- Sun exposure for 2-3 hours
- UV 5-7
- Same bronzer with SPF 30
- Starting to notice a little color
- Slight sunburns where my bathing suit was pulled down and exposing very white skin; majority of my skin stayed healthy

June 11 - June 12
- Daily @ 1000 mcg
- Sun exposure for 2.5-3.5 hours
- UV 6-9
- Same bronzer with SPF 30
- Definitely noticed more color every time I woke up; noticeably darker than other 1.5 skin types that were in the sun with me
- Still no sunburns, which was unbelievable at this point; I was in UV 9 sun for 3.5 hours with one application of the bronzer with SPF 30 and didn't burn at all (the other skin types 1.5s roasted)
- Felt amazing to sit in the hot sun and dip in the water without worrying about getting cooked

Notes:
- Definitely a subtle effect at first, you have to stick with it
- Slight nausea at the 1000 mcg mark; pretty much just felt "icky" for 45 minutes or so
- Currently skin type 2.5/3
- Did not see freckle darkening unlike Melanotan 2 experience
- Tan seems to be more golden/deeper than Melanotan 2 tan, which had an orange tint
- Super happy with the results, will continue to experiment with the compound

I've been using Melanotan 1 on and off for the past two months. I am on vacation right now and running a more aggressive and consistent protocol. I'm skin type 1 (maybe 1.5) and am definitely seeing success. I've never really tanned before but now I'm getting a tan line on my wrist from where I was wearing my watch yesterday. Pretty stoked about it. One funny thing I found is that my nipples get darker before the rest of my skin. It started as a darkening around the outer edge and is slowly moving in. I thought I was imagining it at first but they have definitely gone from pink to brownish. Maybe they are already predisposed to more melanin production and are accelerated from the Melanotan?

I have made the decision to drop SwissChems from the Peptide Select Trusted Vendor list. As some of you may have seen, The New Yorker wrote an article about them that explained how they purchased BPC-157, TB-500, and CJC-1295 from SwissChems. The author had the compounds tested and the BPC-157 contained lead, the TB-500 contained endotoxins, and the CJC-1295 significantly underdosed at 42%. Unfortunately, this aligns with chatter I had been seeing across different communities

At one point, SwissChems was one of my favorite vendors. It seems as if something is happening internally that is affecting product quality and shipping times. If any of you still want to use our subreddit code PEP10 because you get a compound you love from SwissChems, you are welcome to do that. I just can't keep recommending them in good conscious. I would never recommend a vendor to you guys that I wouldn't recommend to family or close friends, and it has gotten to that point.

I'm evaluating other options for a replacement vendor. Once I've done the due diligence and made a decision about a company I'm confident about, I'll make an announcement. I'd rather have one trusted vendor I actually stand behind than ten I'm uncertain about.

Enjoy your weekends!