{"id":765647,"date":"2026-06-28T11:58:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T11:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/765647\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T11:58:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T11:58:11","slug":"peptides-australia-doctors-warning-over-booming-wellness-trend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/765647\/","title":{"rendered":"Peptides Australia: Doctor\u2019s warning over booming wellness trend"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the believers, peptides<\/a> are a modern medical miracle, the easy answer to so many health concerns.<\/p>\n

Want to lose weight? No worries, there\u2019s a peptide for that. Need to slow the ageing process? Take a peptide.<\/p>\n

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Injecting peptides seems to be all social media is talking about, and many users claim they are effective.\u00a060 Minutes<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the same if you want to heal faster from injuries, achieve shinier hair or even a better tan.<\/p>\n

But there are very serious caveats.<\/p>\n

Most peptides in Australia are illegal and only available on the black market.<\/p>\n

And doctors and scientists warn not enough research has been done on them yet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But for anyone who thinks that\u2019s enough to slow down their uptake, this story is a frightening injection of truth.<\/p>\n

Most peptides are illegal here because no-one can say for sure what\u2019s in them, or what all the risks may be.<\/p>\n

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Although most peptides are banned in Australia, users are still accessing unregulated substances through the black market.\u00a060 Minutes<\/p>\n

Australians are resorting to online black markets and the surprising ease in which they\u2019re doing it is concerning. Countless websites illegally sell and import peptides into Australia.<\/p>\n

Influencers injecting peptides promise everything from healing and weight loss to healthier skin and hair, even a better tan.<\/p>\n

It sounds too good to be true and it is, if you ask Dr Mark Putland, the head of emergency medicine at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.<\/p>\n

He knows the harm peptides can cause when they\u2019re either used incorrectly, or a bad batch.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are awful. They\u2019re vomiting, terrible abdominal and chest pain, sometimes really relentless vomiting, dehydration, sometimes diarrhoea with that as well,\u201d he told 60 Minutes.<\/p>\n

\u201c \u2026 We\u2019ve seen diseases like pancreatitis, which is an inflammation of the pancreas, a key abdominal digestive organ that can actually be fatal, when it gets out of control.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen people, patients with cardiac arrhythmias or heart arrhythmias.\u201d<\/p>\n

Putland believes no-one should be thinking of peptides as some kind of panacea until they\u2019ve undergone the same stringent testing and oversight expected of pharmaceutical drugs.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Most peptides in Australia are illegal, and only available on the black market.\u00a060 Minutes<\/p>\n

He said many of them would \u201cform part of our future medication armamentarium without doubt\u201d but they were being \u201cgrossly misused\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou wouldn\u2019t walk into your grandmother\u2019s medicine cabinet and pick a handful of her blood pressure tablets and just swallow them all without thought. It\u2019d be very bad for you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019d feel awful afterwards. It might kill you.\u201d<\/p>\n

US celebrity plastic surgeon Dr Terry Dubrow is also well aware of the dangers but says that doesn\u2019t seem to be having much effect on users.<\/p>\n

Peptides are more accessible in the US thanks to a legal loophole. They can be imported, sold and used under the guise of being for \u201cresearch purposes\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe danger is you don\u2019t know what the ingredients are,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudies have been done of some of the peptides in this country and up to 70 per cent of them don\u2019t actually have the ingredient that they\u2019re purported to have.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd worse, they have heavy metals, some have toxins, some have adulterants or even exotoxins that can be very, very dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n

The way Dubrow sees it, whether you like it or not, the floodgates have opened with peptides.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re here to stay. This is the future of medicine without a doubt,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem is there\u2019s basically two general types of peptides. There are the approved ones and the most common is, of course, the GLP-1 drugs, the Ozempics, the Mounjaros.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then there\u2019s all of the unapproved ones that have never been studied that may induce tumour growth, that may cause problems down the line.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the cat\u2019s out of the bag, people are not going to stop using peptides.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr Tim Piatkowski at the University of Queensland is aware of how perilous Australia\u2019s obsession with the peptide black market has become.<\/p>\n

While most are banned here, they\u2019re clearly still getting through. He\u2019s testing illegally imported peptides so he can at least tell people which ones are contaminated.<\/p>\n

Piatkowski set up a peptide-use hotline he said was getting as many as 10 calls a day, including from a 16-year-old wanting to inject themselves with multiple peptides to lose weight.<\/p>\n

Putland called for better regulation and enforcement while cracking down on the \u201cdodgy operators\u201d selling them.<\/p>\n

Dubrow argued that approach didn\u2019t work in the US and wouldn\u2019t work in Australia.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo you either let them loose on the black market or put them back in the hands of physicians and let us use them in our practice,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s better to study them, use them, figure it out, or restrict them at your own peril.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a complicated debate, but one thing they agree on is that more careful studies are required.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Therapeutic Goods Administration has issued repeated warnings about the contents and\u00a0 safety of peptides, especially ones that are bought through the internet, and come from overseas.<\/p>\n

Watch the full episode of 60 Minutes on 9Now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the believers, peptides are a modern medical miracle, the easy answer to so many health concerns. Want…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":765648,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-765647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=765647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/765648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}