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Comment by declan_roberts | Hacker News Reader

If you're overweight or especially if you're T2D I highly encourage you to discuss GLP-1 with your doctor. If you're T2D then get research retatrutide which looks to be an actual cure for T2D by clearing liver fat. It should be released early next year but research-use is available and what everybody is taking. Companies like finnrick do public testing of research peptides and a good place to gather names.

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I hope Retatrutide pans out but encouraging people to hop on research chemicals when we already have drugs that can get lots of T2D people into remission is a stretch too far. Let's wait for the actual medicines to be produced by legitimate manufacturers instead of ordering grey market peptides from some nameless whoever with zero liability. This is absolutely not on the right side of the risk-reward equation. Mounjaro is more than good enough.

I’m on tirzepatide right now from Eli lily, and I’ve been very interested in Reta, but I can’t say that I jump at the chance to inject something into myself that hasn’t been tested directly on the actual thing I’m about to put into my body. I know there are testing companies that will test certain sources but it’s not like they’ve tested the vial you get. If there’s some kind of pathogen or bacteria or whatever in the vial you get, well, there’s no recourse: it was “for research use only”. That seems like an unacceptable risk, but I see so many people on the internet claiming miraculous results. Maybe if I knew someone in real life, but I know those biohacking subreddits and such are astroturfed to no end by companies looking to sell sketchy peptides.

That's a common and very acceptable concern and there's not great answers for it. Mostly a place will do multi-vail testing for purity, sterility, endotoxin and heavy metals. The idea is that the sample is sufficient to show safety. Many are rightfully dubious of this but still thousand and thousands of people taking it.

I'm using reta myself, but honestly it's because sema/tirz isn't allowed for me either. If you have medical tirz available, you should have some serious reasons to jump into the unregulated shark tank.

How has it been treating you? Do you keep muscle mass without having to hit 1g/lb of protein intake daily?

Haven't measured it exactly, but haven't noticed a reduction in my lifts either.

I do have a home gym, throttled my marathon training and try my best with Skyr and protein shakes though.

Any idea if a pill form will be available in the future?

Pill form is only available for regular GLP-1, not the double (tirzepatide) and triple agonist (retatrutide).

A lot of us in tech have CVS Caremark as our pharmacy benefit manager and they will cover Zepbound (tirzepatide) for weight loss in the Fall.

The problem is I'm too skinny now to get it!

> I know there are testing companies that will test certain sources but it’s not like they’ve tested the vial you get.

It's why you order a decent amount of it (e.g. 2 years supply, it lasts forever in a freezer) and pay for your own randomized testing of the batch you got. You go direct to the source, not via the middle men selling it for 10x markup on a per-vial basis.

Certainly not perfect, and it adds significant cost - but still way cheaper than the regular sources via pharmacy for Zepbound.

I'm not convinced reta really shows that greater of results than tirz though. YMMV significantly here. Tirz is already so effective you are chasing marginal gains for the most part.

It causes less muscle loss/wasting which is a huge benefit over Tirz.

Semaglutide cleared my liver fat and fixed my moderate NAFLD in a matter of months. Why is retatrutide necessary?

Semaglutide clears liver fat? I had no idea. I’m curious to know more about your protocol

My protocol was to take semaglutide

As a consequence I ate less. Weirdly, I think I eat more sugar now but my total calorie intake is lower. I eat more sugar because sometimes it's the only thing that seems palatable or I'm trying to counteract the hypoglycemia feelings.

I have this same reaction sometimes, I don't have the desire to eat a full meal with protein and fat, but a little candy is palatable. It's probably not a good idea overall to be honest, it would be better to just "save up" hunger for a more balanced meal.

Retatrutide has a specific mechanism for clearing liver fat (glucagon) which makes it one of the most effective ways to treat T2D. This is the 3rd agonist not found in semaglutide or tirzepatide.

Honestly this is overrated.

Getting the person to a caloric deficit is already 90% of the work. And that will make glucagon rise

Might be a noob question. What does the liver and clearing of fat have to do with inability of body to clear the sugar from blood?

Are you implying the medicine did it or does the medicine just make you eat less which cleared it? Like is there an MOA of the drug itself?

Yes the medicine does it. It's attacking T2D via several pathways, but in the case of Reta the glucagon is doing the heavy lifting of clearing liver fat.

This extra receptor is why Reta is a triple agonist unlike semaglutide (single glp1) or tirzepatide (glp1+gip double agonist).

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