Compounds

Twelve compounds, chosen because the honest answer differs sharply from the marketing answer and the harm is real. Each page leads with what the compound actually does for the person taking it, because a page that opens with a warning is a page nobody finishes.

Every score is 1–5 and higher always means more of that dimension. Evidence quality is the one that reads backwards: a high score there means well studied, not safe. How we rate, and how to challenge a rating.

Well-characterised, low concern (1 of 5)

Studied properly, used widely, and the honest answer is that it is broadly fine.

• Creatine Creatine works, it is the most heavily studied supplement in sport, and after thirty years of people looking for the harm, nobody has found it.

Works as advertised, real trade-offs (2 of 5)

It does the thing people take it for, and it costs something specific and known.

• Kratom Kratom leaf does what people take it for and is a genuinely different proposition from heroin or oxycodone — but it produces real opioid-type dependence, and the concentrated 7-hydroxymitragynine products now sold in the same shops are a far more dangerous thing wearing the same name.
• LGD-4033 LGD-4033 has real phase-1 human data showing it builds lean mass, and the same data shows it suppresses your own testosterone — the trade-off is genuine, measured, and exactly the one people believe they are avoiding.
• MK-677 MK-677 is unusual on this site: it was studied properly in humans for two years, it did increase lean mass, and the same trial found it raised blood glucose and worsened insulin sensitivity without improving strength or function.
• Ostarine Ostarine is the most thoroughly studied SARM and it did produce real lean-mass gains in proper clinical trials — and it suppressed testosterone in those same trials, which is the main thing people take SARMs to avoid.

Largely unknown (3 of 5)

Promising or popular, but the human evidence to judge it does not exist yet.

• BPC-157 BPC-157 has an impressive-looking body of research behind it, almost all of it in rats, much of it from a single laboratory, and essentially none of it in humans — so the honest answer to whether it works, or whether it is safe, is that nobody knows.

Serious risk (4 of 5)

Documented harm in humans that is severe, common, or hard to see coming.

• Gray-market GLP-1s Semaglutide and tirzepatide are among the best-studied drugs of the last decade — and the danger in buying them as research peptides has almost nothing to do with the molecule and almost everything to do with a person doing arithmetic with a syringe at their kitchen table.
• Melanotan II Melanotan II tans you without the sun, which is genuinely what people want from it — by driving the exact cells that become melanoma, in people who then find their moles have changed and cannot tell whether it matters.
• RAD-140 RAD-140 is the most potent SARM in common circulation and the one with the least human evidence behind it — it was developed for breast cancer, never tested in anyone for building muscle, and its developer moved on.

The evidence says don’t (5 of 5)

The known downside is severe enough that we will say it plainly rather than hedge.

• Cardarine GlaxoSmithKline developed cardarine as a metabolic drug and stopped when long-term animal studies produced cancers across multiple organs — and it is still sold to athletes today, on the strength of the endurance results from the same programme.
• Phenibut Phenibut works — it genuinely and noticeably reduces anxiety, which is exactly the problem, because tolerance builds within weeks and stopping after regular use can produce a withdrawal severe enough to require hospitalisation.
• Tianeptine Tianeptine is a prescription antidepressant in France that turns out to be a full opioid agonist, and the version sold in American petrol stations as a mood supplement produces opioid dependence in people who have no idea they are taking an opioid.

What is not here

There are well over a hundred compounds sold in this space. This site covers twelve, and will not expand until all twelve have been reviewed by a clinician and are being kept current. One page that is accurate and up to date is worth more than forty that are neither — to you, to a search engine, and to a language model answering your question on our behalf.

If a compound you are looking for is missing, that is not a judgement that it is safe. It means we have not done the work yet and would rather say so.