The Dangers of the GLP Grey Market
Mar 16, 2026
Welcome to the 3rd Part of our 4 Part Series on GLP Medications in Physical Therapy.
Bottom-line:
- GLP-1 medications can be pricey and our PT clients might be going to many lengths to lose weight by buying GLP meds in grey markets.
- Prior FDA authorization permitted some compounding pharmacies to sell peptides at a discounted price, but now that has changed and many online providers are selling unregulated peptides.
- Such unregulated peptides have had low purity percentages, driven up poison control emergency calls, and been connected to some major adverse events and allergies.
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Transcript:
Dr. Wells back again from St. Augustine Beach. Another beautiful day. We're doing our third video of 4 on GLP medications, and today we're going to talk about the gray markets of GLP medications. So early days of GLP medications like semiglutide, they were used for patients that had diabetes. They were injectables. They had good results.
[00:22-01:09]
Then suddenly, Monjorno and some of these Other medications started rolling out for obesity and weight loss. And once those hit the market, they become so popularized with the demand, the prices went way through the roof. So now I've had some of my patients say, I'm paying a thousand dollars a month through insurance. to get this medication to help me lose weight and so some of them can't afford it so what do they do they go kind of to these off-market sites right because while they're trying to develop generics a lot of the medication companies are trying to keep those patents around and preventing those generics from being developed as of yet so a couple of years back, people could get GLP like substances or GLP actual like GLP compounds from compounding pharmacies.
[01:09-02:46]
And then the FDA stepped in and said, absolutely not. Can't do that anymore. Basically, we're eating into the profits of some of these pharmaceutical companies. Right. So what's happened now are that people are going online or some of our patients are going online and purchasing GLP medications from warehouses and labs. effectively uh basically buying them sort of off the shelf and illegally per se through online sources well what's the issue with that well according to a twenty twenty four study the actual purity of some of these compounds is anywhere from 7.7 to 14.3 percent in this sample from this this study uh that's definitely concerning because you can see that if you're not getting the right dose you could have adverse effects or you may try to take more right well the other other issues patients have tried other medications like say or excuse me supplements like berberine we talked about this in our second video berberine helps with the insulin response it can help a lower blood sugar some people say it's sort of like the natural glp but it really isn't it acts on a different completely different pathway and so what patients sometimes will do is double up they'll they'll have berberine or this gray market glp or the gray market glp is just berberine right and so they don't really know what they're getting and that's the issue with not having that regulation and and inspection so what does this mean well poison control calls over the last several years are up over one thousand percent uh related to complications from GLP, particularly injections and mixing.
[02:47-03:11]
So some of these patients are getting powder and they're mixing them with like, you know, sterile water to try to inject themselves and they're mistaking micrograms for milligrams and whoops, I'm getting way too much and suddenly I'm sick. There's also been case reports of patients having strong allergic reactions. This was recently in the news. And I also had a fellow family member who also had a very strong allergic reaction to one of these medications.
[03:11-03:44]
So in the end, the safety profile of some of these gray market peptides just are not there. And I really caution patients and physical therapists that their patients may be checking these things out and they need to understand, A, there's some safety concerns, B, There are sometimes other avenues. I found on GoodRx.com and another cash pay website that they can actually offer some of those first line medications like Wegovy and semiglutide for 99 dollars to 129 dollars per month at a cash rate.
[03:44-04:03]
So again, if you don't go through insurance, you might get it at a cheaper price. Again, 99 to 129. That may be still too much for some of our patients. So I get that that that may be expensive. However, that's probably a safer route than trying to pay, you know, 75 bucks online and getting something that isn't the right dose or possibly isn't the right compound at all.
[04:03-04:21]
if you like this content, like subscribe, check us out at WWW nutritional physical therapy dot com. We have board approved nutritional physical therapy courses. And stay tuned for our fourth and final video of this series, which will be on the long term results of GLP. Have a great day.
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