Q: “I’m interested in TB-500. A few times I’ve used GH to treat injuries, and it seemed like healing rate was improved. But now I have chronic forearm tendinitis which isn’t going away. It’s interfering with my lifting. If GH is helping this time, it’s not helping enough. Also, my dad has chronic muscle tightness and pain in his rotator cuff, though he is strong in all the exercises. Years of massage therapy has given him major improvements but he never gets fully healed. His MRI reveals only tendinitis, but his massage therapist says the muscles have trauma damage. Could TB-500 help heal these conditions?”
A: In many but not all instances, TB-500 has given remarkable benefits for such cases. I very much think it’s worth trying.
TB-500 is a synthetic peptide related to the hormone thymosin beta-4. That hormone is widely present in low levels in the body and can have profound positive effects on wound healing. These healing effects can occur in at least muscle, tendons, ligaments, skin, the heart, and the eye. It’s produced in higher concentration where tissue damage has occurred. Part of how it produces benefit is that myocytes and myoblast cells are attracted to the site of injury and aid healing. Another part is that thymosin beta-4 is potently anti-inflammatory.
It’s fair to call thymosin beta-4 one of the body’s key natural means of promoting healing.
Protein hormones such as thymosin beta-4 are very large molecules. They’re so large they cannot fit entirely into the receptors of cells. Instead, a small section of the hormone will fit into the receptor. Different sections can have different activities. It’s been learned that useful effects can be achieved by short peptide chains matching these sections, without need of the entire large protein.
TB-500 closely matches a short section of thymosin beta-4. This short section has been found to provide at least most of the benefits of the complete thymosin beta-4 molecule, and is more readily manufactured. For healing injury, TB-500 may be just as effective as thymosin beta-4. Certainly, TB-500 has far more of a practical track record, as many have used it while few if any have used the entire thymosin beta-4 hormone.
An ordinary course of use is about 4 or 5 mg per week, for example at 2 mg twice per week, taken for 4 to 6 weeks. Where an injury has been really chronic, this is typically followed by maintenance use at a lesser rate. There’s no standard method so far as I know, but in my opinion 1 mg per week is reasonable.
It would not be able to do anything to correct structural problems with the rotator cuff, but fortunately it sounds as if your dad has no such issue. It’s possible TB-500 might reduce his chronic inflammation, and it might promote normalization of the affected muscle tissue. And it might well help your body heal your tendinitis.
It doesn’t work in all cases, but the reasonable chance of success makes it well worth considering.
