Is shining a red light device on your testicles the best way to boost testosterone? What about injecting BPC-157 to heal a shoulder injury or speed up your mitochondria?
One in three Americans now use ChatGPT or some other AI chatbot for health advice, leaping past institutional medicine and into the world of health and wellness consumer products and life hacks. The medical establishment will, of course, express its concern about patients ditching the bureaucracy of insurance and scheduling office appointments for influencer tips and biohacking blogs, but this tension has always existed in public health.
The Consumer in the Driver’s Seat
We see it with the booming category of wearable health technology, the rapid mainstreaming of GLP-1 medications for weight loss, recreational use of cannabis and nicotine as a performance enhancer, kratom derivatives like 7-OH as an alternative to traditional opioids, and even the growing use of injectable and pill-form peptides for recovery or injury prevention. For each of these categories, our health regulations are stuck in the last century.
Consider the speed. Some 46% of Americans now own a health wearable, and medical-grade tools like continuous glucose monitors are sold directly to consumers. Nearly 1 in 8 American adults has used a GLP-1 drug, with prescriptions more than tripling since 2020.
Everyday, crafty innovators are launching apps and services that integrate with AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, or even self-hosted AI models to give better context on their health stats, blood panels, symptoms, using consumers’ own subscriptions and data for maximum security.
Regulation over Prohibition
Daily cannabis users now outnumber daily alcohol drinkers for the first time. Smoking has fallen below 10% for the first time on record as Americans switch from cigarettes to flavored nicotine vaping devices and pouches. Injectable peptides, many sold on the grey market that regulators struggle to classify, ride alongside a peptide therapeutics sector now worth roughly $140 billion.
Rather than become victims in the opioid crisis driven by drugs like fentanyl, Americans are increasingly turning to natural products like kratom and kratom derivatives like 7-OH for chronic pain relief and anxiety, products that are much less bioavailable, and thus less harmful, than traditional opioids.
Nearly 2 billion servings have been consumed with few adverse events reported, but rather than understand the demand signal, politicians and health regulators are moving to ban these products and restrict them in the same way as heroin.
Peptide Fever
Injectable peptides, chains of amino acids that act as signaling molecules in the body, have boomed in recent years. Through an extensive grey market, providers claim these peptides can address all types of health concerns, improvements, and have become popular “stacks” in biohacking. Social media influencers, celebrities, and tech CEOs have flaunted advertising bans to promote them to their users online.
Some are compounded versions of popular GLP-1 weight-loss drugs that have either already been approved by the FDA or are in final trials, while others are compounds that have been widely used in alternative health and bodybuilding communities for decades, and have more recently seen uptake in Silicon Valley.
In 2022, during a a recognized shortage of the GLP-1 drugs Semaglutide and Tirzepatide, the FDA briefly green-lit the ability of compounding pharmacies to make their own versions and offer them to consumers. But since those shortages were lifted in 2024 and 2025, many have continued regardless, raising several safety and health information concerns, particularly when it comes to the quality and sourcing of the ingredients.
The research on most of these peptides (apart from GLP-1s) is scant, but several do have long histories of both animal and human trials, albeit often for different uses.
The FDA has indicated it may provide a legal path for a variety of peptides, including BPC-157, Ipamorelin, and GHK-Cu. Millions of Americans have been buying and selling versions of these peptides through imported stock in China, and the craze is only gaining steam. Will regulators provide enough clarity to mandate clear testing and labeling to protect consumers while also ensuring innovations are protected and secured to offer benefits?
The Personalized Health Revolution
It’s not hard to see where this began. The fallout from overzealous and politically charged COVID policies eroded trust in the health establishment. Consumers now make personalized health decisions based on social media information and research that open markets have democratized, regardless of whether those decisions comply with existing regulations.
Americans are no longer waiting for public health advisories to tell them how to live. They are wearing instant health sensors, managing glucose and weight with smart tech, switching from smoke to nicotine pouches, choosing cannabis over alcohol, and experimenting with peptide compounds that regulators can barely classify. It’s a genuine personalized health revolution, powered more by accessible technology and innovation than by medical advice alone.
The contrast with the old model is stark. For decades now, governments and well-funded NGOs have spent billions trying to get people to quit cigarettes. Michael Bloomberg’s philanthropies alone poured more than $1.58 billion into global tobacco control since 2005, and UN agencies built model legislation, rewarding compliant countries with health grants. Yet all that effort has been dwarfed by products sold in the marketplace: flavored vaping products and nicotine pouches that deliver nicotine at a tiny fraction of the harm.
Sweden, embracing these alternatives, is about to become the world’s first smoke-free country, with the lowest lung cancer rate in Europe and 44% lower tobacco-related mortality than the EU average.
Regulators Need to Catch Up
Catching up doesn’t mean cracking down. Regulators need to get comfortable measuring relative risk instead of demanding abstinence or Bryan Johnson-style clean living. Approval processes’ lanes shouldn’t hold safer products to a higher standard than the dangerous ones they replace, and regulation should inform consumers rather than outlaw what they want.
Even supposed allies fall short. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has carried the spiritual mantle for personalized health, seen using nicotine pouches, praising injectable peptides, and inverting the food pyramid. But too much of his tenure has been spent litigating past battles and inviting new controversies, whether on vaccines or boosting bogus lawsuits linking Tylenol to autism. Instead of setting smarter guidelines that empower consumers to manage their own health, Kennedy has built a new health establishment in an alternative reality.
The health revolution is already here, and Americans found it first. The only question now is whether regulators will ever bother to catch up.
For the consumers who want choice, are embracing innovation, and want to supercharge their own health decisions, the Consumer Choice Center stands ready to fight and empower you.