Healing from injury is a complex natural activity that requires numerous processes, hormones, and endogenous responses to work in concert for optimal recovery.
Regenerative peptides are able to exert powerful healing effects because, among other things, they are able to optimize natural healing processes by enhancing specific activities critical to wound repair.
Indeed, the two most effective healing peptides, TB-500 and BPC-157, are derived directly from natural healing factors. In addition to mimicking the effects of vital recovery agents, these peptides also enhance those natural healing processes crucial to recovery.
Here, we will examine one of these key processes and the natural protein by which it is regulated.
Angiogenesis and the Recovery Process
One of the most crucial factors influencing injury recovery is blood vessel formation and maintenance, also referred to as angiogenesis. As nutrients critical to both healthy tissue functioning and wound repair are transported in the bloodstream, blood vessels form the natural pathways which enable their passage to tissues in need.
Angiogenesis is one of the fundamental processes that aids healing and recovery after injuries of all types, not only severe musculoskeletal traumas such as broken bones or torn ligaments.
For example, higher rates of angiogenesis are observable in muscles stressed by training stimulus. The increased blood vessel formation creates more pathways for crucial nutrients to reach the exercised muscles, healing microtrauma and repairing the tissue even stronger than before.
As a result, it is a vital process for facilitating progress in performance animals.
Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF)
Angiogenesis is regulated by numerous chemical messengers. One of the most powerful and important of these is a signaling molecule known as vascular endothelial growth factor, or VEGF.
While this protein has numerous variants that can vary among animal species, VEGF is nonetheless critical to the health of all animals.
By promoting new blood vessel creation, endothelial cell migration, and vascular penetrability, it is a vital factor influencing healing and growth. For instance, VEGF is largely responsible for the repair of muscle tissue via angiogenesis described in the previous example.
There are several types of vascular endothelial growth factors. These include VEGF-A through VEGF-D, VEGF-E (present only in certain animals), and placental growth factor or PlGF, which stimulates blood vessel production in developing embryos.
All VEGFs exert their effects by binding to specific receptors, called VEGFRs; the two main receptors are referred to as VEGFR-1 and VEGFR-2.
VEGF-A is the primary endothelial growth factor that binds to both VEGFR-1 and -2. Once linked to these receptors, the protein stimulates new blood vessel production, increased vascular permeability, enhanced cell migration, and up-regulated gene expression. Again, these key processes drive wound healing and repair, assisting recovery and defending areas under stress from injury.
Concurrently, BPC-157 has been shown to increase the expression of VEGFR-2, further enhancing its regenerative effects.
Recovery Peptides and Angiogenesis
Both TB-500 and BPC-157 have been shown to increase angiogenesis in damaged musculoskeletal tissue. By enhancing this essential, natural healing process in wounded areas, both peptides are able to promote faster recovery times and better protection against injury.
While TB-500 will promote recovery systemically, or throughout the entire animal regardless of the site of administration, BPC-157 exhibits a more localized effect. Therefore, it is good practice to administer it as close as safely possible to the location of the injury.
While both peptides are very effective healing agents in their own right, administering them in combination (such as in the product PROHEALIX™) results in a potent synergistic effect, providing maximum strength repair and recovery.