Got my surgery in March. By week 8 I was cleared for BPC, ran 250mcg 2x daily subq near the site. Four week cycle. Didn’t jump into a blend bc I wanted to isolate the variable, know what actually helped. Before starting I logged ROM numbers. Internal rotation, external rotation, abduction. Degrees matter. Most people eyeball it and miss real progress. By week 2, inflammation dropped visibly. My PT noticed it. By week 4, external rotation ticked 8 degrees. That’s measurable, not vibes. Could a blend have done better? Maybe. But I proved what BPC alone does. If I add something later, I’ll know what came from what. That’s how you actually test. Talk to your surgeon first. PT homework is doing 90% of the work anyway.
wow, tracking degrees sounds pretty thorough, tbh. did you find that keeping a diary of the reps was just as important as the peptides themselves, or was it really the compounds doing the heavy lifting?
This is basically the only methodology that makes sense and almost no one follows it. “Degrees matter, not vibes” is exactly right. fwiw I ran plantar fascia BPC last year and kept the same approach, isolated the variable first, had baseline measurements before I touched anything. Eight degrees external rotation at week 4 post-surgery is meaningful data. The people stacking four things on day one and calling it evidence are just guessing w/ extra steps.
Diary is how you know what’s actually happening. Compounds? They’re support, not the engine. PT is what’s rebuilding that cuff. I ran BPC, dropped inflammation a bit, got measurable ROM improvement, but if I’d skipped the rehab work, the peptide alone does nothing. You could dose perfectly and still waste weeks without PT. The diary kept me honest. Showed me the 8 degree jump that proved the protocol worked, not just me thinking it worked. Numbers don’t lie. That’s the difference between real recovery and vibes.
The PT noticing the inflammation drop without being told what you were running is the kind of external validation most people skip entirely. Blinded observer, basically. That detail matters more than you might think for your own confidence in the result. Eight degrees of external rotation gain in four weeks is also not nothing, functionally. That’s the range where most shoulder impingement lives. Whether BPC drove it or PT drove it or the combination drove it, you at least know what the isolated BPC contribution looks like now.
tbh that sounds proper thorough, tracking all the degrees. idk if i’d have been able to keep up with that level of detail, honestly. it makes me wonder how much of the improvement is actually the compound and how much is just me finally getting some decent sleep or something.
This is exactly how you test. Most people stack compounds before they even have a baseline, then can’t tell what actually moved the needle. You’ve got measurable ROM gain and that’s what counts. Real question though: after four weeks, are you rolling into a second cycle or stopping? I’m running my second BPC stacked with TB right now, and second cycles usually respond faster. Weekly PT tracking really shows the difference if you go again. You’re right that PT is doing most of the work. I’ve watched too many people drop money on peptides and skip teh actual rehab. You’re not that guy.
imo.
Look, this. ROM in degrees, not vibes, that’s the only way to know what worked. Ran BPC sub-q eight weeks on my shoulder, six to two, take that for what it’s worth. PT’s the engine though.
This is the right call. You’re doing what most guys won’t, actually measuring instead of guessing. The ROM numbers tell the story way better than ‘shoulder feels better.’ i did something similar with my BPC last year, started with 250mcg and tracked pain on a 1-10 scale, nothing fancy. Six weeks in, PT said the same thing yours did: inflammation visibly down. Didn’t stack anything else in that window, couldn’t tell what was helping if I had. PT is doing the heavy lifting though, you nailed it. The BPC just speeds up what the hard work’s already doing. Smart move talking to your surgeon first too, most guys skip that.
Running the same protocol on my own shoulder right now, non-surgical but PT-confirmed partial thickness tear. Also went isolation first for exactly this reason. The ROM logging is the piece most people skip. I’ve been using a goniometer app because I don’t trust eyeball estimates across weeks, and my PT was genuinely surprised I was tracking degrees and not just “feels better.” External rotation improvement at 4 weeks is a real signal. That’s not placebo range. One thing I’d add: the inflammation reduction you noticed by week 2 tracks with what the mechanism literature suggests, which is mostly angiogenesis and tendon fibroblast upregulation, not acute anti-inflammatory in the NSAID sense. So the timeline makes biological sense, not just anecdotal sense. The “isolate the variable first” principle is honestly underrated in this space. Everyone wants to stack immediately and then has no idea which compound is doing what when something goes sideways. Did your PT know you were running BPC or were you keeping that separate?
you tucked 90% into PT adn didn’t think about what that means. if therapy’s driving most of the recovery, the 8 degrees doesn’t prove BPC did anything. you measured better than most guys, but one variable doesn’t isolate when something else is doing the heavy lifting. next time with a blend you might actually learn something.
the ROM-in-degrees approach is genuinely right on - most people don’t bother with objective measurement. but i’d push back on 4 weeks being enough to say ‘proved.’ ran 8 weeks on my shoulder and week 4 felt like ‘okay, this is helping,’ but weeks 5-7 is where the real depth showed, not just incremental gains. ymmv. did you keep measuring after week 4?