✅ Today’s Checklist:
🤔 Trivia: What was the first music video ever played on MTV? Find out.
🧠 Estrogen-only hormone therapy was tied to 39% lower odds of dementia in a new study.
🫂 Five support strategies beat the advice you’re itching to give a struggling friend.
💪 How long can you hang from a bar? Your grip may be a longevity clue.
🍐 Pears, parsnips, and pomegranates: what’s in season this fall.
Peptides have moved from bodybuilding forums to your group chat, and critics and fans can’t agree on whether they’re dangerous or life-changing. Whether you take them is personal, and it should be an informed call.
What are peptides?
Short chains of amino acids your body already makes that act like text messages between cells: heal this tissue, release that hormone, we’ve had enough to eat. Insulin is one, and so are GLP-1s. The FDA has approved around 100 peptide drugs, and most are injected because digestion breaks them down.
Are they legal?
Yes, with an asterisk. Semaglutide, tirzepatide, tesamorelin, and PT-141 are FDA-approved prescriptions. Everything else is sold as “research use only,” which is legal to buy but not approved for people. An FDA advisory panel just recommended loosening rules on six peptides so pharmacies could compound them with a prescription, and the politics have turned into a genuine showdown. It’s the medical marijuana arc, except cannabis had centuries of human use. Some of these peptides have little more than animal data, and researchers are openly uneasy.
How to get them
For GLP-1s, go through a provider like Ro, Midi, RemedyMeds, Henry, or Collective, which pools members’ buying power to lower pricing. Midi Health also covers peptides alongside hormone therapy for perimenopause and menopause.
For research-grade peptides (only if you understand the risks), insist on U.S. manufacturing, a cGMP facility, and a third-party Certificate of Analysis for your batch. Simple Peptides and Alpha Biologix are two options. A COA confirms what’s in the vial, but it can’t tell you it’s safe or that your dose is right.
For topical, peptide skincare is the zero-needle entry point, with none of the sourcing questions. Either way, tell your doctor so they can flag interactions.
What they’re used for
Innerbody’s chart has the full list. The short version:
Weight loss: semaglutide, tirzepatide, tesamorelin
Muscle, recovery, and inflammation: BPC-157, TB4, sermorelin, ipamorelin, CJC-1295
Sleep and longevity: ipamorelin, CJC-1295, sermorelin
Also popular: GHK-Cu for skin, PT-141 for libido, and glutathione
Why women are using them
GLP-1s went mainstream for weight loss and are being tested for heart disease and Alzheimer’s. Menopause is a big driver, since falling estrogen hits sleep, skin, recovery, and libido at once. GLP-1s also target the insulin resistance behind many PCOS cases, and topicals handle the appearance side, no apology needed.
Your call
Peptides range from rigorously studied to barely tested, and the regulation is moving faster than the science, so know which end you’re standing on.
This is informational and not medical advice. Talk to a provider before starting any injectable.
You know the message. “Hey, quick question…” It’s the third one today, and you answered the same thing last Tuesday (and the Tuesday before that).
Being the go-to person is flattering right up until it eats your calendar. Every “can you walk me through it again?” pulls you out of real work, and nobody’s writing “answered 14 Slack pings about expense reports” on your review.
Tango handles the repeats. Add the free Chrome extension, do the task the way you normally would, and it turns every click into a step-by-step guide with screenshots. You don’t write or format a thing.
Next time someone asks, just send a Tango. They get the exact steps and learn it right the first time, and you get your afternoon back. HR leads use it to onboard new hires, and ops teams use it so processes stop living in one person’s head.
I manage my family’s duplex, and for the last two years we couldn’t build ANYTHING on it because of a parcel problem with the city. When my great-grandmother wrote her trust decades ago, one tiny 10-by-10 piece of land got added at the last minute and never made it into the documents. The attorney didn’t know it existed, so nobody caught it. Twenty-something years later, it became our problem.
That one missing detail has cost us at least $5K in attorney fees and around $30K in potential rent plus the special kind of tension that shows up when your father and aunt own property together and yours truly is the trustee 🫠.
Even with that mistake, the trust did its job. It protected the property, it let us apply for exemptions instead of drowning in property tax, and it kept generational wealth inside the family. An imperfect plan still beat having no plan at all.
It has nothing to do with how rich you are
More than half of Americans don’t have any estate planning documents, usually because they procrastinate or don’t know where to start. A lot of us assume this stuff is for old people or rich people. But if you own anything at all, a car, a savings account, a pet you’d want looked after, or you love anyone who’d have to clean up after you, you need a plan.
I know it sounds morbid, but it’s genuinely one of the most loving gifts you can leave the people who outlive you. There is nothing more precious than handing the people you love the time and freedom to simply grieve, instead of being buried in paperwork and court dates while they’re already heartbroken.
You really don’t have to overthink it
Start by getting clear on the basics: who you’d want to inherit what, who you trust to make decisions if you can’t, a rough list of your assets and debts, and your health-care wishes. If the whole trust-versus-will question makes your eyes glaze over, here’s a plain-English breakdown.
✅ I made a checklist of everything to gather so you’re not staring at a blank page.
AI prompt to try today
Open ChatGPT or Claude and paste: “Act as an estate planning guide. Ask me one question at a time about my family, my assets, and my wishes, then draft a plain-English outline of what my will, trust, powers of attorney, and health-care directive should each cover, plus a checklist of what to bring to a lawyer.”
📝 I’ve created a fuller version of this prompt right here.
That gets you organized. To make it official, find a good estate planning attorney, and know that you don’t need a big-name firm. Look for a solo or boutique practice where estate planning is at least half of what they do, and ask for a flat fee so there are no billing surprises. Word of mouth works, and Reddit is surprisingly great for local recommendations too.
If the full package feels like too much right now, ask about phasing it: start with a will, power of attorney, and health-care directive, then add the trust down the road.
I’m not a lawyer, just a trustee who has lived the cost of a small oversight. Put this on the calendar this month.
Future-you, and everyone who loves you, will be so glad you did.
Thania (TA Content Mgr)
If your skin feels drier than it used to, more water and more moisturizer probably won’t fix it. As skin ages, it loses collagen, elastin, hyaluronic acid, and barrier strength, which is what gives it the density to hold moisture in the first place.
Most creams hydrate the surface for a few hours. OneSkin’s new OS-01 FACE RICH CREAM pairs deep hydration with its proprietary OS-01 Peptide™, which targets the visible effects of aging cells so skin gets better at holding onto water over time.
In lab studies, the formula increased measured collagen by 28% and elastin by 108%.* In a 12-week clinical study of women 43 to 65, hydration rose 38%. It’s fragrance-free, gentle enough for sensitive skin, and comes with a 30-day risk-free trial.
📧 Positive DONUT is a free weekly newsletter for optimism, gratitude, and warm fuzzies.
💊 Seed’s DS-01 survives your stomach acid to actually reach your gut (25% off with code ASSIST25).
📚 The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros still hits decades later.
💵 Answer a few questions, then book a free video consult with an advisor matched to your life stage.
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👩🍳 Recipe of the Week: One-Pot Gnocchi Chicken Pot Pie (thanks to TA reader, Kaitlin P., for sharing!).
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