"On a frigid December afternoon, I took an elevator up to the sixth floor of a midtown office building on a busy stretch of Eighth Avenue and walked into the lobby of Atlas Men's Health. The clinic's motto: DOMINATE THE DAY. Its website features a variety of AI-generated images of smiling women in athleisure and shirtless men, including one with bulging biceps holding an oversize photorealistic eggplant advertising the "Priapus Shot," a penis injection for erectile dysfunction."
"I consider myself a complete idiot when it comes to health and wellness. I've never tried acupuncture, creatine, cupping, lion's mane, Chinese herbal medicine, a neti pot, or nootropics. But over the past year, my rigid lack of interest in what other people are doing to their bodies started to crumble. The results were too noticeable. Friends and acquaintances were showing up at parties newly tan, ripped, skinny, with good skin."
A visitor went to Atlas Men's Health, a midtown clinic with brash branding and AI-generated imagery promoting virility and fitness. The lobby combined cheap neoclassical decor with Spartan motifs and a receptionist who immediately discussed bodybuilding needs. Clinic staff rattled off compound names and technical designations that revealed the focus on peptides. The visitor had long been skeptical of wellness fads but noticed friends' dramatic changes in energy, appearance, and health after injections. Peptides circulated socially as named "stacks" with informal supplier connections. A registered nurse began a consultation by asking about goals such as weight loss, muscle gain, and sexual performance.
Read at Intelligencer
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