GHK-Cu injections: what I actually noticed

This page has two halves. The top half is what happened when I used GHK-Cu on myself here in Thailand, which is the only part I can vouch for. The bottom half is the questions that bring most people to a page like this: can I mix it myself, how much, injection or cream. I’ll answer those with what I do, not with instructions.

Jump to: Why I tried it · What happened · Am I still on it? · Mixing it myself · The dose question · Injection or cream · Downsides · Who it isn’t for · What I was told it does

Why I tried it

Not for my skin, and not for anything in particular. The rule I started with ten years ago is still the one I live by: we don’t offer anything we haven’t tried on ourselves first. GHK-Cu was on the list, so it went through me like everything else did. I didn’t expect anything from it.

What happened

I inject it. Somewhere around two to four weeks in, two things had changed.

The first was the acne on my arms and my back. It cleared, and it cleared very fast.

The second was my skin more generally. It had a glow to it and it looked younger, and people started commenting.

The only thing on the other side of the ledger was some redness or irritation where I’d injected, now and then.

That’s all of it. And “I was fine” is not the same sentence as “you’ll be fine.”

What I didn’t expect

That anything would happen at all. I started because of a rule, not a goal, so the arms and back were a surprise.

The other thing worth knowing before anything else: the Cu in the name is copper. GHK-Cu isn’t just a peptide, it’s a copper complex. That’s why most of the list further down about who it isn’t for comes back to copper.

Am I still on it?

It’s one I come back to. I use peptides in cycles, and never more than two or three at a time, depending on what my body needs at that point. GHK-Cu is in that rotation. This cycle, it’s resting. Why only two or three is on the peptides page.

The questions I actually get

Can I just mix it myself?

I mix my own. But I only mix from vials whose source I can check. What I don’t do is mix powder that turned up from somewhere I can’t check.

The powder was never the hard part. The hard part is everything around it: what’s actually in the vial, what the water is, and whether anything got in that shouldn’t have. None of those are peptide questions. They’re questions about where it came from. That’s where I landed. I’m not telling you where to land.

How much do you take?

There’s no number on this page, and that’s deliberate. A dose isn’t something you copy off somebody else’s website. The amount that’s right for me isn’t the amount that’s right for you. It’s a different body, a different reason for being here, and different things you’re already taking. That’s a conversation, not a line on a web page.

Injection or the cream?

I inject. I’ve never used the topical version, so I don’t have a view on it. I can only tell you about the one I’ve done.

How long before you noticed anything?

Weeks, not days. For me it was two to four weeks. If you’re after something you feel the same evening, this isn’t it.

Did it do anything for your hair?

I don’t know. I didn’t use it for my hair and I wasn’t watching it. I’m not going to build a story out of something I didn’t pay attention to.

What are the downsides?

What I was told to expect: mild redness or irritation where you inject, skin that’s more sensitive for a while, and occasionally headache or tiredness, which isn’t common. What I had myself was the first one, now and then. That’s not a promise about you.

Who it isn’t for

This is the list I was given, more or less as I got it: pregnancy or breastfeeding; a known copper metabolism disorder (Wilson’s disease is the one that gets named); active cancer, or being in the middle of chemotherapy; severe liver or kidney disease; and anyone who has reacted to copper peptides before.

I was also told there aren’t well-established studies on how injectable GHK-Cu interacts with other things. So these are worth saying out loud to whoever is looking after you: copper supplements or high-dose antioxidants, hormone therapies, and any other injectable peptides or regenerative treatments you’ve got running.

What I was told it does

I’m not going to explain the biology in my own words, because it isn’t mine to explain. What I was told is that GHK-Cu stands for glycyl-L-histidyl-L-lysine copper. It’s a copper peptide that occurs naturally in the body, and it has been studied a great deal for its role in skin regeneration and tissue repair.

The explanation I was given is that it supports:

skin regeneration
the production of collagen and elastin
wound healing and tissue repair
hair growth
calming inflammation, and acting as an antioxidant
cellular repair and rejuvenation more broadly

What I can vouch for is what happened in my own body, above. It’s a much shorter list than that one.

If you’d rather read the papers than read me, these are the ones I was given:

Pickart L, et al. The human copper peptide GHK-Cu in skin regeneration and anti-aging
Maquart FX, et al. Stimulation of collagen synthesis by the tripeptide copper complex GHK-Cu
Hostynek JJ, et al. Copper peptides in tissue repair and wound healing
Pickart L & Margolina A. GHK-Cu: From regeneration to anti-inflammation

Everything above happened in my body. Yours will write its own version.

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I’m George. Thirty years in business, then ten years trying this whole field on myself before offering it to anyone else.

This is where I write down what I use, what I stopped using, and what I’d never do again. More about me →

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