← The Hunter Williams Podcast
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Hey everybody, this is Hunter Williams. Hope you're doing amazing. Wherever you might be in the world today is going to be the masterclass on one of my favorite peptides, ghkcu. I will definitely say GHK is one of the more versatile peptides out there. A lot of people think of it as a skin and beauty peptide and although it is excellent for those things, it actually does so many more things than just skin and beauty. Hopefully today through the masterclass, you will have a solid grasp and understanding of all the different use cases of ghk as well as whether this is the best way to apply it, whether that's injection, topical microneedling, whatever, and we'll cover all those things. What I'm excited for is I think GHK is again one of those peptides. I don't think it's underutilized, but I think a lot of people don't realize all of the other benefits they would get beyond skin and beauty. Know that's a big priority for some people, probably less for others. And so for the people that typically just write it off as a beauty peptide today, hopefully you'll have a much more comprehensive understanding of what it does and how to apply it. You might notice in this video, if you're watching the video, I'm actually standing up today. Wanted to try something a little bit different. I love standing while I'm working. I usually film sitting down, but today I was like, it'll probably end up being a longer video, I feel like standing up. So hopefully it looks okay and comes across okay in the video. But we'll see how it does. I'll probably go back to sitting and standing and sitting and standing and just rotating back and forth between those. But I guess I have ants in my pants today and wanted to stand up. So that's we're going to get into today. As always, make sure you're on the email list. That's the best place to avoid stuff censorship. And make sure you stay in touch with me also too if you want more access to me and the amazing members in my private community, the link will be down in the the major link below and you can join that. It's called Axion Collective. We have a lot of amazing people in there. We do live coaching calls every Thursday night at 8:00pm Eastern time. And also too you can privately message me if you have any questions. And then lastly, make sure you check out my AI tool. I think there's like 8 or 9,000 active users on there right now, which is pretty cool. You can interact with it. And again, it's just a way to ask questions about my content. And if you've ever wondered, hey, have you talked about this? It'll pull that up for you. So, without further ado, I'm going to share my screen and today we are going to cover the GHK Masterclass. All right, let's get into it. Today's going to be the GHK Master class, obviously. Ghk. Cu. The CU stands for copper. Copper Peptide, you've probably heard it called. Let's dig into it, because I think there's going to be a lot of cool things you might not have heard of before. Just as an overview, we're going to kind of go over the foundations, what GHK is, obviously, who is a good candidate for it, and then safety, because I think with this one, a lot of people worry about copper toxicity. So we'll address that, then we'll talk about some protocols and then obviously just some practical mastery, some troubleshooting, some FAQ and things like that as we get into it. But again, I don't always or I will never claim to have the gospel truth on any peptide stuff, but through this class today, I'm going to give you kind of my thoughts on it, what I've seen out in the wild, so to speak, and how to best use it. We look at GHK, just look at a foundational level. Basically, the GHK stands for glycyl L histil histidyl L lysine. Three amino acids chained together. The free peptide weighs around 340 daltons. So relative to other peptides, a little bit smaller and lighter. Roughly 19 water molecules worth of mass of featherweight in the peptide world, again, it's a lot lighter and smaller than some of those other ones, which makes it one of the ones that in terms of application, you can use transdermally to apply and get good results. The CU stands for copper. GHK has a strong affinity for copper ions, or when it binds one, it becomes the active molecule, ghkcu. Again, the copper is not an accident. Is the whole point of the peptide to get the the results. And it's basically a copper delivery vehicle with a long list of side jobs. So think about that. The GHK is the shuttle that gets the copper into where we want it. And again, GHK is endogenous. So it's one peptide that our own body makes. Typically, the levels are going to decline with age. I think typically we see around an 80% drop off, drop off in most humans between the age of 20 to 60 in terms of their levels declining over time. It's a natural component of human plasma, saliva and urine. And when you supplement GHK copper or GHK cu, you're not introducing something that the body is not used to. It's actually very used to using it. And again, it's why it works so well. And people love it because we already make it, just usually in less quantities. Like I said, around age 20, we typically have around 200 nanograms per milliliter of GHK in our blood. That's the peak circulating plasma concentration in most young adults. But by age 60, for most people, obviously this can vary slightly, but most people, their levels have declined by around 80 nanograms or declined to 80 nanograms per milliliter at age 60. So we see about a 60% decline. And again, that's typically what you will also see correlated with a drop in skin quality, wound healing and tissue resilience, which is why, again, GHK is one of those really cool peptides. Now, one of the bigger things that when we look at GHK, that is important to understand is the idea of gene expression. When we look at GHK, it's shifting the activity of approximately 4,000 different human genes. And the direction of that shift is broadly towards a younger, healthier cell. Again, we can rewrite DNA and we look at this, it's shifting the expression, a lot of DNA to a more youthful restorative state. Again, when we look at genes, DNA repairs gene, it, the DNA repairs genes. We have antioxidant gene cellular machinery that clears damaged proteins like autophagy and, and proteasome pathways. Then we have genes that go down. When we use ghk, we see inflammatory signaling genes, tissue destruction genes, and the molecular profile of aging and breakdown. So again, we see antioxidant genes go up and then inflammatory genes go down. And when we look at that, that's what's really cool at what GHK is doing. No other peptide in common really does anything like this. You'll see this in a lot of the bioregulators, but those are obviously not endogenous to the human body. But GHK is. GHK modulates around 31% of human genes by 50% or more. It's pretty cool. Think about that. Almost a third of all human genes are being modulated in an improved way by GHK, by about 50%, which is pretty cool. Obviously, the skin effects are what we know it for, but there's gonna be a lot of other things we'll talk about today that it does. Let's look at these copper dependent enzymes and how that plays a role in how GHK uses or basically creates an effect in the body. Copper is basically an essential trace metal. And three copper dependent enzymes are central to GHK's mechanism. And all three need copper delivered to the right place to function. First one is lyso oxidase, which basically cross links collagen and elastin, giving skin and connective tissue its strength and springiness, which is obviously where we see the skin improvement benefits. Then we have superoxide dismutase, which is a primary internal antioxidant enzyme that neutralizes damaging free radicals. You've probably seen this abbreviated S O D if you've listened to podcasts SOD superoxide dismutase. GHK is helping improve that and regulate that in the body. And then we have cytochrome C oxidase, which is part of the cellular machinery your cells used to produce energy, otherwise known as ATP. Basically we have, we have loose copper floating freely. It is toxic. However, GHK copper is one of the body's careful copper shuttles. It's. It picks up copper, delivers it across cell membranes and does so without leaving toxic free copper behind. Which is why it's so important and why it works so well again to have an effect on those enzymes to create better health. When we look at an analogy, you guys know that I love metaphors. And using metaphors to explain things. I kind of think of JHK as a building maintenance crew is doing two things simultaneously in aging tissue. One, we look at the raw materials. It delivers copper to the enzymes that need it to switching on lyso oxidase, superoxide dismutase and cytochrome C oxidase. We also have it as kind of working as a signaler or memo. It sends the gene expression signal that puts the repair crew back to work again, turning up repair genes and turning down destruction or inflammatory genes again. To sum that up, we think of GHK as basically delivering this raw material. Then once the raw material gets into the cell, it's sending these gene expression signals, say inflammation down. Good things go up again. We have the materials plus the instructions and which is why it, it's so versatile as a peptide that we can use to do so many different things. When we look at practical benefits in tissue. One, it quiets inflammation. Two, it stimulates fibroblast. It coordinates cellular and Tissue remodeling. It also recruits repair cells and then obviously, like we've talked about, delivers copper and again, very versatile there. How is it different from other peptides? Because when you're saying these things it sounds a lot like a BPC or TB500. Let's explain that. Obviously it's not a growth hormone peptide. It does not work like cjc, ipamorelin or Tessellin. Has nothing to do with the growth hormone axis or really any hormone access for that matter. I will talk about this a little bit later though. One thing that I've, I've seen in practice when it comes to reproductive hormones, so stay tuned for that. It's definitely not interchangeable with BPC and TB500. You guys have probably heard of the glow stack by now, which is bpc, TB and ghb. Ghk. Those are soft tissue injury workhorses working through local signaling and cell migration. GHK's core identity is more of a matrix remodeling and gene modulation, which is obviously a different mechanism, but it's why it pairs so well with those other other peptides. We don't really see, at least that we know now a gene modulation effect from BPC and TB500. However, we do see that with GHK. It's obviously not a metabolic peptide. Definitely not going to help you lose weight. I would even say for people that want a peptide for loose skin, it's not really going to do anything to help. Lose skin will not change your weight, appetite or energy the way a GLP one does. Again, it's generally one a kind. It has documented effects on skin, hair, wounds, bone, nerve, lung and brain regions. Plus raw gene modulation that nothing else in common usually replicates. Let's move on to who is a good candidate for ghk. I would definitely say out of all the peptides out there, this is really one that anyone, I, I would say practically speaking, anyone can take. Obviously this is all for research and entertainment purposes only, but I would say if you're, you're going to categorize it into four people that usually are going to see some good benefits. One, we have the aging skin person, which is usually anyone past their 30s or older, noticing thinner, less firm skin. It has the longest cosmetic track record of any peptide that we have out there. Then we have the recovery focused athlete. And again, I think this is where this is less understood and probably less applied for people pushing hard and wanting tissue to rebuild, rebuild faster. GHK covers the extracellular matrix layer that BPC and TB500 do not. And again, I'm not saying that you always have to use it in tandem with those, but it does help where those will will not really have that effect. Then we have the post surgical or the, the skin wound patient. So the single strongest piece of human trial evidence for GHK is in wound healing. We see controlled remodeling, organized collagen and faster resealing of skin wounds. And then for people with early stage hair loss, notice that I said early stage hair loss. GHK hits hair through three separate mechanisms. The strongest data comes from combining it with microneedling and standard hair drugs. Whatever those are, your choice. Some of them I'm a fan of, some I am not. But I will say it's not one of those things. If you are pretty much 90 to 95% bald, don't expect to take GHK or microneedle or inject it or use it transdermally and think that you're going to regrow all of your hair. However, however, if you're someone that maybe has a little bit of thinning hair, you're noting you're, you're noticing your hair is starting to fall out more, I think GHK can do wonders there. So we'll talk a little bit about that later on the presentation. Also, for people that are good fit any of the longevity minded biohackers that are in that world, I think it's really good for some of the genome modulation data. Again, just go in knowing that it might not be as much as we see in wound or, excuse me, in rodent or petri dish models. However, it does have a lot of effects that we see in practice. Then we see lung tissue and any sort of lung damage recovery. There's a lot of COPD and emphysema data. Again that's in rodent models, but we can assume that at least somewhat that's going to translate to humans. And again, we don't have human data around that, but it looks very promising. And in practice I've seen people have good results when it comes to healing lung issues with ghk. Again, who should skip it? I think this is much less of a one that you, you really have like defined candidates and people that would not be a good fit. However, if your skin is already great and young, you probably aren't going to notice a huge benefit to using GHK on top of just being young, youthful, having youthful skin. However, it could be for a younger person that has acne or things like that. I wish I would have had it when I was younger for my acne. It's not for you. If you want a weight loss tool, it's not going to do anything like that. A lot of people, whatever reason, conflate that or misconstrue JHK as being helpful in that region. And also too, I would say the one thing, if you are injection sensitive, GHK unfortunately is not going to be one that you probably tolerate well because almost, not almost everyone, but a large majority of people usually have to deal with post injection pain if they are injecting it subcutaneously. And again, so you might not be a person that wants to inject it. You could definitely use it in other modalities that don't have as much pain as an injection would. But just be aware of that if you're someone that's sensitive or has mast cell reaction to the GHK contraindications. This is actually really important. And again, these are more rare. But just be advised, there's this thing called Wilson's disease. This is a genetic condition that prevents copper clearance. GHK obviously delivers copper into cells which is not what they want. So be aware of that. Again, much more rare. But just be aware if you're helping people, uh, if that's something that they are diagnosed with, GHK would not be for them. Also too, if you're doing copper chelation therapy, definitely don't take G ghk any, any of those things that they would use, including high dose zinc work directly against GHK cu so they cancel each other out. So you don't want to be taking your GHK if you are doing copper chelation therapy for any reason. Obviously active cancer is just one of those ones with peptides. It's definitely not pro angiogenic or pro proliferative or excuse me, it is pro ang or pro proliferative. It's definitely not as strong as ones like BPC and TB500. But again when we look at it, it's one of those things that the same thing with BPC or TB500 there's as much evidence to show that it's anti cancer than it that it is pro cancer. Just be aware of that. And I always tell people, cover your bases. And there's probably some other peptides too that you could use in lieu of GHK to create the effect that you want if that's something you're dealing with. And then pregnancy and nursing, just be aware there's no data around that. And So I would typically tell people to hold off during that time just because we don't know. For people that have MCAs or chronic hives, histamine intolerance, things like that, or severe liver and kidney dysfunction. It also would warrant caution. I don't, I wouldn't say that. It is something that I would say is a no go whatsoever. But just be aware of that because again, with the injection site stinging, sometimes people can get welts and things like that worse than others. And that's what I've seen in practice. Let's talk about dosing. I think the, the dosing is pretty straightforward with ghk, but just to give you an understanding of it, I like to qualify or quantify dosing into three tiers for most reasons, to kind of give you like an intro, a medium and then a higher dose. Tier 1 is just gonna be the general optimization. You could use a 1 to 2% serum once or twice daily. On top of that, in addition to it, or in lieu of, you could do injectable at 1mg a day, few days per week. And this again would just be for maintenance, prevention. Honestly, for that side of things, if you're using it infrequently like that, I think you could do that pretty much year round, especially with the, the serum or the creams. Then we move up to tier two. This would be much more of like an active performance and using it in a stack to create a direct effect. Obviously the injectable you would want to use at 1 to 2 milligrams per day in a four to eight week cycle cycle. You could obviously pair it with the topical or micro needle. And this would be great for athlete tear regrowth or post surgical procedure. And then tier 3 would be significant dysfunction. This is going to be like the 2 to 5 milligram per day range. This would be obviously if you have chronic wounds, diabetic ulcers, or serious post surgical recovery, even some of those cases like emphysema or copd, you'll probably notice a bigger benefit at closer to the 5mg per day range. But honestly, beyond 5mg I really don't see any more marginal benefit carrying over beyond the 5mg. Whereas for me I noticed like 1-2mg of the sweet spot. But I don't really notice anything going to 4 milligrams that I don't notice at 1 or 2 milligrams. And so just be aware of that. That would only be reserved for those more systemic chronic dysfunction cases that I would go into the higher doses. Obviously you would want to do that in a targeted cycle. And again there's just bispecific goal for longevity anti aging, 1-2mg a day athletic recovery, again, 1-2mg a day. With BPC and TB 500 post surgical, you could do a subcutaneous anatopical version to really help cover your bases. One to two milligrams a day and then the 1 to 2% topical on the the wound once it's closed twice daily to help with scarring and preventing scarring. For hair regrowth you could do topical plus microneedling. What I would do is a 1 to 2% solution at 05 to 1 millimeter depth weekly to bi weekly. And again you could do that once a week or once every two weeks. For skin aging you could do the sub Q1 to 2 milligrams a day and then the topical at 1 to 2% pollution solution twice daily. And and then cognitive Hans enhancement. I would actually recommend, and we'll talk about this in a little bit, that you do a nasal spray if you want to specifically use GHK for cognitive enhancement. And for that nasal spray I would do the one to two milligram amount. Again, that's only in rodent studies that we have that. But we do notice more benefit, cognitively speaking, from the nasal spray than actually injecting it, which is pretty cool because a lot of people tend to say, oh, nasal sprays, they're obviously not not as good as injections, which in a lot of cases is true. However, for certain use cases they actually might be better. Let's talk about a timeline of what to expect and when. Usually it's going to be weeks, four to eight. That from the topical you're going to see hydration and texture changes. And again that's in the first four to eight weeks. So don't think that if you take it for one week and nothing happens that it's not working. And then the injectable, you'll see a gradual improvement in recovery quality after that four to eight weeks and weeks eight to 12, you typically will then start to see a little bit of the fine line improvements but visible in photos. And then the healing speed usually is measurably faster. And then months, three to six, you'll probably see a skin laxicity or firmness change. Hair growth becomes more visible and deep structural remodeling usually takes the longest. And again, when we Talk about those things like actually changing the, the nature of the skin and actually regrowing hair. That is not a two week solution. A lot of people take it for two weeks and like, oh, this doesn't work for me, really for more of those deep structural remodeling changes, that's going to take a long time of supplementation and, and again, obviously I'm a fan of cycling, but when we talk about cycling peptides like ghk, I think it's less important that we cycle ghk. Especially if we are attempting to do something like really affecting the skin healing from surgery, regrowing hair and things of that nature. But again, usually one of the biggest mistakes I see people make is quitting too early or usually going to a higher dose because they don't feel anything. I think again, going to the higher dose is not so much more beneficial. You're probably just going to be wasting your money if you're doing a higher dose. How do you know if it's working? Subjective tracking obviously energy and recovery sleep quality. Another thing too that people subjectively usually report is better sleep on ghk. Cognition and mental clarity obviously is a big thing. Skin texture and hydration probably would be the biggest thing that you notice. And then training capacity and mood. I will say my mood is definitely enhanced when I use GHK and I've gone long stretches where I haven't used ghk and then when I reintroduce it, it's not overwhelming. I'm kinda like, man, I really do feel better today and seem to be in a better mood. And then objectively we can look at blood panel. So obviously just your standard things. Cmp, lipid panel, fasting insulin, crp, things like that. Especially for some of those inflammation things. I don't think GHK is going to be the end all be all to heal some of that inflammation. But it definitely would go a long way in helping in tandem with some other peptides. But again, there's no clean efficacy biomarker for ghk. Blood work obviously is just one of those things you have to look at in context with everything that you're doing. And again, for skin and hair, obviously taking photos is going to be the best and most valuable tool tool with same lighting, same time of day, things like that. All right, should we cycle ghk? That is the question. Now we look at GHK as is not classically desensitized. Again, there's no receptor desensitization that we know of, no tactfulactus no feedback loops shutting down natural production. So why should we cycle it anyway? Again, I think when it, when we look at peptides, a lot of the cycling just comes from not knowing what we don't know. One, we don't have absence, we have, we don't have, we have an absence of long term safety data. There's no multi year human trial trials on injectable ghk. Again, it just limits the cumulative exposure and the absence of data. We also have a durability assessment. Cycling lets us see whether benefits hold during the off period. I definitely think there is a cumulative benefit, but again, if you, if you use it for skin for three or six months, don't expect that three months after going off that it's going to look exactly like you did while you were on it. Which I then think is one of the testaments. This is a peptide that we can run more or less pretty frequently without having to cycle off. And then lastly, just copper load management. We don't really, I guess you could probably use some math formulas to extrapolate. But again, we don't really have a lot of real world data around copper load management. And again, when we stack topical plus injectable plus other copper supplements without breaks, it means that there's a relentless copper input. And again, probably going to be okay when we're talking about the doses that we're doing, but we just don't know what we don't know. So I'd like cycling for that reason, just to give the body some breaks and make sure everything is good and get your blood work done and everything. When we do look at cycling patterns, obviously the standard is eight weeks on, eight weeks off. This is the conservative rhythm for injectable use. It's long enough to drive a real tissue change and long enough to, long enough off to assess durability. We could do targeted short cycles. If you wanted to use a little bit higher dose, you could do four to six weeks on and then two to four weeks off. This is popular for recovery blocks and also for hair protocols. If it's one of those things you want to see if it starts to move your hair in the right direction and then whether or not it's going be something long term you want to use, then you could do 30 on, 14 off, 30 days on, 14 off. Again, just a clean calendar rhythm and then continuous. I think definitely for the topicals it's something you could probably use every day. We have a lot of data to show that there's no harm in doing that. Definitely no toxicity and things like that. So just be, be discreet and use your discretion when you are using ghk. Again, it's not one of those ones like a BPC that I would be a little more adamant about cycling when we look at the nature of it, but it wouldn't be one that I would probably inject every day for the rest of my life. I would definitely take in a minute intermittent breaks. And again, you probably wouldn't want to just because it might be a little too painful from an injection standpoint. When we look at long term use, here's what we know. So one the longest published animal exposure as far as peptides go weeks to months as high doses with no cumulative toxicity signal. Topical human exposure record with no issues whatsoever. Obviously GHK is an endogenous human peptide. It's something the body already makes. And also to copper homeostasis has multiple regulatory pathways. It does seem like the body kind of has a regulatory mechanism to limit the amount of copper and clear it out. But again, it doesn't mean that you can't overdo it. What we don't know is we don't have long term safety data on injectable. Obviously multi year injectable safety is something that we just don't know about. And then anyone claiming injectable GHK is proven say for years. We just don't have a lot of data and that's really what we don't know. Do I worry about it? Absolutely not. But I do always want to be honest with what we do know and what we don't know. Let's talk about sequencing, especially when we talk about the GLOW stack because that's a big thing. If you watch my KPV masterclass or my BBPC and my TB500 masterclass, you know that I probably like or in a lot of cases I like. Starting with KPV to calm the inflammation, then bring in BPC and TB500. I was actually, if I was doing these separately, which you could obviously all do them at one time, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But in a perfect world, sometimes it's actually better to use BPC&TB500 as the site prep to help with stem cell migration and angiogenesis and and then we would bring in GHK to coordinate the repair and really work well. I will say typically GHK works better when you've already laid the groundwork with some of those other peptides to heal inflammation and drive angiogenesis. And then ghk really works into to do remodeling. Again, not that you can't use them, but if you were mapping out a cycle, that tends to work really well. And then you could go off the BPC and TB500 and continue to use the GHK as it's going to rebuild and organize the extracellular matrix. And again, don't have to do that. But if you were sequencing them, sometimes it's better. I will say you might notice the GHK benefits more when you've already kind of front loaded those other peptides and had them do really well and start to see results when we look at a soft tissue recovery protocol. Again, weeks one to two, you can lead with 500 micrograms twice daily with BPC and TB 500. And then weeks two through six to eight, then you would do the full stack and then you could taper down as you look to heal. And then continue to use 1 milligram of GHK after that. But again, typically the Glow blend is a 5 to 1 to 1 ratio. That's my preferred one. So if you see a bottle of glow, it's usually 50 milligrams of GHK, 10 milligrams of PPC and 10 milligrams of TB 500. The CLO would be all of that plus 10 milligrams of KPV. And again, you could definitely use that. And it works fine. But sometimes you notice better results from the GHK when you sequence those. When we talk about reconstitution, bacteriostatic water is obviously the main thing we'd use. There's no weird stuff you would have to do there. I do want to talk about it. Yes, GHK is blue. Hopefully you know that by now. That's why the I made the slides blue. But when reconstituted correctly, GHKCU turns a deep blue. And that blue is actually the copper 2 chromophore, which is the visible signature of copper. Copper properly bound in the complex, a clear or colorless solution is a red flag. So yes, if your GHK is blue, that is a good thing and that's a good way to know the quality. Obviously, injectable peptide ship is lyophilized powder, which is going to be better for you for stability because then you can reconstitute it when you get it and refrigerate it to keep it stable. I will say, when we talk about reconstitution, I've got the slide up here with the recommended amount. When we look at the post injection pain. Typically the more diluted GHK is, the less it's going to sting. Doesn't mean it's not going to sting at all. However, if you can dilute it down to a lighter concentration to where maybe it's not as concentrated, you typically will experience less. If you have a 50 milligram bio, you could do 2 mls and then a 1 milligram dose would be 4 units, 2 milligrams would be 8 units. I would prefer in those 3 milliliters vials if you have 50 milligrams to do 3 mls, which makes it 16, 16,000 micrograms or 1.6 milligrams or excuse me, 16 milligrams per milliliter. And so 1 milligram would be 6 units, 2 milligrams would Be 12 units. If you do have the 100 milligrams I would recommend at least 5 milliliters 100 milligrams. I realize sometimes that comes in a 3 milliliters bottle. And what I would do is reconstitute that bottle with three mls, get a bigger bottle that's sterile, put that three mls into the bigger bottle, and then add another two mls of backwater into that bigger bottle. That makes it 20 milligrams per milliliter. So one milligram would be five units, two milligrams would be 10 units. But that would be my preferred thing. And again, I think you could dilute it down even more if you wanted to. Obviously you would have to inject more volume if you were diluting it down more for the same dose. But, but I think a lot of cases, I know for me personally I will actually do that and it does burn less sometimes. What I'll do too, if you don't want to move it into a new vial, you could just put 3mls of water into it, put it into your insulin syringe and then withdraw more backwater directly into that insulin syringe to dilute it just in the syringe itself. And usually that will work pretty well to help dilute it down, which will mitigate the pain in a lot of cases. But again, I'm not going to say it's going to take everything away. Look at reconstitution, obviously. Just be smart, withdraw or when you're withdrawing the back water, shoot it down the side of the syringe instead of right onto the peptide again, swirl, don't shake it, don't shake it. After you do it to try to mix it, it'll settle usually within a few minutes. And GHK usually mix pretty well. We talk about injection technique I like. You know, obviously sub Q into the abdomen, outer thigh, back of the upper arm and just rotate. Especially with ghk, less other peptides is less important because the injection is very mild. But sometimes with GHK you will get some bruising or some swelling there and it's very important that you rotate so you don't continue to create scar tissue on top of the same injection site. Usually a 21, 29, not 21, excuse me, 29 to 31 gauge insulin syringe is the best. And again you can do a 45 to 90 degree angle and then just inject slowly. If people have consistent reactions, for instance, an H1 anahistamine reaction. Take or excuse me, you could use an antihistamine like Benadryl 36 minutes before injecting. And sometimes that does help with the stinging, the redness, the swelling, the itching that would come as a result of injecting ghk. I would say I am not typically a person that really reacts to peptides at all. Thank goodness. However, I do react to GHK in a lot of cases. For me, I wouldn't even say it's one of those things that I get redness or swelling. I just get a bruise where it does hurt for the next day or two after injecting it. But again, everyone's going to be a little bit different. Um, I will say when we are injecting near an injury site, you typically will want to do it, try to do it sub Q there. I will say this. When I've had injuries in the past and use ghk, sometimes I end up having to pull out the GHK until it heals more because the pain from the injection is just too much. Little anecdotal side story real quick. Little over a year ago I dropped a 45 pound weight on my foot or my toe at the gym. And so it smashed. My left big toe was bleeding like crazy and super swollen. I don't think it was broken, never got it looked at, but I was injecting glow into it. And the first two nights the pain was so bad from the GHK because it was on top of the the pain that I was already having my foot. I just switched to KPV, BPC and TP 500 and cardillacs without the GHK until it healed up a little bit more than I was able to use the GHK in those cases too. I don't think it would be a bad thing if you wanted to apply it topically, but might not help as much as the injection for an injury. But it could still still work well. When we do look at topical application again, make sure it's a 1 to 2% at least GHK serum to clean and then make sure the skin is clean. Keep away acidic vitamin C and then apply at different times of the day within at least 30 minutes in between. Low ph vitamin C can heate the copper out of the complex and inactivate it would obviously would make it pointless. And then if you do micro needling plain top plain topical must fight through the stratum corneum. When you microneedle at.05 to 1 milli mill depths, it creates temporary micro channels documented to improve cosmetic peptide delivery by 2 to 22 fold over just topical application. And then again, this is why it works best for hair. I will say, and I don't really know anyone that sells this right now. I have seen pairing carbon 60, the antioxidant known as C60, carbon 60 with GHK actually works much better for hair because the carbon 60 seems to carry it into the skin better and work as an antioxidant. Again, carbon 60 is not vitamin C, whereas you ne you probably wouldn't want to do that with vitamin C. Carbon 60 seems to work well there and I've heard chemists talk about that being very helpful when we look at the GLOW stock. Obviously I would be remiss if I didn't mention the GLOW stack. With GHK we have bpc, which handles local injury signaling, angiogenesis and growth factor pathways, TB500, which works on cell migration via actin binding and it gets the right cells to the injury site. And then we have jhk, which rebuilds and organizes extracellular matrix, which is why those work so well. It's a very good trinity of peptides that do well because they cover signaling migration and reconstruction for soft tissue repair, which is really good. I love the GLOW stack. Obviously you could do the close stack as well with KPB. You could also do GHK with BPC157. I think you get a lot of the really good effects with that. GHK with kpv. I really like this actually in topical formulations because KPB works well. And topical formulations, if you add just GHK and KPV together, I think it's one of those things. And obviously less angiogenesis, but still really good anti inflammatory GHK plus Epitalon I think is a really good longevity pairing. If you did Epitalon, which is going to target Telomir and pineal effects, GHK modulates gene expression and again they're independently kind of having this synergy towards better gene expression. And then obviously if you wanted to do it with a GH secretagog or hgh, it works really well with those say especially I think people sleep on how good that could be for hair, skin and nails, because we do get better hair, skin and nails typically from GH or GH peptides, which pairs well and nicely with ghk. For topical combinations you could use hyaluronic acid or retinol at different times of the day. And then obviously microneedling and PRP are all synergistic partners. Let's get into some troubleshooting. The first one, typically again with most peptides including ghk, is that you don't feel anything. Well one GHK is not intended to really produce a feeling. Again, maybe you'll notice a slight enhancement in mood, but the main thing it's doing is rebuilding tissue and shifting gene expression. And again there's gonna be slow measurable changes over time. No real acute sensations, which I know for a lot of people sometimes they feel like they're not getting their money's worth if that's the case. But again, you gotta trust GHK is doing things for the long term. It also might be too low of a dose. And so I would say I probably notice more of a benefit from 2 milligrams than 1 milligram. But for me, 5 milligram doesn't do any more than 2 milligrams. You gotta do what works for you. But sometimes if you're doing 1mg you might notice better benefit to 2mg. For me that seems to be the threshold dose, beyond which there's not much more benefit. Or also too, if the cream or serum you're using is sub 1%, it's probably not gonna do anything. And that's very common these days, especially cuz you can sell GHK cream or serum anywhere. It's not like peptides that you have to sell for research purposes in most cases. And so I'd be aware of that. If we look at the duration again, skin laxity takes three to six months, hair takes months. Again, you can use it, see what it does, maybe you get results faster. But I just always caution people that it's going to be a long game and Then source quality, as always, just make sure it's good. And then sometimes it's the wrong tool. GHK is not going to fix sun damage needing a different intervention or a structural issue needing surgery. Just be aware of that when you're using it. Now let's talk about injection site reactions. I will say that's probably the biggest troubleshooting issue with ghk, what's going on here. And I think that there's probably a lot of not a great understanding of why this happens. We kind of just accept it. But basically GHKCU directly triggers mass cell degranulation. Copper, or excuse me, copper, prompts a local immune cells to release histamine, which is why you get the redness and swelling. Roughly 10 to 20% of injectable users usually get at least local redness and sometimes more itching, firmness or hives. And it is definitely one of the more reactogenic injectable peptides. I will say it's probably even higher when you look at just the people that don't report that. How do we mitigate this? Obviously, like I said, diluting it more aggressively can help a lot. Injecting slowly can also help. You can also place it properly deep in the subcutaneous fat. Sometimes I will see people do intramuscular and see and say that helps. I haven't noticed that to help for me, but if it works for you, great. I don't think there's anything wrong with it. Also, just make sure you're being very vigilant about rotating the injection site and and then obviously using an H1 antihistamine or some Benadryl or something like that could be good too. Again in red flags requiring immediate discontinuation and medical care are usually rare. But if you do have difficulty breathing, throat tightness or widespread hives beyond the injection site, just make sure that you're seeking medical attention. I will say that is very rare. Almost always GHK is going to have much more of a local mass cell reaction that's not systemic, that causes issues, but it doesn't mean based on someone's immune system they can't have a reaction to that. Based on their genetics and their end health. It could be something that could happen. I've never seen it, but I've, I've heard of it. So there's also some other issues. One transient blue, green tint at the injection site. This can be very common. So if you're injecting you might get some blue because it is blue and it's going in there, which is basically a local copper deposition showing through the skin. Again, this is purely cosmetic. It resolves usually over days to a couple weeks and then site rotation usually reduces it. Some people do get mild nausea or lightheadedness. I think that's kind of the case with any peptide. This usually is above the 2 milligram dose that I've seen. And again, I think a lot of times that's from the blood pressure lowering effect that it has. And some people do get a metallic taste after injections and that's usually harmless. And then lastly, this is not something I was aware of, but I started to hear this so I looked into it and I actually noticed it a little bit myself. This thing called the copper uglies. But basically the there's a temporary phase where skin looks worse. When you are using ghk, you could get redness, bumps, pimple breakouts or a rough texture. And basically GHK is upregulating MMPs that clear old collagen. And too much too fast means demolition outpaces rebuilding. And again, the fix would be to just do it infrequently like two to three times per week instead of every day. Avoid stacking with retinoids, acids and vitamin, vitamin C simultaneously and it usually resolves within a few weeks. But, but I do notice this and I think again a lot of that, especially like in my case sometimes I'll notice like back acne when I've injected ghk. And it's probably bringing to the surface a lot of those things because the repair is happening so fast. Usually it's not bad, but I have heard of other people saying that and that being a very common thing for people that are using it. And I know, for instance, my wife has talked about sometimes it brings out old scars that she's had. And again, whether or not you want to continue with it, that's up to you. But a lot of times there is a phase like that that you can kind of get some of those things that show up. Let's talk about some faq. Is GHKC legal? Topical? Yes, you're fine. You can sell it on Amazon. You know, it's very, very easy to get the injectable. Obviously it's not FDA approved. It is on that list of ones that are hopefully going to get moved from category two to category one, but we don't know yet. And so it's kind of just in this limbo phase. Obviously right now most people are buying it for research purposes topical versus injectable which one should we use? The topical has the strongest human evidence and we see the cleanest legal status. Obviously it targets skin and hair. You can use it continuously really, without cycling off and you don't have to worry about reconstitution and all those things that come along with other peptides. The injectable, you're definitely going to get more of a systemic and deep tissue effect. There's obviously thinner evidence and then a murkier legal picture in a gray area. I would say it requires cycling and then again it also targets recovery and gene modulation. But I would say if you're going to do one, probably do both because there usually is a systemic synergistic effect on the skin and all those other systems that it is working to heal. Let's talk about oral. Typically, I have not seen GHK well work orally. I do know there are some companies that are putting it in capsules. I don't know. I've used some of those. I can't say that I've noticed any benefit from doing it. I would say some of the peptide strips that I've used, the, the bul strips actually have worked well for me, but I haven't used an oral capsule. And again, I'm, I'm just saying that anecdotally it could work for someone else. What about intranasal? I will actually say this is one of the very interesting use cases that for brain health could work really well. There was a University of Washington mouse study showing cognitive benefits, improvement and memory and learning and spatial awareness when they used intranasal ghk, whereas they did not see the same benefits from the injectable ghk. So I think that is a very interesting use case to use. Does it interact with cholesterol medicine, metformin or anticoagulants? No, you should be fine with those. Although hopefully you don't have to be on some of those things if you're using peptides. And then can you use it with a glp? Yes, I, I get asked that a lot. I think it'd actually be beneficial for people that are on a GLP that are losing a lot of weight to help maintain collagen synthesis and help with skin health as you are losing weight. I'm not going to say it's going to, you know, if you have £100 to lose, it's not going to get rid of the excess skin, but it can help with some of those things like ozempic face if you're using it. Injectable and topically, what about the gene modulation claim? Is that real or hype? The real biology is that GHK modulates roughly 31 of human genes by at least 50 or more. That's a fact. DNA repair genes overwhelmingly are upregulated and damaged. Protein clearance genes overwhelmingly are upregulated as well. Again, it, it looks real. The hype is that most of the data is cell culture work at nanomolar concentrations. And whether your subcutaneous dose achieves a comparable concentration in your tissues is still up for debate. And so when we look at it, it's one of those things. We don't have a lot of data to say, okay, it's directly causing all of these longevity benefits. But I will say anecdotally it does seem to, to do really well. But again, it's just not going to be one of those things that we probably have a lot of data. What about for hair loss? Again, hair loss is going to be so unique to the person. I can't sit here and tell you that it's going to cure your, your balding. I, I can't. But I will say I've seen good things. There's three mechanisms. One, it inhibits type 15 alpha reductase, which is a different isoform than finasteride, which is obviously less dangerous. It also stimulates dermal papilla cells and then also improves follicle or follicular blood supply to the hair. Again, the strongest human Data is with GHK plus minoxidil plus 2 tasteride. I would not use the dutasteride via microneedling. Produced median 26.5% hair regrowth over five monthly sessions. Again, it could be a solid adjunct in a multi pronged protocol. I don't want to get into a whole class on hair regrowth, but there definitely are, it definitely is a lot of data to show that it helps there. But again, I mentioned earlier something about this. I have seen people report back to me that using GHK seem to help raise their free testosterone levels. And again, whether that's anecdotal or not, I don't know. But I have heard more than one person tell me that, which is pretty interesting. We see COPD and emphysema. A 2012 analysis found GHK was the top hit for reversing a 127 gene emphysema destruction signature. And then we have a 2022 mouth study confirmed the attenuation of cigarette smoke induced emphysema. We don't have a human trial on that yet, but it does seem to have really good benefits for the lungs, at least in those clinical trials. And then again, the cognitive effects, we did see that through the intranasal use and mice. There was also a Russian group documented enolytic effects in rats in 2015. And again, there's real signals there to show that it is beyond placebo to help with some of those things when it comes to cognitive health. What about GHK versus retinol or retinoids? GHK is a little bit different. It works through copper delivery, gene modulation and collagen synthesis. Comparative studies show about a 70% collagen increase versus retinoids, which accelerates cell turnover with strong evidence for photo aging. A comparative study shows 40% collagen in Greece. You wanted to, you could use both, but I would tend to lead to lean to ghk. Again, I don't claim to know a lot about that, but it does seem to have as good or better evidence than the retinols do. But if you wanted to, you could use both. Where's the field heading? Well, I would say probably nowhere. Um, obviously I don't think it's gonna be one of those things that someone tries to bring pharmaceutically to market. The best hope I think we have is just from getting it moved from category two to category one. And then again, I think there's a lot of exciting frontiers that we could use it for things at least as an adjunct therapy to help improve those. But I just don't see it coming to where we really have this huge increase in GHK use. Maybe, but it's just not my. If I was betting, man, I don't think the market on GHK is going to be something that we have millions and millions more people adopt into the future. Obviously, hopefully from being moved from category two to category one. That does help. We look at JHK analogs. There are some, some ones that have been tested. No real data that we have around those yet. There is another interesting peptide called AHKCU that is being explored particularly for hair. And I've heard good things with that. You could probably micro needle that if you wanted to. I personally have not used it, but it seems to be really cool. And then we see delivery innovation probably is going to be. If I had to guess where some of the the science would be head in the future with micro needling ionic liquid micro emulsions, three printed scaffolds for bone regeneration and fusion protein hydrogels for spinal cord injury, which is basically Going to solve getting GHK into the right tissue. And just to sum up, what is GHK? It's a tiny 3amino acid peptide your body makes and loses with age. It works by delivering copper where it is needed in shifting gene expression towards repair. Again, it's the materials plus the instructions. Use it for what it's good at. It's not something that is super revolutionary, but I do think a lot of people undervalue and underutilize it for some of those other use cases that we talked about today even it's just from a soft tissue injury healing standpoint. And again, I would say it really shines when we pair it with some of these other peptides to get the most bang for your buck. And it's one of those there. It's not super sexy. I would say. Obviously there's a lot of marketing hype around it with the glow and the CLO and people using it, but it does do some good things. And I wouldn't say that by itself is going to be a miracle peptide, but in conjunction with some of those other things, it's going to work really well. And that is it for the slides. And that is my masterclass on ghk. Hopefully that was helpful to you guys. Hopefully now that you have gone through it, you have a little bit more understanding, just kind of the backbone. And especially with some of those other use cases, what it could be used for, how to implement it. It is very diverse in what it does. It's often called the shamile peptide for the amazing kind of use cases that it, it goes across. Whereas a lot of peptides just kind of do one thing and stay in their lane. GHK can be used for a multitude of things. I'm a fan of it. It's definitely a regular in my rotation. I would say. I personally use the, the topical is more the injectable, but I still do employ the injectable for certain things and I love it for that. But one thing I haven't tried yet, I'm excited to try is the intranasal. To mix up some intranasal and see if there's any benefit from taking it that way. But I love jhk. I think it's one of those. It, it has pretty good awareness. Like a lot of people know about it. I just think it's usually not utilized to the fullest effect of some of the things it could do. Take for instance the lung, the lung health case. I think a lot of people that have lung issues because I've talked to a ton of them. Don't realize that they could get a benefit from ghk. So it's definitely one of the better, better peptides out there. Probably not a 5 top 5, but definitely maybe a top 10 peptide in my opinion. If you are ranking peptides. But that's it for this one. As always, in closing, thank you guys so much for the amazing support that you guys give me. The YouTube channel is doing really well. Everything is going really well with that. So thank you guys so much. You know, as we stand up against censorship and some of those other things, you have no idea how far that goes in helping just promote the content. And again, it's not about me. It's just getting this info into more people's hands so they can heal and repair some of the things that they may not be doing well from a health perspective with. But as always, whether it's using my code of places, sharing this with friends and family, liking commenting, subscribing, and then even if you're someone that's in my private group, thank you guys so much. You have no idea how far that goes and helping me bring these messages to you. So that's it for this one. Again, I look forward to your feedback. Please let me know. Again, the content is shaped by the feedback I get from you guys. What you think, but I have many more master classes to come. Stay tuned. And we're just getting started. So I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.