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Some Notes Researching the Popular Peptide GHK-Cu

ContinuousLeaf

This page is mostly a way for me to crystallize, in detail, my current knowledge on this peptide and provide insurance to me in that way but also regulate me to a baseline level of research before any experimentation.

My focus will be on (injectable) GHK-Cu’s - Safety profile - How it works - and its efficacy

Then I will move on to my personal experiment.

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Safety

The consensus on the safety of GHK-cu is that it is very safe in its topical form naturally occurring peptide and all. In its injectable form the most common risks I observe are in regards to: copper toxicity, angiogenesis (relation to cancer), impurity and the general risks that come from injecting anything such as infection. Lets go through these one by one.

  • Copper Toxicity: Just like any other foreign matter there is a level of tolerance that the human body can tolerate. I see a healthy range of 60 to 160 micrograms per deciliter (mcg/dL) in grown adults.1 Excess copper causes bad things like oxidative stress, DNA damage and reduced cell proliferation. Copper Toxicity is most common as it relates to Wilson’s disease (a genetic disease that inhibits the body from removing copper), i’ve also seen it in contexts of people cooking in bad cookware. It does seem like even at its WCS copper toxicity can be treated, but the good thing about copper toxicity is that it presents with a lot of easily detectable symptoms like: abdominal pain, vomiting, chest pain, chills, cough, fever, general weakness, anemia, burning sensations, tremors, and a metallic taste in the mouth but also depression, fatigue, irritability, excitation, and difficulty focusing Lots of broad symptoms but abdominal pain and with the metallic taste are unique and easily detectable especially in conjunction with each other. Injecting GHK-cu very likely spikes copper levels but from what I see not up to the level of toxicity, there is not much data how GHK-cu directly affects blood copper levels (why?) but we know that ingesting 1g of copper sulfide will cause acute copper toxicity, there isn’t that much copper in a vial of GHK-cu.2 This level of risk is acceptable to me. It’s possible that although copper toxicity it not prompted by GHK-cu, it rasing the baseline copper levels above normal could be a problem. However, i’ll have to set my priors on this being highly unlikely since the range of natural occurring copper levels is so wide plus we know the body maintains copper homeostasis and can get rid of excess copper.

  • Angiogenesis: GHK-cu has been proven to stimulate blood vessel growth play a role in blood vessel growth. New blood vessel growth is called Angiogenesis, this process is known to play a role in sustaining cancerous tumors. From what I can gather there is no direct causal link between GHK-cu the promotion of cancerous tumors through angiogenesis but one can infer that it might. Hence GHK-cu’s cancer growing potential as it is held by consensus is just a natural precaution in light of no direct confirmatory data and based only on suggestive data. Its easy see why though, there’s no need to risk harming cancer patients to confirm a cosmetic drug’s side effects. But as far as this risk goes, it only exists when one already has cancer, so acceptable in my case.

  • Impurity: The following quote is directly pulled from the FDA website on the risks of “Certain Bulk Drug Substances for Use in Compounding” or the peptide page.

    September 29, 2023: Compounded injectable drugs containing GHK-Cu may pose risk for immunogenicity due to the potential. for aggregation and peptide-related impurities. There are limited data in humans to inform safety-related considerations.

    The FDA is right to point out the lack of human safety data on the injectable version peptide, i’ll talk about this more in the efficacy portion. The two main risks the FDA calls out are aggregation and impurities. From what I can gather aggregation relates to the tendency for protein structures to clump up into larger cluster that then trigger adverse immune responses. I cannot find much on the specific tendency of GHK-cu to aggregate but peptides in general are know to aggregate. According this article and its sources, structurally altered proteins are more prone to aggregation than native structures, external stresses like temperature, PH, the presence of other chemicals and absorption interface can cause aggregation.3 However understanding the mechanics of protein folding is over my head and outside of the scope of this research. For the most part I am unaware of any reports of GHK-Cu being particularly prone to protein aggregation or related adverse effect when pure and stored properly. Closely related to this is the risk of impurities. Ideally one should not be introducing foreign harm-causing chemicals when administering any peptide, harm that could be related to related to aggregation or present its own risk. However, since my source can be independently verified to be > 99.99% pure I can consider this risk minimal in my case. If this is all that is the FDA is concerned about then I can only assume its a funding issue or rather a lack of enough incentive issue to study this drug, leaving it in this limbo state indefinitely.4

  • Other Risks include allergies, and skin irritation and the ability to make your skin worse “Copper Uglies” from subjective reports.

How GHK-Cu Works

GHk-cu is a naturally occurring peptide in human plasma to be secreted by tissues in case of injury. The modes of GHK-cu actions is mixed, it was believed to bind to copper ions plays a role in copper metabolism. However, it has also been established to up-regulate or down-regulate a significant amount of human genes.5 Human in vitro studies have shown that the introduction of GHK-cu to cell cultures stimulate growth as well as other effects.6

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Efficacy:

Anti-Aging effects:

Skin Regeneration:

Blood and Nerve Growth:

Anti-oxidative and Anti Inflammatory benefits:

Suppression of Fibrinogen:

Anti-Cancer:

Mental Health benefits(?): Anti-Pain, Anti-Anxiety, Anti-Aggression:

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My personal regimen


Dosing: 2mg, 2-3 times per week -> daily.
Constitution: 50mg vial of lyophilized GHK-cu constituted with 3ml of BAC water. Hence 2mg = 2/50*3 = 0.04 * 3 = 0.12ml

Date Administered Dose Notes
Nov 14 2025 3:36 pm 12 ml, left right love handle area pain levels low, will update later during the day.
Update: dull aching sensation on the spot of injection, no welting or swelling
Next Day: no issues
Nov 17 2025 3:36 pm (coincidence) 12 ml on top right butt cheek high fat area slight dull aching sensation sensations immediately after 3 proper cleaning of area was applied both times before injection with 70% isopropyl alcohol wipes
Update: no pain later during the day
Nov 19 2025 5:09 pm administered 12 ml on left love handle area immediate pain levels low, proper cleaning of area before an after as well as bottle was applied using 70% isopropyl alcohol wipes
Update: slight pain and uncomfortability throughout the day in area
Nov 28 2025 10:29 am administered 12 ml on upper right butt cheek area immediate pain levels very low proper cleaning of area before an after as well as bottle was applied using 70% isopropyl alcohol wipes
Dec 01 2025 12:28 am administered 12 ml on right butt cheek area immediate pain levels very low. Needle completely below the skin before pushing the plunger might not be a good move for pain, we will see. Proper cleaning of area before an after as well as bottle was applied using 70% isopropyl alcohol wipes

This article was written without spellcheck in a couple days, tracking completion in over a month. I also did not vet any of my sources for COF, this may change.
GHK-Cu stands for Glycyl-L-histidyl-L-lysine-Copper

  1. There are a billion ways to measure copper apparently: NIH FactSheet, Uni of Rochester. ↩

  2. 1g of ingested copper leads to toxicity from “Copper Toxicity”, Pubmed ↩

  3. This is probably why it’s important to properly store reconstituted peptides. ↩

  4. Situations likes these I can only imagine bolster the case for other independent medical safety agencies besides the FDA, other countries, maybe even state run ones? ↩

  5. From “Regenerative and Protective Actions of the GHK-Cu Peptide in the Light of the New Gene Data”, Pubmed ↩

  6. From *Paywalled, “Growth-modulating plasma tripeptide may function by facilitating copper uptake into cells”, Pubmed ↩