DIY Peptide Injections: The Dark Side of Injectable Peptides & Copper Hype

After Hours Skin Clinic

Two consultant dermatologists dissect the viral trend of DIY injectable peptides, contrasting regulated GLP-1 weight-loss medications with unregulated

Key takeaways

• Jennifer Aniston's interview mentioning peptide injections sparked a surge of patient questions about DIY use for skin and longevity.
• GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro are rigorously tested, regulated peptides for metabolic health, unlike the unregulated alternatives discussed.

Main topics

• DIY injectable peptides
• GLP-1 medications (Ozempic/Mounjaro)

Notable quotes

"The evidence in itself for their benefit is absolutely rubbish."

Conclusion

Listeners are advised to avoid DIY injectable peptides due to proven s

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Here's what's coming up on today's episode. And the result was negative for the copper peptides. No way. This is just wild. It's gone wild. The evidence in itself for their benefit is absolutely rubbish. Yeah, it's just non-existent. I mean, that will kill me. It will kill you. Speaker 2 (0:24) Hello and welcome to the After Hour Skin Clinic. I'm Dr Ellie Rashid and I'm Dr Emma Craythorne. We're both consultant dermatologists here in central London. But this is our favourite clinic where we unpack the evidence, challenge the trends and answer the questions that you might not always have time to ask your dermatologist. And if you don't have one, you do now. So I think you have a story for us Ellie. Yeah so my story. So Jennifer Aniston, who we all know and love, love, love her. She did an article and mentioned in an interview for the Wall Street Journal that she injects peptides. And I have been asked this question, probably second to the question of should I take oral collagen, is should I start injecting peptides? And what health and skin benefits does it have? So I thought it'd be a good opportunity for us to talk about. what the data shows, what the different peptides are, what the most common peptides are that people are thinking about when it comes to skin health and sort of debunking some of the myths that are out there. Speaker 1 (1:26) This is just wild. It's gone wild. It has gone crazy. Even this summer, whenever I was on holiday with our family, my nephew came and said to me with a little bit of acne. Emma, how do I get these copper peptides to fix my acne? No. I swear. And I said, well, you don't need copper peptides to fix your acne. There's other stuff that will help and work. And it's certainly not copper peptides. And so I think that every social media feed, every so many YouTube videos, they're just full of this word peptide. It's just absolutely everywhere. So should Speaker 2 (2:07) we start by explaining what a peptide even is? So essentially a peptide is just a combination of amino acids. So it's just a link of these building blocks. proteins and that's essentially what a peptide is and there are so many different types of peptides that you can have so insulin that people inject if they're diabetic is a form of a peptide. I mean Speaker 1 (2:32) it's exactly that so when we think about so many of the different functions that are happening within our body they are all because of peptides. almost all of the hormones really in our body are these peptides. And hormones are essentially like these chemical messengers that are working at one part of our body and they're going to another part of our body to tell it to do a job. So just like you say, insulin is a peptide. And then we have peptides that really have made such a difference in the world of obesity and metabolic syndrome issues. probably going to make a big impact in terms of how well people live for how long and that's in the form of these GLP-1 peptides so you've heard the terms things like Monjaro and Ozempic and these are the brand names. of these GLP-1 peptides. And they essentially work by reducing the emptying of your gastric. So whenever you eat something, it reduces the rate at which that's going into the rest of the digestive system. And it also essentially then makes you feel less hungry. So you're not motivated to eat in the same way. And so for many people who have problems with their kind of metabolic state as such, taking these peptides can be hugely beneficial. And they've gone through multiple studies. They've been investigated by big pharma. And so I think that term peptide at the minute is really running on the coattails of these new medicines that we have. But then it lands in the world of the unregulated medicines. Completely. People are taking them because they think that it's going to have a benefit for their skin, for ageing reasons, to help them live longer, to help their wounds get better, to stop them having acne. And there's a whole host of these peptides which have quite recently been discussed a lot at an FDA level and as a consequence in certain... groups so you know groups that are concerned with longevity or wellness or body image groups lots of bodybuilders might be using some of these peptides in a way to for what they think is beneficial for their health or to achieve a specific goal with their body so some of these things are peptides like BPC-157, which is associated with trying to get a bit with angiogenesis and wound healing. So in other words, if you, there's animal studies showing that in rats, they were able to repair their tendon issues more quickly. That data has never been extrapolated to humans. But these tiny little small animal studies and cell-based studies. have