Peptides - Legit chems or snake oil Chinese bullshit?

[guidmaker]

I didn’t know peptides were used as a skincare product? Do any pharmaceuticals beyond retinol (besides acne treatments) have a significant impact on your skin anyway?

Not a pharmaceutical but you can buy TCA online for cheap and rub it on your face for an aggressive DIY chemical peel. It's pretty much guaranteed to make a noticeable difference but you pay the price in terms of social downtime as your skin peels peels off for like seven days or so. I've done 18% TCA on myself, it sucked ass but worth it.

No pain, no gain.

 

[TheOtherSideofMakeBelieve]

I didn’t know peptides were used as a skincare product? Do any pharmaceuticals beyond retinol (besides acne treatments) have a significant impact on your skin anyway?

GHK-Cu is one that's commonly sold for skin health. You can buy cosmetic grade, which is usually just loose crystals that you mix into lotions or hyaluronic acid and then apply topically, potentially after derma rolling. You can also buy it ready for injection, which is much more expensive, but it seems to work better as well, and it's systemic rather than just where you applied it, and it has internal benefits as well for the skin

It's also available in mixes called GLOW and KLOW. GLOW is GHK-Cu, BPC-157, and TB-500. BPC-157 and TB-500 together are called 'the Wolverine stack' because it helps with healing soft tissue injuries, while the GHK-Cu helps rebuild collagen and thicken skin

KLOW adds KPV which is anti-inflammatory and can reduce auto-immune flareups

The KPV is kinda overkill imo unless you actually have auto-immune issues but GLOW and KLOW are usually within a few dollars of each other so it's kind of a "Why not?" option

GLOW is pretty safe and well tolerated, you can just get shots at medspas or sketchier normal spas, that's where it was popularized. You might be able to get it compounded as well now that RFK has loosened up restrictions on commercial peptides.

Haven't tried these myself but my main vendor is running a clearance combo sale on GLOW right now where I also want the other half of the combo and today is the last day so I'm tempted to buy some lol

 

[The Stranger]

The ones I used worked. There's seemingly thousands of peptides for everything under the sun and a lot of them are probably bullshit but some of them have at least a couple of clinical trials showing they work. I took CJC-1295, Ipamorelin, and HCG (technically not a peptide but it's in the same realm) and I saw huge gains in musculature. A teenager at the gym even asked if I was on steroids. I probably won't do another cycle, I didn't intend it to have such a potent effect on my hormones.
TL;DR it comes down to whether or not the specific peptide has some evidence supporting it and if what's in the bottle is what's on the label.