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Takeaways

1. In this episode, we thoroughly examined the efficacy of the Glow and KLOW peptide blends, addressing numerous misconceptions that have arisen in social media discourse.
2. We emphasized the importance of conducting independent research on peptide blends rather than relying solely on popular narratives prevalent in online platforms.
3. The discussion highlighted the stability of GHK-Cu within peptide formulations, debunking claims about its fragility when mixed with other peptides.
4. I shared my personal experience with the KLOW blend, which has significantly aided my healing process following a recent surgical procedure.
5. We explored the science behind pH stability in peptide solutions, clarifying that physiological conditions do not adversely affect their efficacy.
6. Finally, we urged listeners to critically evaluate information sources, advocating for fact-checking in the pursuit of understanding peptide therapies.

All right, welcome back, everyone.

Today's episode, I'm going to try to keep short and sweet.

I always say that and always ends up running longer than I expected to.

But when I was thinking about topics, this one came up for a couple of reasons.

A, because I just had a procedure done that I'm trying to heal from and which will make sense to you in a minute.

And B, because I get this question either in the school forum, the Women's Peptide Collective, or someone just reaching out to me via email or Instagram or TikTok pretty much multiple times a week.

And the combination of the two just brought it to the forefront of my mind.

And that topic is, do the Glow and CLO blend actually work?

Because the peptides are combined together and for one argument or another, a lot of people come to me and say, I heard this, that they cancel each other out or this causes it not to be effective or the GHK CU is not stable and all the things.

And they'll tag someone in Instagram.

And I'm not going to call out specific names of people and any of you that have been in the peptide world for a moment know who some of the people are that are saying this, but it's not accurate and it's super annoying to me at least when people are throwing out clickbait, if you will, to get views or likes or followers on something that, that scientifically is just not correct.

And I personally am taking the Cloblend.

I had a surgical procedure done a little over a week ago and I want to heal quickly and as quickly as possible.

And I had a follow up yesterday and the surgeon's nurse was like, I, I cannot believe how well and how fast you are healing.

And I know without a shadow of a doubt that is from taking the CLO blend.

And so I want to debunk a lot of that's going around right now.

I actually got an email, I think maybe a week ago from someone who had bought, I don't remember if it was the CLO or the Glow from the Peptique and had heard one of these things and said that they wanted their money back and all this stuff.

I was like, oh good grief, it's just ridiculous.

And I want to say this too.

I know it's really easy to hear these things and think, oh my gosh, I spent all this money and it doesn't work.

But you have to really do some research on your own to try to figure this stuff out instead of just, instead of listening to even what I'm saying, excuse me, do your own research and come to your own conclusion.

But I'm going to go through the science, how I extrapolate it from the research that I've done.

And we're going to break down the top arguments that I see and debunk those.

Okay, so before we get started, what is the glow?

The GLOW stack, if you don't know, is a combination.

It's usually in one vial that includes the GHKCU peptide, the BPC157 and TB500.

The CLO has all three of those with the added component of KPV.

So it has four peptides in it, which is an anti inflammatory peptide.

It's actually one of my favorite blends.

I've cycled it many times and like I said, I'm cycling it right now.

And so these are really popular.

The glow blend is more for skin rejuvenation.

That's what most people use it for.

And then the CLO is more for, you get the skin rejuvenation, you get out of the glow.

But it has that anti inflammatory property that makes it even better for healing and stuff and regenerative type of things.

Okay, so let's isolate one of the loudest claims floating around right now because this one sounds scientific.

It sounds good.

And that's the claim that the peptides in these blends, the GLOW and the CLO, all prefer different ph ranges.

When you com and when you combine them or reconstitute them with bacteriostatic water, the ph shifts and the peptides destabilize or become ineffective.

And again, it sounds right, it sounds scientific.

It makes you want to believe it.

It uses real chemistry, words, all the things it implies.

Precision, precision.

But when you slow it down and actually look at how ph works in real biological systems, the argument collapses.

So let's walk through this.

Okay?

Ph is simply a measure of acidity or alkalinity.

And the scale runs from 0 to 14.

Strong acid is very low, strong base is very high.

So physiological ph sits around right about 7.4.

And most injectable peptides are designed to exist near physiological conditions.

That's not an accident.

Biology doesn't.

It simply doesn't tolerate extremes.

So right out of the gate, any claim that a tiny amount of a peptide powder dramatically alters the ph of several milliliters of water should raise an eyebrow.

That's just not how buffering works.

Backwater is not a chemical weapon here, okay?

It's a sterile water with a very small amount of benzo alcohol.

Added to prevent bacterial growth.

And that's it.

It does not create extreme acidity.

It does not create extreme alkalinity.

It does not force peptides into hostile chemical environments.

Its ph sits near neutral.

So if backwater were inherently destructive to peptides, then single peptide vials across the entire research and pharmaceutical world would would fail routinely.

And they quite simply don't.

Okay, the other argument is that different peptides want different ph.

Okay, so let's address this one directly because you'll hear this with people saying things like GHKCU wants an Acidic pH and BPC157 wants neutral and TB wants something else, so on and so forth.

So mixing them can cause them to be unstable.

This is a misunderstanding of preference versus tolerance.

Yes, peptides do have an optimal stability range during manufacturing and long term storage.

That does not mean they instantly degrade when placed slightly outside of the narrow window.

To chemically damage a peptide with ph, you generally need extreme conditions.

Strong acid, strong base, prolonged exposure.

A vial sitting near physiological ph is not considered extremely.

Think you can use BPC157 here as a real example?

Okay.

Because BPC157 is literally described in literature as a stable gastric peptide, so it survives stomach acid.

That's a pH of 1 to 3, extremely acidic.

So the idea that BPC157 becomes unstable in a vial that's hovering near neutral ph is not a serious scientific position.

If stomach acid doesn't destroy it, bacteriostatic water isn't going to either.

Okay, what about precipitation?

This is where people confuse appearance with chemistry.

Yes, precipitation can occur in peptide solutions, but precipitation is not automatically degradation.

It's usually caused by high concentrations, poor reconstitution technique, temperature swings, contamination, aggressive shaking.

These are handling and formulation issues, not proof the peptide has stopped working.

And this applies to single peptide vials too, not just blends.

So if you ever see cloudiness or particles floating around, you're normally not going to use it.

That's peptide hygiene, not evidence of a flawed concept with these blends.

And if the ph argument were truly correct, here's what would have to be true.

Most multi peptide formulations would fail.

Many single peptide vials would degrade rapidly.

Labs running analytical tests would consistently show loss of content.

Clinical and research use would have exposed this decades ago.

And that's not what we observe.

What we actually observe is slow, predictable peptide degradation over time.

It's the same thing we see with properly stored single peptides.

It's normal behavior, not a chemical collapse.

So while this PH argument sounds convincing because it's framed that way.

Chemistry doesn't care how confident someone sounds.

It cares about the actual conditions.

And under real world reconstitution conditions with backwater, these blends are not being exposed to anything remotely extreme enough to make them ineffective.

That's just basic chemistry.

And I'm not the brightest person in the world when it comes to this stuff.

Okay?

I'm not a chemist.

I don't have that background.

This is just me breaking through a lot of the research that exists on this.

Okay?

One of the other big things I hear is about the copper falling off in the GHK CU peptide.

So there's also this claim floating around that the PE in the peptide space.

Again, sounds scientific on the surface, but completely falls apart once you actually look at the chemistry behind it.

And the claim goes like this.

GHKCU is fragile because the copper can fall off when it's mixed with other peptides.

And if the copper falls off, GHK doesn't work and it ruins the entire blend.

Let's break this down because this argument is fundamentally wrong.

First, GHKCU is not just a peptide sitting next to copper.

It's a chelated complex.

That copper ion is not loosely attached.

It's tightly bound recoordinated bonds to the glycine, histidine and lysine sequence.

This is not a casual relationship.

It's a stable chemical structure.

Copper does not simply fall off because another peptide entered the vial.

For copper to disassociate from ghkcu, you would need very specific conditions.

Extreme ph shifts, strong competing chelates, chelates, harsh oxidative and degradative environments.

And normal peptide blends do not meet those conditions.

So let's also address this idea that mixing peptides somehow destabilizes copper.

Peptides like BPC157 and TB500 and KPV or even other copper peptides do not have a higher binding affinity for copper than GHK does.

They are not copper scavengers.

They don't strip ions.

They don't displace chelated metals.

This isn't a game of musical chairs where copper jumps shook the moment another peptide shows up.

If that were true, GHKCU wouldn't work in the human body at all because it would immediately encounter thousands of proteins, enzymes, and competing molecules in circulation.

Yet.

Yet GHKCU has decades of research showing biological activity in vivo, where conditions are far more complex than a reconstituted vial.

Another misconception is confusing.

Free Copper.

With chelated copper, free copper ions can be reactive and unstable.

GHKCU is specifically designed to control copper, not lose it.

One of its known biological roles is copper transport and regulation, not copper instability.

So there is no evidence, none, that properly formulated peptide blends cause GHKCU to become inactive simply by coexisting in solution.

Stability depends on proper ph range, which we've already talked about.

Correct.

Solvent, meaning back water, some instances sterile water, which we've already talked about.

Reasonable storage conditions and time and solution, not the presence of another peptide.

Could GHKCU degrade over time?

Of course, all peptides can.

But that degradation is driven by hydrolysis, oxidation, light exposure, temperature and time.

Not because copper simply decided to abandon chip.

When someone says the copper falls off and ruins the blend, what they're really saying is I don't understand the basic chemistry behind chelation.

And that's okay, but it doesn't make the claim true.

Okay, so the takeaway for this argument is that GHKCU is not as fragile as people say it is.

Copper does not randomly detach, and properly formulated blends do not magically deactivate it.

If they did ghkc, you would never have survived decades of research or biological systems in the first place.

All right, okay.

The last argument that I want to address is aggregation and oxidation.

What actually matters here and what doesn't?

These two words get thrown around constantly when people are trying to discredit peptide blends, this abrogation and oxidation.

And they sound technical, but they're often wildly misused.

So let's start with abrogation.

Abrogation simply means peptide molecules sticking to each other.

This is not a mystery phenomena, and it's not unique to blends.

It happens with single peptides too.

Aggregation risk depends on a few ph, concentration, temperature, time in solution, and mechanical stress like things like excess shaking, which we all know you're not supposed to do with peptides.

What it does not depend on is whether another peptides happens to be in the same vial.

If aggregation automatically happened just because peptides were combined, then multi peptides signaling in the human body would be impossible.

Biology does not work that way.

Properly formulated peptide solutions using appropriate concentration, neutral ph ranges, gentle handling and cold storage do not suddenly abrogate because they're blended.

Okay, so let's break down oxidation.

Oxidation is a chemical process where peptides are exposed to reactive oxygen species.

Again, this is not a blend problem.

It's a time and exposure problem.

Oxidation is driven by light exposure, heat, air exposure, certain reactive amino Acids, time and solution, et cetera.

Copper peptides like GHKCU often get dragged into the conversation.

But here's the key point.

GHKCU is designed to regulate copper, not destabilize it.

Chelated copper in GHKCU is far less reactive than, than free copper ions.

In fact, the GHK structure helps control redox activity rather than amplify it.

So if oxidation were inevitable just because copper is present, GHKC would not function in biological systems at all, which we already mentioned.

Right.

And decades of research show this aggregation and oxidation occur gradually and predictably under proper conditions and under poor conditions.

Okay, so under proper conditions, where you're not shaking the peptide and you're storing it away from light and you're storing it in the refrigerator, it's going to happen gradually and predictably.

You can speed that process along.

If you have warm storage, light exposure, excessive agitation and long timeframes in solution.

Which is why we normally say you want to use the peptides within 30 day period.

Right.

So under proper handling, what you will see is minor, slow degradation.

This is the same kind of degradation that you see with single ingredient peptides.

So it's not the sudden failure, it's not dead on arrival, it's not catastrophic.

Catastrophic loss of fish, of efficacy.

Peptides are not fragile glass ornaments.

They're biochemical tools that behave according to chemistry and not the social media panic that's been going on about these blends over the last, really the last six months is what I've seen.

Science doesn't care about these hypotheticals.

It cares about conditions, data and outcome.

And under proper condition, things like the aggregation and oxidation are manageable, minimal and normal, not deal breakers.

Look, and at the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding, right?

So you don't need to take, you know what I've said about this, what I've extrapolated out of the research.

There was actually a test done and I'm just trying to find it this morning before I recorded.

I'll try to find it and attach it to the podcast notes.

But basically it was a, it was a test that was done over a 20 way, 21 day period.

And I can't remember it was on the Glow or the CLO, but it was, I think it was on the CLO blend and it was over 21 days.

And they tested it three times.

And over that 21 days, from the starting time frame to the end of the 21 days, the degradation landed around 2 to 3%.

Okay, that's not dead, it's not worthless.

It's expected.

You could run a similar test on what's considered one of the more stable peptides, like BPC157, and it would probably show the exact same results.

So people that are out there just saying, oh, these blends don't work and they break down the minute you reconstitute them.

Like, the science just doesn't back that.

That science actually backs the opposite of that, that these are very stable blends, they work very well together and you should consider using them if you want skin rejuvenation, overall healing and health optimization.

I'm like I said, I'm personally using this one myself, the Clobalin myself right now for healing, and I'm already reaping the benefit from it.

So the takeaway here I think is don't always I tell my kids this, but as adults, and my kids are adults, but as a more mature adult, we fall victim to this as well.

You cannot believe everything that you hear.

And I'll be honest, the first time I heard that, I was like, that doesn't sound right to me.

But I want to check into this and make sure that I'm not missing something.

So always do some fact checking on your own.

A kind of a little phrase that we throw around here.

Within my family, if my kids bring me something, I'm like, cite your source.

And if they tell me that it's TikTok, I'm like, that's not a good source.

I'm not saying that all the information that you hear on Instagram or social media is wrong.

There's a lot of amazing, really relevant information out there.

But always try to go back and cite that person's source as well.

If someone really has an argument that they can stand behind, they're going to have of research behind that will collaborate what it.

Whatever it is that they're saying.

Okay, so that is it for today.

Like I said, I was going to keep it short and sweet.

I'd actually recorded an entire different episode, but I'm not quite ready to release it yet.

And so that'll come out a little later.

In the meantime, I just want to thank you guys for the support through all this crazy credit card processing issues that we've had and this, this roller coaster rider, the research peptide world.

And I love what I do.

I get emails from y' all every day, really, sometimes a couple times a day, of how peptides have changed people's lives.

And I believe so much that they can and that they do.

And so we're gonna continue along this bumpy road.

People ask me all the time, where is this going?

What should we expect in the research peptide world?

And the truth is, I don't know.

I know that it's gonna be bumpy.

And we are in this for the long haul, and we are gonna continue to do everything that we can on our end to keep providing peptides, but also information that you can take, that you can come to your own conclusions on, and you can really advocate for yourself to take your own health and wellness into your own hands instead of relying on our really broken healthcare system.

And I'm not gonna get on that soapbox, but at the end of the day, that's why I do what I do.

And like I say every time, I love doing what I do.

I'm so grateful and blessed that I get to do what I do every single day.

And that is because all the support that I get from each and every one of you.

So on that note, thank you.

Thank you.

And until next time, have a blessed day.