What is GHK-Cu?

What the compound is

GHK-Cu is the tripeptide glycyl-histidyl-lysine in complex with a copper ion. The peptide portion is three amino acids long, which makes it small compared to most of the compounds catalogued on this site. The copper is not an additive or a preservative; it is part of what the name describes.

It is sold as a lyophilized powder in sealed vials, most commonly at 50 mg and 100 mg. The powder is dissolved in bacteriostatic water before anything else happens to it. That dissolution step is the only part of the process this site models.

GHK-Cu is filed here under repair, which is a shelf label for how vendors and forums group it. It is not a statement about what the compound does in a human body. This site does not evaluate that question and has no medical review process behind it.

Regulatory status

GHK-Cu is not approved by any regulator for human use. There is no approved label, so there is no authorized dose, no authorized route, no authorized indication and no reviewed safety summary to point at.

That absence matters for reading anything you find online. When a compound has an approved label, dosing arithmetic is a translation of an official number. When it does not, the amounts circulating in listings and forums are conventions, not instructions. The amounts seen in GHK-Cu listings cluster at 1 mg, 2 mg and 3 mg. Those are figures we observed being sold, nothing more.

We will not tell you which of those to use, or whether any of them is reasonable. That is a clinical question and this page cannot answer clinical questions.

What is not known

We hold no reliable human pharmacokinetic data for GHK-Cu. This site therefore makes no claim about its half life, how quickly it clears, whether it accumulates with repeated use, or how long any single amount remains present.

This is a real gap, not a formality. Half life is what would let you reason about spacing between administrations. Clearance is what would let you reason about whether amounts stack on top of each other. Without those numbers, any schedule you see quoted is someone's habit rather than a derived interval, and we are not going to dress a habit up as arithmetic.

What remains computable is the relationship between the powder in the vial, the water you add, and the concentration of the resulting solution. That is chemistry, not pharmacology, and it holds regardless of what the compound does once it leaves the vial.

Reading the concentration table

The table on this page crosses the two vial sizes sold, 50 mg and 100 mg, against the three water volumes commonly used, 1 mL, 2 mL and 3 mL. Concentration is simply the milligrams of peptide divided by the millilitres of water.

Three things are worth pulling out. First, water volume is inversely proportional to concentration: hold the vial constant and doubling the water halves the concentration. A 50 mg vial gives 50 mg/mL in 1 mL and 25 mg/mL in 2 mL. Second, vial size and water volume can cancel each other exactly. A 50 mg vial in 1 mL and a 100 mg vial in 2 mL both land on 50 mg/mL, even though one vial holds twice the peptide of the other. The concentration alone does not tell you how much peptide is in the vial, and the vial size alone does not tell you the concentration. You need both.

Third, 3 mL produces the untidy figures, 16.67 mg/mL and 33.33 mg/mL, because 50 and 100 do not divide evenly by 3. Those repeating decimals are the reason many people reconstitute in 1 mL or 2 mL instead. It is a convenience of arithmetic, not a property of the compound.

Higher concentration means a smaller volume of liquid carries the same amount of peptide. That is the entire practical consequence of choosing a water volume, and it is why the choice is made before the powder is dissolved rather than after.

What this page will not do

It will not recommend a vial size, a water volume or an amount. It will not tell you what to expect, what side effects occur, whether GHK-Cu is safe, or whether it does anything at all. Those are questions for a clinician with access to your situation, and no arithmetic on this page substitutes for that.

DoseGraph exists because concentration mistakes are common and are pure arithmetic, so they can be checked. Everything downstream of the concentration figure, including whether to use the compound in the first place, sits outside what this site is willing to claim.

What we do not know

We hold no reliable human pharmacokinetic data for GHK-Cu, so this site makes no claims about its half life, how long it takes to clear, or how it accumulates. The arithmetic below concerns concentration and volume only.

This page answers arithmetic and handling questions. It does not tell you what dose to take, what to expect, or whether anything is appropriate for you, and there is no medical review behind it.

Common questions

What does GHK-Cu stand for?

The letters are the single-letter codes for the three amino acids in the peptide: glycine, histidine and lysine. Cu is the chemical symbol for copper, which is complexed with the peptide. The name describes the composition, not any effect.

Is GHK-Cu approved?

No. GHK-Cu is not approved by any regulator for human use. There is no approved label and therefore no official dose, route or indication to reference. This site does not assess whether the compound is safe or effective.

How much water should I use to reconstitute a GHK-Cu vial?

That is a choice, not a fixed answer, and this site does not make it for you. The table shows what 1 mL, 2 mL and 3 mL produce from the 50 mg and 100 mg vials. More water means a lower concentration and a larger volume of liquid per equivalent amount of peptide.

What is the half life of GHK-Cu?

We do not know, and we will not estimate. There is no reliable human pharmacokinetic data for GHK-Cu that this site is willing to rely on. That means no claims here about half life, clearance rate, or accumulation across repeated use.

Why do the 3 mL rows have repeating decimals?

Because neither 50 nor 100 divides evenly by 3. A 50 mg vial in 3 mL works out to 16.67 mg/mL and a 100 mg vial in 3 mL to 33.33 mg/mL. Nothing is wrong with the compound; the numbers are just less convenient to work with than the 1 mL and 2 mL results.

Two different vials show the same concentration. Are they interchangeable?

They give the same amount of peptide per millilitre, but not the same total peptide. A 50 mg vial in 1 mL and a 100 mg vial in 2 mL both read 50 mg/mL, yet the second vial contains twice as much peptide and twice the finished volume. Always track both figures, not just the concentration.