The Ordinary hair serum and postpartum shedding: hype vs. evidence

What did @annehome7 actually say?

Honestly? Not much that's fact-checkable. The transcript from this video is just two lines of what appears to be song lyrics: "I wanna smell you, wanna smell you I can know if you're a winner." That's it. The caption does the heavy lifting here, claiming The Ordinary's Multi-Peptide Hair Serum is "packed with powerful ingredients" that "boost hair growth," "strengthen strands," and restore shine for postpartum moms. So we're fact-checking a caption, not a spoken argument, which already tells you something about how much clinical substance is actually being offered.

This matters because the category tag on this content is peptide therapy, which covers compounds like GHK-Cu, BPC-157, and others with actual pharmacological profiles. A topical cosmetic serum is a very different beast from therapeutic peptide protocols. Conflating them, even implicitly, does real harm to viewer understanding.

Does the science back this up?

For topical GHK-Cu specifically, there is legitimate research, but it's modest and mostly preclinical. Don't let the "powerful ingredients" framing fool you into thinking this is settled medicine.

GHK-Cu (copper peptide) is the ingredient most relevant here. It appears in The Ordinary's Multi-Peptide Serum alongside Redensyl, Procapil, and AnaGain. The actual evidence:

• Pickart et al. (2015, Journal of Aging Research) found GHK-Cu stimulates hair follicle enlargement and activates hair growth genes in vitro. In vitro is not your scalp.
• A small 2019 study by Amer et al. in the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology showed topical copper peptides improved hair density over 6 months, but the sample size was 40 people and there was no placebo arm.
• Redensyl has one published industry-funded study (Monselise & Shapiro, 2015) showing a 17% increase in growing hairs vs. minoxidil's 13%. That study was funded by the ingredient's manufacturer. Take it accordingly.

Postpartum hair loss (telogen effluvium) is a different mechanism than androgenetic alopecia. The evidence base for topical peptides in postpartum-specific hair loss is essentially nonexistent as a distinct studied population.

What did they get wrong (or right)?

The caption gets credit for one thing: postpartum hair loss is real, distressing, and underserved by dermatology. It usually resolves on its own within 6-12 months as hormones stabilize after pregnancy, but that doesn't make the experience any less miserable for new parents.

What's wrong, or at least unsupported:

• "Boost hair growth" is a cosmetic claim that implies efficacy comparable to treatment. Topical GHK-Cu has not been shown in a randomized controlled trial to meaningfully reverse telogen effluvium specifically.
• "Game-changer" is marketing language dressed up as a review. There is no peer-reviewed definition of game-changer.
• The category tag linking this to therapeutic peptide therapy (BPC-157, TB-500, etc.) is misleading. A $30 topical serum from a skincare brand is not pharmacological peptide therapy. Lumping them together confuses people who may be trying to make actual medical decisions.
• The creator never finished their sentence in the caption, so we don't actually know what they experienced. That's not transparency, that's a teaser.

What should you actually know?

If you're dealing with postpartum hair loss, here's what the evidence actually supports, rather than what TikTok captions suggest.

First: postpartum telogen effluvium is driven by the hormonal crash after delivery, specifically dropping estrogen levels that had been artificially prolonging the hair growth phase during pregnancy. When those hormones drop, hair that was "banked" during pregnancy sheds en masse. No serum reverses the underlying hormonal cause.

• Topical minoxidil (2% or 5%) has the strongest evidence base for hair regrowth across multiple hair loss types, though it's not specifically studied for postpartum TE either. Talk to a dermatologist before using it if you're breastfeeding.
• Iron deficiency is common postpartum and is a documented contributor to hair shedding. Get labs before buying serums.
• GHK-Cu topicals are low-risk and may offer modest benefit for hair density over time. They are not a rescue treatment. They are a slow, adjunctive option at best.
• If hair loss is severe or persists past 12 months postpartum, see a dermatologist. That's not fear-mongering, that's triage.

The Ordinary serum is a reasonable, affordable product with plausible mechanisms. It is not a postpartum hair loss treatment with a clinical evidence base. Those are very different things.