What did @michele.riggs6 actually say?
The creator stacked GHK-Cu and glutathione injections as a "skin stack," claiming GHK-Cu supports hair, skin, anti-aging, collagen production, and tissue repair, while glutathione is your "master antioxidant" that prevents illness, reduces bloating, speeds recovery, detoxes the liver, and improves skin. She also credited the stack for near-invisible surgical scars. The video then shows her self-injecting both compounds subcutaneously, rotating between the arm, belly, thigh, and glute, describing the process casually as a "concoction."
The claims land in two buckets: things that have at least some scientific backing, and things that are either exaggerated or not supported by human clinical evidence. The "master antioxidant" label for glutathione, for instance, is real biochemistry. The immunity and bloating claims are where things get shaky.
Does the science back this up?
For GHK-Cu, the evidence is more credible than most TikTok peptides, but most of it is in vitro or small-scale. For glutathione as an injectable, the evidence is mixed and context-dependent.
GHK-Cu (copper peptide GHK-Cu) has been studied since Loren Pickart's early work in the 1970s and 1980s, and more recent research confirms it can stimulate collagen and glycosaminoglycan synthesis in fibroblast cultures (Pickart et al., 2015, Journal of Aging Research). A 2018 review by Gorouhi and Maibach in Skin Pharmacology and Physiology found topical copper peptides showed modest but real improvements in fine lines and skin firmness. Systemic injectable use in humans is far less studied.
Glutathione is legitimately the most abundant intracellular antioxidant in the human body. Intravenous glutathione has shown some benefit in specific clinical contexts, like Parkinson's symptom management and chemotherapy-related neuropathy (Cascinu et al., 2002, Journal of Clinical Oncology). The "detoxes your liver" claim oversimplifies a real process: glutathione is critical to phase II hepatic detoxification, but injecting it does not straightforwardly translate to clinically meaningful liver detox in healthy people.
What did they get wrong (or right)?
Credit where it is due: calling glutathione the "master antioxidant" is accurate biochemistry, and the collagen and tissue repair claims for GHK-Cu have real preclinical support. The self-reported scar outcome is plausible, though it is a sample size of one.
What they got wrong, or at least oversold:
- "While everyone else is coughing and getting sick, you are not" is not supported by any clinical trial showing injectable glutathione prevents upper respiratory infections in healthy adults. This is immune system overclaiming, full stop.
- "Less bloating" attributed to glutathione has no meaningful clinical trial support in healthy populations. Bloating reduction is not a documented mechanism of action.
- "Detoxes your liver" is a phrase that needs serious unpacking. Glutathione plays a role in hepatic metabolism, but implying an injectable dose provides detoxification benefit beyond your liver's baseline function is misleading without clinical evidence in non-deficient individuals.
- Describing the injection stack as a personal "concoction" and demonstrating self-injection technique on TikTok, without mentioning sourcing, sterility, dosing verification, or physician oversight, is a significant safety omission regardless of the compound's actual risk profile.
What should you actually know?
Both compounds have legitimate science behind them, but the gap between "has real biology" and "inject this at home and you won't get sick" is enormous. Here is what the evidence actually supports.
GHK-Cu has the most robust data in topical and in vitro contexts. Injectable systemic use in humans lacks large randomized controlled trials. The wound-healing and collagen data is promising but preliminary at the systemic level.
Glutathione supplementation faces a bioavailability problem. Oral forms are largely degraded before absorption. Injectable and liposomal forms bypass that issue, but the clinical applications with the strongest evidence are in specific disease contexts, not general wellness or immunity in healthy adults (Schmitt et al., 2015, European Journal of Nutrition).
Self-injection of compounded peptides carries real risks: infection at the injection site, improper dosing, unknown purity of unregulated sources, and no monitoring for adverse reactions. A TikTok video is not a medical protocol. If you are interested in peptide therapy, that conversation belongs with a licensed clinician who can evaluate your individual health status, not a comment section.
The bottom line on this stack
GHK-Cu and glutathione are not pseudoscience. But the claims made in this video run well ahead of what the human clinical evidence actually shows, especially for immunity, bloating, and liver detox. The scar story is anecdote, not data. The self-injection demonstration, framed as a casual routine, skips over every question a clinician would ask first.
If you are 39 and optimizing, that is a reasonable goal. But "I look good and I do these injections" is correlation, not causation, and 202,000 viewers deserve that distinction.