Peptides, and how to read the label honestly
Short chains of amino acids, a great deal of marketing, and a smaller set of things that are actually established.
Tetyana Chemerynska
Advanced facialist
About the clinic
A peptide is a short chain of amino acids. Proteins are long chains of the same thing, and collagen is a protein. That relationship is where most peptide marketing starts and where a lot of it stops making sense, because applying a fragment of something is not the same as applying the thing itself, and neither is the same as making more of it.
What is reasonably established is that certain peptide sequences act as signals. They are recognised by the skin, and the skin responds. Different sequences signal different things, which is why grouping every peptide under one claim on a label tells you very little.
How to read a label. Position in the ingredients list matters, because it broadly tracks concentration. A peptide named specifically is more informative than the word peptide on its own. And a product that lists a sequence alongside what that sequence is for is being more useful to you than one leading with a percentage and no context.
What it will not do. No topical peptide replaces a structural treatment, and none of them work on a timescale of days. Skincare is the maintenance layer around clinical work rather than a substitute for it, and anyone selling it as a substitute is selling something.
In the clinic. Tetyana selects homecare after the skin scan rather than before it, because the point of the scan is to establish what the skin is actually short of. Bringing in your current products at consultation is genuinely useful; frequently the answer is to use fewer of them.