The short answer: four peptides, one coenzyme, and a lot of unnamed shots
Strip the 2025 and 2026 coverage down to what people actually said into a microphone and the celebrity peptide list is shorter than the headlines suggest. Four compounds get named by name: BPC-157, TB-500, GHK-Cu and the growth hormone releasers, tesamorelin and CJC-1295. One non-peptide, NAD+, is in nearly every routine. And the most quoted lines of all, Jennifer Aniston's weekly injection, Khloé Kardashian's daily one, Gwyneth Paltrow's longevity peptides, come with no compound attached. Nobody has asked, or nobody has answered.
That matters because the word peptide now covers at least four different products: a cosmetic cream with a trace of acetyl hexapeptide-8, a scoop of hydrolysed collagen in a smoothie, a prescription GLP-1 drug with tens of thousands of trial patients behind it, and a lyophilised research-use-only vial of BPC-157 bought from a website. When a star says she loves peptides, she may mean any of those, and the reporting rarely tells you which. This article sorts them, person by person and compound by compound. Separate pieces on Hailey Bieber, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Aniston, Khloé Kardashian, the Duhamel and Grillo Wolverine stack, and Joe Rogan follow.
Who said what, on the record
Hailey Bieber is the most specific. In her spring 2026 Interview Magazine cover story she said peptides are the base of her Rhode skincare line, named GHK-Cu, the copper peptide, as something I take, described BPC-157 as one you can take orally that is really good for the gut, muscle repair, and recovery, and mentioned peptide hair gummies and unnamed immunity peptides she had used before. That is four categories in one answer: a cosmetic ingredient, an injected or oral research peptide, a supplement, and an immunomodulator.
Jennifer Aniston told WSJ. Magazine in August 2023 that she gets weekly peptide injections for her skin and that she does think that's the future. Khloé Kardashian told ELLE in November 2025 that she cannot see her life without peptides and takes a daily peptide injection that has changed her life. Gwyneth Paltrow told ELLE in January 2026 that injectable B12, NAD+ and peptides are among her biggest wellness tools, that she uses NAD+ drips and a self-injection NAD+ pen, and that peptides being formulated for longevity deal with inflammation and brain health. None of the three named a molecule.
The action side of town is blunter. Josh Duhamel, 53, told Yahoo Life in April 2026 that NAD or Tesamorelin or the Wolverine stack, the BPC-157, TB-500, have helped him stay strong, stay fit, stay youthful. Frank Grillo told TheWrap in December 2024: I do BPC-157. It took away the pain in my shoulders and my knee. I take CJC for recovery as well. Joe Rogan told Andrew Schulz in December 2020 that elbow tendonitis he could not fix was gone within two weeks of starting BPC-157, the exchange in which Schulz coined the phrase Wolverine shit. LeAnn Rimes starts the day with peptide shots alongside her husband, and Kris Jenner, who holds a stake in a hair-peptide gummy brand, says a peptide injection was really great for her.
BPC-157: the Wolverine peptide with no human trial
BPC-157 is a fifteen-amino-acid sequence derived from a protein found in gastric juice, and it is the most famous unapproved peptide in the world. The fame rests on an unusually large rodent literature, most of it from one affiliated research group in Zagreb, reporting faster healing of transected Achilles tendons, crushed muscles, ligaments and gut lesions through nitric oxide signalling and new blood vessel growth. Read as preclinical work it is real and interesting. Read as evidence that it heals a human tendon, it is a gap.
There is no published randomised, placebo-controlled human trial of BPC-157 for any indication. The one programme that reached the clinic was an oral formulation for inflammatory bowel disease in the 2000s, and its efficacy results were never published. What has appeared since is a handful of uncontrolled pilot reports from a single US group, including a 2025 intravenous safety study in a couple of healthy adults. That is the entire human record for a compound three actors and the country's most-listened-to podcaster credit with fixing their joints.
Its regulatory story is the most active in the class. In September 2023 the FDA placed it in the category of bulk substances that raise significant safety risks, citing immunogenicity and impurity concerns, which barred pharmacies from compounding it. In April 2026, after the Health Secretary told Joe Rogan he was a big fan of peptides and that we created the gray market, the agency moved twelve peptides out of that category. On 23 July 2026 the Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee voted eight to six, with one abstention, to recommend BPC-157 for compounding for ulcerative colitis, over the objection of FDA career scientists who said they lacked the evidence to assess safety or effectiveness. A recommendation is not an approval, and rulemaking runs into 2027.
TB-500: the fragment that borrowed a protein's résumé
TB-500 is the second half of the Wolverine stack and it has the more confusing biography. Thymosin beta-4 is a real 43-residue protein that binds actin, promotes cell migration and blood vessel growth, and has been through registered clinical trials, almost all of them with the intact protein dropped into the eye for dry eye disease and neurotrophic keratopathy. None of those trials produced a marketing approval, and the only systemic human exposure on record was an early-phase safety study whose planned heart attack efficacy trial never returned results.
The vial sold as TB-500 is not that protein. It is a short synthetic fragment built around the actin-binding region, with no clinical development programme of its own. No randomised trial has tested injected TB-500 for tendon, ligament or muscle injury in anyone, which is the use every buyer has in mind. And the parent protein's talent for driving cell migration and vessel growth is the property that makes chronic systemic use hard to reassure anyone about, because it is overexpressed in several tumour types.
Anti-doping authorities have never been confused about it. Thymosin beta-4 and its derivatives are named on the WADA Prohibited List, and athletes have been sanctioned for it, most famously in the Essendon Football Club case. The July 2026 advisory committee voted eight to six to recommend TB-500 for compounding for wound healing, on the same non-binding basis as BPC-157.
GHK-Cu: strong in a cream, unproven in a syringe
GHK-Cu is the compound Hailey Bieber named, and it has the best human evidence on this list, provided you keep the route straight. It is a naturally occurring tripeptide, glycyl-histidyl-lysine, that binds copper tightly and circulates in plasma at levels that fall by roughly sixty percent between the ages of twenty and sixty. In cultured skin fibroblasts it increases collagen synthesis, in animal wound models it speeds closure, and applied to photoaged faces in vehicle-controlled cosmetic studies it has produced measurable improvements in fine lines, density and elasticity. That is why it is a lawful cosmetic ingredient sold as copper tripeptide-1.
The version the celebrity conversation has moved to is the injected one, and here the record is empty. There is no controlled human trial of subcutaneous or intramuscular GHK-Cu for skin, hair, tendon or anything else, and no approved injectable product anywhere. Injection also introduces a question the cream never faces: the complex carries copper, and injection bypasses the intestinal step where the body normally regulates how much copper it takes on.
That question is no longer theoretical. The Hollywood Reporter and NPR both reported in 2026 on a skin reaction users call the copper uglies, on clinicians warning of copper overload and immune reactions, and on grey-market vials found to contain arsenic and lead. GHK-Cu was placed in the significant-safety-risk category in 2023 and was not on the July 2026 agenda.
CJC-1295, ipamorelin, sermorelin, tesamorelin: the growth hormone stack
When a longevity clinic talks about recovery, body composition, sleep and anti-aging in one breath, it usually means the growth hormone secretagogues. These do not inject growth hormone; they ask the pituitary to release more of its own, which caps the response through IGF-1 feedback in a way injected growth hormone is not capped. CJC-1295 and sermorelin are analogues of growth hormone-releasing hormone. Ipamorelin acts on the ghrelin receptor and is unusually selective, raising growth hormone with little effect on cortisol or prolactin. Stacking one of each is the standard clinic protocol, and it is the stack Frank Grillo alluded to when he said he takes CJC for recovery.
The evidence for the outcomes people want is thin. The longest controlled trial in the class, a two-year study of the oral secretagogue MK-677 in healthy older adults, raised IGF-1 to young-adult levels and added lean mass but produced no gain in strength or function and worsened fasting glucose. Human data on CJC-1295 is a handful of short studies in healthy volunteers. Ipamorelin was abandoned in development. Nobody has run a trial showing any of them makes a 53-year-old actor recover faster.
Tesamorelin, the one Josh Duhamel named, is the outlier. It is the only growth hormone secretagogue with a current FDA approval, and that approval is narrow: reducing excess abdominal fat in HIV-associated lipodystrophy, with the fat returning when treatment stops. Sermorelin was withdrawn from the US market in 2008 and lives on through compounding. CJC-1295 and ipamorelin were placed in the FDA's significant-safety-risk category in September 2023 and were not on the July 2026 advisory agenda.
NAD+: the non-peptide in every peptide conversation
NAD+ is not a peptide. It is a coenzyme, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, that every cell uses to shuttle electrons in metabolism and that a family of repair and signalling enzymes consume. Tissue levels decline with age in animal studies and, less clearly, in humans, which is the whole basis of the longevity pitch. It is here because the clinics that sell peptide injections sell NAD+ drips and pens from the same menu, and because Paltrow, Bieber, Duhamel and Rogan all group it with peptides when they talk.
The human evidence splits by route. Oral precursors, nicotinamide riboside and nicotinamide mononucleotide, reliably raise NAD+ metabolites in blood in randomised trials, and one 2021 trial in prediabetic women found improved muscle insulin sensitivity with NMN. Functional endpoints beyond that, on strength, cognition, energy or ageing biomarkers, have been modest or null. Intravenous NAD+, the drip that costs several hundred dollars an hour, has no controlled trial behind any wellness claim made for it, and the flushing and chest tightness people report during infusions are the pharmacology of pushing a large charged molecule into a vein quickly.
The rest of the list: collagen, GLP-1s, thymosin alpha-1, melanotan
Collagen peptides are the peptides celebrities consume most often, and the least dramatic. Hydrolysed collagen is a food ingredient, broken into short fragments so it dissolves in coffee. Randomised trials, mostly small, manufacturer-funded and eight to twelve weeks long, report modest gains in skin hydration and elasticity, and meta-analyses pool them into a small positive effect. Jennifer Aniston is a paid partner of one collagen brand, which is worth knowing when she talks about peptides in her smoothie.
The GLP-1 drugs are the opposite case: peptides with enormous evidence and a celebrity problem of their own. Semaglutide and tirzepatide are FDA-approved, carry phase 3 programmes enrolling tens of thousands of patients, and are the reason half of Hollywood is thinner than it was in 2022. One point belongs here: when a star denies using Ozempic but says she takes a daily peptide, a daily GLP-1 such as liraglutide is a peptide, and both statements can be true.
Two more names surface at the edges. Thymosin alpha-1 is what the market usually means by an immunity peptide: a genuine immunomodulatory drug approved in dozens of countries for hepatitis B and as an immune adjuvant, but not in the United States. Melanotan II, the tanning peptide, has a unanimous regulatory position, illegal to sell for human use in the US, UK, EU and Australia, with published case reports of eruptive moles and melanoma, and it appears in celebrity coverage only as a warning.
Why Hollywood, and why now
Anyone who has spent time around a production understands the demand side. A physical role at fifty means twelve weeks to build a body that reads on a forty-foot screen, a stunt schedule that does not wait for a shoulder to settle, and a face lit from eighteen inches away in 4K. The trainer, the dermatologist and the concierge physician are all on the payroll, and all three have a longevity clinic on speed dial. Frank Grillo said the quiet part out loud: it is ridiculous to think you are getting that from eating chicken and broccoli.
The supply side changed too. Testosterone replacement became something an actor could mention on a podcast without consequence, and the peptide clinics grew up in its shadow, selling the next tier of optimisation to the same clientele on the same cash-pay model. The conversation then moved from forums to TikTok, where a thirty-second clip of Josh Duhamel listing his stack reaches more people than every human study of BPC-157 combined. Every celebrity mention is free advertising for an industry that cannot legally advertise the uses it sells, and the question what peptides is Hailey Bieber using is now a search term with real volume.
The regulatory record, September 2023 to September 2026
Three dates organise everything above. In September 2023 the FDA evaluated a batch of peptides nominated for pharmacy compounding and placed BPC-157, TB-500, CJC-1295, ipamorelin, GHK-Cu, KPV, MOTS-c, epitalon, semax, selank and others in Category 2 of its bulk substances list, meaning the agency saw significant safety risks and pharmacies could no longer compound them. That decision pushed the whole market onto research-use-only websites, and it is what Robert F. Kennedy Jr meant when he told Joe Rogan in February 2026 that we created the gray market.
On 15 April 2026 the FDA announced it would move twelve of those peptides out of Category 2 and convene its Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee to reconsider them, seven in July and five more before the end of February 2027. Removal from Category 2 did not place anything in Category 1, so through the spring the peptides sat in a limbo where nothing was prohibited and nothing was authorised.
On 23 and 24 July 2026 the committee met. BPC-157, KPV and TB-500 each passed eight to six with one abstention; MOTS-c passed seven to five with two abstentions; semax and epitalon passed; DSIP was the only rejection. Every vote was close, and every vote overruled the FDA's own reviewers, whose central objection was that without universally accepted chemical definitions the identity, quality and comparability of these substances are unclear. A recommendation triggers rulemaking that realistically takes eight to twelve months. As of this writing, nothing on the list is approved.
What a famous name is worth as evidence
Take Joe Rogan's elbow, the single most influential data point in the history of BPC-157. A man with chronic tendonitis starts a compound and the pain is gone in two weeks. What else is true of that man? He trains with professionals, had almost certainly changed his loading, had other treatments in play, and started the compound at the moment the pain was bad enough to try something, which is exactly when tendinopathy is most likely to improve on its own. Regression to the mean is not a slur on the anecdote. It is the reason we run controlled trials.
Every celebrity statement in this article has the same structure with more money behind it. There is no control, no blinding, no measurement beyond how the person felt, and several concurrent interventions, some of them, like retinoids, lasers, fillers and neuromodulators, with far better evidence for the outcome being credited to the peptide. There is also a commercial layer: Bieber, Paltrow, Duhamel, Jenner and Aniston each have a company or partnership whose sales rise when peptides trend.
None of that means the compounds do nothing. It means that after two decades and a great deal of clinic revenue, the question of whether they do anything in humans remains unanswered, and the people best placed to fund an answer have funded testimonials instead. The famous name tells you what someone tried. The trial that would tell you whether it worked has not been run.