Copper
Browse through any popular magazine or watch TV for a short while. You will soon learn that where there is a profit to be made, scientific research and high technology will be close behind to find new and better ways to get involved. The multibillion-dollar beauty and cosmetics industry is a good example of this. It has pushed for answers to various skin problems – like scar formation – discovering good information along the way that PDI has found can be applied to the problem of Peyronie’s disease. Copper has been found to be a critically important mineral element needed to repair a site of tissue injury. As you read between the lines it is easy to apply what is done for a wrinkle or a surface scar to the internal Peyronie’s plaque that causes a curved penis to develop.
Copper and Peyronie’s plaque
In the 1970s Loren Pickart, PhD discovered the benefits of copper-peptides for tissue regeneration. He found and patented a number of specific copper-peptides (in particular, GHK copper-peptides or GHK-Cu) that were particularly effective in healing wounds, and reducing facial wrinkles. A distinctive feature of GHK copper-peptides is that they reduce scar tissue formation while stimulating normal skin remodeling.(1)
The mechanism by which copper-peptide (GHK-Cu) affects injury repair and eventual scar remodeling is complex. Most important to PD, copper-peptides cause the reduction of disorganized and “extra-large” collagen protein strands, as found in scars, and promote formation of smaller and more regular collagen, as found in normal tissue. But it also does other things: promotes manufacture of elastin, proteoglycans, glycosaminoglycans and other components of normal skin; regulates growth and migration of several different types of cell of the immune system that are mobilized after injury; controls inflammation; and, prevents the release of oxidation-promoting iron into the damaged and healing tissue. The end result of all this copper-peptide activity is a faster and better repair with minimal scar tissue.
After skin injury in which the skin is broken, many dozens of fascinating cellular processes take place along with a frenzy of simultaneous chemical activities. However, our focus here will be to collagen and scar formation, and the vital importance of copper to this process.
2. The cells at the site of injury also cause release of a wide variety of enzymes that break down skin proteins into smaller fragments. Copper – no other metal, not iron, not zinc, not potassium, only copper – accumulates at the site and is soon joined with protein fragments called peptides. If copper is insufficient, healing will be imperfect and inadequate. The copper-peptides that are formed in the area of injury serve as chemical signals to the immune system that the skin is injured and needs repair. Without these chemical signals from the copper-peptides the body is said to be unaware that it is injured, resulting in delayed or inadequate repair to the injury.(2)
3. Copper-peptides also signal a most important phase of tissue repair called skin remodeling. During this phase the scar tissue is transformed and replaced with normal skin tissue. Since the excess scar that was developed in response to the initial emergency is no longer needed, it is reduced and even eliminated.
4. As copper-peptides accumulate, they protect the damaged area by stopping the production of, and sterilizing effects of, oxygen radicals from the PMNs, and by reducing scar formation by suppressing the production of TGF-beta – the scar-making hormone. So you see that not only does copper-peptide reduce scar material, it also keeps more from being formed — not bad!
5. Copper-peptides also signal another type of defensive cell of the immune system, called a macrophage, which arrives after the PMNs have sterilized the tissue with oxygen radicals. Macrophages act as scavengers eating up various cellular debris elements from the site of injury, and they secrete over a dozen growth factors required for tissue repair. Copper-peptides also stimulate scar removal in other ways by changing the synthesis of metalloproteinases (a family of at least 20 proteins that remove damaged collagen and scar tissue) and antiproteases.(2-5) These copper-peptides have been found to increase metalloproteinase activity up to fourfold – 400% ! – which has the potential to greatly increase the activity of scar reduction and remoldeling.(6)
6. If all that wasn’t enough, copper-peptides accelerate production of proteins needed for repair and remodeling, such as collagen and elastin, and other proteins and molecules such as proteoglycans and glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) that bind water to moisturize the skin. The copper-peptides also initiate angiogenesis, which is new capillary formation, to insure a good blood supply for the newly repaired tissue.
7. Skin remodeling goes on for long time; it is a slow process. This point needs to be emphasized often to the PD patient who wants to get well tomorrow. Scar reduction is done on the cellular level, one strand of fibrin at a time. PD is an exercise in developing the virtue of patience.
So the main message of all these studies is that it pays to supply copper to the body if you wish to minimize scar development.
Copper and Peyronie‘s research
Copper is an important component of the healing process called scar remodeling, or the resurfacing and removal of excess scar tissue. Use of copper has been repeatedly found to reduce the appearance of even old and healed scars on the surface of the skin. There is good science to support the idea of copper-peptides can be used to assist remodeling of your Peyronie’s plaque or scar.
Science
In the body, copper is either in the cuprous form (Copper 1 or Cu 1+) or the cupric form (Copper 2 or Cu 2+). Most of the body’s copper is in the Copper 2 form, the “metabolically active copper” that is used for tissue regeneration and repair. Copper 2 imparts a blue or green color to whatever solution it is in, whether in creams, lotions, and solutions. Copper 1 is not involved in tissue regenerative or skin repair activity and is colorless in water. Less that 1% of the body’s copper is metabolically active copper, and it is exchanged between the various tissues of the body as needed, as in the metalloproteins and copper-peptides need for scar remodeling.
Peyronies treatment connection
2. Incomplete healing results in heavy scarring, and complete healing results in minimal scarring.
3. Copper is a critically essential element needed for complete wound and injury healing. Without copper, scar reduction – called remodeling – cannot proceed normally. In a copper deficiency scars not only start out larger and thicker, and they are more likely to stay that way. Keep that in mind about your Peyronie’s treatment .
Copper product information
What follows next is the presentation of commercial information about a particular product that PDI endorses and sells through its Natural Complementary Medicine Products LLC division. PDI does this so that you may easily identify what we think is the best therapy product of its kind, and then make it available for sale easily and at the best price we can.
Copper product recommendation
Loren Pickart, PhD, holds numerous patents for his discoveries and innovations with problems in dermatology; he is perhaps the leading world authority on the use of copper for skin problems. He has an excellent formula that he has recommended in personal communication with PDI for the use of attempting to stimulate remodeling of the Peyronie’s plaque. This product is called Super CP Serum. Dr. Pickart has experience with Super CP Serum in thousands of cases of different skin problems. He advises that for Super CP Serum to reach the deep Peyronie’s plaque material, extra penetration of the copper-peptides would occur if Super CP Serum was applied at the same time with DMSO.
For additional information go to DMSO for that discussion.
Recommended use of Super CP Serum (Copper-peptide )and DMSO
Place 2-3 drops of Super CP Serum over the internal plaque or nodule on the shaft of the penis, and work into the skin with your finger. Initially the Super CP Serum will feel slippery, but after just a few seconds it will penetrate the area and you will feel a certain resistance or drag as you rub it in. At this point stop working it in, and apply a small amount of DMSO over the same area you just applied the Super CP Serum. Let the area air-dry for as long as you can before getting dressed.
For ideas and suggestions to put it all together, visit Peyronie’s treatment help.
2. Simeon, Emonard, The tripeptide-copper complex GHK-Cu stimulates matrix metalloproteinases 2 expression by fibroblast cultures. Hornebeck & Maquart Laboratoire de Biochimie-UPRESA CNRS 6021, Faculte de Medecine, Reims, France. Life Sci 2000 Sep 22;67(18):2257-65
3. The effect of copper tripeptide and tretinoin on growth factor production in a serum-free fibroblast model. McCormack, M., Nowak KC, Koch, J. Arch Facial Plast Surg 2001; 3: 28-32
4. Oddos, T, Jumeau-Lafond, A. Requirement of Copper and Tripeptide Glycyl-L-Histidyl-L-Lysine Complex Formation for Collagen Synthesis Activity in Normal Human Dermal Fibroblasts.; Val de Reuil, France, Ries, G, Johnson & Johnson, Dusseldorf, Germany. Abstract P72, American Academy of Dermatology Meeting, February 2002
5. Buffoni, Pino and Dal Pozzo. Effect of tripeptide-copper complexes on the process of skin wound healing and on cultured fibroblasts. (Department of Pharmacology, University of Florence, Firenze, Italy) Arch Int Pharmacodyn Ther 1995 330(3):345-60
6. Simeon; Monier; Emonard; Gillery; Birembaut. Expression and activation of matrix metalloproteinases in wounds: modulation by the tripeptide-copper complex glycyl-L-histidyl-L-lysine- Cu2+. Hornebeck and Maquart (Faculte de Medecine, Reims, France). J Invest Dermatol 1999 112(6):957-64
7. Farquharson C, Robins SP. Immunolocalization of collagen types I, III and IV, elastin and fibronectin within the heart of normal and copper-deficient rats. J Comp Pathol. 1991 Apr;104(3):245-55. Biochemistry Division, Rowett Research Institute, Bucksburn, Aberdeen, Scotland.