CJC-1295 + Ipamorelin dosing — commonly reported research protocols

The figure repeated most often for CJC-1295 with ipamorelin is roughly 100 mcg of each peptide per subcutaneous injection, one to three times daily, commonly including a dose before bed and taken away from food. That number has no trial behind it. It circulates because it circulates. The doses that were actually studied in humans look nothing like it: CJC-1295's published pharmacokinetic work used 30 and 60 µg/kg as weekly or biweekly injections (Teichman, JCEM 2006), and ipamorelin's only human efficacy trial used 0.03 mg/kg intravenously twice daily in a hospital setting (Beck, Int J Colorectal Dis 2014).

When FDA reviewed ipamorelin for the compounding bulks list in 2024, it documented the products and schedules actually being sold. Its findings are the most reliable public snapshot of real-world practice, because they come from outsourcing-facility product reports rather than forum recollection (FDA PCAC briefing, October 2024):

• Single-API injectable ipamorelin at 0.6 mg/mL and 1.5 mg/mL reported by outsourcing facilities.
• Multi-API injectables including sermorelin 1.5 mg with ipamorelin 1.5 mg/mL.
• A compounding-pharmacy listing for a "CJC-1295/ipamorelin (lyo) 6/6 mg vial", alongside ipamorelin/sermorelin vials at 15/18 mg and 15/9 mg.
• One wellness clinic marketing ipamorelin at 150 mcg per day as a single subcutaneous injection.
• Oral troche and rapid-dissolve formats at 300–750 mg, which have no pharmacokinetic rationale for a peptide.

Community sources converge on the ~100 mcg + ~100 mcg figure. Frequency varies from once daily to three times daily; a bedtime dose is near-universal in these descriptions. These are reference points for understanding what people report doing, not evidence that any of it is effective or safe.

This is the single most consequential detail in any dosing discussion of this blend, and it is almost always skipped.

• With DAC — the molecule from the human trials. Its albumin-binding group gives it an estimated half-life of 5.8 to 8.1 days, with GH elevated 2- to 10-fold for six or more days and IGF-1 elevated for 9–11 days after a single injection (Teichman 2006). Dosing it daily makes no pharmacokinetic sense; the studies used weekly or biweekly injections.

• Without DAC — the same tetra-substituted GRF(1-29) backbone with no albumin anchor, which FDA describes as "Tetra-substituted GRF (1-29)" and which is sold as modified GRF (1-29). It is short-acting and is the form generally intended in daily-use blends. No published human pharmacokinetic study of it exists.

A regimen designed around the no-DAC peptide, applied to a vial that actually contains the DAC version, produces days of stacked exposure rather than a daily pulse. FDA cited exactly this problem — "inconsistent naming conventions" — as part of its basis for rejecting all five CJC-1295 forms for compounding (FDA PCAC briefing, December 2024). See CJC-1295 with DAC and CJC-1295 without DAC for each form in detail.

Pre-mixed vials are sold at whatever ratio the compounder or seller chose. The frequently quoted "1:1" is a gray-market convention, not a formulation standard — FDA's own survey found a 6/6 mg CJC-1295/ipamorelin vial alongside ipamorelin/sermorelin vials at 15/18 mg and 15/9 mg, which are not the same ratio as each other. No pre-blended combination has an approved specification, a reference standard, or third-party assay confirming the label.

This matters more than it would for a single peptide, because a mislabelled ratio silently changes which pathway is being stimulated more heavily, and there is no dose-response study of the combination against which to notice.

Two timing conventions dominate these protocols, and both have a real physiological basis that is narrower than how it is usually presented.

Bedtime dosing. GH is secreted in pulses, with the largest normally occurring shortly after sleep onset. Timing a secretagogue to reinforce that pulse is coherent reasoning. No study has shown that doing so changes any outcome from these peptides.

Fasted administration. A glucose or food load blunts GH secretion, which is why the "two hours away from food" convention exists. Again, no study of these peptides has tested whether it matters to any endpoint. It is a plausible optimization of a hormone level, applied to a product whose effect on anything beyond the hormone level is unmeasured.

Reconstitution introduces its own error surface: the vial arrives as lyophilized powder, the mass of each peptide divided by the diluent volume sets the concentration, and the dose is then read as syringe units of volume. The peptide calculator covers that arithmetic. With a two-peptide vial, one dilution serves both peptides, so any error applies to both at once.

Beyond the general case for clinician involvement with unapproved compounds, two specifics apply. Raising GH raises blood glucose and lowers insulin sensitivity — measurably, over two years, in the best long-term secretagogue trial available (Nass, Ann Intern Med 2008) — which is a monitorable effect that self-directed use will not catch. And in ipamorelin's own phase 2 trial, hypokalemia and hyperglycemia both occurred more often than on placebo (Beck 2014; FDA 2024). These are laboratory findings, not sensations. The figures on this page describe what is reported in the wild, and reporting is not endorsement. See the side effects page for the full safety picture.