Growth hormone

CJC-1295

Two versions sold under one name

7 sections

Top of article
What it actually is
What it is supposed to do
What people take it for
The dose question
How to check you have the right molecule
What people get wrong
What is known about harm

What circulates: 1 to 2 mg per week, DAC version
What was studied: 30 to 60 mcg/kg, about 2.25 to 4.5 mg
The gap: Convention runs below the studied dose
How long it lasts: About 5.8 to 8.1 days in people for the clipped version, injected under the skin. For the version without the clip, I found no published figure in a person.

What it actually is

CJC-1295 is a lab-made copy of a small piece of one of the body's own signals, the one that tells the body to release growth hormone. It is injected, and it is sold in two different forms under the same name. One has a tiny chemical clip on the end that hooks it onto a protein in the blood so it stays around for about a week, and the other has that clip removed and lasts only minutes, which is why it gets injected every day.

What it is supposed to do

It copies the body's own signal to release growth hormone, so it works on the same switch and prompts the body to put out more of its own. In the human trials, growth hormone rose 2 to 10 fold and a second hormone it drives, insulin like growth factor 1, rose 1.5 to 3 fold. What no trial measured was whether any of that changes the body in a way a person would actually notice.

What people take it for

People take it hoping for more muscle, less body fat, better sleep and faster healing, and it is almost always sold paired with another peptide called ipamorelin. No published human study of either one measured any of those things, and no study in people or animals has ever given both together and measured an outcome.

The dose question

What circulates: 1 to 2 mg per week, DAC version
What was studied: 30 to 60 mcg/kg, about 2.25 to 4.5 mg; Teichman 2006, trials of 28 and 49 days

Below the studied dose

A quarter to a half of one studied injection. Lower, not higher, and still a dose no trial administered.

Reported because it is what people use. Nothing here recommends any amount.

How long it lasts

About 5.8 to 8.1 days in people for the clipped version, injected under the skin. For the version without the clip, I found no published figure in a person.

Route studied

Injected under the skin, in a clinical trial

Route used

Injected under the skin, at home

How to check you have the right molecule

The entry does not list the two molecules' weights, so the check it gives is the wording on the certificate. Ask the vendor which molecule is in the vial and whether the certificate names the DAC form, short for Drug Affinity Complex, the version carrying the clip that fastens to blood protein. They are two different compounds with different masses, so the report will say which one you have. The dosing on the label is a second tell: the studied clipped version is used at 1 to 2 mg per week, while a product sold at 100 to 200 micrograms once or twice a day is the unclipped one, which has no published human study behind it.

Walked through on two real certificates in how to read a certificate of analysis.

What people get wrong

That there is only one CJC-1295. The impressive numbers on vendor pages, a 2 to 10 fold rise in growth hormone lasting six days or more, come from trials of the version with the clip, while the version most people are actually buying and injecting daily is the one with the clip removed, and not one peer reviewed human study of it exists.

What is known about harm

The trials reported no serious adverse reactions, but they ran only 28 and 49 days, while people commonly run cycles of 8 to 16 weeks. There is no published human safety information for the clipped version past 49 days, and none at all, of any kind, for the version sold without the clip. The one trial that set out to measure whether this compound changes anything about a person's body was started in 2005, terminated, and nobody has said what it saw.

Others in Growth hormone

The full entry

Everything on this page is a summary. Read the full entry on CJC-1295 for the citations, the studies, and the reasoning behind every figure above.

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