CJC-1295 / Ipamorelin
CJC-1295 and Ipamorelin blend (GHRH analogue plus ghrelin mimetic)
Written by Aaron CuhaReviewed Sep 2026
Also known as: CJC/Ipa, CJC-1295 with Ipamorelin, The GH blend
In plain English, from Aaron
This is how I would explain it to a friend. The evidence, with the numbers, is further down the page.
This is two growth hormone peptides in one vial. It is the most stacked pair in the peptide world. A vial is usually 5 mg of each, so half the powder is each one. Both nudge your pituitary to put out more growth hormone. They just push different buttons to do it. No study has ever tested these two together. Not in people. Not in animals.
What people take it for
- Better sleep.
- Losing fat and holding on to muscle.
- Healing faster from training and old injuries.
- Feeling younger, on the idea that more growth hormone turns back the clock.
- Some people believe two peptides beat one. Nobody has tested that with this pair.
What the trials actually showed
There is no trial of this pair. That is the main thing on this page. What exists is a record for each half. One shot of the first peptide raised growth hormone 2 to 10 times for six days or more in healthy adults. It also raised IGF-1 for nine to eleven days. Its half life was 5.8 to 8.1 days. The second peptide has one human trial. It was given to 117 people after bowel surgery. It was safe. It did not help them eat sooner than a dummy shot did. Now the part that matters most. Those two half lives are nothing alike. One peptide is gone in about two hours. The other is still working a week later. So there is no dosing plan that fits both. Daily is right for one and piles up the other. Twice a week is right for the other and wastes the first. A close cousin of this pair was tested in 20 patients. Adding the second type of peptide about doubled the growth hormone peak, 54.7 against 25.7. But that was one shot through an IV, in a clinic, as a test. It is not this vial and it is not a nightly plan. One note for the calculator on this page. A blend is usually mixed in more water than a single peptide, and drawn on a bigger syringe. The numbers for one peptide do not carry over.
What people report
Reports, not trial results
The good
- Deeper sleep in the first two weeks. This is the most common report by far.
- Vivid dreams, usually alongside the sleep change.
- Feeling better recovered from training after a month or two. People put that down to the sleep, not to anything anyone measured.
The bad
- Puffy face and hands, and stiff mornings. Water retention is the classic one here.
- Numb or tingling fingers. People call it carpal tunnel. It goes away when they stop.
- Hunger, which comes and goes and is not the same for everyone.
- Nothing at all. This is common enough that people argue about vendor quality all day.
- A red itchy lump where the needle went in.
- You cannot turn one peptide down. The ratio is set in the powder. If your hands go numb, your only move is to cut both or stop both. You will never know which one did it.
Where these come from: There are no trial exit interviews here, because there is no trial of the blend. These come from peptide forums such as r/Peptides and from clinic and vendor write ups. A 2026 medical review of people self dosing these peptides lists the same problems: fluid retention, aching joints, blood sugar changes and sore injection sites.
My bottom line
The idea behind this pair is real. The vial is not. Two peptides with half lives a hundred times apart do not belong in one bottle, and buying them together means you can never tune either one. If you are going to do this at all, buy two vials.
An opinion, not a finding. I am a coach, not a doctor.
Overview
The most stacked pair in the peptide market, sold as 5 mg plus 5 mg or 10 mg plus 10 mg in one vial, so each peptide is half the powder by mass. No published study has tested CJC-1295 with ipamorelin in humans or in animals, and the two components have half-lives that differ by roughly a hundredfold, which means no single injection schedule is correct for both.
CJC-1295 and ipamorelin are sold together more often than either is sold alone. The logic vendors give is real pharmacology: CJC-1295 is a growth hormone releasing hormone analogue acting at the GHRH receptor, ipamorelin is a ghrelin mimetic acting at the growth hormone secretagogue receptor, and the two receptors sit on the same pituitary somatotroph. Pushing both at once produces a larger growth hormone pulse than pushing either alone. That principle has human evidence behind it. The specific pairing in the vial does not.
The arithmetic matters more here than on most pages. A 5 mg plus 5 mg vial is 50 percent CJC-1295 and 50 percent ipamorelin by mass. By molecule count the split is nothing like even. CJC-1295 with its Drug Affinity Complex weighs 3,647.2 Da and ipamorelin weighs 711.85 Da, so an equal-mass blend delivers about 5.1 ipamorelin molecules for every CJC-1295 molecule. Reconstituted in 2 mL of bacteriostatic water, a 5 plus 5 vial holds 2.5 mg per mL of each. A 10 unit draw on a 100 unit insulin syringe is 0.1 mL and delivers 250 micrograms of each peptide. That is inside the range people use for ipamorelin on its own. It is a large recurring dose of a GHRH analogue whose measured half-life is 5.8 to 8.1 days.
That half-life gap is the specific problem this blend creates. Ipamorelin clears in about two hours and needs frequent dosing to do anything. CJC-1295 with DAC was measured raising growth hormone for six days or more and IGF-1 for nine to eleven days after one injection. Dose the vial daily, as most protocols say, and the ipamorelin is correct while the CJC-1295 accumulates. Dose it twice a week to suit the CJC-1295 and the ipamorelin is doing nothing on the five days in between. There is no schedule that serves both, and because the ratio is fixed in the powder you cannot lower one without lowering the other.
A second problem is that the label does not identify the molecule. Vendors sell both CJC-1295 with DAC, which is the long-acting version with days of activity, and CJC-1295 without DAC, which is modified GRF 1-29 and clears in roughly half an hour. Both are labelled CJC-1295. The two behave so differently that the correct dosing frequency for one is wrong for the other by two orders of magnitude, and the buyer usually cannot tell which is in the vial.
Mechanism of action
Two receptors on the same pituitary cell. CJC-1295 activates the GHRH receptor, raising the amplitude of growth hormone pulses; albumin binding through the Drug Affinity Complex extends that signal for days in the DAC version. Ipamorelin activates the growth hormone secretagogue receptor GHS-R1a, the ghrelin receptor, which both releases growth hormone and suppresses somatostatin tone. Combining a GHRH agonist with a GHS-R agonist produces a larger pulse than either alone in human testing, though that testing used GHRH itself with GHRP-6, not this pair.
Human evidence
There is human evidence for CJC-1295 alone, human evidence for ipamorelin alone, and human evidence that a GHRH plus a growth hormone releasing peptide beats either alone in an acute intravenous test. There is no human evidence for CJC-1295 given with ipamorelin.
- CJC-1295 alone, healthy adults, randomised and placebo-controlled: one injection raised mean growth hormone 2-fold to 10-fold for six days or more and IGF-1 1.5-fold to 3-fold for nine to eleven days.
- Ipamorelin alone, the only published human trial, 117 bowel resection patients: intravenous ipamorelin was well tolerated but did not significantly shorten time to a first tolerated meal against placebo, 25.3 hours versus 32.6 hours.
- GHRH plus GHRP-6, 20 patients: mean peak growth hormone 25.7 micrograms per litre on the secretagogue alone versus 54.7 micrograms per litre combined. A single intravenous diagnostic test in a hospital, not a nightly subcutaneous protocol.
- GHRP-2 with GHRH for 7 to 30 days: the combined response could shift from additive to synergistic, and desensitisation depended on dose and frequency.
What this does not tell you: No trial has given CJC-1295 with ipamorelin to a person. No trial of any GHRH plus secretagogue combination has measured body composition, strength, sleep quality or any other outcome people buy this blend for. The combination evidence that exists measures a growth hormone peak over 90 to 120 minutes in a clinic, which is a surrogate for a surrogate. Nobody has published the stability of the two peptides in one vial, and nobody has published a dose-finding study for the pair at any ratio.
Reading the research record
The reason this blend has no trial is not that anyone tried and failed. It is that a fixed-ratio mixture of two unapproved peptides is not a product anyone can patent or file, so the funding to test it does not exist. That is an economic fact, not a verdict on the pharmacology, and the pharmacology of GHRH plus a secretagogue is genuinely supported. What is not supported, and what nobody is working on, is this ratio at these doses on this schedule.
The practical cost of the blend is the one nobody mentions when selling it. If you develop water retention, carpal tunnel symptoms, numb fingers, joint aches or a rising fasting glucose on a single peptide, you lower that peptide. On a blend you cannot. The ratio is set in the powder. Lowering the dose to fix a CJC-1295 problem also removes the ipamorelin, and there is no way to find out which component caused what. The same applies to the appetite and cortisol effects that differ between secretagogues. A blend buys convenience and sells away every diagnostic move you would otherwise have.
The evidence, charted
Fig. 1 · evidence composition
3of 5 citations (60%) are in people
Counted from the citation list on this page. The Human count is the same number shown in the badge at the top. Both understate any literature larger than the sources we cite.
Fig. 2 · evidence over time
Evidence spans 5 distinct years, 1996 to 2026, counted from the citation list on this page.
Fig. 3 · legal status at a glance
US
Not approved
UK
Not approved
AU
Not approved
CA
Not approved
Not approved in any of the four jurisdictions shown. A jurisdiction's classification is a regulatory fact, not a verdict on the science; see Legal status below for the full text and any notes.
Fig. 4 · dose response
No human dose response curve exists
We draw this figure where the data supports it. For this compound in humans it does not, so the panel stays empty rather than borrowing an animal curve and implying it transfers.
Key studies & citations
- Human2006
Prolonged stimulation of growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factor I secretion by CJC-1295, a long-acting analog of GH-releasing hormone, in healthy adults
Two randomised placebo-controlled trials in healthy adults. A single injection of CJC-1295 raised mean growth hormone 2-fold to 10-fold for six days or more and IGF-1 1.5-fold to 3-fold for nine to eleven days, with an estimated half-life of 5.8 to 8.1 days. This is the CJC-1295 component alone. No ipamorelin was given, and this is the measurement that makes daily dosing of a blend incoherent.
Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism - Animal1998
Ipamorelin, the first selective growth hormone secretagogue
The paper that defined ipamorelin, in rat pituitary cells, rats and swine. Growth hormone releasing potency similar to GHRP-6 with far less effect on cortisol and prolactin. Animal pharmacology of the single peptide; it says nothing about what happens when it shares a vial with a GHRH analogue.
European Journal of Endocrinology - Human2002
Diagnosis of growth hormone deficiency in adults by testing with GHRP-6 alone or in combination with GHRH: comparison with the insulin tolerance test
Twenty patients given GHRP-6 at 1 microgram per kilogram alone, and on a separate day with GHRH at 1 microgram per kilogram. In the growth hormone sufficient group the mean peak was 25.7 micrograms per litre on GHRP-6 alone and 54.7 micrograms per litre on the combination. This is the closest human evidence that a GHRH plus a ghrelin mimetic beats one alone, but it used GHRH and GHRP-6 as a single intravenous diagnostic test, not CJC-1295 with ipamorelin injected nightly.
European Journal of Endocrinology - Human1996
GHRP-2, GHRH and SRIF interrelationships during chronic administration of GHRP-2 to humans
Bowers and Granda-Ayala gave younger and older men and women GHRP-2, GHRH, or both together for 7 to 30 days. Chronic dosing of either one could turn an additive combined response into a synergistic one, and whether the response desensitised depended on the dose and the frequency. The honest reading is that additivity is not fixed and that dose and schedule decide whether you get more or less over time, which is exactly what a fixed-ratio vial takes out of your hands.
Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology and Metabolism - Review2026
Injectable Peptides in Sports Medicine: A Structured Narrative Review of Evidence, Safety, and Antidoping Implications
Structured review of injectable peptides published between January 2020 and August 2025. Growth hormone axis secretagogues including CJC-1295, ipamorelin and tesamorelin are classed as investigational with uncertain safety profiles, product quality concerns and widespread antidoping restrictions. GLP-1 receptor agonists were the only class the authors found supported by reproducible randomised evidence.
JBJS Reviews
What users report
Self-reported experiences, not evidence. Nothing below was measured under controlled conditions, and reports like these cannot separate a real effect from placebo, from the training or diet change that accompanied it, or from what the product actually contained. They are here because knowing what people describe, including what goes wrong, is worth reading alongside the studies.
- Deeper sleep in the first two weeks, which is the most consistent report on this blend and the one people notice first.
- More vivid dreams, reported alongside the sleep change.
- Feeling better recovered from training after a month or two, which users generally attribute to the sleep change rather than to anything measured.
- Water retention, puffiness in the face and hands, and morning stiffness, usually appearing after a few weeks and more often on blends labelled DAC.
- Numbness or tingling in the fingers, described by users as carpal tunnel symptoms, which typically resolve on stopping.
- Hunger, which is inconsistent and is one of the ways users guess whether their vial actually contains what the label says.
- No effect at all, which is common enough that vendor purity is a standing topic on the forums.
- Redness or an itchy lump at the injection site.
Sources: Peptide user forums including r/Peptides, clinic and vendor write-ups, and the adverse-effect domains listed in the 2026 Frontiers in Endocrinology review of self-administered growth hormone axis peptides, which names fluid retention, myalgia and arthralgia, dysglycaemia, prolactin and cortisol elevations and injection site reactions. None of this comes from a trial of the blend, because no trial of the blend exists.
Frequently asked questions
Has anyone studied CJC-1295 with ipamorelin together?
No. Not in people, not in animals. The published combination work used GHRH itself with GHRP-6 or GHRP-2 as an acute intravenous test. That work supports the idea of pairing the two receptor types. It does not tell you anything about this vial, this ratio, or nightly dosing.
How much of each am I actually injecting?
On a 5 mg plus 5 mg vial the powder is half of each by mass. Put 2 mL of bacteriostatic water in and you have 2.5 mg per mL of each peptide, so a 10 unit draw is 250 micrograms of CJC-1295 and 250 micrograms of ipamorelin. By molecule count, equal mass means roughly five ipamorelin molecules for every one CJC-1295 molecule, because CJC-1295 is about five times heavier.
Why does the dosing schedule matter so much on this one?
Because the two halves clear at wildly different speeds. Ipamorelin is gone in a couple of hours. CJC-1295 with DAC was measured holding growth hormone up for six days or more from one shot. Daily injection is right for the ipamorelin and stacks the CJC-1295 on top of itself. Twice weekly is right for the CJC-1295 and wastes the ipamorelin. There is no schedule that fits both.
Is my vial DAC or no DAC, and does it matter?
It matters enormously and the label usually will not tell you. CJC-1295 with DAC lasts days. CJC-1295 without DAC is modified GRF 1-29 and lasts about half an hour. Both get sold under the same name. If you do not know which you have, you cannot know whether your schedule is right.
Can I just lower the dose if I get puffy or my hands go numb?
You can lower the dose, but you lower both peptides at once, which is the real cost of any blend. You cannot back off one component and keep the other, and you can never work out which one caused the problem. Two separate vials cost more and take an extra draw, and they are the only way to actually titrate.
Will this raise my IGF-1?
The CJC-1295 component on its own raised IGF-1 by 1.5-fold to 3-fold for nine to eleven days after a single injection in healthy adults. What no study has measured is what the blend does to IGF-1 over months of repeated dosing, or whether that IGF-1 change turns into any outcome a person can feel.