CJC-1295 + Ipamorelin
The hormone goes up. Whether anything else does has never been tested.
This is the most established pairing in growth hormone peptides and the one most people start with. One compound lifts the baseline signal, the other triggers the pulse. Both halves have human trials, and neither of those trials measured anything a person would notice.
Two switches, and the argument for using both.
Growth hormone reaches the bloodstream through one of two doors. CJC-1295 works the GHRH receptor, raising how much the pituitary is willing to release. Ipamorelin works the ghrelin receptor, triggering the release itself.
Taking one from each door is the cleanest mechanism argument in peptides. It is why this pairing became the default, why it is sold premixed, and why almost every other growth hormone stack is a variation on it.
People take it for sleep first, and that is the effect reported earliest and most consistently, usually within a few weeks. Recovery and body composition are the longer-term draw, appearing over months rather than weeks.
Ipamorelin's selectivity is the other reason it won. Older compounds in its class raised cortisol and prolactin alongside growth hormone. Ipamorelin was designed not to, and a 1997 study is where that reputation comes from.[4]
Four benefits, and how well each one holds up.
Only the bottom row is proven, and it is the only row that is a number rather than an experience. Everything people actually take this for sits in the rows above it.
Three questions, answered before anything else.
A real trial, measuring the wrong thing for your purposes.
Teichman and colleagues published the CJC-1295 result in 2006 in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. It is a genuine randomised trial in healthy adults, which is rare in this catalogue.[1]
That is not a criticism of the study. It was a pharmacology trial and it answered its own question well. It is a problem for anyone treating it as evidence that the stack does what they want.[3]
The same gap has been measured elsewhere, and the answer was not encouraging. MK-677 raised IGF-1 by 84% in 161 elderly patients and improved no measure of what they could actually do. That trial is covered here, and it is the closest anyone has come to testing whether a raised growth hormone marker translates into something you would feel.
It does not settle the question for this pairing. Different compounds, different population, different doses. It does mean the assumption deserves more doubt than it usually gets.
Tested twice in patients. Negative both times.
Ipamorelin is usually described as having almost no human evidence. That is not quite right. A pharmaceutical company put it through two Phase 2 trials, and between them they enrolled 437 patients.[2]
Both tested it for postoperative ileus, the delayed return of bowel function after abdominal surgery. Helsinn Therapeutics ran both.
The first, NCT00672074, enrolled 117 patients and finished in December 2009. Its result is recorded as negative.[2]
The second, NCT01280344, was a dose-finding study in 320 patients following bowel resection, completed in May 2014. Ipamorelin was well tolerated, and there were no significant differences in measurable motility between the treated and placebo groups.[7] Time to recovery of gut function was shorter on ipamorelin, without reaching significance on the measured endpoints.
Neither trial says much about muscle or sleep. Different indication, intravenous rather than injected under the skin, and a surgical population. What they do establish is that when somebody funded a controlled trial and asked whether ipamorelin produced a measurable benefit, the answer twice was no.
Outside those two trials there is a 1999 pharmacokinetic study in volunteers, which measured how the compound moves through the body rather than whether it helps.[2] Ipamorelin has never been evaluated in a published human trial for body composition, recovery or ageing.[3]
One of the few blends with an even split.
This pairing is sold ready-mixed, and unlike the skin blends the ratio is clean. Where vendors publish amounts, it is 5 mg of each in a 10 mg vial, an even fifty-fifty.[5]
That matters because GLOW runs at 71 percent one compound and KLOW at 62 percent, so those names tell you less about the contents than this one does.
The price comparison flips depending on how you measure. Two separate vials cost less on the sticker and hold less material, while the blend costs more and holds more. Per milligram the blend wins comfortably, and by a wide margin.
The version you buy changes how it behaves.
CJC-1295 is sold in two forms. The one with DAC, short for drug affinity complex, binds to albumin in the blood and stays active for days. The one without clears in minutes.[6]
The Teichman trial used the DAC version, which is where the six-day and fourteen-day figures come from. Most blends sold today use the no-DAC form.
So the headline evidence and the common product are not the same compound. The no-DAC version is chosen because a short pulse is thought to sit better alongside ipamorelin's short pulse, which is a reasonable argument and an untested one.
Both are Category 2 as of April 2026.
The FDA keeps a register of ingredients compounding pharmacies may work with, called the 503A list. Both CJC-1295 and ipamorelin sit in Category 2 on it, the tier that means not allowed.[3]
Neither has an approved label in the United States. Everything sold online is research chemical material.
Anyone taking this has a specific reason to have IGF-1 checked. Raising it is the one documented effect of the stack, and the long-term consequences of holding it high are not established. That is a conversation for a doctor.
What people ask about this stack
Does CJC-1295 with ipamorelin actually work?
CJC-1295 with ipamorelin raises growth hormone and IGF-1, and that much is measured. A randomised trial in 65 healthy adults found growth hormone rising two to tenfold for six days after one injection, with IGF-1 up to threefold for two weeks. No published trial has tested whether that produces better sleep, faster recovery or a change in body composition. The mechanism is real, and the outcome has not been tested in anyone.
Why combine two compounds instead of one?
The two compounds work different switches. CJC-1295 raises how much growth hormone the pituitary will release, and ipamorelin triggers the release itself. Taking one from each door is the cleanest mechanism argument in peptides, and it is why this pairing became the default. No trial has tested the combination against either compound alone.
How good is the evidence for ipamorelin?
Better than usually described, and worse in what it found. Helsinn Therapeutics ran two Phase 2 trials enrolling 437 patients between them, both for recovery of bowel function after surgery. The first, in 117 patients, is recorded as negative. The second, a dose-finding study in 320 patients, found no significant differences in measurable motility against placebo. There is also a 1999 pharmacokinetic study in volunteers. Ipamorelin has never been evaluated in a published trial for body composition, recovery or ageing.
Should I buy the blend or two vials?
The blend is the better value here, which is unusual. Two separate vials cost $41.55 for {{sep.mg}} mg total. The premixed vial is $47.00 for 10 mg, which works out at less than half the price per milligram. The split is an even 5 mg each, so you are getting what the name implies, unlike the skin blends. What you give up is the ability to change the ratio.
DAC or no DAC?
The DAC version binds to albumin and stays active for days; the no-DAC version clears in minutes. The trial everyone cites used DAC. Most blends sold today use no-DAC, on the argument that a short pulse pairs better with ipamorelin's short pulse. That argument is reasonable and has never been tested, so the headline evidence and the common product are not the same compound.
What else gets added to this?
Tesamorelin most often, which brings an FDA approval and a visceral fat claim, and swapping it in for CJC-1295 entirely has its own page. The three-compound version duplicates the GHRH side, since tesamorelin and CJC-1295 are both GHRH analogs. The three-compound page covers that. People taking a GLP-1 add this pairing for muscle, which has its own page. Injured people add it to a healing stack. Compare all of them here.
What this page is built on
- 01Teichman SL, Neale A, Lawrence B, Gagnon C, Castaigne JP, Frohman LA. Prolonged stimulation of growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor I secretion by CJC-1295, a long-acting analog of GH-releasing hormone, in healthy adults. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 2006. PMID 16352683. 65 healthy adults aged 21 to 61, single subcutaneous dose, GH up 2 to 10-fold sustained 6 days, IGF-1 up 1.5 to 3-fold for up to 14 days.
- 02Ipamorelin trial record. NCT00672074, Helsinn Therapeutics, Phase 2, postoperative ileus, 117 patients, completed December 2009, outcome recorded as negative; treatment-emergent adverse events 87.5 percent on ipamorelin against 94.8 percent on placebo. Published in the International Journal of Colorectal Disease. Plus a 1999 pharmacokinetic study in volunteers, and confirmation that no trial of the two compounds combined has been published.
- 07NCT01280344, Helsinn Therapeutics, Phase 2 dose-finding study in patients following small or large bowel resection with primary anastomosis. 320 enrolled, started April 2011, completed May 2014. A review of gut motility agents reports that ipamorelin was well tolerated but that there were no significant differences in measurable motility parameters between placebo and treated groups.
- 03Evidence and regulatory assessment. Source for ipamorelin never having been evaluated in a published human trial for body composition, recovery or ageing; for the absence of any published human RCT of the combination; and for both compounds sitting on the FDA 503A Category 2 list as of April 2026.
- 04The 1997 study establishing ipamorelin's selectivity, showing growth hormone release with minimal off-target stimulation of cortisol and prolactin.
- 05Peptide Decoding vendor pricing data, 16 September 2026. Lowest in-stock single-compound listings: CJC-1295 no DAC $23.99, ipamorelin $17.56. Premixed blend from $47.00 for 10 mg. Composition parsed from vendor listings as 5 mg of each.
- 06Description of the DAC modification, binding to albumin to extend duration of action, and the difference between the DAC and no-DAC forms.