This content summarizes published research and publicly available prescribing information. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, and nothing here is a recommendation to buy or use any compound. Consult a licensed clinician before making any decision about any substance.
CJC-1295/ipamorelin is not one compound but a blend of two, combined because they stimulate growth-hormone (GH) release through complementary mechanisms. CJC-1295 is an analog of growth-hormone-releasing hormone (GHRH) — the hypothalamic signal that tells the pituitary to release GH. Ipamorelin is a ghrelin mimetic: it activates the growth-hormone secretagogue receptor, a second, independent trigger for GH release. Hitting both pathways at once produces a larger GH pulse than either alone, which is the rationale for the pairing.
A naming detail that matters: "CJC-1295" is sold in two forms. The original pharmaceutical candidate carried a modification called DAC (drug affinity complex) that binds albumin and stretches its half-life to about a week. The version typically found in blends is "CJC-1295 without DAC" (also called modified GRF 1-29), which acts for minutes to hours. Blend products are generally the short-acting kind — designed to produce a brief GH pulse rather than continuous elevation. Ipamorelin was studied in early trials partly because it appeared more selective than older secretagogues, raising GH without much effect on cortisol or prolactin at studied doses.
Regulatory status: neither CJC-1295 nor ipamorelin is approved by the FDA or any major regulator for any human use. Both went into formal drug development and both programs stopped — CJC-1295 with DAC after early trials (during which one study participant died of a cardiovascular event, though causality was debated), and ipamorelin after a phase 2 trial for post-operative bowel dysfunction failed to show efficacy. The FDA has since placed both peptides in the category of compounding substances raising significant safety risks, and clinics were subsequently pressed to stop dispensing them. WADA prohibits both in sport.
Unlike BPC-157 and TB-500, these two peptides do have human pharmacology data — small, early-phase, and focused on hormone levels rather than outcomes:
The crucial gap is between hormone changes and outcomes. Raising GH and IGF-1 on a lab report is established; showing that this translates into muscle gain, fat loss, recovery, sleep quality, or "anti-aging" benefits in controlled human trials is not. No such outcome trials exist for these peptides.
It is also worth absorbing what the discontinued programs imply: two pharmaceutical companies with financial incentive to bring these to market stopped. That is not proof of danger, but it is the opposite of an approval story.
Despite that, the blend became a staple of anti-aging and "wellness" clinics in the years before the FDA's compounding crackdown, usually marketed on the logic that stimulating the body's own GH is gentler than injecting GH itself. The premise is not unreasonable physiology — pulsatile release does preserve normal feedback loops — but a plausible premise is not an outcomes trial, and none was ever run.
The blend's risk picture combines known hormonal physiology with the standard unknowns of unapproved compounds:
Any decision touching this blend — including whether numbers from a wellness clinic are trustworthy — is a conversation for a licensed clinician.
Not medical advice. The figures below describe what published studies and prescribing information report — they are ranges observed in research, not recommendations, instructions, or endorsements. Consult a licensed clinician before any decision.
There is no established human dose for the CJC-1295/ipamorelin blend — no clinical trial has ever tested the combination, so no validated combined dose exists at all.
What individual-compound studies actually used:
The distinction to hold onto: study doses were single-compound, supervised, and measured hormones rather than benefits. Blend-product dosing is convention, not evidence. Nothing here is a recommendation.
The blend as commonly sold is short-acting — around a 2-hour effective half-life, driven by the no-DAC form of CJC-1295 and ipamorelin's similarly brief action. (The DAC form of CJC-1295 is the exception, lasting about a week, but it is not what blend products typically contain.)
A 2-hour half-life means the compound is largely gone within about 10 hours of injection. Whatever GH pulse it triggers happens shortly after dosing, and nothing meaningful persists to the next day. This is why usage convention clusters at bedtime — aligning the induced pulse with the natural overnight one — and why the timing of each injection matters far more than with weekly compounds: a dose is an event, not a background level.
For tracking, short-half-life compounds reward precise timestamps. Two logs a few hours apart describe genuinely different physiological events, and a consistent nightly time is the only way day-to-day records stay comparable.
Peptide Max's reference library includes the CJC-1295/ipamorelin blend (mcg dosing, ~2-hour half-life). Because the level curve decays within hours, the app's timeline makes dose timing — the variable that matters most here — easy to keep consistent and honest.
Get Peptide Max on the App Store →No. Neither peptide is approved for any human use; both had formal drug-development programs that were discontinued, and the FDA has flagged both as substances raising significant safety risks when used in compounding. The blend itself has never been tested in any clinical trial.
The individual compounds demonstrably do — small human studies showed clear GH and IGF-1 increases at studied doses. What has never been shown in controlled trials is that this hormone change produces the muscle, fat-loss, recovery, or anti-aging outcomes the blend is marketed for.
The DAC modification binds the peptide to albumin in the blood, extending its half-life to about a week and raising GH continuously. The no-DAC form (modified GRF 1-29), which blends typically contain, acts for minutes to hours and produces a brief pulse instead. They are meaningfully different compounds pharmacologically.
Because the body's largest natural GH pulse happens in early deep sleep, and the blend's short action means an evening dose overlaps with it. That rationale is physiological reasoning, not the result of a controlled trial — no study has validated the practice.