Option C

Start low. 150/150mcg total. 1 dose a day. No calories 3 hours prior/2 hours after.

I've experimented with pinning first thing a.m. and last thing before bed. Try both and see which one you prefer. There are pros and cons to each, best method is whichever one works best for you.

I'd start with a.m. first week or two if possible just to see how stimulating it is/get your body used to it. See how that goes. You can then switch over to nighttime for a couple weeks and see how that goes. Then pick a method you like.

I am not a fan of 5/2 cycles. Every day your peptide exists reconstituted, it loses potency. No reason to ever have it sitting around unused. Run that bottle dry.

2 days is nowhere near enough time to reset receptors/prevent desensitization/prevent antibody buildup regardless. You need a minimum of 30 days for that.

Run your cycle 30 - 90 days on/30 days off

A 22% loss after a year is still quite a bit, and that's best case scenario and not taking Jake's points into effect which may well be true.

Definitely worth taking a modicum of effort and freezing them.

@STATIEEIGHT said:

And here’s me covering them up on my desk so the led’s don’t degrade them while I’m playing around with them

Nice test

I've got my peptides stored in a sealed contraption packed in dessicants inside a freezer. Overboard, yes, but they'll be good for many, many years.

Unpopular opinion, but I just have a sneaking suspicion that eventually the crackdown will happen. Hopefully I am proven wrong.

@bobs said:

AI suggests that the small 2% peak appearing slightly earlier than the main peak is most likely an oxidized variant of the peptide (specifically at the Met27 position), or less commonly, a synthesis deletion sequence that left the chain slightly more polar. Neither of these indicates external contaminants; they are simply minor structural variations of the Tesamorelin molecule itself.

Exactly. Broken chains of proteins can affect the purity, big-time. At first glance looking at something that says 97% , one might assume there's a sterility/contaminent issue, but often it's not. Think of it more as a potency issue.

This doesn't mean it gets a pass btw. At $288 for a kit, for that price I would expect 99%

I've been using it for so long that I've just grown so accustomed to it, but I get that exact same heart pounding feeling. It's really strong for the first time I go back on cycle after 30 days off.

That's definitely not allergic reaction - you would have hives, redness, swelling, itching near injection site. It is possible to develop antibodies from the CJC1295 portion over long time use, which is why it's important to cycle off for a full 30 days after your cycle usage (30 to 90 days) which will help prevent that.

Generally won't run into those issues with Ipamorelin, but you will grow a tolerance to it and it needs to be cycled in same fashion.

If you run into any issues with sleep, you can pin first thing a.m. fasted, or anytime of the day really as long as you're following fasted guidelines.

@mary said:

I experienced an increase in my heart rate of about 18 bpm for roughly 5–10 minutes after injecting CJC/IPA. I’m concerned that this could be indicative of an impending allergic reaction, and now I’m wondering whether it’s safe to start my next vial.
I have one dose left from my current vial, which I will cut in half to see how I respond.
Has anyone had this problem with CJC/IPA but continued it without worsening symptoms?

That's totally natural and happens. I get it every time. Indicative that you have good stuff too and your pituitary is responding.

The sudden surge in GHRH causes the heart to beat faster and the flushing feeling. Don't worry or panic, just relax and understand that's just your pituitary spitting out hormones.

Don't cut your dose in half, just continue on. How much are you taking? What was your baseline igf-1 score? Have you had post labs?

10% overfill is nice

@JtCjEfF said:

@vpep I had similar experience with it too and stopped. Maybe morning dose is better for us that cant take it at night?

You absolutely can use GH peptides in the morning successfully, lots of people do. Your body produces 4 pulses of GH throughout the day as it is, so it isn't unnatural to have GH pulses during awake time.

@BeeKind said:

I use a 25g no issues

Same

@MikeMiranda said:

Testing was 26 weeks no cycling off, Testing didn't even mention fasting

Which leads me to believe they didn't even bother to fast around any of the injections. This isn't unique to Tesa. NONE of the studies on any of the GHRH analogs did (Sermorelin studies in the 90s, CJC-1295, or the recent Tesa).

Makes you wonder - did they not even know this was beneficial? Likely scenario with Sermorelin and CJC-1295 at the time. But I have to believe they did with Tesamorelin. But perhaps maybe I'm giving them too much credit.

@ResearchCat said:

@BeeKind I know it. We ate loads of garbage and drank tons of soda when I was a kid, but we also ran around outside like maniacs until someone hollered that it was dinner time - or the street lights came on, since we were usually to far away to hear.

Same. I ate all sorts of garbage, breakfast cereal, candy and soda pop and somehow never gained a pound as a kid. These kids just aren't very active.

@Stevepep said:

@Neil-McCauley The chain is longer, but it's not that difficult. I was in a similar business. There is nothing special about this process. The point is there is no secret sauce; it can be replicated by any factory with the right equipment and facilities. In fact, it has been replicated without even the right facilities. Its why its so cheap

The chain is the same, 39 animo acid sequence. The process down the line in each step is much more complicated for Reta versus Tirz. Each receptor binding mechanism makes the entire process more difficult. Reta being 3 versus Tirz being 2 means the entire synthesis is harder. You're going to have much more yield loss and purity targets are harder to achieve.

The major reason why it's cheap is popularity. There is just so much more product in the market versus Tirz and economic supply and demand forces are at play. Reta should cost much, much more than Tirz - its significantly more difficult to manufacture.

That's great for all of us really. Hopefully it stays that way.

@Stevepep said:

@EXTROPIAN The issue is that there is nothing proprietary; any factory with the equipment can make any of these peptides. It's just Amino acids sequenced in a chain bound to salt. It couldn't be simpler to make. There is no secret sauce, so you can't stop it.

Retatrutide is on hard mode compared to Tirzepatide and many other common peptides. Every step of the way Reta has a much more difficult process in the manufacturing complexity and the synthesis process is just on a whole different level than any other GLP.

Same can be said comparing Tesamorelin to other GHRH peptides.

@Stan-Douglas said:

From what I understand the next best thing is IGF-1 without the potential side effects.

I think the maximum amount of time you can run igf-1 lr3 is 6 to 8 weeks before receptors become down regulated and stop responding, so keep that in mind.

That's the issue you run into anytime you start mucking with the half lives of drugs and stretch them out. Only so long before diminishing returns spills into no returns.

@MikeMiranda said:

In this document the recommended dosage ws 1.28-1.4 in different variations of egrifta

https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2025/022505s020lbl.pdf

Mean age was 48 as well, even older than I would have assumed.

@derekg1 said:

@Neil-McCauley said:

@MikeMiranda said:

During testing Egrifta/Tesa was tested at 26weeks

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK539127/

What is kinda crazy is that the study participants didn't even pin fasted. Who knows how much bettter the results would have been had they made that change in the protocol. Also makes you wonder if that was even a known thing among the researchers who developed the study. You'd think they would have known that?

Hopefully Big Pharma is paying attention to the discoveries going on in the RUO communities.

Makes me wonder if pinning fasted isn't as big as big of a deal as we make it or the patients were so bad off on health pinning fasted or not had little impact on their response.

I think its all of the above. Pinning fasted helps, but perhaps its only say 25% more effective (total guess there, have no idea) and the patients had such little igf-1 signaling going on for years that even something as mild as a single peptide secretagogue, taken without being fasted so perhaps with blunted effectiveness, still moved the needle quite a bit in a positive direction.

It does also lean into my hypothesis that 2mg is actually a very high dosage, and that was needed for all the reasons mentioned above in order to get the most favorable outcomes from the participants.

It really all points in a positive direction for Tesamorelin and its effectiveness. The study certainly wasn't designed for optimal outcomes (reasons I noted above) and was actually quite handicapped, the participants were far from healthy subjects to begin with (quite the opposite actually) and despite all that the outcomes were pretty favorable.

@MikeMiranda said:

During testing Egrifta/Tesa was tested at 26weeks

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK539127/

What is kinda crazy is that the study participants didn't even pin fasted. Who knows how much bettter the results would have been had they made that change in the protocol. Also makes you wonder if that was even a known thing among the researchers who developed the study. You'd think they would have known that?

Hopefully Big Pharma is paying attention to the discoveries going on in the RUO communities.

@WowwyZowwy said:

@thanks_enjoi I'm about to dive into this for the first time. What was it that made you realize that 3.5 was too much?

When my GH levels get too high the first thing I notice is side effects from water retention. My fingers and hands get tight and stiff, and my elbow joints get a little sore.

@SkepticJen said:

@EXTROPIAN great thread - thanks all. I have some tesa coming to start tomorrow night, and I was thinking 500 mcg before bed, 5/2. I only bought enough for one month because I figure that'll give me time to decide if this is for me. And it gave me a reason to try the new pen

Good luck. Definitely lower dose to start is a great idea. I and many others have seen results at 1mg, so I think 500mcg especially combined with Ipamorelin you will likely have positive results.

Remember those Tesa study participants on 2mg not only were HIV+, they didn't use Ipamorelin, and I'm almost positive they were not even bothering to pin around fasted times which we know drastically increases the effectiveness.

To top all that off, I believe they were specifically chosen as having excessive visceral fat (lipodystrophy) which blunts GHRH response, so it's likely the 2mg standard dose you see many start with/what the study used is actually a very high end dosage that was needed specifically for them given their preexisting health conditions.