Peptide Stack for Muscle Growth: Evidence, Doses and Units

This page reports the peptide combinations sold for muscle growth: what each component is, who claims what, what the human evidence holds when it is counted, the reported doses with their sources, and how the vials are reconstituted and drawn. It ranks nothing and presents no protocol; every figure carries its source and the date it was read.

A stack is two or more compounds used over the same period. The combinations sold for muscle growth are built from growth-hormone-axis peptides: CJC-1295, tesamorelin and sermorelin are analogues of growth-hormone-releasing hormone, the signal that tells the pituitary to release growth hormone; ipamorelin is a growth-hormone secretagogue acting on the ghrelin receptor, a second route to the same release; IGF-1 LR3 is an analogue of insulin-like growth factor 1, the hormone the liver makes in response to growth hormone, modified to bind less to its carrier proteins. Four combinations recur: CJC-1295 with ipamorelin, tesamorelin with ipamorelin, sermorelin alone or with ipamorelin, and IGF-1 LR3 added to any of them.

The combinations, and who promotes them

The phrase "best peptide stack for muscle growth" is answered on the first page of results by telehealth clinics, med-spa blogs, a peptide-education site and a video titled as the best stack for building muscle (read 2026-09-18). Their claims, in their own terms: CJC-1295 with ipamorelin "raises the body's own growth hormone" and pairs a long-acting baseline with a "clean, selective pulse"; tesamorelin with ipamorelin is framed as the fat-loss variant, with tesamorelin credited as having "the strongest human evidence" because it has a label; sermorelin is presented as the milder or older option; IGF-1 LR3 as the compound that acts "downstream". None cites a trial of the combination it describes; there is none. The site's own CJC-1295 with ipamorelin article and tesamorelin with ipamorelin article cover those two pairings; the sermorelin and ipamorelin page covers the third.

What the human evidence holds, counted

The CJC-1295 record is two 2006 papers on the DAC form in healthy adults: GH up 2- to 10-fold for 6 days or more and IGF-I up 1.5- to 3-fold for 9 to 11 days after single doses, a half-life of 5.8 to 8.1 days, and tolerability described as best at 30 or 60 mcg/kg (Teichman et al., PMID 16352683; Ionescu and Frohman, PMID 17018654). The ipamorelin record is intravenous: 4.21 to 140.45 nmol/kg over 15 minutes in healthy men, 3 to 100 mcg/kg at a molecular weight of 711.9 (Gobburu et al. 1999, PMID 10496658), and 0.03 mg/kg twice daily after bowel resection with no significant difference from placebo (Beck et al. 2014, PMID 25331030). Tesamorelin's pivotal trial is in the facts above (Falutz et al. 2010, PMID 20101189); sermorelin's labelled use was paediatric (Prakash and Goa 1999, PMID 18031173); IGF-1 LR3 has no human study, which Peptifact's IGF-1 LR3 dosage page also found after reading all 44 records of a narrower search.

Reported doses, with sources

The INCRELEX row is there for scale, not as a proxy: it is native IGF-1 in children with severe primary IGF-1 deficiency, dosed by weight and tied to meals because of hypoglycaemia, and none of that transfers to an analogue with no human data.

Reconstitution and the units per draw

Concentration is the milligrams in the vial divided by the millilitres of water; the draw on a U-100 syringe is the quantity in mg divided by that concentration, times 100. The rows use the vial sizes the site's calculators carry.

A blend vial fixes the ratio of its two peptides at fill time, so a single draw delivers both in whatever proportion the vial holds; separate vials allow independent amounts but mean two draws and two calculations. The blend calculator does the per-component arithmetic for either case, and the single-compound calculators cover each vial: CJC-1295 with ipamorelin, CJC-1295, ipamorelin, tesamorelin, sermorelin and IGF-1 LR3. The scales and barrels are on the insulin syringe units page.

What the figures omit

The trial figures omit the stack: every human number above was measured for one compound, in a population not training for muscle, on an endpoint that was not muscle. The label figures omit the purpose: tesamorelin's label is for HIV-associated abdominal fat and sermorelin's withdrawn label was for children. The circulating figures omit their origin and change the molecule without saying so: the CJC-1295 in the blends is the no-DAC form, never given to a person in a published study, while the 2006 trials used the DAC form at milligram doses. Route, frequency, duration and population therefore belong to a handful of papers and two labels, not to the combinations.

Status

The component guides on the store cover regulatory status in full: Medibact's CJC-1295 guide, ipamorelin guide, tesamorelin guide, sermorelin guide and IGF-1 LR3 guide. In September 2023 FDA placed CJC-1295, ipamorelin acetate and AOD-9604 in Category 2 of its interim 503A bulks list, the category for substances identified as presenting significant safety risks (Alliance for Pharmacy Compounding update, 2023-09-29); an FDA Law Blog post of 2026-04-21 reports FDA moving peptides scheduled for advisory review out of Category 2 in 2026. FDA's own list pages refused this site's requests on 2026-09-18, so their current text is not quoted.

Related pages

The stacks hub indexes every combination page; the CJC-1295 reconstitution page works that vial in detail; the dosage pages for CJC-1295, ipamorelin, tesamorelin and sermorelin hold each compound's reported range with its source, indexed on the dosage hub; the how peptides are injected page reports the procedure as labels describe it.

This page does not recommend a stack, a dose, a schedule or a vendor. It reports what registries, trials, labels and the promoting pages state, each with its date, and it does the arithmetic on the vials.

Sources and dates

Opened 2026-09-18: the ClinicalTrials.gov v2 API for each component and each pairing, with the records NCT00267527, NCT00672074 and NCT01280344; the DailyMed SPL search API for each component and the EGRIFTA WR, EGRIFTA SV and INCRELEX labels; PubMed through the NCBI E-utilities with the trial-type filter, and the abstracts of PMID 16352683, 17018654, 10496658, 25331030, 20101189 and 18031173; PubChem CID 9831659; the Federal Register notice of 2013-03-04 on GEREF (via GovInfo); the Alliance for Pharmacy Compounding update of 2023-09-29 and the FDA Law Blog post of 2026-04-21; telehealth, med-spa and protocol pages carrying the circulating figures. Corrections go to the contact page.