Compound reference
Ipamorelin Dosage Guide 2026: The Research vs Reported Use
Short answer
What it is: ipamorelin is a pentapeptide GH secretagogue, a ghrelin-receptor agonist: GH release without raising ACTH or cortisol in discovery work, at 200x the GH-releasing dose.
The human record: three published human studies, all old: a 1999 pharmacokinetics study, a 2014 phase 2 trial for postoperative ileus, and a 2015 intranasal study.
The research doses: the 1999 study tested five intravenous infusion rates, 4.21 to 140.45 nmol/kg over 15 minutes. The 2014 trial ran 0.03 mg/kg intravenous, twice daily, for up to 7 days.
The headline number: growth hormone release appeared at every dose level tested, peaking about 0.67 hours after infusion.
The catch: the studies dosed intravenously, by bodyweight. Forum posts dose subcutaneously, in flat micrograms, and the two never met in a trial.
The status: not FDA approved as of July 2026, no human trial published since 2015, no obesity or body-composition trial ever run. Every research figure on this page comes straight from the cited papers, DOIs at the bottom.
The calculator
How it works: key in a vial size, a water amount, a syringe type, and a dose. It returns the concentration, the volume, and the reading in units on the syringe.
Units converter
Converts the numbers you type. It does not recommend a dose.
Arithmetic only. Check the result against your own vial, your own reconstitution, and your own syringe before you trust any unit count.
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On this page
Community reports, not a protocol
What do people report running?
The source of this section: dosage forums, Reddit threads, and the schedule pages that rank for this query. Not a trial, and not me.
No log of mine here: I have never run this compound, so there is no field log to show you. What follows is what the community reports, framed as exactly that.
The amounts posted: most posts describe 100 to 300 mcg per subcutaneous injection.
The frequency posted: once daily before bed is the most common schedule. Some split it into two or three injections across the day.
The timing rules posted: fasted, two to three hours after food, or right before sleep. The posted logic is that food blunts the growth hormone pulse, which no trial has checked.
The stack: ipamorelin is rarely discussed alone. Most threads pair it with CJC-1295, with or without DAC, on the posted rationale that a GHRH analog and a ghrelin mimetic cover both sides of the growth hormone axis.
The cycles posted: eight to twelve week runs, and five days on with two off, repeat constantly.
What the posts agree on: none of these numbers comes from a controlled trial. The earlier human studies used intravenous infusions, the 2015 one went intranasal, and all of it was for purposes other than body composition.
Peer-reviewed research data
What did the research do?
The whole record: three human studies, published in 1999, 2014, and 2015. One mapped what the drug does in the body, one tested it for postoperative ileus, a gut complication of surgery, and one took the intranasal route.
The discovery paper: Raun et al., European Journal of Endocrinology, 1998, out of Novo Nordisk's research program. Ipamorelin is a pentapeptide built in a growth-hormone-releasing-peptide series, and it matched GHRP-6 for growth hormone release in their models.
The selectivity claim: GHRP-6 and GHRP-2 also push ACTH and cortisol up. Ipamorelin did not, even at doses more than 200-fold above the growth hormone dose, which is why the authors called it the first selective secretagogue of its class.
The phase 1 study: Gobburu et al., Pharmaceutical Research, 1999, dosed eight healthy men per level across five intravenous infusion rates, 4.21 to 140.45 nmol/kg over 15 minutes.
What it showed: dose-proportional pharmacokinetics, a terminal half-life of about 2 hours, and a single growth hormone episode peaking 0.67 hours after infusion. Release appeared at every dose level.
| Study | Design | Dose | Population |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gobburu 1999, phase 1 | dose escalation, pharmacokinetics | 4.21 to 140.45 nmol/kg, intravenous, over 15 minutes | 8 healthy men per dose level |
| Beck 2014, phase 2 | double-blind, placebo-controlled | 0.03 mg/kg, intravenous, twice daily, days 1 to 7 or hospital discharge | 114 bowel-resection patients analyzed |
The phase 2 result: median time to a first tolerated meal was 25.3 hours on ipamorelin against 32.6 on placebo. The gap was not statistically significant (p=0.15), and no efficacy measure reached significance.
The safety readout: treatment-emergent adverse events came in at 87.5% on drug and 94.8% on placebo, in a surgical inpatient population.
Why ileus: the only controlled human trials ran in postoperative bowel recovery, following rodent work on gut transit after surgery (Venkova et al., 2009). Body composition was never the trial target.
3
published human studies, ever
114
patients analyzed in the phase 2 trial
0.67 h
to the growth hormone peak after infusion
2015
the year of the last human trial
Human study record: Gobburu 1999, Beck 2014, Semenistaya 2015, via PubMed, scanned 20 July 2026.
Is the research dose the same as the internet dose?
The usual dodge: most pages either skip the question entirely or post a schedule with no trial behind it. We're doing neither.
What the research doses are for
What they're for: the 1999 study mapped how the drug behaves in the body and what it does to growth hormone. The 2014 trial asked whether it speeds gut recovery after bowel surgery.
What they are: a pharmacology map and a trial that missed its endpoint. Not a recommendation.
What people run online
What the posts show: flat microgram amounts, 100 to 300 mcg per injection, chosen for a growth hormone pulse rather than gut motility.
The route gap: the studies dosed intravenously and scaled by bodyweight; the posts dose subcutaneously at a flat number. At 0.03 mg/kg, the trial dose for a 70kg patient works out to 2.1mg per infusion, and nobody has run the community pattern in a controlled trial.
We will not tell you which of those numbers is right for you.
The real question: your body, your risk tolerance, and a conversation with a doctor who knows your history. What we can give you is what the trials published and the math behind a dose; the rest is yours to figure out with someone qualified.
How does the units math work?
The point: do this math once, in general terms, attached to no dose.
Example one: say a 10mg vial gets reconstituted with 2mL of bacteriostatic water. That's 5mg per mL, or 5,000mcg per mL.
The syringe side: a U-100 insulin syringe holds 100 units per mL, so each unit equals 1/100th of a mL, which at this concentration is 50mcg. From there: 100mcg is 2 units, 200mcg is 4 units, 300mcg is 6 units.
Change one thing: reconstitute the same 10mg vial with 1mL instead of 2mL. Concentration doubles to 10mg per mL.
What changes: each unit now equals 100mcg instead of 50mcg. The same 200mcg is now 2 units, not 4.
The other common vial: a 5mg vial with 2mL of water gives 2.5mg per mL. One unit is 25mcg there, and 200mcg reads as 8 units.
The forum trap: that "4 units" someone read on a forum could be 200mcg at one concentration and 400mcg at another.
| Vial and water | Concentration | 1 unit equals | What the micrograms read as |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10mg vial + 2mL | 5mg per mL (5,000mcg per mL) | 50mcg | 100mcg is 2 units, 200mcg is 4 units, 300mcg is 6 units |
| 10mg vial + 1mL | 10mg per mL | 100mcg | 200mcg is 2 units, not 4 |
| 5mg vial + 2mL | 2.5mg per mL | 25mcg | 200mcg is 8 units |
| Syringe | Units per mL | 1 unit equals |
|---|---|---|
| U-100 | 100 units per mL | 0.01mL |
| U-40 | 40 units per mL | 0.025mL |
The second trap: the syringe scale. Concentration aside, insulin syringes read in units at two scales.
The two scales: U-100 carries 100 units per mL, one unit equals 0.01mL. U-40 carries 40 units per mL, one unit equals 0.025mL.
The 2.5x problem: mix up a U-40 for a U-100 and every unit delivers 2.5 times the volume you calculated. Same vial, same concentration, same "4 units" on the barrel.
Check the barrel before the math; the syringe scale changes every number after it.
Both halves: that's the whole units-versus-micrograms confusion, both halves of it. The syringe shows the truth. Your concentration and its scale are the two things it cannot know; you know them.
How many units is 200 mcg of ipamorelin?
The short answer: it depends on the concentration. At 5mg per mL (a 10mg vial plus 2mL of water), 200mcg reads as 4 units on a U-100 syringe. At 10mg per mL (the same vial plus 1mL), it reads as 2 units.
The third setup: at 2.5mg per mL (a 5mg vial plus 2mL), 200mcg reads as 8 units.
The rule: no microgram amount has a universal units reading. Concentration first, syringe type second, then the math, or the calculator above.
What's not known yet?
The status: ipamorelin is not FDA approved for anything, under any name, as of July 2026.
What the registry shows: two registered phase 2 trials, both for postoperative ileus, both completed, both run by Helsinn. Nothing is active, and the second trial's results were never published in the peer-reviewed record I could find.
The compounding angle: FDA's compounding advisory committee reviewed ipamorelin in October 2024 for the 503A Bulks List, with growth hormone deficiency and postoperative ileus as the evaluated uses. It is still not on that list, so it cannot lawfully be used in 503A compounding, and the committee's July 2026 meeting covers seven other peptides, not this one.
The real gaps:
- No human trial for fat loss, muscle gain, sleep, or anti-aging. Those outcomes have never been studied in people.
- No peer-reviewed human data since 2015.
- No verified data on the community subcutaneous patterns or the CJC-1295 stack. None of it has been run in a controlled trial.
Anyone who tells you different is guessing.
The biggest gap: in our read, one gap is bigger than any dose number. A research-grade vial comes with no third-party verification of what is actually in it.
All taken on trust: identity, purity, sterility, and the true labeled concentration.
The quiet one: a mislabeled concentration quietly breaks every units calc above. The math is only as good as the label's mg claim.
The real worry: that is not a milligram question, a sourcing question, and that would be our first worry, ahead of the arithmetic.
How this page is sourced
No secondary summaries: every trial figure above comes straight from the cited papers' abstracts; the regulatory status comes from the FDA and trial-registry records named on this page. Not lifted from a secondary summary.
The five sources: below, with their DOIs and PubMed IDs. Pull them yourself, and check the page's numbers against theirs.
The standard: the sourcing and citation-verification standard across this site lives on the methodology page. If a number here ever gets corrected, it gets corrected there first.
Last reviewed: 19 July 2026.
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1
Raun K, Hansen BS, Johansen NL, et al. Ipamorelin, the first selective growth hormone secretagogue. Eur J Endocrinol. 1998;139(5):552-561. doi:10.1530/eje.0.1390552. PMID 9849822.
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2
Gobburu JV, Agersø H, Jusko WJ, et al. Pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic modeling of ipamorelin, a growth hormone releasing peptide, in human volunteers. Pharm Res. 1999;16(9):1412-1416. doi:10.1023/a:1018955126402. PMID 10496658.
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3
Venkova K, Mann W, Nelson R, et al. Efficacy of ipamorelin, a novel ghrelin mimetic, in a rodent model of postoperative ileus. J Pharmacol Exp Ther. 2009;329(3):1110-1116. doi:10.1124/jpet.108.149211. PMID 19289567.
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4
Beck DE, Sweeney WB, McCarter MD; Ipamorelin 201 Study Group. Prospective, randomized, controlled, proof-of-concept study of the ghrelin mimetic ipamorelin for the management of postoperative ileus in bowel resection patients. Int J Colorectal Dis. 2014;29(12):1527-1534. doi:10.1007/s00384-014-2030-8. PMID 25331030.
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5
Semenistaya E, Zvereva I, Thomas A, Thevis M, Krotov G, Rodchenkov G. Determination of growth hormone releasing peptides metabolites in human urine after nasal administration of GHRP-1, GHRP-2, GHRP-6, Hexarelin, and Ipamorelin. Drug Test Anal. 2015;7(10):919-25. doi:10.1002/dta.1787. PMID 25869809.
The disclaimer
Every page is reviewed by medical professionals before it ships, and written with longtime biohackers who were doing this before it was a trend. Reviewed still does not mean prescribed: nothing here is medical advice.
It is research, trial data, and reported use, with the numbers intact so you can check them. For decisions about your body, see a doctor who can look at your labs.
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