Hello Longecity!
This my first topic. The purpose of the topic is to help others out with practical, detailed advice and share experiences using peptides. Although there are myriad threads that discuss peptides, there is a serious lack of anything practical and concrete to help out others interested in taking peptides.
While all comments and threads are appreciated, "BPC-157 is the real deal!" and similar information is not helpful in actually using peptides. Here I hope people will share their advice and experience to provide specific details about peptide use/regimens.
Please be as detailed as possible in sharing information - I promise you it will be very appreciated!
Although I very recently began taking peptides, I immediately learned a number of things that I wish had been readily available.
1. Auto-injection. It baffles me why no one talks about auto-injectors for peptides! Self-injection was my biggest obstacle in starting therapy. The community was peep on discussion of auto-injection. I can tell you that it is GREAT! I use the Autoject EI, one of many out there. I use BD Ultra-Fine 1ml 12.7mm 30g syringes. I am not exaggerating when I say I don't feel a thing. The light bump of the injector itself is all I feel. No pain. Easy!
2. Dosage. Start low - I learned this one the hard way. It's relatively easy to find dosage recommendations for most peptides. What no one tells you though is to start with much less. I suggest 30-50% the recommended dose. Peptides, like any other supplement, effect every individual differently. For any given peptide you have a number of people who say it did nothing and many that say it's the best thing they've ever done. There are probably a lot of factors that go into that including age, dosage, purity and the different bio-chemistry of a given person at a given time.
As an example, I started my Ipamorelin/Mod-GDF1-29 stack at the recommended dosage of 100/100mcg 3x a day. This had some undesirable effects. For one, I gained 5lbs over night, quite literally. I am a competitive cyclist, so weight is not good. I also could not sleep, for 5 days. After further research I found out (not surprisingly) that this was likely due too high a dose and/or impurities. After the first 5 day cycle I slept well on my 2 off days. The next cycle I reduced my dosage to 50/50mcg 2x a day and slept like a baby. I shed some of the weight, still retained about 2lbs. I started feeling very good. After 2 days I added a third injection right before bed. No problem sleeping. The lesson - started with too much too soon. In many cases, a less-is-more approach is a good one. Be patient and work the dose up to get the best result with the least side effects. This will be different for each person.
3. Reconstitution. This was probably the biggest mental block for me. Is there some magic ratio? Will it screw me up if I get it wrong? No and no. The most important thing is simple: understand how much peptide you are injecting. That's it. It takes very little BAC water to dissolve peptides and it really doesn't matter much how much you use, as long as the peptide is dissolved. I've heard of people using 1ml to dissolve 5mg of peptides. I have found the best way is to use a ratio that is easy to remember and measure. In my opinion, 1ml (100ul) per mg is perfect. Then you'll know that 1 tick (10ul) is 100mcg of peptide. This doesn't always work however, because most vials only hold about 4ml. Therefore, if you have 5mg peptide you can't use the 1ml/mg ratio. In this case I would use .5ml/mg ratio. The resulting dosage is 200mcg/10ul. Write it down every time you mix it! Mystery solved: 100ul = 1ml.
I really hope this helps someone!
I look forward to more comments. Please feel free to ask questions as well!