CJC-1295 DAC

What it is

CJC-1295 DAC raises your own growth hormone and IGF-1 for about a week per shot, so you inject once or twice a week instead of every night. You get the convenience and the sleep and recovery benefits; you also get more puffiness and joint ache than the nightly peptides, because the signal never switches off.

The person this suits is someone who wants a growth hormone peptide for recovery, deeper sleep, and slow body-composition change, and who knows they will not stick with a nightly shot. Shift workers, frequent travelers, people who have already quit a CJC + ipamorelin cycle at week three because the routine wore them down. It is not a beginner's first GH peptide, and it is the wrong choice for anyone who already retains water or has tingly hands at a keyboard.

The first thing most people notice is sleep: heavier, dream-filled nights inside the first week. The second thing, usually by week two, is water: a tighter ring, puffier face in the morning, hands that feel thick or tingle on waking. That is the always-on IGF-1, and it is the honest price of weekly dosing. Recovery between workouts improves over weeks three to six. Body composition, if you are training and eating for it, is a 10 to 12 week story and modest; nobody gets HGH results from a secretagogue. It will not burn fat on its own.

Start at 1000 mcg once a week, and only move to 2000 mcg if the first four weeks are comfortable. Many people do better splitting 1000 mcg twice a week, which smooths the peak and the water. SubQ (just under the skin with an insulin needle), same day each week, fasted does not matter much here because the signal lasts days. Run 8 to 12 weeks, then about four weeks off. Here the break has a reason: growth hormone stays raised around the clock, so your body's own feedback needs time to recover, and with a half-life of about a week, a month off is a real washout and a good time to recheck IGF-1 and blood sugar. The two mistakes: starting at 2 mg because the vial is 2 mg, and stacking it with a nightly ipamorelin or GHRP, which flattens whatever pulse is left and piles on the water. A 2 mg vial is one week at the standard dose, two at the gentle dose, so a 12 week cycle is 6 to 12 vials.

The evidence here is better than most peptides on this site but narrow. A real phase 1 human study (Teichman and colleagues, 2006) showed single doses raised growth hormone two to ten fold and IGF-1 one and a half to three fold, for six days or more, in healthy adults. That is where the weekly schedule comes from. What has never been studied is what months of flat IGF-1 elevation does to a healthy person's joints, blood sugar, or anything else. Promising but not proven for any outcome beyond raising the hormones.

Not worth it if you want the most physiologic option: CJC-1295 without DAC plus ipamorelin keeps the natural pulse and most people feel better on it. Not worth it if belly fat is the goal: tesamorelin has actual human data for that. Skip it entirely if you have diabetes, a cancer history, or carpal tunnel; the always-on IGF-1 is the wrong tool for all three.

What people use it for

Safety, in brief

The full picture — stop signs and who should talk to a doctor first — is on the dosing guide.

Sources

The labels and studies behind this page. Each link opens the original on PubMed, DailyMed or ClinicalTrials.gov.

1. Prolonged stimulation of growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factor I secretion by CJC-1295, a long-acting analog of GH-releasing hormone, in healthy adultsTeichman et al., J Clin Endocrinol Metab 2006 · Trial
2. Pulsatile secretion of growth hormone (GH) persists during continuous stimulation by CJC-1295, a long-acting GH-releasing hormone analogIonescu et al., J Clin Endocrinol Metab 2006 · Trial