Ipamorelin and sleep

Bioexplorer

Bioexplorer

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I've been on tesamorelin for around 2 months now, and for the most part the results have been good. Sleep quality is better (both how I feel and what my smartwatch shows), workouts have improved, and my waist has gotten smaller.

5 days ago I introduced 0.2mg ipamorelin alongside my morning Tesa. The only reason was to get the same outcomes for less money, since hitting two different GH receptors should work synergistically. My plan was to tweak things further once the next blood test comes back.

However, from the very first night my sleep fell apart, and it has stayed that way every night since. My sleep score went from the mid 80s down to the mid 60s. Does this happen to most people? Has anyone had a similar reaction? And is it probably only temporary?

My understanding was that ipamorelin should make sleep better. If things don't change, I'll simply stop the IPA and consider that kit a loss.

I ran 1mg/day for several weeks, but right now I'm at 0.5mg per day because of high IGF-1 and BPH symptoms that may be getting worse.
 
If the goal is better sleep, taking IPA in the morning is a strange choice. The sleep stories people share usually come from pinning closer to bedtime, which puts the dose in line with the GH pulse that happens at night, rather than an a.m. injection. Crashing for 5 days once you added it is a strong enough sign that it does not agree with you, so the cleanest step is to stop the IPA and check whether your scores recover with tesa on its own.
 
John_C said:

If the goal is better sleep, taking IPA in the morning is a strange choice. The sleep stories people share usually come from pinning closer to bedtime, which puts the dose in line with the GH pulse that happens at night, rather than an a.m. injection. Crashing for 5 days once you added it is a strong enough sign that it does not agree with you, so the cleanest step is to stop the IPA and check whether your scores recover with tesa on its own.
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Taking Ipamorelin before bed does nothing for me. While I'm on retatrutide, it ends up too near my evening meal. Any effect gets wiped out by somatostatin. Before I understood any of this, I also gave CJC/Ipa a try at bedtime for a few weeks. Nothing came of it.

My sleep was poor again last night, so IPA is getting dropped this week and I'll watch what changes. At some point I might experiment with moving the Tesa to before bed, since I keep hearing that works better for sleep. Supposedly tesamorelin is strong enough to get past the somatostatin signal. Still, I question whether it would work as well as when taken fasted.
 
Bioexplorer said:


Used 1mg/day for several weeks but currently on 0.5mg per day to address high IGF-1 and possibly worsening BPH symptoms.

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This may be old news to you, but when BPH is contributing to the issue, options worth looking at include tadalafil, finasteride, dutasteride, or tamsulosin at low doses. For older men such as myself, tadalafil especially comes with a wide range of health advantages--upsides that go past what it was originally meant to treat.
 
Bioexplorer said:

Taking Ipamorelin before bed does nothing for me. While I'm on retatrutide, it ends up too near my evening meal. Any effect gets wiped out by somatostatin. Before I understood any of this, I also gave CJC/Ipa a try at bedtime for a few weeks. Nothing came of it.

My sleep was poor again last night, so IPA is getting dropped this week and I'll watch what changes. At some point I might experiment with moving the Tesa to before bed, since I keep hearing that works better for sleep. Supposedly tesamorelin is strong enough to get past the somatostatin signal. Still, I question whether it would work as well as when taken fasted.
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It's possible that the CJC, rather than the IPA, was the culprit behind the sleep disruption you experienced with your nighttime injections.

Based on what you shared in your first post, it seems a GHRP might not deliver the benefits you were hoping for. Since Tesamorelin by itself is already providing all the results you wanted, dropping IPA for a few days to check whether your sleep quality improves sounds like a sensible approach.
 
Clavicular's Hammer said:

At my usual midnight waking, I actually dose cjc + ipa.

Later on in the night, this gives me a second round of deep sleep.
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Do you keep a syringe already loaded so it's ready for that middle-of-the-night injection? I typically get up around 1pm, and I'd really rather not have to hunt for my glasses and carefully draw up a dose at that hour.
 
FartfulCodger said:

This may be old news to you, but when BPH is contributing to the issue, options worth looking at include tadalafil, finasteride, dutasteride, or tamsulosin at low doses. For older men such as myself, tadalafil especially comes with a wide range of health advantages--upsides that go past what it was originally meant to treat.
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Correct. For roughly a year tamsulosin did the job, yet it brought on alarming orthostatic hypotension following weight lifting (roughly 75/55), so I stopped it and moved to 5mg tadalafil, which performed equally well or even better. Side effects from 5-ARIs make me somewhat uneasy, though I plan to bring up finasteride with my doctor at the next appointment. Has finasteride left you pleased with the outcome?
 
aepower2016 said:

It's possible that the CJC, rather than the IPA, was the culprit behind the sleep disruption you experienced with your nighttime injections.

Based on what you shared in your first post, it seems a GHRP might not deliver the benefits you were hoping for. Since Tesamorelin by itself is already providing all the results you wanted, dropping IPA for a few days to check whether your sleep quality improves sounds like a sensible approach.
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The sole reason I brought IPA into the mix was to cut costs a bit on Tesa. That said, given how my IGF-1 responds, tesamorelin ends up being pretty cheap anyway. Taking 1mg daily was way more than necessary. My hope is that 0.5mg on its own, without ipamorelin, brings my z-score back to the high normal range for roughly $0.50 per day.
 
Bioexplorer said:

Do you keep a syringe already loaded so it's ready for that middle-of-the-night injection? I typically get up around 1pm, and I'd really rather not have to hunt for my glasses and carefully draw up a dose at that hour.
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Yes, though putting one together myself is fine too.

Yeah, plenty of folks prepare their syringes ahead of time.

I've never tried them, but pens (that's what I believe they're called) are another route you could take.
 
Clavicular's Hammer said:

At my usual midnight waking, I actually dose cjc + ipa.

Later on in the night, this gives me a second round of deep sleep.
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I had the same idea for when I begin it. Since my bladder gets me up regardless, it would add a few extra fasted hours for me. Waiting an hour before I can have my morning coffee is something I'd really rather avoid.
 
Bioexplorer said:

Correct. For roughly a year tamsulosin did the job, yet it brought on alarming orthostatic hypotension following weight lifting (roughly 75/55), so I stopped it and moved to 5mg tadalafil, which performed equally well or even better. Side effects from 5-ARIs make me somewhat uneasy, though I plan to bring up finasteride with my doctor at the next appointment. Has finasteride left you pleased with the outcome?
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I've been taking finasteride for a long time. About 15 years back, when I began the oral version, my hairline rolled back roughly a year's worth of loss. Realistically, that's probably the ceiling of what it can do for anybody. Even so, it has held my hair steady ever since. As the years went by, though, it turned out not to work especially well for my BPH. I was still waking up more times in the night than I wanted. So a few months ago I made the switch to dutasteride (0.5mg daily), combined with low-dose tadalafil (5mg daily). My BPH got noticeably better. Sometimes I'm up once a night, but a lot of the time I sleep right through until morning. Which of the two drugs did the work, I can't say--maybe it took both. My hair also looks like it's filling in more. BTW, none of these have given me any bad side effects so far, at least in my case.
 
FartfulCodger said:

I've been taking finasteride for a long time. About 15 years back, when I began the oral version, my hairline rolled back roughly a year's worth of loss. Realistically, that's probably the ceiling of what it can do for anybody. Even so, it has held my hair steady ever since. As the years went by, though, it turned out not to work especially well for my BPH. I was still waking up more times in the night than I wanted. So a few months ago I made the switch to dutasteride (0.5mg daily), combined with low-dose tadalafil (5mg daily). My BPH got noticeably better. Sometimes I'm up once a night, but a lot of the time I sleep right through until morning. Which of the two drugs did the work, I can't say--maybe it took both. My hair also looks like it's filling in more. BTW, none of these have given me any bad side effects so far, at least in my case.
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Appreciate you sharing that. Dutasteride was what my doctor first suggested, and it could be where I land eventually. Still, I'll give finesteride a shot first, just in case any unpleasant side effects show up. The 4 week+ half life of dutasteride worries me.
 
sheilarae74 said:

I had the same idea for when I begin it. Since my bladder gets me up regardless, it would add a few extra fasted hours for me. Waiting an hour before I can have my morning coffee is something I'd really rather avoid.
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Okay, so I had been dosing at bedtime, though I probably wasn't properly fasted.

Then I moved it to the morning, which worked okay, except that your GH pulse ends up competing with the natural cortisol surge that happens in the morning.

That's how I came across this. One caveat: based on my rather basic sleep tracker (a Garmin Forerunner 55), the nights I use it show a drop in my REM sleep.

Since I usually only use CJC every 2 or 3 days, it's not that significant.
 
Cjc-ipa has been making it hard for me to drift off, yet once I'm finally out, the quality of my sleep is improved… and 5 hours feels like enough to wake up rested. That very first 75mcg dose, tiny as it was, hit me like a truck. Later doses haven't packed the same punch (though they also don't leave my fingers aching… which is likely better for my igf levels anyway). Since I'm on a low dose of enclomiphene 3x a week, my levels ought to be blunted by that, so caution is warranted.

All in all, it's only been a week, so I'll stick with it a while longer, but if my sleep keeps getting pushed back by a couple hours at random, I'll likely switch to mornings.
 
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