HGH (Somatropin)
Also known as: Somatropin · Human Growth Hormone · GH
Recombinant human growth hormone — the actual hormone itself, not a secretagogue. Powerful for body recomposition, with side effects that scale unmistakably with dose.
Overview
Somatropin is the FDA-approved drug. Everything else in the GH category (Sermorelin, CJC-1295, Ipamorelin, the various GHRPs) is a polite request that the pituitary make more of its own; HGH is the hormone itself, bypassing the pituitary. That directness is what makes it work fast and what makes the side-effect profile bigger than the secretagogues. Approved indications are adult GH deficiency, pediatric short stature, and HIV-associated wasting. Off-label use for body recomposition and anti-aging is widespread and pharmacologically straightforward, but 2 IU and 6 IU are not the same drug in any meaningful sense.[1]
Evidence quality
Recombinant somatropin is FDA- and EMA-approved for adult growth hormone deficiency, pediatric short stature, and HIV-associated wasting. The drug itself is well-characterised across four decades of clinical literature. Off-label use in non-deficient adults for body recomposition is an extrapolation from on-label pharmacology, supported by smaller trials in healthy older adults (Rudman 1990 and several follow-ups) but not by a large RCT base in healthy populations.
Benefits & timeline
Benefits
- Visceral fat drops — the deep belly fat that diet and cardio struggle with is the most responsive tissue
- Sleep architecture improves; slow-wave sleep gets noticeably deeper within the first two weeks
- Connective tissue, skin, and hair quality improve over months, not weeks
- Recovery between training sessions shortens, which is what most users notice before the mirror does
Timeline
Week 1
Mild fluid retention; deeper sleep. The fluid is the first thing people feel and the first thing they confuse with weight gain.
Week 2–4
Sleep change consolidates. Carpal tunnel-style tingling can appear here — that is your signal the dose is at the edge of your tolerance.
Week 6–8
Visceral fat begins to drop, often visible at the waistline before the scale moves.
Week 12–16
Body composition shift is clearly visible. Skin, hair, and nail quality improve in parallel.
Off-cycle
Taper down rather than stop cold. A sharp IGF-1 drop produces a few weeks of feeling flat that an abrupt stop guarantees.
Dosage protocols
Advanced
6 iu
daily, split
Performance dose; meaningful side-effect risk.
Beginner
2 iu
daily, AM
Health/anti-aging dose.
Standard
4 iu
daily, split AM/PM
Body recomposition dose.
Titration & adjustment
Start at 1 IU/day for the first week to detect water retention and joint discomfort early. Increase by 0.5 IU/day each week up to the target dose. Anti-aging users typically settle at 2 IU/day, body-recomp users at 3–4 IU/day, performance users at 5–6 IU/day. If carpal tunnel symptoms or persistent joint pain appear, drop back 0.5 IU and hold. Always check fasting glucose and HbA1c every 8 weeks at any dose ≥2 IU/day. Taper down by 0.5 IU every week when stopping to avoid a sharp IGF-1 drop.
Injection timing
Morning fasted on an empty stomach is best for fat loss (no insulin to blunt the GH pulse). Pre-bed dosing optimises sleep architecture but may impair sleep onset in some users — test both timings. Avoid carbs or protein in the 30 minutes around injection.
Side effects & contraindications
- mildWater retention, especially in the first two weeks. Rings get tighter; faces look puffier in the mirror.
- moderateCarpal tunnel-like tingling and numbness in the hands. Almost always dose-dependent — drop 0.5 IU and it usually resolves within a week.
- moderateJoint aches, especially in fingers and knees. Same fix as the tingling: pull the dose back.
- severeInsulin resistance and elevated fasting glucose. At 2 IU/day and above, check HbA1c every 8 weeks — not optional.
- severePotential acceleration of latent cancers. The IGF-1 elevation is mechanistically uncomfortable in anyone with a history of cancer or strong family history.
Contraindications
- Active cancer or recent cancer history — IGF-1 elevation is the exact growth signal you do not want to amplify
- Severe diabetic retinopathy — GH can worsen the vascular pathology
- Acute critical illness — multiple ICU trials showed harm, not benefit, in critically ill patients on high-dose GH
- Unfused growth plates (children outside a paediatric GH protocol)
- Uncontrolled diabetes or HbA1c trending up at the screening visit
Reconstitution & injection
A 10 IU vial reconstituted with 1 ml bacteriostatic water gives 10 IU/ml, which makes a 2 IU dose 0.2 ml — 20 units on a U-100 insulin syringe. A 100 IU vial mixed with 1 ml gives 100 IU/ml, in which case 2 IU is 2 units on the syringe — tiny, easy to under- or over-shoot. Many users prefer the lower-concentration mix for that reason. Subcutaneous into the abdomen, AM fasted for fat-loss focus or pre-bed for sleep focus. Refrigerate after reconstitution; potency holds for about 3 weeks.
Open calculator pre-filledStorage after reconstitution
Refrigerate the reconstituted vial at 2–8 °C immediately. Do not freeze — freezing irreversibly destroys somatropin. Light-protect (the original Genotropin/Norditropin/Humatrope packaging is foil-lined for this reason). Reconstituted somatropin is stable for 14–21 days at fridge temperature; this is shorter than most peptides because the full-length protein degrades faster than smaller analogues. Travel: insulated pouch with ice pack, never in checked luggage (cargo holds can drop below freezing). Cold injection stings — pull from the fridge 15 minutes before injecting.
Cost & sourcing red flags
Typical price range: European/US pharma rDNA somatropin (Genotropin, Norditropin, Omnitrope, Humatrope, Saizen) runs $900–2,500 per month at 2 IU/day cash-pay in the US, with insurance copays sometimes bringing it to $0–100/month for adult GHD. UGL Chinese-source 100 IU kits (Hygetropin, Riptropin, generic 'somatropin') sell for $150–350 per kit on grey-market sites — that price gap is the entire reason counterfeiting exists in this category.
Red flags
- Bottom-tier Chinese 100 IU kits priced under $150 with no batch-verifiable hologram. Independent assays have repeatedly found these contain 30–60% of label, are partially MK-677 stacked into a powder cap to mimic an IGF-1 bump, or are simply mannitol with no peptide content.
- Vials that arrive at room temperature with no cold pack or thermal liner. Lyophilised somatropin tolerates a few days at room temp; reconstituted product degrades 24–48 hours at 25 °C and rapidly above 30 °C. A vendor that ships ambient in summer is either selling fake powder or destroying real product in transit.
- Lyophilised cake that is loose, flaky, off-white, or rattles in the vial. Genuine rDNA somatropin forms a tight white puck adherent to the vial bottom. A powder that dissolves instantly on reconstitution is suspect — real somatropin takes 30–60 seconds of gentle swirling to clear.
- Persistent painful red welts at every injection site. The classic counterfeit pattern is 192-amino-acid somatropin (pituitary-sequence variant produced in older Chinese fermentation) which provokes anti-GH antibody formation and visible local immune reaction. Real 191-aa rDNA product injects without sting in 99% of users.
- Sellers who refuse to provide a serum GH test protocol or balk at the 'inject 4 IU, draw blood at 3 hours' authenticity check. Legitimate pharma distributors will explain it; UGL resellers usually deflect because their product fails it.
- Packaging holograms that do not match the manufacturer's current security mark generation. Pfizer (Genotropin), Novo Nordisk (Norditropin), Lilly (Humatrope), and Merck Serono (Saizen) all publish current packaging photos; counterfeiters lag the latest hologram by 6–12 months.
Pricing rots fast and varies by region and supplier. We list no vendors.
Common mistakes
Starting at the target dose instead of titrating up.
Better approach: Begin at 1 IU/day for the first week regardless of where you plan to land. Fluid retention and joint discomfort show up at the lower doses first and let you correct the trajectory before you are sitting on a vial half-used. Increase by 0.5 IU per week to your target.
Skipping glucose monitoring above 2 IU/day.
Better approach: Fasting glucose and HbA1c every 8 weeks at any dose at or above 2 IU/day. GH-induced insulin resistance is silent until it is not, and HbA1c trending up by 0.3 in 12 weeks is the early warning the lab catches and you will not.
Eating carbs or protein right around the injection.
Better approach: Insulin blunts the GH pulse. Keep a 30-minute window clear of food on either side of the shot. Black coffee and water are fine; everything else waits.
Stopping abruptly at the end of a cycle.
Better approach: Taper 0.5 IU/week down to zero. IGF-1 falls slowly; the few weeks of feeling flat after a hard stop are avoidable with a 2-week taper.
Real-world tips
- Buy a U-100 insulin syringe with half-unit markings. The dose precision matters more at low-volume / high-concentration mixes.
- Inject into the abdomen, rotate sites in a clock-face pattern. Same-spot repeats turn into local lipoatrophy over months.
- Track waist circumference weekly, not weight. The scale lies during the first month because of fluid; the waist tells the truth.
- If carpal tunnel tingling appears overnight, your dose is 0.5 IU too high. Drop, hold for two weeks, then reassess.
- Refrigerate the reconstituted vial. Room temperature is fine for a day or two but degrades from there.
What users report
Aggregated from r/PEDs, r/Steroids GH threads, and longevity forums. Not clinical data.
Onset: Pharma-grade somatropin at 2 IU/day produces noticeable water retention and finger puffiness within 5–10 days; the deeper-sleep and slow body-composition shift lands at week 4–8, with measurable IGF-1 rise visible on bloodwork by day 14.
Common reports
- Carpal tunnel symptoms — numb fingers on waking, especially in the dominant hand — surface around week 2 at 2–3 IU/day and resolve within a week of dropping the dose. Users describe it as 'the first real sign the GH is working'.
- Deeper sleep with vivid dreams in the first 2 weeks, often reported as the most reliable subjective marker of a real product. A vial that produces no sleep change in 10 days is the single most common reason posters declare a kit fake.
- Visible fat loss on the abdomen and lower back at the 8–12 week mark on 2–3 IU/day, lagging the joint-pain and water-retention onset by weeks. Most users report scale weight stays flat or rises 1–2 kg from water while waist measurement drops.
- Joint aches in knees, ankles, and shoulders starting week 2–3, peaking around week 4, then easing. Users who pushed dose above 4 IU/day report the joint pain becomes the dose-limiting side effect rather than IGF-1 numbers.
- Fasting glucose creep of 5–15 mg/dL on a continuous glucose monitor within the first month at 2 IU+/day. Forum consensus is that this reverses within 2–4 weeks of stopping but is the reason many users split daily doses or move to 5-on/2-off.
Where reports diverge from theory: Forum reports consistently describe a 'feels like nothing for the first week, then suddenly the water retention hits' pattern that the textbook pharmacokinetics do not predict — IGF-1 rises within 24 hours of the first injection, but subjective effects lag the labwork. The other big gap: clinical adult-GHD studies use 0.2–0.4 mg/day (roughly 0.6–1.2 IU) and show body-composition benefit at that dose, while forum protocols routinely run 2–5 IU/day and chase the bigger dose for cosmetic effect. The trade-off (insulin resistance, organ growth concerns, edema) scales nonlinearly with dose, and the 'more is better' culture on r/PEDs frequently understates this.
When something else is the better tool
CJC-1295 / Ipamorelin stack
Use instead when: You want most of the GH benefit at a fraction of the side-effect risk and the cost. The secretagogue stack does not match HGH for raw IGF-1 elevation, but it preserves the pulsatile pattern and the safety margin is much friendlier for indefinite use.
Tesamorelin
Use instead when: Visceral fat is the specific goal. Tesamorelin is on-label for HIV-associated lipodystrophy and the trial data on visceral fat reduction is cleaner than the off-label HGH literature.
Sermorelin
Use instead when: You are older, sleep is the chief complaint, and you want the gentlest possible re-introduction of a GH signal. Sermorelin pulses the pituitary in line with the natural sleep-onset window without the metabolic baggage of full HGH.
Based on 1 peer-reviewed study
- When should I inject?
- AM fasted maximises lipolysis; pre-bed supports sleep architecture. Try one for two weeks, then the other, and pick what fits your routine. Split AM/PM above 4 IU/day.
- How long until results?
- Sleep changes within two weeks. Visible body composition change around 8 weeks. Full effect lands at 12–16 weeks, which is why short cycles get judged unfairly.
- Do I need glucose monitoring?
- Yes, at any dose ≥2 IU/day. Fasting glucose and HbA1c every 8 weeks. Insulin resistance is real, dose-dependent, and silent until it shows up on labs.
- Will it shut down my natural GH?
- Yes, for the duration of the cycle and a few weeks after. A taper-down avoids the few weeks of feeling flat that cold stops produce.
- Is the carpal tunnel permanent?
- No — it is fluid-driven and dose-responsive. Drop 0.5 IU and it resolves within a week or two.
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