Insulin and glucose on GH secretagogue stack (fasted AM values)
45 posts
Tracking weekly fasting glucose + insulin on a CJC-NoDAC/Ipa/tesa stack (100mcg/200mcg/1mg). 10 weeks in. Same meter (Contour Next), same lab for insulin (Quest), draws Tuesday AM fasted 12h, same restaurant for coffee the day before (kidding).
Glucose (mg/dL, fingerstick mean of 3):
- Wk 0: 84
- Wk 2: 86
- Wk 4: 89
- Wk 6: 91
- Wk 8: 93
- Wk 10: 92
Insulin (mIU/L, lab):
- Wk 0: 5.8
- Wk 4: 7.1
- Wk 8: 8.9
- Wk 10: 9.4
HOMA-IR: 1.20 -> 1.47 -> 2.04 -> 2.14.
That's not catastrophic but it's the 'GH stack insulin creep' I keep reading about. How much of this do I eat before cutting a dose?
9 Replies
97 posts
Agreed with above. My additional take: add berberine 500mg tid if diet is dialed. Cheap insurance, real effect on fasting insulin (~15-20% drop in most responders).
- CJC-1295 no DAC · 100 mcg · pre-bed · sub-Q
- Ipamorelin · 200 mcg · pre-bed · sub-Q
- BPC-157 · 250 mcg · 2x/day · sub-Q
73 posts
My heuristic: HOMA-IR < 1.5 = fine, 1.5-2.0 = monitor, 2.0-2.5 = pull back one lever (drop dose, cut days, or swap tesa out), >2.5 = hard stop on stack and reassess. You're at the 'pull back one lever' threshold.
Easiest lever here is probably cutting tesa to 1mg 5x/wk from 1mg daily, or dropping CJC to 4x/wk.
- BPC-157 · 500 mcg · 2x/day · sub-Q
- GHK-Cu · 2 mg · nightly topical · topical
45 posts
Your glucose trend looks close to maxed-out at 92-93. Likely to stabilize. Insulin is the one you want to watch — it's still climbing.
29 posts
Also — carb timing. If you're eating most carbs in the evening the fasting insulin takes longer to drop overnight. Shifting carbs earlier in the day can reduce fasting insulin 10-20% independent of drug changes.
- Sermorelin · 300 mcg · pre-bed · sub-Q
- Ipamorelin · 200 mcg · pre-bed · sub-Q
35 posts
Are you doing AM dosing? Some people see meaningfully less insulin creep shifting their GH secretagogues to post-workout + bedtime only, skipping the AM pulse.
10 posts
honestly the insulin creep thing gets worse the longer you run it, like ive seen dudes sit at stable fasting insulin for like 6-8 weeks then just balloon up. your homa-ir is still reasonable tho so youre not in panic territory yet. the bedtime-only thing might help but also just throwing this out there, are you moving more or sitting more than usual? sounds dumb but ive seen people blame their stack when they started a desk job lol. anyway the a1c will tell you if this is actually problematic or just noise.