Peptide Primer: CJC-1295/GHRP and Growth Hormone

June 24, 2019

References: WikipediaEur Jr Appl PhysCell MetabolismNatureFEBS Press,


Bear with me because this is the crux of aging. Bit by bit, your cells get tired, and senescent. They are still there in your tissue, but they don't respond to signals and they don't do their job, whatever tissue they are in. The mitochondria don't talk to the nucleus and vice versa. Slowly they drift into cell death. You are done. That process shows up with the mitochondria losing their ability to make energy and gradually making more "oxidants". We have frantically been taking anti-oxidants for decades, hoping that will help. Anti-oxidants soften the blow but don't wake up the conversation between mitochondria and nucleus in each and every cell. Without that conversation between mitochondria and nucleus the inevitable slide into senescence continues. 


That's the key to reversing aging: waking up that conversation in aging cells (you) between your mitochondria and your nuclei. Now, if you exercise like crazy and induce a shortage of energy in each cell (pushing your muscles and cells to the point of exhaustion - that last pushup, curl, pump, lift) your mitochondria startle, send out help messages to the nucleus, and you start the conversation. That's why exercise helps. Its effect lasts a few days. You can accelerate that with blood flow restriction training because you hasten the exhaustion of energy supplies. Ditto with Fast Mimicking Dieting: you turn on the conversation between nucleus and mitochondria because you exhaust energy supply and call the internal cellular 911 system. Fast mimicking's effects last a few weeks to months. 


Or, you can use CJC-1295/GHRP2 (Growth hormone inducing peptides). Growth hormone inducing peptides in your body do the same thing as exercise and fasting when it comes to waking up the conversation between your mitochondria and nuclei. What not to like? CJC-1295 is a growth hormone releasing hormone analog. It is a slight alteration of the original hypothalamic hormone but effectively results in the very prolonged release of growth hormone from your anterior pituitary. Your normal process of releasing growth hormone happens when your hypothalamus puts out GHRH (growth hormone releasing hormone) which then stimulates your pituitary to make it. Its use is not without controversy. CJC-1295 was being developed as a drug but one of the subjects taking it had a heart attack and diet. It was "ruled" to have been a random, non-related event, but it killed the clinical trial. Wikipedia refers to the "gray" market for bodybuilding but two minutes on Google will show you a lot more. (The deep dive can get into more detail, but the complexity would put you to sleep.....) 
This topic of bringing understanding to the aging process is starting to burrow down into that space: how do we wake up those senescent cells in every tissue in your body? That's the frontier. Getting a handle on the mitochondria-nucleus conversation has become the key topic. I even found it mentioned in this week's AARP Magazine titled "Can A Single Pill Keep You Healthy Till 100?".


WWW: What will work for me? I'm trying to learn this just as fast as I can go. I have now done 5 days of fasting for 14 months in a row and have lost about 15 pounds doing it. I can feel my brain perking up when I do my 5 day fast mimicking thing. And I'm trying to exercise using the 2 mile a day formula with daily pushups and situps. I want to learn the 4 minute high intensity workout, maybe with blood flow restriction. I think I'll do a column on that (BFR) when I'm off my peptide kick. Am I ready to advise that people use CJC-1295? I want to educate you and me. You are an adult reader and can make your own decision.


Pop Quiz

  1. How does your body release growth hormone? Answer: Simple, from your pituitary gland after stimulation by GHRH secreted by your hypothalamus.
  2. What happens to growth hormone as we age? Answer: We make a lot less. We have the capacity to make more, indeed, but it gets blocked by somatostatin which rises as we age. (I warned you that this dive can go very deep.)
  3. One of the main problems with loss of growth hormone is what in older cells? Answer: They can't wake up to do their job, whatever it may be. They slide from quiet waiting (good) to senescence (warning light) to dying (bad, bad, bad).
  4. You can wake up cells by what central process? Answer: putting stress on the energy supply in the cell: exercise to exhaustion, or fast until glucose is used up and inducing ketones: aka fasting. (You can accelerate this with various tricks: taking oral ketones, restricting blood flow in exercise....or various peptide treatments)
  5. CJC-1295 was about to be released as a drug and was held up because? Answer: One of the subjects had sudden death from a heart attack.

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