GHRP-6: the first one, and the one that makes you hungry
The compound the rest of the family was developed to improve on. It releases growth hormone well and it makes people extremely hungry, and the second of those is not a flaw in the design — it is what a ghrelin mimetic does when nothing has been trimmed off it.
Regulatory status. Research compound — no FDA approval. Historical clinical research base. That is the app’s own field, reproduced here rather than summarised. It means no regulator has reviewed a manufacturer’s evidence for identity, purity, potency or safety in people for this compound, so nothing below is a marketing claim about a product you can buy.
Purity, identity and concentration are therefore unverified by anyone but whoever made the vial. The storage rule in the fact box below is general practice for this formulation rather than a specification for a particular product: General handling practice for this formulation. Your supplier’s own insert or COA overrides anything here.
This page names no vendor, no clinic and no testing service, and there is no discount code anywhere on this site — the moment a page like this recommends where to buy, it stops being information.
- Also known as
- Growth Hormone Releasing Peptide-6
- Class
- Peptide
- Regulatory status
- Research compound — no FDA approval. Historical clinical research base.
- Modelled half-life
- 24 min
- Time to peak
- 15 min
- Formulation
- Aqueous (reconstituted powder)
- Before mixing
- Sealed powder tolerates room temperature in transit, but keep it refrigerated at 2–8 °C (36–46 °F) for anything beyond a few weeks, or frozen for months. Keep it dark — the carton it shipped in is doing a job.
- After mixing
- Once reconstituted with bacteriostatic water: refrigerate at 2–8 °C and use within about 28 days. The benzyl alcohol in bacteriostatic water is what buys that window — plain sterile water has no preservative, so a vial mixed with it should be treated as one sitting only. Kits are usually ten vials: only the one you mixed is on that 28-day clock — the sealed ones keep their own, much longer shelf life, so store them as powder, not as solution.
- What ruins it
- Do not freeze a reconstituted vial. Repeated freeze–thaw is one of the more reliable ways to degrade a peptide.
- Handling caveat
- General handling practice for this formulation. Your supplier’s own insert or COA overrides anything here.
Hunger is the point of comparison
Established clinical use Ghrelin is the stomach hormone that signals hunger and also stimulates growth hormone release; the two functions travel together in the natural molecule. GHRP-6 was among the first synthetic agonists at that receptor and it reproduces both effects substantially. Everything that came after — GHRP-2, hexarelin, ipamorelin — was an attempt to keep the growth hormone release while shedding something: appetite, cortisol, prolactin, or all three.
So the appetite stimulation is the baseline the family is measured against rather than an unfortunate extra. It is strong enough to be the deciding factor for most people: useful if the goal involves eating more, actively counterproductive during a caloric deficit, which is the goal most people in this space actually have.
Off-label or community practice Cortisol and prolactin rise more with GHRP-6 than with any of the others except hexarelin, and desensitisation is faster than with the selective compounds. Those are the other two things later molecules were built to reduce. The ipamorelin page covers what the end of that development looked like.
The clinical history, and where it stops
Established clinical use GHRP-6 has a real research base. It was studied through the 1980s and 1990s as a growth hormone secretagogue, used in provocative testing of pituitary reserve, and characterised properly — which is more than most peptides in this reference can claim. There is also work in cardiac and tissue-protective contexts from the ghrelin receptor’s wider biology.
What never happened is an approval for anything. The compound was superseded by orally-active secretagogues in pharmaceutical development and by more selective peptides in practice, and it survives now mostly in the research-peptide market. Its characterisation is good; its clinical development is finished and negative by omission rather than by result.
What to measure, and what nobody established
IGF-1 is the marker for whether the axis responded, as everywhere in this class — a random serum growth hormone mostly reports where in a pulse the draw landed. The IGF-1 page covers the age-dependent range. Prolactin, cortisol and fasting glucose are on this compound’s panel specifically, and body weight is on it for the obvious reason.
Fasted administration and a pre-sleep dose follow from the same physiology as the rest of the class: insulin blunts growth hormone release and the largest natural pulse is nocturnal. That constraint is harder to keep here than with the other compounds, because the drug itself is arguing against it.
Animal-only or theoretical What amplifying GH pulses does for a person with a normal axis remains unestablished across this entire family. IGF-1 is a marker of exposure rather than of benefit. There is no approved product, identity and purity rest with whoever made the vial, and this site names no vendor. Anything experienced while using it — a rising fasting glucose in particular — belongs with a clinician.
How long one dose lasts
pkCurve function.
The vertical axis is relative: the shape carries across people, the absolute
concentration does not.Try other intervals on the half-life and steady-state calculator, which runs the same function against whatever cadence you type.
The dosing rows the app records
Off-label or community practice Reproduced from the app’s reference so you can see what it holds, not as a recommendation. Which row applies to a particular person, if any, is a clinical decision this page does not make — and rows describing supraphysiological or post-cycle use are filtered out before this table is built, so what you see here is a subset.
| Label | Amount | Route and frequency | Duration recorded |
|---|---|---|---|
| With CJC-1295 | 100mcg GHRP-6 + 100mcg CJC | SubQ 2-3x daily fasted | 3 months |
What the app monitors alongside it
The panel below is the app’s own monitoring note for GHRP-6, verbatim. The analytes in it that have a page here are linked; those pages cover what each one measures, which assay produced it and how to read a trend.
- Monitoring panel
- IGF-1 every 3 months, Prolactin, Cortisol, Fasting glucose, Body weight.
Drawbacks and risks the app records
From the app’s own entry, and every item is a comparison against a later compound in the same family. That is a fair description of where this one sits.
- Strong hunger side effect — problematic for cutting
- Most cortisol and prolactin elevation of common GHRPs
- Faster desensitization
- Not FDA approved
- Water retention
- Less selective than Ipamorelin
Interaction rules that name GHRP-6
From the app’s interaction data, filtered so no rule naming a compound this site does not publish appears. Not exhaustive, and not a safety clearance: a combination that is not listed is one nobody has documented here, which is not the same as one that is fine. The combination checker has the rest.
GHRP Stacking Increases Cortisol and Prolactin
Stacking two GHRPs amplifies cortisol and prolactin elevation. Use lowest effective doses and monitor prolactin.
What to watch: Prolactin, Cortisol, IGF-1. Consider Cabergoline if prolactin elevates.
Questions people actually ask
How strong is the hunger?
Strong enough that it is the usual reason people stop, and strong enough that it is described as a use rather than a side effect where increasing intake is the goal. It is mechanism: this is a ghrelin mimetic with nothing trimmed off it.
Is it obsolete?
In development terms, yes — it was superseded by more selective peptides and by orally active secretagogues. It remains well characterised, which is why it still appears in the reference.
Does it raise cortisol?
More than any of the family except hexarelin. That is why cortisol and prolactin sit on this compound’s monitoring panel and not on ipamorelin’s.
Can the hunger be avoided by timing?
Taking it before sleep shifts when it lands rather than removing it, and the fasted requirement works against eating anyway. If a caloric deficit is the goal, a more selective compound in the family is the straightforward answer.
Where the load-bearing numbers come from
Named rather than linked. Publisher URLs move, and a citation that resolves to a 404 two years from now is worse than one you can search for by name — every entry below is findable from the title and year alone.
- Ghrelin receptor agonism and dual GH-appetite signalling
- Standard endocrinology references on the GH secretagogue receptor
- Comparative selectivity across the family
- The secretagogue characterisation literature of the 1980s and 1990s
- Use in provocative pituitary testing
- Clinical studies of GHRP-6 as a test of GH reserve
- Modelled half-life and time to peak
- app.html’s TL_PK entry
A compound whose main effect is on appetite is one where the food log matters as much as the dose. TherapyLog keeps both.
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