What Is CJC-1295? DAC vs No-DAC, Dosing & How to Track It

What CJC-1295 is and how it works

CJC-1295 is a modified fragment of GHRH (growth-hormone-releasing hormone), the brain signal that tells your pituitary to release growth hormone. Rather than injecting growth hormone directly, it nudges your own gland to do it — which preserves the natural pulsatile rhythm and feedback loop instead of overriding it.

The two versions are the thing to understand. DAC (Drug Affinity Complex) is a modification that grabs onto albumin in the blood, dramatically extending half-life; no-DAC — commonly sold as Modified GRF 1-29 — has no such anchor and clears in minutes. Same basic job, opposite pharmacokinetics.

Because a GHRH signal only works when the pituitary isn’t being told to stop, CJC-1295 is usually stacked with a GHRP (like ipamorelin): the GHRP suppresses the “off switch” (somatostatin), and together they produce a bigger, cleaner GH pulse than either alone.

Typical dosing & reconstitution

Which version you have decides the schedule. No-DAC / Mod GRF 1-29 is dosed daily, typically 100–300 mcg at bedtime to ride your natural overnight GH pulse. DAC is dosed weekly (sometimes split twice weekly), often close to the full vial per week.

Reconstitution differs by version, and that is where people slip up — the same vial size concentrates very differently:

At 1.67 mg/mL, a 200 mcg no-DAC dose is 12 units. For small doses (under ~10 units) a 30- or 50-unit syringe reads more accurately — one of several things the reconstitution calculator sorts out for you.

Half-life & what it means for frequency

This is where the two versions split hard. No-DAC clears in about 30 minutes — deliberately. A short-lived GHRH pulse mimics your body’s own rhythm and lets somatostatin switch GH back off between doses; that is why it is a daily (sometimes multiple-daily) bedtime peptide.

DAC’s albumin binding stretches its half-life to roughly 6–8 days, so a weekly injection keeps GHRH signaling elevated the whole time. There is a real trade-off there: DAC’s convenience comes from constant presence — but constant GHRH can blunt the natural pulse into more of a steady “bleed” of GH, which is exactly the rhythm no-DAC preserves. Neither is simply better; they are different tools. The blood-level simulator shows how differently a short- vs long-half-life peptide accumulates.

What to track & common side effects

Common, generally mild effects trace to raised GH/IGF-1 and to the injection itself: water retention, tingling or numbness in the hands, head-rush or flushing right after a dose, and injection-site reactions. Some people get sleep disruption from a bedtime dose rather than better sleep — often fixed by moving the dose to morning or switching the paired GHRP.

Since these run in cycles (commonly weeks on, then a break to protect sensitivity), the useful things to track are which version and dose you are on, the daily bedtime streak for no-DAC, and the recovery / sleep / body-composition changes you are actually after — plus IGF-1 if you lab it.

Frequently asked questions