Thread: Putting it all together - HGH + IGF-1 + Insulin – by RedBaron

Putting it all together - HGH + IGF-1 + Insulin – by RedBaron

A basic peptide cycle guide for the lazy man

There are volumes of studies available regarding the use of HGH, IGF-1 (and all its variants), and Insulin, but for the most part coming up with a good cycle incorporating all of these is a tedious process and requires more of an investment in time pouring over studies and other reading than most people wish to invest. The following is put forth as a basic guide. It is meant to be a quick and simple reference as to what a cycle including all three of these components might look like and a brief description of the action of each of the components. This is in no wise intended to be a comprehensive guide, a technical document, nor is it presented as the ONLY way to run a cycle such as this. This is merely as an example of one method that will definitely yield results. Myself and several athletes and all levels of competition have used the basic cycle principles below with good success over the last few years. You will certainly want to tweak this for your particular application, but this should at least get you headed in the right direction.

THE CYCLE

Weeks 1- (20-30) – HGH – On 5/ off 2
Weeks 1-5, 11-15, (21-25)
• 2 – 3 IU’s - first thing in the morning on workout days – early afternoon on non-workout days
Weeks 6-10, 16-20, (26-30)
• 2 – 3 IU’s first thing in the morning
• 2 – 3 IU’s 1-2 p.m. or pre-workout (or IM post-workout with your insulin if preferred)
All HGH injected subQ into abdomen, obliques, fronts of the thighs, and upper triceps

Weeks 1-5, 11-15, (21-25) – Long R3 IGF-1 – Every day
80 – 100 mcg’s intramuscular
• post work out on workout days
• first thing in the morning on non-workout days

Weeks 6-10, 16-20, (26-30) – Humalog – Workout days only
• 8 – 12 IU’s immediately post workout, intramuscular

IMPORTANT / CRITICAL - Post Insulin Nutrient Routine
Immediately after Humalog injection – do the following in exacting fashion -
• Injection + 5 minutes – drink shake with 10g glutamine / 10g creatine / 7 grams of dextrose per IU of Insulin. (If you don’t wish to split the shakes, add the whey isolate described as well here for a single shake).
• Injection + 15 minutes – drink shake with 65g of whey isolate protein in water (skip if taken with above)
• Injection + 75 minutes – eat a protein / carb meal with 40-50g of protein, 40-50g of carbs, NO FATS (you may wish to add another 30g or so whey isolate protein drink with this meal if you have tore down sufficient muscle groups to utilize this without it being stored as fat)
(i.e. – two boneless, skinless chicken breasts baked or grilled, a serving of brown rice, sweet potatoes, or pasta, with green beans)
Avoid fats for 2-3 hours for Humalog IM, 3-4 hours for Humalog subQ, 4-5 hours for Humulin-R.
keep some glucose tablets or other simple carbs on hand (Orange Juice, Full sugar Coke, etc.) for the active window of your insulin. Hypo symptoms can and will hit hard and fast and you will have little time to react. This is the main danger of insulin use. . Lack of attention to detail in this area can end in a nice ambulance ride, a visit to the hospital or even a one-way trip to the morgue. Be ready and act smart. The price of stupidity is really, really high.

OPTIONAL Addition to above cycle

Weeks 1- (20-30) T3 or T4 - Every Day
one of the following –
• 12.5 mcgs - 25 mcgs T3 taken once each day
-or –
• 100 mcgs T4 taken once each day

[alternative method if additional fat loss is necessary - Only use if sufficient AAS cycle is present to protect and support lean tissue and use only during the weeks of LR3 injections to avoid any potential negative impact to our IGF levels by increased IGF binding proteins. The 13 amino acid side chain of LR3 IGF-1 has specifically been engineered to resist being impressed by or bound to IGFBP’s, so any increase in the below ramp up/down will not kill your IGF levels. A reasonable dose AAS component of the cycle will further protect lean tissue from being used for fuel. In absence of these above-mentioned components, you won’t want to run your T3 above 50mcgs per day. It will begin to elevate IGFBP’s and will dismantle and burn through hard-earned muscle proteins quicker than you could imagine.]

Weeks 1-5, 11-15, (21-25) T3 Every Day
For each of the 5 week runs of T3:
Days 1-3 25 mcgs
Days 4-6 50 mcgs
Days 7-9 75 mcgs
Days 10 - 20 100 mcgs
Days 21 - 24 75 mcgs
Days 25 - 27 50 mcgs
Days 28 - 30 25 mcgs
Days 31 - 35 12.5 mcgs

DESCRIPTION OF THE ELEMENTS OF THIS CYCLE

HGH
HGH should ideally be used for 20-30 week cycles (or longer). The dosage should be between 2-3IU per day if you are using GH primarily for fat loss, 4-8 IU’s a day for both fat loss and muscle growth, and approximately 1.0 – 2.0 IU’s a day for females. It is best to split your injections 1/2 first thing in the morning, 1/2 early afternoon if your dose is above 3.0 IU’s per day. Your pituitary will naturally produce an average of 6 or so pulses of GH per day, the mega pulse being 2 hours after we fall asleep. Each injection you take will create a negative feedback loop that as suggested by a couple of studies will suppress these pulses for an approximate 4 hours. By taking your injections first thing in the morning and early afternoon you will still allow your body to release its biggest pulse, which normally occurs shortly after going to sleep at night, as well as blunting the effects of cortisol, the two biggest peaks of which are occurring at these same times (early morning, early afternoon).

When starting out with your HGH cycle, for most people it is wise to begin you dose at 1.5 – 2.0IU per day for the first couple of weeks, and then begin increasing your dose by 0.5 unit every week or two until you reach your desired level. While it isn't an absolute necessity to do this, if you are sensitive to the type of sides HGH present you will often times avoid these sides of joint pain/swelling, CTS, and bloating/water retention by slowly acclimating to your ultimate 4-5 IU/day goal.

You should use an U100 insulin syringe for injecting HGH, and inject it subQ into your abdomen, obliques, top of thighs, triceps. Rotate injection sites. HGH can have a small-localized fat loss benefit, so keep this in mind when choosing your injection sites.

IGF-1
When HGH makes it pass through the liver, a release of IGF-1 is a result. IGF-1 appears to be a key player in muscle growth. It stimulates both the differentiation and proliferation of myoblasts. It also stimulates amino acid uptake and protein synthesis in muscle and other tissues. While HGH will cause an increase in your IGF-1 level over the course of a few months, HGH has a cumulative effect, so our addition of IGF-1 will greatly speed up the time to results.

There are two types of IGF-1 that will typically be used by bodybuilders. One is bio-identical huIGF-1, a 70 amino acid string. The other is Long R3 IGF-1, which is an 83 amino acid analog of human IGF-I comprising the complete human IGF-I sequence with the substitution of an Arg for the Glu at position 3 (hence R3), and a 13 amino acid extension peptide at the N-terminus (hence the long). This 13 amino acid "side chain" helps prevent the IGF-1 from being so easily bound by binding proteins, and thus increases its active window exponentially. Which of these you use depends on your goal.

HuIGF-1 is very short lived in the body (probable half life of approximately 10 minutes). This type of IGF-1 is very useful if you are seeking local site growth. Since it is so short lived, little if any of the IGF-1 makes it to other tissues and IGF-1 receptors in other parts of the body. The way to inject this is immediately post work out into the muscle that you wish to have local site growth. Use a U100 insulin syringe, and inject 100 - 300 mcg’s (in some cases more) bilaterally into the desired muscle immediately post workout. For this type of IGF-1, I would use it workout days only.

For Long R3 IGF-1, it isn’t as critical that you inject into a local site as long R3 has a active window of many hours (if not days), and is designed specifically to resist being bound by IGF binding proteins.

Since it is common to reconstitute this type of IGF-1 with Benzyl Alcohol, Acetic Acid, or Hydrochloric Acid, I would still recommend that you inject intra-muscular. While for some purposes of nerve regrowth and other medical recovery purposes subQ is a somewhat superior injection method, it can and probably will leave a nice red irritated spot for a couple of weeks if you inject subQ, and it is not superior for our purposes of muscle growth anyway.

I still inject into a muscle just worked to take advantage of increased IGF-1 receptors present as a result of tearing down muscles with my workout, but because of the long activity window of this type of IGF-1 any muscle will work well and give you good results. I would suggest that you inject between 80 – 120 mcg’s per day everyday immediately post workout on workout days, and first thing in the morning on non-workout days.

The added bonus of using LR3 in our cycle is that fat loss will be accomplished while still eating a great number of clean calories per day. You will visibly see yourself leaning out from a couple of weeks in on while using LR3 at doses suggested here.

Use a U-100 insulin syringe with 1/2" needle to inject IGF-1 intramuscular (bilaterally for HuIGF-1, bilaterally optional for Long R3)

Insulin
Working out causes our muscles to end up in a catabolic state after a good hammering. It is important to back in a positive nitrogen balance as soon as possible. When not using insulin, we drink some dextrose with our protein to cause an insulin spike immediately post workout to help shuttle the protein and sugars to the muscles.

Insulin is very good at shuttling nutrients to the muscles, and works in a very complimentary manner with GH in the types of things that they shuttle. Also, HGH can cause an amount of insulin resistance, so adding some insulin to your cycle will go a long ways toward reducing the elevated blood glucose levels caused by HGH's action of interfering with the liver's ability to uptake glucose, and thus help offset any potential resistance that might occur during your HGH cycle. Also by taking our HGH near the time of our insulin injection (immediately post workout) we are ensuring a great influx of growth factors after action on the liver. HGH + Slin passed through the liver = BIG secretion of growth factors. These growth factors will equate to muscle growth, rapid healing, etc.

For the purposes that we are using insulin, a dosage of 6-12IU’s is adequate and should be used immediately post workout. I personally prefer using Humalog intramuscular as it will cause a rapid spike and clear out of your system quickly. You can use it subQ or use Humulin-R instead, but each of these will result in a longer active window, thus a longer time to avoid eating any fats and watching your carb intake. Any fats or over abundance of carbs will end up being stored as fat during insulin's active window. The approximate windows are:
Humalog - IM - 2-3 hours
Sub-q - 3-4 hours
Humulin -R - IM - 3-4 hours
Sub-q 4-5 hours

Use a U-100 insulin syringe with 1/2" needle to inject IM immediately post workout. Alternatively, you can inject subQ if desired or if you wish a longer active window for some reason. Begin with a dose of 4IU's or so, and increase the dose each workout day until you reach your desired 8-12IU's.

If for some reason you wish to avoid insulin, I would still suggest that immediately post workout you spike you own endogenous insulin by drinking 80 grams of dextrose / 40 grams of whey isolate protein. While this certainly won't do the work of 8-12 IU's of Humalog, it will most certainly assist getting your muscle back in a nitrogen positive environment in a short amount of time.


T3 or T4
HGH can (but certainly not universally) have a slight inhibitory effect on your thyroid. For most people this is minimal and does not require any additional thyroid be taken, but if you wish to augment protein synthesis as well as give yourself a slight metabolic boost in thyroid without shutting down your own production, you can add 12.5mcg of T3 or 50mcgs of T4 daily to your HGH, IGF-1, and Insulin cycle. This will aid both in bulking and cutting.

If you add T3 or T4 to your cycle, you should also consider taking some thyroid support supplements such as t-100x, bladderwrack, and coleus forskolin. You should check and make sure your intake of trace minerals (selenium, zinc, copper) is sufficient to aid in the conversion of T4 to T3.

If you are going to take more than 12.5 mcg of T3 or 50mcgs of T4, a wise method is to cycle the dose both up and down to avoid a rebound effect when going off the T3 portion of your cycle. While many profess they don’t suffer from this rebound problem, I can personally attest to MANY that do. If you don’t have a desire to find out whether you are one of the lucky ones or not, consider the ramp up/down to minimize the rebound. It is a real bummer to lose a bunch of fat only to pack it right back on because your metabolism is in the toilet for many weeks post thyroid cycling. The other consideration is that T3 is very indiscriminant in it stoking of the metabolic fire. It will happily burn both fat and lean tissue (muscle proteins are really attractive, easy marks), so I would only recommend its use at much above 25mcgs of T3 or 100mcgs of T4 per day (and definitely if used at 50mcgs of T3 or 200mcgs of T4 or above - at which point IGFBP's will rise significantly enough to be a consideration) if you are on a reasonably healthy anabolic cycle to protect your lean tissue. For strictly our use with an HGH cycle and use in assisting with protein synthesis, 12.5mcg of T3 or 50mcgs of T4 will be sufficient and will not be problematic.

Also another consideration if cycling in higher doses, cycle your T3 in conjunction with your LR3 IGF-1 use. The thought behind this is that LR3 binds poorly to IGFBP's, so you will be able to use an elevated dose of T3 (which will likely increase IGFBP's) and still keep elevated IGF-1 levels. I would suggest that use of T3 above 25mcg's or T4 at doses above 100mcgs or so would not be advisable for too many 5 weeks segments of your complete cycle. As one of the major "anabolic" benefits of HGH use is elevated IGF-1 levels, we don't want to create an environment of radically increased IGF binding proteins. Abuse of T3 or T4 will go a long way in creating that environment hostile to IGF-1.

Well, I think that about covers the basic peptide suite …all that is needed to complete this cycle is the addition of your preferred anabolic portion of the cycle –a simple testosterone combo (cyp, e, prop, etc.) or a more complex cycle. In either event, add something along those lines and you have a great combination that can be tailored for whatever your goals may be.

I hope this guide helps get you going on the right path. Happy growing!
RedBaron
(last updated 1/15/07)

great post! very informative.