I think I’d rather know target IGF-1 or z-scores. IU seems too individualized to be useful. The trial really wanted people in a target range based on labs. The patent describes what increase they were looking for, but I only skimmed it and need to read more closely later. Not sure I found the right levels after a first look.
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FWIW…
$600 per month is reasonable…
Pharmaceutical Industry in the US take as much as possible from your wallet.
$3000 and more per month
AI-generated answer below
Please verify critical facts
The cheapest place to purchase somatropin (including Norditropin ) is Costa Rica or Mexico , where medical tourism clinics offer FDA-approved brands like Norditropin and Saizen for $550 per month (for a 10–12 mg supply). This represents a 60–70% reduction compared to standard US retail prices, which can exceed $2,600 for the same medication.
In the United States , prices vary significantly by pharmacy and insurance:
- Retail/Cash Prices : Norditropin can cost as high as $2,646 to $9,465 per month at full retail.
- Discounted Prices : Using coupons or pharmacy programs (e.g., Kroger, CVS), prices may drop to approximately $1,737 per month.
- Patient Assistance : Eligible patients with financial need may access medication for as low as $70 per month through specific assistance programs.
Key Considerations:
- Legality : In the US, Norditropin is a prescription-only medication. Purchasing it from online vendors without a prescription carries risks of counterfeit products.
- Medical Supervision : Legitimate low-cost options in Mexico (e.g., Tijuana) and Costa Rica require a physician-supervised program and medical evaluation to ensure safe administration and cold-chain handling.
- Alternatives : Other brands like Zomacton ($301 ) and Genotropin ($359–$907 ) may offer lower costs than Norditropin depending on the provider and location.
AI-generated answer
Please verify critical facts.
Zomacton Injection (Somatropin)
12iu in 1 Vial with 1 Vial of water for injection Strength: 4mg
$85.00 per vial - online purchase
Jason, what is your cost for “gray market,” HGH?
I would like to know both. I think the only way we will get our answers are to hear about it from the person who is in the trial that posted here.
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Good catch. Here is the most useful addition from the patent:
The patent claims that GH dose should be increased until the CD4/CD8 ratio peaks, then stopped — not titrated to a fixed IGF-1 value. The ratio declines if GH is pushed beyond the optimum. This implies the ideal GH/GHRH dose is individual and immune-guided, not weight- or age-based.
For the protocol this is actionable: IGF-1 monitoring is a safety ceiling, but the therapeutic target should be the CD4/CD8 ratio peak.
As CD4/CD8 ratio is not easy to get It will be added as an optional therapeutic target to the protocol.
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Not sure if this answers your question but I recall seeing this:
Since Tesamorelin is currently difficult to find and expensive, I have attached an appendix regarding the use of CJC 1295 noDAC and Ipamorelin as an alternative.
thymic_rejuvenation_appendix-1.pdf (62.9 KB)
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Another practical disadvantage of tesamorelin (or CJC/Ipa for that matter) is injection site reactions (very common and often quite painful) and occasionally severe allergic reactions including anaphylactic shock. Such issues anecdotally seem to be virtually non-existent with actual gray market HGH. I personally will never touch tesamorelin again after breaking out in hives all over both thighs last time I used it.
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Yea. I have taken both and tolerated fine. However if you follow some of the bio hacking subreddits, there is a post every week where tesa+ipa sent someone to the hospital.
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Thanks for this! It’s the part I skimmed over, but wasn’t sure if there was more later in the patent. I was at work and didn’t have time to comb through it. Thanks for the assist!
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To be clear: much of the so-called “roids” are produced in backstreet steroid labs. Users share lab-test results to identify suppliers whose products have an acceptable purity level. Some of them have a phamaceutical grade.
Costs are no different from Chinese imports.
(human-written answer, based on actual experience with importing goods, trading with India/China, and knowledge of the anabolic steroid scene 
)
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Just to share my AI experience:
Some time ago, I asked several AI systems about a nerve-regeneration protocol, which is broadly similar to a thymus-regeneration protocol, with only minor differences. I went with the cheapest option: MK-677 / ipamorelin.
The AI had suggested a dose that I considered rather high for a personal test, although it is a dose commonly used in bodybuilding circles. I did not go with that dose. Instead, I took a much lower dose — low enough that the AI said it would probably have no effect on GH or IGF-1. Its wording was essentially: “If it has any effect at all, it will probably be very small.”
A reality check with blood testing showed that my baseline IGF-1 was already much higher than expected. It was still within the reference range, but closer to levels typically seen in much younger adults, even though I was 44. That was the first AI mistake.
I then took MK-677 at this much lower dose. Within two weeks, my IGF-1 rose to a near-supraphysiological range, although it did not clearly exceed it. I never took it again.
In my opinion, if someone’s IGF-1 or anabolic signalling becomes supraphysiological, rapamycin may no longer work as intended. One of the ITP lab leads said in an interview: “If you took steroids once, rapamycin won’t work anymore.” I found that statement shockingly broad. My interpretation is that he was referring to supraphysiological anabolic signalling, possibly including supraphysiological IGF-1 levels, rather than the mere fact that someone once took steroids. However, I have not checked whether this statement is supported by studies.
Why am I sharing this experience?
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Because AI-generated protocols require specific blood-value monitoring, especially when the protocols are not established.
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Because tesamorelin can have a highly individual effect. The response depends on how strongly someone responds to GHRH-receptor stimulation, how strongly the liver produces IGF-1 in response to GH, and how much age-related decline there is in the somatotroph cells of the anterior pituitary gland, which produce endogenous growth hormone.
Yes, the response to ipamorelin is highly individual. Tesamorelin may be a somewhat more physiological approach, but its effect is still highly individual. That is why I would personally choose directly dosed somatropin — even if that meant using an underground-lab product or Chinese imports.
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100% agree on both your points.
I think if your IGF-1 is pegged at high or superphysiological, that is likely a true statement.
Side note - how hungry did the MK-667 make you? I trialed it last summer, and probably gained 10lb in 6 weeks (outside of water weight). Did not get the result I wanted 
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Oh, I felt a strange, mechanical kind of hunger about two hours after I took it. It was not like real hunger; it was more like a sensation in the stomach, but without any actual need to eat. I called it an “empty hunger” rather than the strong feeling hunger normally has. It was subtle, so I just ignored it.
But after a few days, as IGF-1 went up, I felt more hunger for protein. I don’t track lean body mass, but overall I lost some weight. I think this was because of my diet: I eat 80 grams of fibre every day.
Naive CD4/CD8 is not easy to get, it’s considered specialized, and as far as I know Mayo is the main purveyor of that test. Total CD4/CD8 ratio is pretty easy to get these days. Nevertheless, naive is what you want, since it will show direct evidence of new t-cells being manufactured by the thymus. I’ve contacted several of the lab brokers, and only 1 so far has said that they would get back to me about the cash price of this test from Mayo. We’ll see. There is value in knowing total CD4/CD8 ratio, as it is a good proxy for general immune health.
In the meantime, the best I can do is track proxies that indicate that the thymus is picking up production. Here’s a lit suggested by AI. Most of those can from a simple CBC.
“Immune Rejuvenation” & Hematopoietic Proxies
| Category | Test / Biomarker | Specific Metric or Calculation | What it Signals to Your Doctor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Immune Rejuvenation Signals (Lymphoid Lineage & Cellular Shifts) | 1. Absolute Lymphocyte Count (ALC) | Total number of lymphocytes per UL | Tracks the expansion of the total systemic lymphoid pool as thymic output increases. |
| 2. Lymphocyte Percentage (% Lymphs) | Percentage of total white blood cells | Reflects a shift in marrow architecture favoring adaptive immunity over innate myeloid dominance. | |
| 3. Monocyte-to-Lymphocyte Ratio (MLR) | Absolute Monocytes/Absolute Lymphocytes | A decreasing trend indicates an expanding adaptive immune pool relative to the innate inflammatory monocyte pool. | |
| 4. Platelet-to-Lymphocyte Ratio (PLR) | Absolute Platelets/Absolute Lymphocytes | Declining ratios suggest a shift away from pro-thrombotic/senescent cellular states toward a younger immune profile. | |
| 5. Absolute Eosinophils | Total eosinophils per uL | GH acts on early myeloid-lymphoid branching. Tracking steady baselines ensures the therapy isn’t over-activating specific allergic/Th2 pathways. | |
| 7. Total Serum Globulin | Total Protein} - Albumin (from standard CMP) | A proxy for systemic antibody production capacity; stabilization or modest improvement reflects healthy B-cell/T-cell cross-talk. | |
| Marrow & Hematopoiesis Proxies (Upstream Stem Cell Activity) | 8. Red Cell Distribution Width (RDW) | Coefficient of variation of RBC size | Higher numbers mean erratic, irregular marrow production. A downward trend or rock-solid stability indicates youthful, uniform red cell maturation. |
| 9. Mean Corpuscular Volume (MCV) | Average volume of a single red blood cell | Rapidly shifts in MCV can signal alteration in marrow transit times or nutrient utilization (like folate/$B12 kinetics) altered by GH metabolic acceleration. | |
| 10. Absolute Reticulocyte Count | Immature red blood cells per uL (Standard add-on to a CBC) | The most direct measure of real-time bone marrow erythroid output and stem cell responsiveness. | |
| 11. Absolute Platelet Count | Total platelets per uL | GH strongly impacts megakaryocyte (platelet precursor) differentiation in the marrow niche; tracks whether the dose is hyper-stimulating stem cells. | |
| 12. Alkaline Phosphatase (ALP) | Total serum ALP activity (from CMP) | While partly a liver marker, ALP is also heavily driven by bone turnover and osteoblast activity in the marrow stroma, which forms the physical niche for hematopoiesis. |
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Here is a new appendix on the optimal posology for Thymosin alpha 1 and an optimized dosing protocol vs the Thymosin alpha 1 stability.
_ta1_posology_addendum.pdf (9.7 KB)
_ta1_every3days_addendum.pdf (7.3 KB)
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An every-3-days rolling schedule using 3 × 1.6 mg compounded vials eliminates this asymmetry, fits naturally within thebacteriostatic-water 7-day beyond-use date
Zadaxin the product has a use date of 7 days, partly because it is formulated as a single use product, with few excipients. I think it even comes with only sterile water, not bacteriostatic water.
Lyophilized thymosine alpha 1 bought from chinese sellers has different/additional excipients that make it usable for longer than 1 week. We had a group that tested degradation of reconstituted thymosine alpha 1 over 30 days (reconstituted with bac water, and stored in the fridge) by testing it for mass and purity at 0,7,14,30 days and the variation in mass and putiry between dates was minimal, and well within error bounds.
Same story with pharma vs grey tesamorelin actually.
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That is really useful
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I was quoted 1129$ for this test at Mayo: https://www.mayocliniclabs.com/test-catalog/overview/89319 . Steep, will have to think about it.
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