How to reconstitute peptides

Lyophilized peptides and Growth arrive as a powder because a powder is stable. Once you add water, the clock starts. Do it right and you get weeks of usable solution; do it wrong and you degrade the compound before the first dose.

Here is the whole process, plus the maths people get stuck on.

What you need

• Bacteriostatic water. Not sterile water. Bacteriostatic water contains a small amount of benzyl alcohol that stops bacteria growing, which is what lets a reconstituted vial stay usable for weeks instead of days.
• Insulin syringes. 1mL, 29-31 gauge. These are how you both add water and draw doses.
• Alcohol swabs. For the vial stopper and your skin.
• A fridge. Not a freezer, for anything already mixed.

The step by step

1. Let the vial come to room temperature. Cold glass and sudden water cause condensation and stress.
2. Swab the stopper of both the peptide vial and the water vial. Let them dry.
3. Draw your water with the insulin syringe.
4. Angle the needle against the inside wall of the vial and let the water run down the glass. Do not squirt it directly onto the powder — that froths it and can denature the peptide.
5. Swirl gently. Do not shake.
6. Let it dissolve. It should take a minute or two. If it foams, wait.
7. Label it with the date and the concentration.

The maths, worked out

You want a dose that lands on a comfortable number of units on the syringe.

Say you have a 10mg vial of BPC-157 and you add 2mL of water. That gives 5mg per mL. A 250mcg dose is 0.05mL, which is 5 units on a standard 100-unit insulin syringe. Easy to read, easy to be accurate.

If you had added only 1mL, the same dose would be 2.5 units — harder to measure precisely.

The rule: more water means bigger, more accurate numbers on the syringe. It does not change the total amount of drug in the vial.

Storage

• Unreconstituted: fridge or freezer, dark, upright. Good for a long time.
• Reconstituted: fridge, used within roughly 4-6 weeks.
• Never freeze a reconstituted vial.

A vial left in a warm drawer for a month is meaningfully weaker than one kept cold.

Signs it has gone bad

Cloudiness, visible particles, or a solution that will not fully dissolve. A clear solution is a good solution.

Reconstituting Growth

Same technique, same water, slightly higher stakes. Growth is a larger protein and more fragile.

• Use 1mL for a 10iu vial so you get 10iu per mL. A 2iu dose is then 0.2mL — 20 units.
• Swirl, never shake.
• Keep it cold, always, and use within a few weeks.

See the Growth range for vial sizes and the peptide range for everything else.

The five mistakes

1. Using sterile water instead of bacteriostatic.
2. Squirting water onto the powder instead of down the wall.
3. Shaking the vial.
4. Leaving it out of the fridge.
5. Reconstituting everything at once so half of it expires before you use it.

One more thing

If you are dosing daily, a reusable peptide pen turns this from a syringe routine into a ten-second click. Worth it if you are running anything long.

FAQ