How To Mix A Vial

Lyophilised peptide arrives as a dry cake or powder under vacuum. Reconstitution is the act of dissolving that cake into a known volume of sterile diluent so that a measurable fraction of it can be withdrawn.

Which water to use

Bacteriostatic water is sterile water containing roughly 0.9% benzyl alcohol, which suppresses microbial growth and makes multi-draw vials viable for a matter of weeks under refrigeration. Sterile water for injection contains no preservative and is generally reserved for single-draw work. A handful of compounds — copper peptides and some acetate salts among them — have documented compatibility quirks with benzyl alcohol, so check the compound profile before defaulting.

Step by step

1. Let the vial reach room temperature before opening. Cold glass plus cold powder makes for slow, incomplete dissolution.
2. Swab both stoppers with isopropyl alcohol and let them dry.
3. Draw the diluent, then angle the needle so the stream runs down the inner wall of the vial rather than jetting directly onto the cake. Peptide bonds are mechanically fragile.
4. Let the vacuum pull the diluent in; don't force the plunger.
5. Swirl gently or let it sit. Never shake. Agitation shears peptide chains and denatures them.
6. Wait until the solution is completely clear. Persistent cloudiness or visible particulate after several minutes means something is wrong — don't proceed.

The maths

concentration (mg/mL) = vial strength (mg) ÷ diluent volume (mL)
volume per dose (mL) = dose (mg) ÷ concentration (mg/mL)
syringe units (U-100) = volume (mL) × 100

The diluent volume is a free choice, and it is the only lever you have over measurement precision. A 5 mg vial in 1 mL gives 5 mg/mL, which puts a 250 mcg dose at 5 units — legible, but every half-unit of error is a 10% dosing error. The same vial in 2.5 mL gives 2 mg/mL and puts that dose at 12.5 units, where the same absolute error matters far less. Dilute enough that your target lands somewhere in the mid-range of the barrel.

Reading Your Syringe

Everything on this site assumes a standard 1 mL U-100 insulin syringe — the ordinary kind, marked 0 to 100. The U-100 label means it is calibrated for insulin at 100 units per millilitre, and that is what fixes 1 unit at 0.01 mL.

This is where most people go wrong. A unit is a volume, not an amount of peptide. Ten units drawn from a weak mix and ten units from a strong one fill the syringe to exactly the same line — but one holds five times more peptide than the other. That is why the calculator always asks what you put in the vial.

The unit chain

Four units of measure show up constantly and they are not interchangeable:

• mg — milligram. Mass. What vials are labelled in.
• mcg (µg) — microgram. 1 mg = 1000 mcg. What most non-GLP-1 research doses are expressed in.
• IU — international unit. A biological activity measure, not a mass. Conversion to mg is compound-specific: growth hormone is conventionally ~3 IU per mg, hCG is a different scale entirely. Never assume a universal factor.
• Syringe units — the marks on the barrel. 1 unit = 0.01 mL. Tells you nothing on its own until you know how strong your mix is.

Storage & Stability

Lyophilised peptide is comparatively robust: kept dry, dark, and at −20 °C, most compounds in this database are stable for a year or more, and many tolerate 2–8 °C for months. The moment water is introduced, that changes.

Practical points

• Do not freeze a reconstituted vial. Ice crystal formation and repeated freeze–thaw cycles are among the most destructive things you can do to a peptide in solution.
• Copper peptides (GHK-Cu) and several others are photosensitive. Amber vials or foil, not a clear vial on a shelf.
• Store vials upright, away from the fridge door where temperature swings are largest.
• Date the vial at reconstitution. Memory is not a stability record.
• Cloudiness, colour change, or visible particulate that develops after a clear reconstitution means the solution has failed. Discard it.

Where the numbers came from

We think you should know exactly how this was built, because it changes how much weight the figures deserve.

The dose ranges and the citations were assembled by an AI system from its training knowledge of the published peptide literature. They were not compiled by researching each compound one at a time, and the individual citations have not been checked against the source records. Author names, journals and years may contain errors.

That is also why every reference on this site links to a PubMed search rather than a specific article ID. A search will take you to the real record if the paper exists. A fabricated ID would look authoritative and lead nowhere, which is worse than no link at all.

Three parts of the site do not come from that process:

• Product compositions — vial strengths, blend ratios and what we stock come from us directly.
• Blend arithmetic — the per-component splits are calculated from those compositions, so they are exact.
• The "Newest Studies" panel — queried live from Europe PMC each time you open a compound. Those are real, current records, and nobody has reviewed them.

What this means in practice: treat the ranges as a well-informed starting point for your own reading, not as a verified bibliography. Follow the links. If a number matters to a decision you are making, check it at the source.

How we grade evidence

Every compound carries an evidence tier, and we would rather show you a weak one honestly than dress it up:

Week-by-week schedules carry their own label so you can see where each one originated — a published label, a clinical trial protocol, a commonly used protocol, one we built from a compound's own cited range, or an OptimalDosages protocol anchored to a target we chose. Where no source publishes a schedule, the page says so rather than implying one exists.

What we don't do

• We don't change dose figures automatically. New papers appear in the live feed, but ranges, schedules and evidence tiers only change after a person reviews the evidence.
• We don't convert weight-based figures into draw volumes. Where a dose was reported as mg/kg, the calculator refuses to turn it into a syringe reading and says why.
• We don't rewrite citation titles. If a paper studied a different molecule or a different route, its description says so, even where that sits awkwardly next to the product.
• We don't present community convention as trial data. Protocols with no published basis are labelled as such.

Updates and corrections

A literature check runs weekly against Europe PMC, rotating through the catalogue so every compound is reviewed roughly monthly. It flags new human trials, dose findings, safety signals and retractions of papers we cite. It reports only — it cannot edit the site.

If you find an error, tell us and we will fix it. Corrections to dose figures or evidence tiers are made in place, and the build identifier in the footer changes whenever the site does, so you can tell whether you are looking at a current version.

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