Clomid Is Silently Killing Your IGF-1 (Here's the Fix)

Why Clomid Lowers Your IGF-1 and What That Does to Your Peptide Stack

You need the whole chain in front of you before the clomid part makes sense, because the mistake people make here is treating growth hormone and IGF-1 like the same thing.

Your pituitary releases growth hormone in pulses, and that growth hormone travels to the liver, and the liver converts it into IGF-1, which is the molecule that actually does most of the anabolic work in muscle tissue, so growth hormone is the signal while IGF-1 is what shows up as the effect.

That conversion step at the liver is not automatic. It depends on the liver reading the growth hormone signal properly, and one of the things that helps it read that signal is estrogen acting on estrogen receptors in liver tissue.

Clomid, or clomiphene, works by blocking estrogen receptors at the hypothalamus and pituitary so your brain thinks estrogen is low and cranks up LH and FSH, which raises your own testosterone production. That part works.

But the drug does not selectively land only where you want it. And clomophene can actually suppress the production of IGF-1 at the liver, because we're basically blocking the estrogen receptors.

So you are turning up the testosterone signal and turning down the liver's ability to make IGF-1 at the same time.

So one of the considerations to have is when you're doing a CIRM, you're potentially wasting your money when you're doing things like CJC or Tessamerelin, because your liver is going to convert less IGF-1 on that and clomophene.

It is like turning up the volume on a stereo with a blown speaker. More signal going in, flat output coming out.

You can push growth hormone pulses all day with a secretagogue, and your GH levels will look great on paper, and your IGF-1 still sits lower than you expect, because the bottleneck is downstream of where the peptide is working.

So the question that this guy asked is, well, what about just adding IGF-1-LR3? I think, yes, that works. It skips the liver entirely, because you are injecting the finished product instead of asking the body to manufacture it.

But one of the concerns with IGF-1-LR3 is you have to cycle it, because you're creating desensitization at the receptor over time.

The IGF-1 receptor downregulates when it sees constantly elevated ligand. That is standard receptor behavior, and it is why every long-running IGF-1 protocol has an off period built into it.

At that point you have three drugs stacked on each other. Clomid to raise testosterone, a secretagogue to raise growth hormone, and LR3 to fix the conversion problem clomid created, with the LR3 bringing its own cycling schedule to manage.

And I'm not really huge about taking drugs and then using other drugs to solve the problems that that drug is creating.

Technically, the answer is yes, but why would you go that far when, again, you could just do testosterone, and then you're not going to deal with the problems related to SHBG. You're not going to deal with the problems related to IGF-1 conversion.

That SHBG point matters as much as the IGF-1 one. Clomid tends to raise SHBG, and SHBG binds testosterone and holds it in circulation where it cannot enter cells, so a good-looking total testosterone number can sit right on top of a free testosterone number that does nothing for you.

Exogenous testosterone does neither of those things. It does not block estrogen receptors at the liver, and it tends to lower SHBG rather than raise it.

The honest reason people reach for clomid first is fertility, and that is a real reason, and if you are actively trying to conceive then the tradeoff is worth having. That is a different goal with a different set of rules.

But if the goal is body composition and you are running expensive peptides alongside clomid, you are paying for a signal your liver has been instructed to ignore.

Most of what I know about this came out of conversations in the free community, so if you want the rest of it and somewhere to ask, the men's group is here: https://www.skool.com/jh-iron-forge-brotherhood/about