Your goal
Raising growth hormone
There are really only two proven ways to raise growth hormone: take growth hormone itself, or take an approved drug that tells your body to make more. Both are prescription-only and meant for people with a real deficiency. Everything else here is a family of peptides that genuinely trigger a burst of your own growth hormone, but no one has shown that burst turns into the muscle, fat-loss, or anti-aging results they're sold on.
What actually works
2The strongest real evidence for this goal.
HGH (Somatropin)
ProvenIt is growth hormone, a lab-made copy that's FDA-approved and works, but only in people who are genuinely deficient, not as a shortcut for healthy adults.
Tesamorelin
ProvenAn approved daily shot that reliably boosts your own growth hormone and trims deep belly fat in human trials, though it was only tested and cleared for people with HIV-related fat changes.
Promising, still unproven
4Interesting early signals — not proven yet.
Sermorelin
ModerateA real, decades-old medicine that dependably raises growth hormone, but head-to-head, plain growth hormone worked better, and its anti-aging and muscle claims in adults aren't backed up.
Ipamorelin
EmergingSets off a clean pulse of your own growth hormone without the extra hormones older peptides stir up, but the payoff for muscle, fat, or aging has never been tested properly in people.
CJC-1295
EmergingKeeps growth hormone and IGF-1 raised for days from a single shot in humans, but the only reports of it actually improving muscle, sleep, or skin are user stories, not trials.
GHRP-2
EmergingProduces a strong, reliable growth hormone surge, but its proven job is as a hospital test for deficiency, not a self-use treatment for building your body.
Mostly hype — be skeptical
4Lots of buzz, little human proof. Tread carefully.
GHRP-6
EarlyThe same growth-hormone-pulse trick as the others and mainly used as a hospital diagnostic test, with nothing proven for everyday muscle or fat-loss use.
Hexarelin
EarlyA strong growth hormone releaser on paper, but studied almost entirely as a pituitary test or in animals, and it tends to stop working as your body adjusts to it.
IGF-1 DES
EarlyA souped-up cousin of a growth-hormone-driven hormone, but it's a lab and animal research tool that has never been tested in a single human trial.
HGH Fragment 176-191
EarlyA snippet of the growth hormone molecule sold for fat loss, but it doesn't actually raise your growth hormone and has no real human evidence behind it.
The honest bottom line
If you want more growth hormone, the only things with real proof are prescription growth hormone and tesamorelin, and they're for genuine deficiency. The peptides sold to 'boost' it do spike your growth hormone, but that spike has never been shown to deliver the results people buy them for.
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