Sermorelin Dosage Chart: What the Published Protocols Actually Say
Functional & Regenerative Medicine Provider
Sermorelin is dosed in micrograms, injected under the skin at night, and the adult protocols published by compounding pharmacies land between 150 and 300 mcg per injection. None of those numbers come from an FDA-approved label, because there is no FDA-approved sermorelin product on the market for adults. Every figure you find online traces back to a compounding pharmacy's own protocol, and those protocols disagree with each other on the amount, on how many nights a week you inject, and on whether you do it on an empty stomach or an hour after dinner. The number that decides what actually goes into the syringe is the concentration of your own vial, because sermorelin ships as a dry powder that gets mixed with bacteriostatic water, and the same 300 mcg dose can be 6 units or 15 units depending on how much water went in.
Below is what each published protocol says and who published it, the arithmetic for turning a milligram vial into units on an insulin syringe, and the labs a provider should be watching while you are on it.
Sermorelin Isn't Growth Hormone, and That Changes the Dose
Sermorelin is a 29-amino-acid fragment of growth hormone releasing hormone, the signal your hypothalamus already sends to your pituitary gland. Injecting it asks the pituitary to release more of its own growth hormone, rather than adding growth hormone to your bloodstream directly.
That distinction is why sermorelin dosing looks nothing like human growth hormone dosing. Injected HGH bypasses the pituitary and puts the hormone straight into circulation, leaving the body's own feedback brake with nothing to regulate. Sermorelin works upstream of that brake, so if levels climb too high the loop still pushes back, and release stays pulsed rather than flat across the day.
The honest limit of the mechanism: sermorelin needs a pituitary capable of responding. If the gland itself is the problem, prompting it harder doesn't fix anything, which is why bloodwork before the first injection is worth more than any dosing chart. Our overview of what sermorelin is and how it works covers the biology in more depth.
The Published Sermorelin Dose Range, Source by Source
Three compounding pharmacies publish adult sermorelin protocols. They are worth reading side by side, because the differences between them tell you more than any single number would.
| Published by | The dose it states | Schedule and timing |
|---|---|---|
| Olympia Pharmaceuticals, sermorelin dosage chart | 300 mcg, from a 0.9 mg/mL preparation, which it works out to about 33 units | Once nightly, 60 to 90 minutes after your last meal. One vial covers 28 days at that schedule. |
| Strive Pharmacy, provider guide | 0.15 to 0.3 mL from a 1 mg/mL vial, which is 150 to 300 mcg | Nightly on an empty stomach, 5 nights out of 7. |
| Empower Pharmacy, sermorelin acetate injection | 0.2 to 0.3 mg once daily, which is 200 to 300 mcg | Subcutaneous, at bedtime. Vials listed at 6 mg, 9 mg and 15 mg. |
They agree on the ceiling. All three top out at 300 mcg. Below that they scatter: one starts at 150, one at 200, one publishes a flat 300 with no starting dose at all. One says five nights a week, two say every night. One says empty stomach, one says an hour after dinner.
That spread is what happens to a drug with no approved label to anchor to, where each pharmacy writes its own protocol and no regulator arbitrates between them. Anyone presenting a single sermorelin dose as the standard is picking a favorite and not telling you.
What the FDA Label Actually Covered
Sermorelin was approved once, under the brand name Geref, held by EMD Serono. Two separate approvals, and neither one is what adults take it for now. NDA 20-443 covered the 0.5 mg and 1.0 mg vials, for treatment of idiopathic growth hormone deficiency in children with growth failure. NDA 19-863 covered a 0.05 mg ampule used to evaluate the ability of the somatotroph of the pituitary gland to secrete growth hormone, a diagnostic test rather than a therapy.
EMD Serono discontinued the ampules on July 11, 2008 and the vials on December 2, 2008. In a Federal Register notice dated March 4, 2013, the FDA determined the products were not withdrawn for reasons of safety or effectiveness. The notice does not state why they were discontinued.
So sermorelin was approved, it wasn't pulled for harm, and it is no longer sold as an approved drug. Adults get it from 503A and 503B compounding pharmacies, and compounded preparations are not reviewed by the FDA for safety, effectiveness or quality before they reach a patient. No manufacturer's prescribing information exists to check your dose against, which is why the arithmetic below matters as much as it does. Peptide compounding rules have been in motion through 2026, and we track where things stand in our update on the FDA peptide review.
Reconstitution and Units: the Part That Decides Your Syringe
Your vial arrives as a lyophilized powder. It is labeled by total weight, usually in milligrams, and that number describes the whole vial rather than a single dose. You, or whoever teaches you, add bacteriostatic water, and the volume you add sets the concentration. Concentration sets the units.
Two lines of arithmetic, and both are checkable:
concentration in mcg per mL = the vial's total micrograms ÷ the millilitres of bacteriostatic water added
units on a U-100 syringe = (your dose in mcg ÷ that concentration) × 100
The 100 is there because a standard U-100 insulin syringe holds 100 units in 1 mL. And 1 mg is 1000 mcg, so a 6 mg vial holds 6000 mcg of sermorelin regardless of how much water you put in it.
Run that first line across common vial sizes and you get the micrograms sitting in each unit mark. Read your own vial rather than this table:
| Vial | + 1 mL water | + 2 mL | + 3 mL | + 5 mL |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 mg | 30 mcg per unit | 15 mcg | 10 mcg | 6 mcg |
| 6 mg | 60 mcg per unit | 30 mcg | 20 mcg | 12 mcg |
| 9 mg | 90 mcg per unit | 45 mcg | 30 mcg | 18 mcg |
| 15 mg | 150 mcg per unit | 75 mcg | 50 mcg | 30 mcg |
Now the second line, using the three doses the pharmacies above publish:
| Dose | At 20 mcg per unit | At 30 mcg per unit | At 50 mcg per unit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 150 mcg | 7.5 units | 5 units | 3 units |
| 200 mcg | 10 units | 6.7 units | 4 units |
| 300 mcg | 15 units | 10 units | 6 units |
Look at the right-hand column. A 300 mcg dose from a concentrated vial is six units. Six. On a syringe barrel marked in whole units, being one mark off is a 17 percent dosing error, and half-unit markings don't exist on most 100-unit syringes, so the 7.5 and the 6.7 in those tables are being eyeballed rather than measured.
The fix is upstream and it is free. Adding more bacteriostatic water spreads the same drug across more volume, which moves your dose into the middle of the barrel where you can actually see what you're drawing. Nothing about the medication changes. Only the geometry does. If your arithmetic produces a number you cannot draw cleanly, that's a conversation with the pharmacy about reconstitution volume, not a reason to guess.
Olympia's own worked example checks out against the formula, which is a good sign: 300 mcg ÷ 900 mcg per mL is 0.333 mL, and 0.333 mL × 100 is about 33 units. Strive's vial does the same, at 1 mg/mL each unit carries 10 mcg, so 0.3 mL is 30 units is 300 mcg. Run your own vial through the same two lines before the first injection and you'll catch a mismatch while it is still harmless.
A few things trip people up. Bacteriostatic water and sterile water are different products, and only the bacteriostatic version carries the preservative that lets you draw from the vial repeatedly. Peptides degrade with heat and agitation, so the powder gets dissolved gently and the reconstituted vial lives in the refrigerator. And if your label states a total in mg with no instruction on how much water to add, you cannot compute anything safely. Call the pharmacy rather than inferring it from the size of the vial.
None of this arithmetic tells you what dose to be on. It tells you how to draw the dose you were prescribed.
What a Provider Should Be Watching
Growth hormone comes out in pulses, mostly during early deep sleep, which is why sermorelin is injected at night. It's also why a single random growth hormone blood draw is close to useless for tracking therapy. You could catch a peak or a trough and have no way of knowing which.
IGF-1 is the marker that does the work. Produced downstream in response to growth hormone, it's stable enough across the day to compare one draw to another. A baseline before the first injection is what makes every later result readable. Without it, a number sitting mid-range tells you nothing about whether it moved.
Growth hormone also changes how the body handles glucose, so fasting glucose, insulin and A1c belong in the same panel. Thyroid function sits alongside it, since the two axes interact and a thyroid problem can look like a growth hormone problem from the outside. A provider should also know your cancer history before writing sermorelin at all, and that belongs in a conversation rather than a checkbox on an intake form.
This is the part quick-script telehealth skips. A vial shows up, nobody draws blood, and there's no way to tell whether the dose is doing anything. We run advanced testing before any peptide is prescribed, and read those markers as part of overall hormone balance rather than chasing one number in isolation.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many units of sermorelin is 300 mcg?
It depends entirely on how your vial was reconstituted. At 20 mcg per unit, 300 mcg is 15 units. At 30 mcg per unit it's 10 units. At 50 mcg per unit it's 6 units. Work it out from your own vial: total micrograms divided by the millilitres of bacteriostatic water added gives the concentration, then your dose divided by that concentration, times 100, gives the units. Never copy a unit count off someone else's vial.
Is sermorelin FDA approved?
Not currently. It was approved as Geref for pediatric growth hormone deficiency and for a pituitary diagnostic test, and EMD Serono discontinued both in 2008. The FDA stated in 2013 that they were not withdrawn for reasons of safety or effectiveness, and did not state why they were discontinued. Sermorelin available today is compounded, and compounded preparations are not FDA-reviewed for safety, effectiveness or quality.
Why is sermorelin injected at night?
The body's largest natural growth hormone pulse happens in early deep sleep. Dosing at bedtime is meant to land the signal alongside that pulse instead of fighting it. Published protocols also ask for an empty stomach or a gap after the last meal, since food, and carbohydrate in particular, blunts growth hormone release.
Do you take sermorelin every night or five nights a week?
Published protocols disagree. Strive Pharmacy's provider guide specifies five nights out of seven. Olympia and Empower both publish once-daily schedules. The five-day pattern is generally described as a way of keeping the pituitary responsive rather than saturated. Which one applies to you is a prescriber's decision, not something to change on your own.
How much bacteriostatic water should I add to a sermorelin vial?
Whatever your pharmacy instructed. There is no universal answer, because the volume is a choice that sets your concentration, and different pharmacies pair different volumes with different vial sizes. If no instruction came with the vial, ask before you mix it. Once water is in, the concentration is fixed.
Can I just dose sermorelin by the millilitre?
Only if you know the concentration behind it. A millilitre measures liquid, not drug. The same 0.3 mL is 300 mcg from a 1 mg/mL preparation and 900 mcg from a 3 mg/mL one. Milligrams and micrograms are the language that matters, and the millilitre is just how you get them into the syringe.
Is sermorelin the same as HGH?
No. HGH is the hormone itself, injected directly. Sermorelin is the upstream signal that asks your pituitary to release its own, which keeps the body's feedback loop and its pulsed release pattern intact. They're dosed on completely different scales and are not interchangeable.
How We Handle Sermorelin at Med Matrix
A dosing chart is a starting frame. Whether sermorelin belongs in your plan at all, and at what dose, should come out of bloodwork and a conversation. Neither fits in a five-minute video visit.
Our process runs in five steps. It opens with a Free Discovery Call, where a patient coordinator hears what you're dealing with and what you've already tried. Then the 80+ Biomarker Test & Full Body Scan, which is where IGF-1, thyroid, glucose handling and body composition get measured before anything is prescribed. The Medical Team Reviews Everything together rather than one provider reading a slip alone. You sit down for a 60-Minute Provider Consultation to go through the results and build the plan. After that it's Ongoing Support & Progress, with labs rechecked and the plan adjusted against them.
Collin Dees, MPAS, PA-C oversees peptide therapy in our clinic alongside hormone and metabolic work, and peptides get prescribed here as one piece of a plan built on peptide therapy and healthy aging rather than as a standalone vial in the mail. If you're weighing a clinic, our guide to choosing a peptide clinic in Maine lays out what to ask.
If you're already on sermorelin and nobody has checked your labs, or you're trying to work out what to draw from a vial nobody explained, Start Feeling Like Yourself Again with testing first and a dose that follows from it.