Epithalon Dosing Guide: 10 mg Course, Timing, and Syringe Units

Epithalon (also spelled Epitalon, and written as AEDG after its sequence Ala-Glu-Asp-Gly) is a four amino acid peptide developed by Vladimir Khavinson as the isolated active fragment of Epithalamin, a bovine pineal extract studied in Russia since the 1970s. Because it is so small, it is dosed in whole milligrams rather than the micrograms used for growth hormone secretagogues, and because it works as a pulsed bioregulator rather than a daily hormone signal, the course structure matters more than the individual dose size.

Standard Epithalon Dose Range

The dose range in the published Russian protocols is 5 to 10 mg per injection, given once daily during an active course. The single most cited version is 10 mg daily for 10 consecutive days, which delivers 100 mg cumulative. An equally common alternative is 5 mg daily for 20 days, which delivers the same 100 mg total spread across a longer window. Both are treated as one course.

The cumulative total is the number worth anchoring on, not the per-injection dose. There is no published human dose-response curve for Epithalon, so nothing in the literature supports pushing past 10 mg per day, and nothing supports running it every day of the year. People who report the best subjective response typically follow the original schedule rather than improvising a higher dose.

The 10-Day Course Protocol

The standard course is short enough that a single 10 mg vial covers one day at the high dose, or two days at the 5 mg dose. Plan vial count before you start so you do not interrupt a course midway.

1. Reconstitute one vial at a time. Only mix the next vial when the current one is finished.
2. Inject 10 mg once daily, subcutaneously, in the evening, for 10 consecutive days.
3. Rotate injection sites across the abdomen, at least one inch from the navel, alternating sides each night.
4. Log the date of each injection so the course end date and the next course window are unambiguous.
5. Stop completely at day 10. Do not taper and do not extend.
6. Wait 4 to 6 months before repeating, for a total of 2 to 3 courses per year.

Concentration Math and Syringe Units

Epithalon ships lyophilized, most commonly in 10 mg or 50 mg vials. The amount of bacteriostatic water you add sets the concentration, which sets how many units you draw on a U-100 insulin syringe. On a U-100 scale, 100 units equals 1 mL, so 10 units equals 0.1 mL regardless of what is dissolved in it.

• 10 mg vial + 1 mL BAC water = 10 mg/mL. A 5 mg dose is 0.5 mL (50 units). A 10 mg dose is the full 1 mL (100 units).
• 10 mg vial + 2 mL BAC water = 5 mg/mL. A 5 mg dose is 1 mL (100 units), which fills an entire 1 mL syringe.
• 50 mg vial + 5 mL BAC water = 10 mg/mL. A 10 mg dose is 1 mL (100 units), and the vial covers a full 10-day course.
• 50 mg vial + 10 mL BAC water = 5 mg/mL. A 5 mg dose is 1 mL (100 units), and the vial covers a 10-day course at the low dose.

The practical takeaway: 10 mg/mL is the more workable concentration, because it keeps a 5 mg dose at half a syringe and a 10 mg dose at one full syringe. Diluting to 5 mg/mL forces every dose into a full 1 mL draw or two separate injections, with no benefit in accuracy at these dose sizes.

If your vial size or BAC volume does not match the examples above, run the numbers through the Epithalon calculator, which is preloaded with a 10 mg vial and a 5 mg dose, or the general peptide calculator for any custom combination.

Injection Timing and Route

Inject in the evening, roughly 30 to 60 minutes before bed. The rationale is the pineal axis: Epithalamin, the parent extract, was shown to restore age-related decline in nocturnal melatonin secretion and to normalize circadian melatonin and cortisol rhythms in older subjects. Dosing before sleep places the signal in the same window as the rhythm being targeted, and improved sleep quality is the most consistently reported subjective effect.

Subcutaneous injection into abdominal fat with a 29 to 31 gauge insulin syringe is standard. Intramuscular dosing appears in some of the Russian literature and is not wrong, but it offers no advantage for a peptide this small and is more uncomfortable. Unlike growth hormone secretagogues, Epithalon does not require a fasted state, because it does not depend on suppressing insulin or somatostatin tone. You can eat before or after the injection without affecting it.

Cycling: Why Epithalon Is Pulsed, Not Continuous

Most peptides are run daily for weeks or months and then cycled off to restore receptor sensitivity. Epithalon inverts that: the course itself is only 10 to 20 days, and the off period is measured in months. Khavinson's clinical schedule repeated the course 2 to 3 times per year, which means roughly 20 to 30 dosing days out of 365. Running it continuously is not a more aggressive version of the protocol, it is a departure from the only schedule with any human follow-up data behind it.

Because the course is short, Epithalon layers cleanly into an existing cycle rather than dictating one. It is commonly run alongside GH secretagogues, since the mechanisms do not overlap: Epithalon acts on the pineal and telomerase pathway while ipamorelin and CJC-1295 act on the pituitary GH axis. No published human trial has tested these combinations, so the rationale for stacking is mechanistic rather than evidence-based.

Storage and Handling

Add bacteriostatic water slowly down the inside wall of the vial, then swirl gently until the powder dissolves. Never shake and never inject the water directly onto the powder. Once reconstituted, refrigerate at 2 to 8 degrees Celsius and use within 28 days, the standard limit set by the 0.9 percent benzyl alcohol preservative that makes multi-draw use possible. Keep the vial out of direct light and discard it if the solution turns cloudy or shows particulates.

Lyophilized Epithalon powder is stable far longer than the reconstituted solution. Leave unmixed vials cool, dark, and dry until the day you start a course. If a 50 mg vial would outlast its 28-day window at your dose, that is a reason to buy 10 mg vials instead of diluting a large one you cannot finish in time.

What the Evidence Actually Supports

The telomerase results are real published findings, and they are cell culture findings. Khavinson reported telomerase activation and telomere elongation in cultured human fetal fibroblasts in 2003, with a 2004 follow-up describing cells dividing past the normal Hayflick limit. No controlled human trial has measured telomere length as an endpoint in Epithalon users, so vendor claims about lengthening your telomeres are extrapolation from in vitro work rather than a demonstrated human outcome.

The long-term human data, including a 15-year follow-up reporting reduced mortality in elderly patients given the pineal preparation, comes largely from one research group and has not been independently replicated at scale outside Russia. That does not make it worthless, but it does mean the honest position is a plausible mechanism with thin independent confirmation. Epithalon is not FDA-approved for any indication and is sold for research purposes only.