Blends and stacks

Updated Nov 14, 2026 · Clinical review: completed Nov 14, 2026 (details)

Two kinds of stack dominate the market. Repair blends sold in one vial under names like Wolverine, Glow and KLOW. And weight-loss stacks built around a GLP-1 with other compounds layered on to protect muscle. Both have the same problem: nobody has tested the combination.

The thing most sellers leave out. The HHS enforcement policy requires that a compounded product contain only a single active ingredient from its list. A vial holding BPC-157 and TB-500 together has two. Lawyers reading the policy have concluded that combination products fall outside it, which leaves common mixed formulations exposed to regulatory action even though each ingredient on its own is now permitted.

Repair blends: what is in each one

Name	Contents	Sold for
Wolverine also BPC/TB	BPC-157 + TB-500, commonly 10 mg of each	Injury recovery, tendons and ligaments
Glow	GHK-Cu + BPC-157 + TB-500	Skin, hair and recovery together
KLOW	GHK-Cu + BPC-157 + TB-500 + KPV	The Glow formula with an anti-inflammatory fourth peptide

The most common KLOW presentation is an 80 mg vial in a fixed 50/10/10/10 split: 50 mg GHK-Cu and 10 mg each of BPC-157, TB-500 and KPV. Some compounders add larazotide, a fifth peptide studied in intestinal permeability. Because the ratio is fixed in the vial, you cannot adjust one component without moving all four.

"Wolverine" is a marketing name taken from the Marvel character, not a scientific one. None of these three names describes a tested product.

The legal problem, in detail

In October 2026, HHS issued an interim enforcement policy allowing licensed pharmacies to compound six peptides: BPC-157, KPV, TB-500, MOTS-c, Epitalon and Semax. Three of those appear in the blends above, which is why 2026 looked like the year blends became legitimate.

The policy sets conditions, and one of them is that the compounded product contains only a single active pharmaceutical ingredient from the list. Law firms analyzing the policy have been direct about what that means: the conditions exclude multiple-API compounded products, which puts common mixed formulations outside the scope of the enforcement discretion and potentially subject to regulatory oversight.

So the position as it stands:

A vial of BPC-157 alone, from a licensed pharmacy, under a patient-specific prescription: within the policy.
A vial of BPC-157 and TB-500 together: outside it.
A clinician prescribing both separately, to be injected separately: back within it.

The practical consequence for you is supply. A pharmacy following the policy closely will not make a blend, so a seller offering one is either working outside the policy or is not a 503A pharmacy at all.

What the evidence says about combining them

There is no trial of any of these blends. Not a small one, not a negative one. The evidence that exists applies to each ingredient studied separately, and for BPC-157 and TB-500 that evidence is almost entirely animal work with no completed controlled human trials.

The argument for blending is mechanistic: each peptide is said to handle a different stage of repair, so running them together should cover more of the process. That is a reasonable hypothesis. It is not a result. "Synergy" in blend marketing means the seller expects the combination to work better, not that anyone measured whether it does.

This concern reached the FDA's own advisory committee. One member who voted against adding TB-500 to the compounding list cited the lack of fundamental data, and added a specific concern that the drug is being used in combination with other drugs.

What a blend costs you beyond the price

You cannot tell what worked. If you improve on a four-peptide blend, you have learned nothing about which peptide to keep.
You cannot tell what went wrong. A reaction on a blend means stopping everything, and no way to identify the cause without starting over one at a time.
The ratio is someone else's choice. KLOW is 62.5% GHK-Cu by weight. If the component you actually want is BPC-157, you are buying mostly something else.
Copper accumulates. Anything GHK-Cu-based delivers copper with every dose. Long courses are a reason to pay attention to copper and zinc balance, which is a conversation for a clinician rather than a forum.
No safety characterization exists for the mixture. Reviews of compounded multi-peptide preparations note the absence of any safety or pharmacokinetic work on the combinations themselves.

Dosing

No dose has been established for any of these blends. No human trial has tested one, so there is no label, no study and no documented prescriber consensus to report. The reconstitution tables and week-by-week ladders published by vendors are their own arithmetic applied to a product nobody has studied.

Where we can report dosing for the individual ingredients, it is on each compound's own page, with the source shown.

If you are considering one anyway

Ask the seller which pharmacy compounded it and whether that pharmacy is operating under the HHS policy. A blend cannot be, and a straight answer tells you what you are dealing with.
Ask for the certificate of analysis showing each component's identity and purity separately, not a single figure for the vial.
Consider running one compound at a time instead. It is slower and it is the only way to learn anything about how you respond.
If a clinician is prescribing, ask why a blend rather than separate vials, and whether the ratio can be adjusted for you. If it cannot, you are buying a product, not a prescription tailored to you.

Weight-loss stacks

The most promoted version right now is retatrutide plus tesamorelin plus MOTS-c, often with NAD+, L-carnitine or 5-amino-1MQ added. Unlike the repair blends, these are separate vials injected on separate schedules rather than one mixed product, so the single-ingredient compounding rule above does not apply in the same way. The legal problems are different and, for this particular stack, larger.

The problem it claims to solve is real

This is the part worth taking seriously. Weight lost on a GLP-1 is not all fat. Reviews put lean body mass at roughly 25% to 40% of total weight lost, and that matters most for older people and anyone already low on muscle, because it accelerates sarcopenia.

Two analyses presented at the European Congress on Obesity in 2026 sharpened the picture: muscle loss is small relative to fat loss, but larger than the muscle loss seen with diet and exercise alone at the same amount of weight lost. So the concern is legitimate, and it is not a reason to avoid GLP-1s.

What actually addresses it

The evidence-based answer is unglamorous. Reviews converge on resistance training as the single most effective way to limit lean mass loss, combined with protein intake higher than most people on a GLP-1 are managing. Two resistance sessions a week is the floor where retention improves meaningfully.

A clinician quoted on this in 2026 put the limit of the peptide approach plainly: if a patient is undereating because of the GLP-1, the body may still prioritise survival over muscle, even with growth hormone elevated. You cannot inject your way out of insufficient protein and no training.

What the stack's evidence actually is

No clinical trial has examined muscle preservation strategies during GLP-1 therapy. Not for this stack, not for any other. That gap sits directly underneath the most-promoted protocols in the market.

Taking the three compounds one at a time:

Retatrutide has strong Phase 3 weight-loss results and is the reason people want the stack. It is also investigational: the only lawful way to take it is in a clinical trial. Every protocol you will read online is built on a drug its authors cannot legally obtain.
Tesamorelin is FDA-approved, which makes it the most defensible component. Its approval is for reducing excess abdominal fat in people with HIV and lipodystrophy. Use for general body recomposition is off-label and was not what the trials tested.
MOTS-c is newly compoundable under the 2026 policy. Its lean-mass claims come from animal work.

Each has its own page here with its own grade. None of that is evidence for the three of them together.

How to read these protocols

The published versions of this stack share a few features worth noticing:

They end in a link to a seller. Several of the most detailed protocols we read close with a referral link to a research-chemical vendor. The protocol is the marketing.
They present mechanism as outcome. "Retatrutide mobilises fat, MOTS-c programs mitochondria, NAD+ completes combustion" is a story about biology, not a measurement of what happened to anyone.
They stack up quickly. The same sources go on to add SS-31, SLU-PP-332, BAM15, IGF-1 LR3, melanotan II and growth hormone. At that point nobody, including the author, can attribute any result to anything.
They are confident about numbers no study produced. Week-by-week titration ladders for a drug with no approved dose are invention, however precise they look.

If muscle loss is your actual worry

Get a body composition measurement before you start, not just a scale weight. Without a baseline you cannot know what you lost.
Resistance train twice a week minimum. This is the intervention with evidence behind it.
Raise protein deliberately. Appetite suppression makes this harder exactly when it matters more.
Talk to the prescriber about dose and pace. Slower weight loss protects muscle better than any peptide added on top.
If you still want to add a compound, add one, and measure. Adding four at once guarantees you learn nothing.

No dose is published here for this stack either. There is no trial of the combination, and retatrutide has no approved dose in any country. Our rule is the same for weight-loss stacks as for repair blends: figures come from a label, a published human study or documented prescriber practice, or they do not appear.