Run for recovery and sleep
Sleep Nasal (DSIP + Epitalon)
intermediate2 weeksDSIP and epitalon run together on a short evening course, sold as a sleep stack and increasingly as a nasal spray. Both names promise more than the data delivers: DSIP is named after how it was discovered, not after a demonstrated hypnotic effect, and epitalon's sleep and longevity claims come almost entirely from one unreplicated Russian group. This entry exists to describe the stack accurately, not to recommend it.
Also sold as Sleep spray, DSIP + Epithalon, Delta sleep stack.
Cautions — 10 on record
Read before running any of this
- DSIP's name oversells it, and this page will not pretend otherwise. It was isolated in the 1970s from the cerebral venous blood of rabbits in electrically induced delta sleep - the name describes the experiment, not a proven effect in humans. The controlled human work runs from about 1977 to the early 1990s, involved at most a few dozen subjects, and found effects on sleep architecture that were modest and inconsistent between groups. It is not a sedative and does not reliably make anyone fall asleep. Whether an injected dose crosses the blood-brain barrier intact in meaningful quantity is still disputed.
- Combining two compounds that each have thin human data multiplies the uncertainty rather than adding it. If you sleep better you will not know which one did it or whether it was the placebo effect of a bedtime ritual; if you feel awful you will not know which to stop. There is no trial of the two together, and no mechanism connecting them beyond both being sold under the word "sleep".
- Nasal doses are not injected doses. DSIP and epitalon are conventionally injected, and every number on this page is a subcutaneous figure. Nasal versions of both are sold, but there is no published pharmacokinetic data for either compound intranasally, so nothing here tells you what to spray. Anyone converting an injected mcg figure into spray doses is guessing.
- Epitalon's human evidence comes almost entirely from a single Russian research group and has not been independently replicated. The telomerase and longevity claims attached to it are unproven, and the +33% telomere figure that circulates in vendor guides is from cell models, not people.
- The active-malignancy flag on epitalon is precautionary but it is not nothing - it rests on the same claimed telomerase activation that the marketing uses as a selling point. You cannot take the benefit claim seriously and dismiss the risk claim.
- Morning grogginess, vivid or unpleasant dreams and a hungover heavy feeling on waking are the common DSIP complaints. A minority report the opposite - harder, not easier, sleep onset.
- DSIP can drop blood pressure briefly after injection, and transient flu-like malaise in the first few doses is reported. Do not dose it for the first time somewhere you cannot lie down.
- If the actual problem is insomnia, this stack is not a treatment for it. Sleep apnoea, restless legs, alcohol, an untreated mood disorder and a badly timed caffeine habit all have real interventions with real evidence behind them. Working through that list is a better use of eight weeks than either of these compounds.
- Neither is approved anywhere in the US or EU. Both are research-chemical grade with no pharmacy oversight of purity or content.
- Not for use in pregnancy, and not for under-18s.
Components
What is in it, and when
| Compound | Dose | Frequency | Time | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DSIP (Delta Sleep-Inducing Peptide) | 200 mcg100 mcg–500 mcg | Once daily7×/week | Pre-bed | Taken shortly before bed. This range is contemporary community practice and has no trial behind it - the classic human studies gave roughly 25 nmol/kg intravenously, about 1.5 mg for a 70 kg adult, which is both a different route and several times this amount. No dose-response curve exists for subcutaneous dosing, so there is no principled reason to go up if 200 mcg does nothing. | Calculator → |
| Epitalon | 5 mg5 mg–10 mg | Once daily7×/week | Pre-bed | The classic Russian course is 5-10 mg daily for 10-20 consecutive days, repeated once or twice a year - not continuous use. That short course is what sets the two-week duration on this stack; DSIP alone is conventionally run up to four weeks. Note that vendor guides and their own comment sections disagree about this dose by roughly a factor of ten; the figures here follow the Russian protocol the dataset entry documents. | Calculator → |
Doses are per administration, in the canonical unit. The second line under each dose is the range people run. Each calculator link prefills the reconstitution math for that component.
Delivered dose vs standalone dose
How these doses compare to running each compound alone
Each bar is that compound’s own dose range from its monograph, with a marker where this protocol puts it. A marker outside the band means the protocol is not dosing that compound the way it is dosed on its own — for a fixed-ratio vial that is arithmetic, not a choice.
DSIP (Delta Sleep-Inducing Peptide)
Within standalone range- Per dose
- 100% of typical
- Per week
- 1.4 mg · 100% of standalone
- Cycle total
- 2.8 mg · 14 doses
Taken shortly before bed. This range is contemporary community practice and has no trial behind it - the classic human studies gave roughly 25 nmol/kg intravenously, about 1.5 mg for a 70 kg adult, which is both a different route and several times this amount. No dose-response curve exists for subcutaneous dosing, so there is no principled reason to go up if 200 mcg does nothing.
Epitalon
At the floor of the range- Per dose
- 50% of typical
- Per week
- 35 mg · 50% of standalone
- Cycle total
- 70 mg · 14 doses
The classic Russian course is 5-10 mg daily for 10-20 consecutive days, repeated once or twice a year - not continuous use. That short course is what sets the two-week duration on this stack; DSIP alone is conventionally run up to four weeks. Note that vendor guides and their own comment sections disagree about this dose by roughly a factor of ten; the figures here follow the Russian protocol the dataset entry documents.
Schedule — 2 weeks
Week by week
| Compound | 1Week 1 | 2Week 2 | Cycle total |
|---|---|---|---|
| DSIP (Delta Sleep-Inducing Peptide)200 mcg · 7×/wk | 2.8 mg14 doses | ||
| Epitalon5 mg · 7×/wk | 70 mg14 doses |
The dataset records one dose per component, so every dosing week is identical. Where a protocol note describes a loading phase followed by maintenance, that phase change is in the note, not in the schedule — read the component notes before assuming the grid is the whole story.
Evidence
What is actually known
WHAT THIS STACK ACTUALLY RESTS ON. DSIP: a nine-amino-acid peptide with no modern development program, no approval anywhere, and a small, old and sparse controlled literature whose sleep findings were modest and did not replicate cleanly. Some of the more repeatable DSIP results were not in insomnia at all but in chronic pain and in opiate and alcohol withdrawal. Epitalon: a synthetic tetrapeptide from pineal extract, with human reports confined largely to Khavinson and colleagues in St Petersburg and no independent replication. The subjective sleep improvement people describe on epitalon usually gets explained through melatonin restoration, which is a mechanism story rather than a measured outcome in a controlled trial. THE COMBINATION HAS NO EVIDENCE AT ALL. Nothing has been published on the two together. They are stacked because a vendor put them in the same bottle and called it Sleep. WHAT THE CACHED VENDOR GUIDES CLAIMED AND THIS PAGE DOES NOT REPEAT: increased delta-wave activity, enhanced sleep-spindle activity, fewer awakenings by week three, reduced stress reactivity by week six, neuroendocrine stabilisation by month two, and a "+33% telomere length" figure. None of those are supportable in humans at these doses by this route. The dosing conventions from those guides are worth keeping; their outcome timelines are not.
SourcesPubMedClinicalTrials.gov
Educational information only, not medical advice. Talk to a licensed clinician before starting, changing, or stopping anything.