KLOW + low-dose follistatin for an old Achilles tear, too much overlap?

Posted by tracker_jade in Protocols & Stacks - 1 points, 4 comments.

Been running a KLOW-style stack for a stubborn partial supraspinatus and my lingering Achilles tendinopathy from last year. BPC-157, TB-500, GHK-Cu, and VIP intranasal. Healing has been noticeably better, anecdotally, but I've been stalled on actual muscle growth in the affected leg.

Thinking about adding a short run of follistatin 344 to push past the plateau since it's supposed to remove myostatin and activin as growth brakes. But follistatin also touches some of the same tissue remodeling pathways as the KLOW pieces, and I keep seeing tendon stress flagged as a side effect.

For anyone who's stacked follistatin with BPC or TB-500, did you run them at the same time or cycle them separately? And how did you time the follistatin run relative to your rehab work? Mine is mostly eccentrics and slow heavy calf raises right now.

Also curious if going low and short, like 100 mcg daily for maybe 10 days, is the smarter play when tendons are still healing, or does that just waste the run.

Comments

• fasted_scientist: Genuine question, are you basing the follistatin decision on a study or just vibes? Because ngl I keep seeing this one thrown around as a magic bullet for plateaus and the human data for follistatin 344 in tendons specifically is basically thin air. For me (and plenty others in the threads) the Achilles thing stalls because calf raises only get you so far when the proximal chain is rubbish. Have you actually looked at soleus loading or isometric work? Also you're already on VIP and TB-500 whic
• tracker_jade: Fair points, and you're right that the follistatin pull is mostly anecdotal from people online, not hard data. I haven't looked into soleus loading at all, just been hammering calf raises and eccentrics. Can you point me to what good soleus work actually looks like? For the overlap part, would it make more sense to drop VIP for a bit and add follistatin instead, or is that just trading one unknown for another?
• busypriya: Ngl you're right that the follistatin 344 human data is pretty thin, and the overlap point is fair. But I'd be careful ruling out stacking vs doubling just based on pathway overlap... Plenty of real stacks work because the compounds hit different parts of the same system, not because they're novel. On the calf raises though, solid point. Heavy slow soleus work changed more for me than anything else I tried on a grumpy Achilles, way more than any peptide.
• tracker_jade: Yeah the soleus work is honestly where I notice the most day to day, even before adding anything. Did you stack follistatin into your routine while doing heavy slow loading, or did you run it in a separate block? Trying to figure out if I should hold off on follistatin and just grind the eccentrics for another month first.

Community discussion - research and educational context only. Not medical advice.