In this video Gil T. explains whether for purposes of health, longevity and anti-aging, guys on TRT should use human growth hormone injections or an HGH secretagogue. Is HGH worth it? What are the benefits of HGH for men's health? This is the TRT and Hormone Optimization YouTube channel.
And if you want to learn all about the science-based information on this topic, consider subscribing, hit that notification bell, and you'll be on your way. So, welcome to the video everyone. Again with us is Guilty.
He's driving for the moment. But he's willing to do a video on human growth hormone. And that's especially for health, longevity and anti-aging. So Gil, is HGH worth it for anti-aging purposes and what are the benefits if so? Hey Steve, good to see you again.
Yeah, so human growth hormone is something that is often tooted by the masses. And unfortunately, I think most people don't really quite understand what it is, what its mechanisms are and what it's all about. Everyone tends to think, and again this is just from my own anecdotal experience, people tend to think that anytime someone is doing steroids, quote-unquote, they're using growth hormone.
They think that growth hormone makes you grow and it makes your muscles bigger and that is essentially like God's gift to physiques, right? So people have no idea about anything anabolic or TRT or anything whatsoever, always say, oh yeah, you know, he must be on growth hormone because that's what they hear about and that's what they read and then some of the athletes you know talk about it and they think this is like a miracle drug first we have to understand what growth hormone is it's a naturally occurring hormone in the human body it is produced by the pituitary gland and it is stimulated from the hypothalamus by a hormone known as g h r H. This stands for growth hormone releasing hormone.
So the hypothalamus sends this down to the pituitary, which then releases human growth hormone. This tends to peak around puberty, okay? It is at the lowest point in adolescence when children are younger, and it tends to peak at puberty.
Yes, it's responsible for growth. It'll grow every single cell in your body without bias. It'll grow your... organs, your bones, all connective tissue, and so forth. So why is it not this magical drug that everyone thinks it is if we're talking about growth when we're talking about muscle, right?
You have to understand that the way muscle hypertrophy occurs is very different to what growth hormone actually does. Growth hormone is a very good analog. Big factor in growth hormone is something called IGF-1 or insulin-like growth factor 1. This is something produced in the liver and it is triggered by growth hormone secretion.
IGF-1 is anabolic, not really to insulin, but insulin-like growth factor. It acts on two cell surface receptors and one of them happens to be the insulin receptor, but that's not the dominant one. I'll come back to that in a minute because it's important to understand that it does also bind and act on the insulin receptor. I'll tell you why in a minute. IGF-1 levels tend to fluctuate often, and they also tend to get deficient.
And when they are deficient, either in aging or in people with pituitary deficiencies for growth hormone, on the second one I just mentioned, in the United States, it is indicated to be prescribed for children under the product. called somatrol, which is essentially a synthetic growth hormone, or what they call incumbent growth hormone. So it is an exogenous hormone that's injected, and it mimics our body's natural growth hormone. And again, it's indicated by prescription for children. It is extremely expensive, and it is difficult to get insurance to cover it.
And even when they do, often the co-pays are significant. So it costs thousands of dollars for this treatment. Now let's fast forward for a minute. Bodybuilders tend to use somatropin in high doses. Growth hormone is suited in bodybuilding as a miracle drug, and you have to understand that this is often dosed in IUs or international units.
Bodybuilders on the high level scale, I have heard using 18 to 26 IUs per day. To give you an indication of what that is in comparison to what we call the anti-aging dose. that guys on TRT may benefit from, that's two IUs per day. So again, bodybuilders, 18 to 26 IUs on the pro level. 8, 10, 12 IUs on the smaller amateur level, 2 IUs for a relatively safe, and I'll come back to that again, relatively safe anti-aging dose.
Now, there are significant risks with exogenous growth hormone. For starters, much like testosterone, it will suppress endogenous production. Second, there are risks associated, potential.
type 2 diabetes or insulin resistance from prolonged or excessive growth hormone leading to elevated IGF-1 because remember what I said earlier IGF-1 tends to act on two receptors one being the insulin receptor and this binds the insulin receptor and means the insulin unable to do its job and therefore blood glucose may elevate so we often find guys using growth hormones or analogs or creatogox with elevated blood sugar. This is another reason why a lot of the heavier bodybuilders will use insulin together with growth hormone. Number one, you get the extra anabolic effect of delivering nutrients.
And number two, you are helping to reduce blood glucose levels, which will spike significantly with elevated IGF-1. What we prefer to do in the medical field when guys want to get the... the growth hormone benefits without the potential risks.
And I say without potential risks with a little asterisk because there's always potential risks, but they are far easier to mitigate and manage when you use a growth hormone secreting analog such as growth hormone secreting hormones and growth hormone secreting peptides. When you use these in conjunction, rather than suppressing endogenous production, and replacing it with the synthesized version of the exogenous growth hormone itself, like somatropin, you're simply stimulating your pituitary gland to release more of its own by replacing the GHRH that would have been released out of the hypothalamus. So you're artificially giving your body the signal to make more of your own endogenous natural growth hormone.
Again, why is this safer? You can't overdose. on a hormone that you naturally produce, right? Similar analogy, if I gave you a ton of HCG, your testosterone will never reach 5,000 anagrams per deciliter because I'm not giving you an exogenous testosterone, I'm giving you a secretic, something that's forcing you to take more. So that is why when you have risk associations with things like IGF-1, both for diabetic markers, as well as if you have any cancerous cells or tumors, which will cause...
rapid proliferation with elevated IGF, then again, these are mitigated by not overdosing on the hormone exogenous. Secondly, the pricing of the secretagogues is usually a quarter or a third of what the actual somatropin pricing is. So it's a much more affordable route, and it is a far safer route.
And we can get a little more into the dosing and protocols if you'd like. But in a nutshell... This is what growth hormone is, this is what it does and you know a lot of guys have a big misconception. Okay Gil, so what are these secretagogues?
I know they are known by numbers and names but do you have any experience with them? What are they? I do because we happen to prescribe them to patients who wish to get the anti-aging and other benefits associated with growth hormone therapy in a safe and more importantly...
legal manner because we are governed by the U.S. medical boards and FDA and DEA and cannot put out things that are unsafe or illegal. And I know people do go out and get somatropin for adults. But again, like I said before, safety and legality are... The secreted drugs are significantly safer.
Some of the benefits, and I'll get into the types of them, but some of the benefits... at least from my personal experience, both for myself as well as patients, is first and foremost improved sleep, drastically improved sleep. When you're using it fasted at night before bed, and I say fasted meaning two hours, no insulin spikes, right before bed, subcutaneously, the sleep quality by day three or four, literally after you start, is dramatically improved.
You're getting much more REM sleep. You're starting to experience vivid dreams. You're starting to sleep deeper and feel more relaxed when you wake up in the morning.
So that is the number one benefit for me. as well as some of the people that I've spoken to have experienced it. Hair, skin, nails, essentially anything the body requires healing and rejuvenating is going to be enhanced on a greater level. Some of the other benefits associated with growth hormone, secretogods, tend to take a little bit longer to kick in.
If you're looking for the anabolic values, it is really, really... Good to run it alongside testosterone. It is fairly weak on its own for guys that are not already on TRT. But you're usually going to start to get that in around three to six months.
So it is more of a long-term approach. And the benefit of using secretogox, again, being as safe as they are, they do not need to be cycled. They can be run long-term as long as it's on relatively low maintenance doses. We like to dose them at five days on, two days off.
I often tell dieters. go Monday through Friday and then take the weekend off. And you can run the doses of anywhere from 100 to 200 micrograms, not milligrams, micrograms per day on these stages. The common ones that we like to use are a growth hormone secreting hormone called sermorlin and a growth hormone secreting peptide called ipamoral. And when you couple those two together, they tend to have a compounding effect on each other and work even more efficiently.
Unfortunately, we used to use a compound called ZJC1295, also known as modified GRF1-29. And modified GRF simply means modified growth reducing factor. The 1-29 stands for the first 29 aminos in the growth hormone chain.
By the way, growth hormone has 191 aminos. So the first one through 29 are what is known as semoralin. And semoralin was modified for an extended half-life to match that of a semoralin.
And that essentially gave you CJC 1295. And that was coupled beautifully with a semoralin. Recently, some things have changed. And some pharmacies, according to the FDA, are no longer able to compound CJ state. So now we're back to coupling some Morulin which was the first GHRH that was produced with the Ipamorilin together and again they work really well I've personally used them together for Okay so you're not talking about the oral versions like MK677 and things like that?
I'm not but I'm glad you touched on it because oftentimes guys are going to gravitate towards the world administration naturally out of another fear of needles or just ease of use and here's the problem with mk677 and by the way this is a name that was given to it by the SARMS websites and distributors. MK was Merck 677 was the number assigned to this medication it was under review it never made it to market as a name brand by Merck and it was it was squashed and often you'll see all the SARMS having these names of letters and numbers the letter represents the manufacturer the number represents the Drug number prior to having a name. So NK-677 is the unofficial name, and it is actually not a SAR, and it is just a secretive gun, okay? And it's a ghrelin agonist, which is the mechanism of action.
Ghrelin is a hunger hormone in the stomach, and when ghrelin agonists go to work, they also help boost IGF-1. The problem is it gives you insane appetite. So guys will tend to raid the fridge and over consume calories and gain weight. You combine that with the elevated blood glucose and the insulin resistance, and they start to hold on to water and get bloated and get blood pressure. So this is the biggest problem with the growing acne is slide.
So again, hunger is a very big disadvantage to most guys because it'll cause uncontrolled cravings. And guys will tend to binge on junk food all day long as a result. An isingrelic, another issue is that when you do so, you're not only eating bad foods, but you're also becoming insulin resistant due to the IGF-1 spike, and your blood glucose tends to elevate, you tend to retain water, increase blood pressure, etc.
And for this reason, I don't recommend it to most guys. The only guys I do see benefit from it on a relatively short term of maybe a 30-day run are people who struggle to eat, really have a loss of appetite. They are underweight. I have seen guys gain 10, 12, 15 pounds in a matter of 30 days using MK-677, which, by the way, the pharmaceutical name is Ibutamorin, because this is the compound and pharmacies that manufacture it.
This is the efficient name. So MK-677, research chemical, sold on websites. Ibutamorin, same medication, same compound, actual pharmaceutical grade just by compound and pharmacies. I read somewhere that the secretogogs, if they're oral or injectable, that the older you get, the less your body is able to put out growth hormone. So that they aren't very useful anymore if you go over 40, 45. I read that somewhere.
Isn't that correct? I wouldn't necessarily put a number like 40 or 45. I mean, you know, you and I are both in our mid-40s and I think we could both benefit from them. I think it's more individual than that.
It's like saying HCG doesn't work when you're 45. Thank you. a secretagogue like hcg that's what hcg is it's a secretagogue it mimics luteinizing hormone therefore it's it causes testicular function to produce and secrete testosterone if you're a primary hyperkinetic and your latic cells are essentially dead hcg is moved right it's not going to work because you're not going to secrete any hormone just because you stimulate it you can't poke a dead horse and expect it to get up and hurt however you If your pituitary gland does produce growth hormone fairly adequately, but slightly deficient, or even sufficiently, but for whatever reason you feel you want it higher, these secretogags will stimulate it. Think of this as raising your luteinizing hormone.
You raise luteinizing hormone, you raise testosterone, endogenous hormone, as long as you're capable of producing. Now, if you're so grossly deficient in growth hormone, or your endogenous production is non-existent. or minimal, sure, a secretagogue at that point is going to do the same thing HCG would have to a primary guy.
You're going to need to replace it with a synthetic form. And bear in mind all the risks I mentioned earlier. The age specific is not really something I like to focus on because you've got a 45-year-old with great hormone level, and then we've got 30-year-olds with atrocious hormone levels. And like I said earlier, this is indicated.
for children with deficiencies. So you have adolescents who do not secrete their own growth hormone and need a replacement. So age or naming numbers is not something I'm a fan of as a blanket policy because then people are going to use that to say this is my entry point or this is not going to work for me. And again, it's more individualistic.
One thing I do want to point out, very important, do not get on TRT and go jumping on growth hormone analogs. And here's the reason why. The androgen therapy, testosterone specific, increases IGF-1 levels. So if you're mildly deficient, be free to check your labs and ask for an IGF-1, and you may be surprised.
I've seen IGFs go from 150 to 270 with just TRT. And then you're going to throw in a growth hormone, and you're going to be in the 350-400 range, which isn't very safe long-term. So ideally you want to beat that 270 to maybe 320 range if you're going to cruise there for a bit.
You know, T may get you there. Good healthy lifestyle, quality sleep, which is going to be improved with IGF, is going to get you there probably. So wait and check before you go ahead and double stack this. Okay. One last thing to come back to the bodybuilding world, Gil.
So from what you're saying, maybe it's more interesting for bodybuilders to... inject directly insulin like growth factor isn't it well bodybuilders tend to use growth hormone it does have benefits outside of just igf1 but yeah bodybuilders do use igf1 directly it's very hard to find these days uh and from from what i have heard from some old school bodybuilders used it back in the 70s the pumps they get from real igf1 which is often faked But if you get real idea for the pucks they get they describe this page now bodybuilders don't use the word painful Talking pro bodybuilders, they don't use the word painful because what the average person deems as painful is often just discomfort. You know when things are painful.
Pain is pain. Pain is agonizing. Doing a set of squats and thinking like you want to re-rack it and then doing three more and you say that was painful, that's just semantics. That's not pain.
That's uncomfortable. Breaking your leg is painful, right? I've heard guys telling me IGF-1 pumps were painful. When you've got a guy who's been bodybuilding for 35, 40 years, using every compound out of the sun, and he said something is painful, I take that to heart.
And I don't know if it's something that I would necessarily want to experiment with, but, you know, it's around, and it's available if you look hard enough, and everyone can do what they please. Personally, I think that... When we have things that are tried and tested, they give you the intended purpose and let's just assume here that your average listener here is not a professional bodybuilder.
These secretive acts work. They'll improve your life. They'll do it safely. They'll make you happy. They'll make you sleep.
You'll feel better. Why do you want to go out and push the extremes? That's my philosophy. But adults can do what they please.
Okay Gil, thank you so much for explaining, clarifying all that. Have a safe drive. Appreciate it, thank you Steve as always. Hey, and thank you for watching this video.
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