Human Growth Hormone
By Frank Reitzenstein

Human growth hormone or hgh has attracted considerable interest because of it's demonstrated potential to reverse the aging process. It all goes back to a study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine in the early 1990's. Men aged from 60 to 80 were injected with growth hormone and their biological age decreased by around 20 years. There were however side effects from the large doses of hgh administered including carpal tunnel syndrome.

Nowadays there are products available which are claimed to increase your growth hormone levels naturally. Whereas it is said that you need very large doses of amino acids to achieve any useful results, some of these products only contain a couple of grams of active ingredients, and their value has been questioned.

However I personally have first hand experience using large doses of arginine.

Arginine

I remember after reading that 30g of arginine can release growth hormone and make you younger, I was very excited and wanted to find out for myself. I bought two 15g bottles of arginine tablets, and started to eat the whole lot within 30 minutes one by one.

Impressed by whatever I experienced at the time, I soon bought sufficient quantities in order to do this for a week or two in a row. What I remember was that I could feel blood vessels bulginging under my skull. Yes arginine is the body' vasodilator, and there is a large body of evidence that taking 10g of arginine a day will almost certainly reduce the risk of heart disease to negligible, as it not only renders the blood vessels flexible, but also removes the plaque build up inside the arteries.

I remember also washing dishes at the hotel where I worked the day after my first dose. Everything seemed much louder. One of the numerous qualities of growth hormone (which simply makes you young again) is that it can even grow nerves.

Well after a few days of this I then began to notice the fine hairs. As my hair colour changed from red to blonde to dark brown since I was a baby, so do the new hairs that grow. I still have those hairs after 4 years. I now have a higher arch over the eyebrows, and the other visible site of growth is the sideburns where a peninsula of hairs is seen to invade the bald areas to the left and right of my fringe - a pattern I have had since my teens.

Other benfits of growth hormone are mood elevation, and improved sleep. Apart from the release of melotonin associated with a good night's sleep (which turns to serotonin - the awake hormone when it gets light) the early stage of sleep is when the main spike of growth hormone release occurs. One may well infer from this that increasing one's growth hormone levels improves sleep which inturn increases growth hormone and melatonin release even more. Could the converse be true? If we don't care for ourselves and as we age do things just get worse. Yes it is known that the elderly suffer from poor sleep from staying indoors. The lack of exposure to sunlight (needed for melatonin and vitamin d) and lack of exercise contribute greatly to this.

Lean Body Mass

Whereas there has been some dispute regarding the ability of hgh to build muscle directly, there is no doubt that hgh increases the bulk of connective tissues. That means collagen; skin, bones and cartilage. Even the kidney and liver mass have been measured to increase.

In spite of all the hype by those selling body building supplements that arginine releases growth hormone and hence it increases muscle mass, there is almost no scientific study that proves this.

However, as mentioned above, an increase in liver and kidney size has been measured from increasing growth hormone release. Also a Nobel prize was awarded for demonstrating that nitric oxide (produced from arginine) is reponsible for the normal function of blood circulation. This combined with the likelihood that arginine can assist in building muscle in various ways means that it is an excellent supplement to take. After all the transport of oxygen, energy and waste is entirely dependent on your blood circulation.