HGH: Its Uses and Abuses
Human growth is stimulated by a hormone known as the Human Growth Hormone. HGH is also known as somatotropin. It is a peptide hormone. It encourages growth, cell reproduction and cell regeneration in human beings and animals. Human Growth Hormone is a kind of mitogen, stimulating mitosis (cell division) in the cells. It is specifically found in only certain kinds of cells.
What is the human growth hormone?
HGH is a 191- amino acid. It is a single-chain polypeptide that is secreted by the somatotropic cells. The somatotropic cells also synthesize and store HGH. The somatotropic cells are situated in the lateral wings of the anterior pituitary gland.
Somatotropin is a recombinant form of HGH. It is used in prescription drugs that treat growth disorders in children and growth hormone deficiencies in adults. In countries such as the United States of America, somatotropin is prescribed by doctors and is available in pharmacies legally if the prescription is shown.
It is also prescribed for older patients who have a deficiency of HGH. It helps in increasing vitality. Although the HGH boosters are legal, their efficiency and safety are not tested clinically. HGH is known to be a very complex hormone and many of its functions are still not brought to light.
HGH boosts anabolic activities in the body, which is why it is often used by sports persons to enhance their performance. It has been banned by the IOC and the NCCA. Traditionally done urine tests do not detect HGH doping in the blood. Around the early two thousand, blood tests were developed which could distinguish between artificial and natural growth hormones.
In the 2004 Olympics at Athens, WADA conducted blood tests that targeted artificial growth hormone doping. The use of somatotropin or other artificial growth hormones for improving performance is not approved, by the FDA.
HGH can also be used to raise livestock in a more efficient manner in industrial agriculture. Despite this, the governments of most countries do not approve of using growth hormones for livestock. In the United States, the FDA approves the usage of cow-specific growth hormones called bovine somatotropin.
Bovine somatotropin is synthesized by using recombinant DNA technology. Bovine somatotropin is used for increasing the production of milk in dairy cows. The containers of milk are labeled to help the buyer to know whether the milk is produced with or without the artificial growth hormone.
HGH is also used for slowing down the muscle degeneration in people suffering from AIDS.
Growth hormone and weight loss
Most people want to lose weight as easily as possible these days; this has led them to turn to HGH boosters in form of pills, injections, and powders. Very few studies prove the linkage of HGH to burning fat and muscle gain.
Usually, the changes in the body muscle to fat ratio are minimal, while the side effects are many. Not only is this, but also, HGH was not approved of by the Food and Drug Administration for weight loss.
The production of the growth hormone is seen to be increasing when a person is in their teen years and slowly reduces as one grows older. Obese adults always have lower levels of growth hormone than normal adults.
Due to this lower level of the growth hormone in obese adults, people think that it might be possible to lose weight with the help of Human Growth Hormone boosters. HGH has also gained the reputation that of a muscle builder in the last few decades. This is the reason it has been banned from being used in the Olympic Games as well as other sports, forcing sportsmen to take HGH tests before getting on their playfield.
In the year nineteen ninety, a journal called the New England Journal of Medicine study revealed that injections of lab-made or synthetic HGH ended up resulting in almost nine percent gain in muscle mass and fourteen percent burning fat in the body without changing anything in the diet or working out in any form.
Despite this, many studies which were done later showed no results which promised such benefits. In the tear, two thousand and three the New England Journal of Medicine denounced its study regarding HGH in nineteen ninety and pointed out that their reports on the synthetic growth hormone injection provided no reasons to think that it would actually work in burning fat and gaining muscle. Even after this, the nineteen ninety studies are used still, to boost internet sales of growth hormone for fat burning and muscle gain.
Adults with a deficiency of the human growth hormone suffer from a pituitary disease. These adults are administered the HGH replacements, resulting in the improvement of their body composition which includes, increase in bone mass and muscle mass and decreasing fat stores.
Even with the decrease in fat stores, weight loss is barely observed in people. The changes seen are more notable when an individual has the true pituitary disease due to which the individual has stunted growth.
On the bottom line, synthetically produced human growth hormone being used for burning fat, muscle gain, and anti-aging is not only experimental but also controversial, along with being helpful, it is also risky if the amount of it taken is too high and it is expensive. In the long run, artificially created growth hormone boosters are not good for the human body.
