Natural Healing: Human Growth Hormones

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In a culture that seems to value youth, growing older is often cause for apprehension, with fears of declining health and reduced capabilities. So it’s no surprise to me that anti-aging remedies are flying off the shelves. One heavily hyped product is human growth hormone (hGH). Advertisements promise that injections of synthetic hGH or use of supplemental “hGH releasers” can restore this naturally occurring pituitary hormone to its youthful levels in your body and keep you looking younger. But will getting more hGH really turn back the clock?

Human growth hormone plays an essential role in the growth and repair of organs and tissues. Because levels of natural hGH peak at age twenty and dwindle with age, and because people with a diagnosed hGH deficiency appear to age faster, researchers have long wondered about the link between hGH and aging. Popular buzz escalated when a highly publicized 1990 clinical trial found that healthy older men receiving regular injections of hGH reported an increase in muscle bulk, a decrease in fat, and a small increase in spinal bone density.

Less attention was paid to a 1996 trial finding no improvement in actual strength, endurance, or mental ability in men receiving hGH injections, and to the fact that the men participating in the second trial experienced such side effects as joint pain, edema, and breast tenderness. People who can afford the $12,000 to $15,000 annual cost of hGH shots at anti-aging clinics are apparently not put off by these side effects, nor by the fact that there are no long-term studies on the effects of hGH in healthy people.