How Does Human Growth Hormone Benefit Skin and Hair?

Human Growth Hormone (HGH) is vitally important for maintaining healthy, youthful-looking skin and hair.

Look online or in the health and beauty aisle of any drugstore, and you will see dozens and dozens of products for "younger skin" and "healthier hair." Supposed "anti-aging" beauty products are a multibillion-dollar industry. This is because most women and even men realize that sagging, wrinkly skin and thinning hair are the main features that make one look “old.”

But none of these products can do anything like HGH to promote healthy, more youthful-looking skin and hair. That is because HGH is one of your body’s most important hormones for revitalizing and regenerating the cells of your skin and hair.

Unfortunately, your levels of HGH decline as you grow older. Current research suggests that most of the things we consider as signs of "aging" — including thinning hair and sagging, wrinkled skin – are the results of this age-related growth hormone decline.

Among its many benefits, growth hormone replacement therapy has been shown to help to restore skin and hair to a much more youthful and healthy appearance.

Throughout your life, HGH plays a vital role in maintaining skin and hair health.

How Does HGH Impact Skin Health?

The key to healthy, young-looking skin is collagen. Collagen is a protein that supports your skin’s strength and elasticity. Think of collagen as the foundation of your house. As the foundation gets old and worn, it can cause the house above it to settle and crack. The same is true of your skin.

As collagen production slows due to low levels of growth hormone, the skin loses its support and begins to wrinkle and sag. Also, the ability of your skin to heal and repair itself lessens as HGH levels drop. The loss of collagen and your waning ability to repair damaged skin cells leave your skin looking old and creepy.

HGH therapy has been shown to rejuvenate and revitalize the skin.

How Does HGH Therapy Benefit Skin?

Clinical studies have shown the many positive benefits HGH therapy has for aging skin. A 2011 paper entitled Growth Hormone System: skin interactions reviewed all of the research literature to date on HGH for skin rejuvenation and concluded that "Clinical observations and analysis… have shown the important role played by the HGH system in the development, maintenance, and repair of the skin. In fact, the dermal structures directly reflect the various changes in HGH production that occur in the different phases of life."

In other words, the look, health, and appearance of your skin are directly dependent on the level of HGH in your blood at any given stage of life. Our skin is naturally healthier and more resilient when our HGH is highest in teens and 20s. It is only as our HGH declines that skin starts to look older.

The problems with skin that can and typically do occur as HGH production decreases as a result of age-related growth hormone deficiency include:

Thinning of the layers of the skin
Age spots
Wrinkles
Cellulite
Sagging

Growth hormone replacement therapy revitalizes skin in two ways. It promotes collagen repair and growth as well as the increased rejuvenation of another protein vital to skin health known as elastin. Elastin is largely responsible for your skin’s elasticity and resilience, something else that lessens as your HGH levels decline.

Over the course of taking HGH injections, you will start to notice the impact of improved collagen and elastin production. The collagen will thicken your skin and smooth the appearance of lines and wrinkles, while the increase in elastin will improve your skin’s elasticity, make your skin soft, smooth, and more resistant to injury and tearing.

As you continue your course of HGH replacement therapy, usually for six months to appear, other problems typical of aging skin, such as "creepy skin" and cellulite, will also start to disappear. By the time you have completed a full course of HGH replacement therapy, your skin will literally glow with youth like it hasn’t done for many years.

How Does HGH Impact Hair Health?

To appreciate how HGH impacts hair, we must first understand how your hair grows. The hair growth cycle begins with cells called keratinocytes which produce keratin. A hair bulb forms at the base of a hair follicle, and it is there that these living cells divide and grow to build the hair shaft. Blood vessels nourish these cells by bringing hormones that will help to support this process, one of the most important of which is human growth hormone.

As we age and HGH levels decrease, your hair follicles cannot provide enough new cells to make your hair grow as strong and thick as it did when you were younger. Weak, thinning hair is the result. In addition, pigment cells that produce melanin in the follicle will also start to die with aging, and fewer are replaced due to low HGH, and this how our hair begins to turn gray.

It stands to reason, therefore, that if we increase your HGH level with growth hormone therapy, hair regrowth will improve. Studies have shown that this is indeed the case. As your HGH levels rise, cellular regeneration takes place throughout your body, including in the living cells of your hair. Many people have reported an overall improvement in hair thickness and quality as well as a return of natural color after just six months of HGH therapy.

The driving force between HGH and its impact on hair and hair loss is its relationship with another critical hormone known as IGF-1. HGH stimulates the liver to produce and release another hormone called Insulin-like Growth Factor-1 or IGF-1. Among its many other functions, IGF-1 is known to stimulate hair follicles to proliferate and influence the growth cycle of the hair follicle. People with an IGF-1 deficiency and/or a growth hormone deficiency often experience hair loss. HGH therapy and IGF-1 injections have been shown to slow hair loss and restore hair in such individuals.

How Does HGH Therapy Benefit Hair?

The benefits of HGH therapy for healthier, thicker hair have been well-documented. HGH can be used to restore thinning hair for both men and women.

Just as it does for your skin, a common benefit of HGH therapy is thicker, more youthful-looking hair. Four specific benefits of HGH for hair health have been identified:

The first benefit of HGH for hair growth begins with keratinocytes. These cells form the bulb at the base of the hair follicle. The keratinocytes grow and divide, thanks to the effects of HGH and IGF-1. When a person has low growth hormone levels, cellular growth and division slow down. The developing hair shaft suffers from a lack of keratinocytes, causing the new strand of hair to grow in thinner and weaker. The thinner the hair strand, the easier and faster it can fall out.
The next benefit of HGH to slow or prevent hair loss comes from increasing blood cell production, which nourishes the cells in the hair follicle as they grow.
HGH consists of 191 amino acids in a single chain. It is a polypeptide protein hormone. Keratin is a protein made up of amino acids found in collagen. By increasing collagen through HGH therapy, the hair shaft receives the amino acids necessary to build new proteins such as collagen and elastin.
The fourth known benefit of HGH for hair health has to do with hair color. Loss of pigmentation results in the graying of hair. Pigment cells, also called melanocytes, live beneath the surface of the skin. As the hair strand pushes up through the layers of the skin, it passes through the melanocytes, which provide the color. As cell regeneration declines with low HGH levels, the abundance of melanocytes drops significantly lower, leading to hair losing its color. Many people who receive HGH therapy have seen a reversal of gray due to stimulation of increased production of melanocytes, the cells responsible for hair color.

What Does the Medical Research Say About the Benefits of HGH for Skin and Hair?

The benefits of HGH therapy for skin and hair health have been well-documented by medical research.

A 2011 meta-analysis (study of studies) that looked at all of the literature available on the benefits of HGH for hair health concluded, "Clinical observations and analysis… have shown the important role played by the GH system in the development, maintenance, and repair of the skin. In fact, the dermal structures directly reflect the various changes in GH production that occur in the different phases of life." The study was published in Brazilian Annals of Dermatology.

A 2018 paper published in the journal Skin Appendage Disorders confirmed that HGH and IGF-1 have been shown to affect follicular proliferation, tissue remodeling, and the hair growth cycle, as well as follicular differentiation.” And that HGH therapy, therefore, could be a treatment for alopecia (hair loss) that occurs as the result of growth hormone deficiency.

Similarly, a previous study in the Dermatology Online Journal found that IGF-1 could stimulate hair growth in animal models. That paper was published in 1999. In 2014, another set of researchers picked up on this work and also concluded that "[Our] observations suggest that IGF-1 is an effective stimulator of hair follicle development in wide-type mice in vivo and may be a promising drug candidate for baldness therapy.” This paper was published in the clinical journal Growth Hormone and IGF Research.

HGH therapy can return skin and hair to a healthier, more youthful appearance.

Now that you know more about the connections between HGH and hair and skin health, why not take a minute to contact us and learn more about the many other life-changing benefits of hormone therapy.