- Growth Hormone
- Growth Hormone
- Growth Hormone Deficiency
- Growth Hormone Therapy
- Growth Hormone Injections
get startedThe Most Effective Hormone Replacement TherapiesWhat Is the Purpose of Growth Hormone in the Human Body?
- Human growth hormone may very well be the most important hormone produced by the human body.
- Human growth hormone, or HGH, stimulates and regulates the growth and lifecycle of just about every cell of your body.
- In terms of biological function, HGH triggers protein synthesis and stimulates lipolysis, or the burning of fat into energy.
Human growth hormone may very well be the most important hormone produced by the human body. Human growth hormone, or HGH, has many important functions. As you might be able to discern from its name, human growth hormone is responsible for growth, but HGH has many more critical functions in the human body.
Once you are fully grown, your bone plates are fused, so HGH in adults does not cause you to keep growing, but it does keep you alive, by keeping your cells growing and dividing. As an adult, HGH is primarily responsible to regulate all of the processes that keep the biological machine that is your body functioning normally.
In children, HGH is responsible for growth. As an adult, HGH is primarily responsible to regulate all of the processes that keep the biological machine that is your body healthy and functioning normally.
What Exactly Is HGH?
HGH is a hormone. That means that like all hormones, it is one of your body’s chemical messengers. The technical, or biological term for growth hormone is somatotropin. HGH stimulates and regulates the growth and lifecycle of just about every cell of your body. Therefore, HGH is vitally important to build muscle and bone, and to allow a child to literally grow from the size and physical strength of a baby, to a toddler, to a young child, to a teen, and finally to a fully grown adult. Therefore, as you might imagine, throughout your childhood as you continue to grow and mature, your levels of HGH rise progressively, eventually peaking around puberty when the most radical growth spurts and physical changes take place.
The technical, or biological term for growth hormone is somatotropin. HGH stimulates and regulates the growth and lifecycle of just about every cell of your body.
Where Is HGH Produced?
Growth hormone is primarily produced and secreted by one the most important glands of your endocrine system, the pituitary gland. The pituitary does not produce and release growth hormone continuously. Rather it is released in bursts throughout the day, usually every 3 to 5 hours. This is why when you are tested for a possible growth hormone deficiency, doctors cannot merely take a sample of your blood and see if you have enough, because you could be between bursts of HGH. Instead, to test for a growth hormone deficiency, doctors do what is called a growth hormone stimulation test. In this kind of test, the pituitary gland is induced to release a pulse of HGH, and then your blood is tested, to see if the gland released the right amount of growth hormone for your size, weight and age.
What Does Growth Hormone Do?
So how exactly does growth hormone make you grow? In terms of biological function, HGH triggers protein synthesis and stimulates lipolysis, or the metabolization of fat into energy. If you think of growing as a construction crew erecting a new building, basically those are the main ingredients needed for tissue growth — protein to provide the raw materials, or the building blocks, and energy to provide the labor.
The exact mechanism of action of growth hormone is not 100% understood, however, we do know that it does not act directly on the tissue it is “telling” to grow. Rather, it stimulates the liver and other organs to produce and release another hormone known as insulin-like growth factor 1, or IGF-1. IGF-1, and similar compounds, are the chemical messengers that actually cause cells to grow. Much like growth hormone itself, once you have reached puberty, your levels of IGF-1 significantly decrease. This is the built in mechanism that stops you from growing once you have reached your genetically predisposed full height. However, as HGH and IGF-1 levels continue to drop the older you get, you can start to feel the effect in the drop off of strength and energy, typical of “growing old.”
What Happens If You Do Not Produce Enough HGH?
We all know that growing old brings with it a number of issues. The battery of symptoms that we think of as “aging”- loss of muscle mass, weight gain, weakness, increased fatigue, sleep disorders, bone loss, and loss of libido – are collectively known to medical professionals as somatopause. Loss of HGH is a direct cause of somatopause.
However, growth hormone therapy can replace the HGH that your body loses over time, and prevent many of these problems, as well as improve overall health and wellbeing.
Growth hormone replacement therapy can:
- Rejuvenate and invigorate every cell in your body
- Help you burn fat and build lean muscle
- Improve your immune response
- Fight fatigue and give you more energy
- Keep your moods more stable
- Return you to more normal sleep patterns
- Improve sexual performance
What Is the Function of Growth Hormone Therapy?
If it is growth hormone that provides the fuel for your body to run at peak efficiency, it only stands to reason that, once you remove that fuel, the engine slows and runs sluggishly. Do you ever look at kids running around on a playground? They seem to have boundless energy. That is because their HGH levels are very high. Have you watched kids play like that, and ever said to yourself, “I wish somebody could bottle some of that energy?” Somebody has, and we call it growth hormone therapy.
However, do not be deceived by ads in magazines or online that claim to sell you products that contain HGH. You can only get real human growth hormone through HGH replacement injections, and the only way to obtain such injections legally, is with a doctor’s prescription. If you see an ad for a supplement, or any product on a shelf that claims to contain “HGH,” and it can be obtained without a prescription, or taken in any way other than an injection, it is not, by law, authentic Human Growth Hormone.
You could get a prescription for HGH from any physician. But you want to work with a specialist who not only understands the many functions of HGH in the human body, but the intimate relationship it has with your other hormones. You want to work with a clinic whose doctors are skilled and experienced in bringing all of your hormones into the proper balance for peak performance at any age.
Such practitioners will be able to bring to bear all that is currently available in the emerging discipline of antiaging medicine, and provide adjunctive therapies to your HGH prescription that can help you the be your best self, no matter your physical age.
So now that you know a little more about HGH and hormone replacement therapy, why not contact us, and find out if you can benefit from growth hormone therapy!
The battery of symptoms that we think of as “aging”- loss of muscle mass, weight gain, weakness, increased fatigue, sleep disorders, bone loss, and loss of libido – are all a result of age-related growth hormone decline.
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