Human Growth Hormone (HGH) is a very powerful hormone that changes the chemistry of the body so that it starts using fat for energy instead of just sugar. It reduces the age of your metabolism. In other words it turns the age of your metabolism to that of a younger body.

Some of the things HGH Does For You:

  • Increases calcium retention, and strengthens and increases the mineralization of bone
  • Increases muscle mass
  • Promotes lipolysis (breaking down fat for fuel)
  • Increases protein synthesis
  • Stimulates the growth of all internal organs excluding the brain
  • Promotes gluconeogenesis in the liver
  • It stimulates the immune system

It doesn't take much to see how this affects your weight loss and fat loss progress. All the above allows your muscles to recover faster, grow stronger and burn fat (lipolysis).

Makes Your Metabolism Younger
Internally, it makes your metabolism younger. If you are someone who used to be low fat and very lean when you were younger, and now you are having a hard time getting there when it was so easy before, there is a different internal environment in your body. In fact, human growth hormone has also been regarded as an anti-aging agent.1

One of the changes is the amount of HGH that is released and present in the blood. As a person grows older, the amount of HGH produced decreases. The graph below shows the natural decrease of HGH.

Source: Natural Hormone Replacement Therapy. Alternative medicine: the definitive guide. Celestial Arts; 2nd edition (September 1, 2004). Page 359

What Promotes HGH?

  • Deep Sleep. Most HGH is secreted during deep sleep. 2
  • Intense exercise (in particular resistance training)3
  • Low levels of blood sugar (hypoglycemia)4
  • Dietary protein5,6

What Stops HGH Secretion?

Chronic Stress7,8.9
Cortisol (which is caused by stress)
High Blood Sugar10
Insulin11,12
Lack of Sleep13,14,15

 

HGH and Sleep:
Other than intense exercise, the bulk of your HGH is produced and secreted in deep sleep, especially in the first two hours of sleep.16 This is the reason why fat is burned when you sleep and not during exercise.

That's right ... fat is burned when you sleep.

In fact, you wil learn later in the book, sleep deprivation and weight gain are interconnected. So much so that with a client I will usually have them first start with a sleep diet before anything else!

Professional weightlifters and bodybuilders all make sure recuperation is a part of their entire program. This includes making sure there is enough sleep.

How Is It Increased?
Reduce cortisol levels but reducing stimulants, eating nutritious water-rich foods, eating more frequently so you are not going for long periods without food.

Reduce high levels of Insulin. High levels of insulin will suppress growth hormone. This also means you must reduce or eliminate sugar from the blood to help increase growth hormone or restore normal levels of growth hormone. You will learn about how to do this in a next few chapters.

Increase Dietary Protein.

Partake in intense resistance exercise. If you partake in intense exercise, rest the next day or do only aerobic exercise. As you can see from the graph below, there is a phase right after intense exercise where growth hormone decreases. But 15 - 18 hours later, it surges. So with intense resistence exerices, there is a latent rise in human growth hormone.

 



Get more sleep. Other than intense exercise the greatest amount of human growth hormone is secreted during the first half of sleep. The graph below shows this surge in human growth hormone during sleep.

To learn more about how to structure your exercise to enhance your fat burning hormones you can learn this in Best Exercise To Lose Weight

  1. Rudman D, Feller AG, Nagraj HS, Gergans GA, Lalitha PY, Goldberg AF, Schlenker RA, Cohn L, Rudman IW, Mattson DE (July 1990). "Effects of human growth hormone in men over 60 years old". N. Engl. J. Med. 323 (1): 1'6.
  2. Van Cauter E, Latta F, Nedeltcheva A, Spiegel K, Leproult R, Vandenbril C, Weiss R, Mockel J, Legros JJ, Copinschi G (June 2004). "Reciprocal interactions between the GH axis and sleep". Growth Horm. IGF Res. 14 Suppl A: S10'7. doi:10.1016/j.ghir.2004.03.006
  3. Kanaley JA, Weltman JY, Veldhuis JD, Rogol AD, Hartman ML, Weltman A (November 1997). "Human growth hormone response to repeated bouts of aerobic exercise". J. Appl. Physiol. 83 (5): 1756'61.
  4. Alba-Roth J, M'ller OA, Schopohl J, von Werder K (December 1988). "Arginine stimulates growth hormone secretion by suppressing endogenous somatostatin secretion". J. Clin. Endocrinol. Metab. 67 (6): 1186'9. doi:10.1126/science.2237411
  5. Suminski RR, et al. Acute Effect of Amino Acid Ingestion and Resistance Exercise on Plasma Growth Hormone COncentration in Young Men, Int J Sport Nutr 1997;7:48.
  6. Isidori A, LoMonaco A , Cappa M. A Study of Growth Hormone Release in Man After Oral Administration of Amino Acids. Curr Med Res Opin 1981;7:475
  7. Dinan TG, et al. Lowering Cortisol Enhances Growth Hormone Response to Growth Hormone Releasing Hormone in Healthy Subjects. Acta Physiol Scand 994;151:413.
  8. Sartin JL, et al. Cortisol Inhibition of Growth Hormone-Releasing Hormone-Stimulated growth Hormone Release from Cultured Sheep Pituitary Cells. J Endocrinol 1994;141:517
  9. Thompson K, et al. Effects of Short-Term Cortisol Infusion on Growth Hormone-Releasing Hormone Stimulation of Growth Hormone Release in Sheep. Am J Vet Res 1995;56:1228.
  10. Low LC (1991). "Growth hormone-releasing hormone: clinical studies and therapeutic aspects". Neuroendocrinology 53 Suppl 1: 37'40.
  11. Maybe, Nancy G (1984). "Direct expression of human growth in Escherichia coli with the lipoprotein promoter". in Arthur P. Bollon. Recombinant DNA products: insulin, interferon, and growth hormone. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
  12. Hintz, Raymond L. (1984). "Biological actions in humans of recombinant DNA synthesized human growth hormone". in Arthur P. Bollon. Recombinant DNA products: insulin, interferon, and growth hormone. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
  13. Actions of Anterior Pituitary Hormones: Growth Hormone (GH). Medical College of Georgia. 2007.
  14. Van Cauter E, Latta F, Nedeltcheva A, Spiegel K, Leproult R, Vandenbril C, Weiss R, Mockel J, Legros JJ, Copinschi G (June 2004). "Reciprocal interactions between the GH axis and sleep". Growth Horm. IGF Res. 14 Suppl A: S10'7. doi:10.1016/j.ghir.2004.03.006
  15. Takahashi Y, Kipnis D, Daughaday W (1968). "Growth hormone secretion during sleep". J Clin Invest 47 (9): 2079'90. doi:10.1172/JCI105893
  16. Takahashi Y, Kipnis D, Daughaday W (1968). "Growth hormone secretion during sleep". J Clin Invest 47 (9): 2079'90. doi:10.1172/JCI105893

 

 

 

 

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