Growth Hormone (GH) Accelerates Aging

[haidut]

Animal study, but the effects have been observed in humans as well. One of the suspected reasons is that GH chronically elevates cortisol, among other things Peat wrote about as well.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14583653

 

[Ben]

People, you don't need to cut out your Pituitary glands or take mysterious anti-GH drugs. Just eat fat! GH is the specific stress hormone that responds to lack of free fatty acids in the bloodstream in case of fasting or exercise. And niacinamide can actually be very stressful because it reduces FFAs and elevates GH.

Btw Haidut, where is the source for your claim that GH elevates cortisol?

 

[haidut]

People, you don't need to cut out your Pituitary glands or take mysterious anti-GH drugs. Just eat fat! GH is the specific stress hormone that responds to lack of free fatty acids in the bloodstream in case of fasting or exercise. And niacinamide can actually be very stressful because it reduces FFAs and elevates GH.

Btw Haidut, where is the source for your claim that GH elevates cortisol?

Wait, wouldn't exercise / fasting increase free fatty acids in the blood when glycogen runs out? What else would people burn when their glucose runs out? Cortisol will rise but it will provide glucose through protein breakdown mostly for the brain. I am pretty sure that elevated fatty acids is the mechanism behind extended exercise increasing serotonin levels - i.e. fatty acids displace tryptophan from albumin and it goes to the brain to make serotonin.
The cortisol claim is from the study itself: "...GH-transgenic mice exhibit various symptoms of accelerated aging, including increased astrogliosis, shortened reproductive life span, and early onset of age-related changes in cognitive function, hypothalamic neurotransmitter turnover, and plasma corticosterone levels."

I don't have access to the study but it is well known that cortisol induces GH release, so I think this study reports the opposite connection - high GH means high cortisol.

 

[SQu]

Could GH/ cortisol be why low fat diets can make one feel stressed?

 

[mujuro]

Funny you should mention the GH/cortisol relationship. The early growth hormone releasing peptides are known to raise cortisol and prolactin. GHRP2 and GHRP6 are non-selective ghrelin mimetics, while the selective Ipamorelin does not see the same sharp spike in cortisol and prolactin. I've used the former two and have felt the cortisol spike.

 

[Such_Saturation]

I think insulin lowers growth hormone.

 

[haidut]

I think insulin lowers growth hormone.

Yep, that's the mechanism behind sugar lowering GH. However, I know higher insulin usually means higher IGF-1 and high IGF-1 is not good either. If GH and IGF-1 are inversely related, wouldn't you expect at least one of them to be protective if the other one is bad in excess?
Also, protein intake in the ranges recommended by Peat (80g-120g) daily will raise IGF-1, especially when consumed with sufficient sugar. So, that may be the reason Peat warns that protein intake is highly individual and most people should be able to do well on 80g.

 

[Such_Saturation]

Well we are stuck with one of those then, aren't we

 

[koganmj]

I'm a bit confused. So the cortisol rise that comes from eating an unbalanced serving of protein (by mechanism of: insulin secretion to "dispose" of the digested amino acids as Ray has said, insulin lowers circulating glucose, reduction of glucose drives up cortisol) would suggest insulin raises cortisol, but high cortisol is associated with high growth hormone?

Is it kind of like: insulin removes glucose from blood - if no sugar consumed during any sort of consumption that stimulates insulin, blood gets "emptied" of glucose by insulin - "emptied" blood triggers cortisol production?

So 'not triggering' cortisol production would in turn keep GH low, but how does insulin lower GH?

 

[haidut]

I'm a bit confused. So the cortisol rise that comes from eating an unbalanced serving of protein (by mechanism of: insulin secretion to "dispose" of the digested amino acids as Ray has said, insulin lowers circulating glucose, reduction of glucose drives up cortisol) would suggest insulin raises cortisol, but high cortisol is associated with high growth hormone?

Is it kind of like: insulin removes glucose from blood - if no sugar consumed during any sort of consumption that stimulates insulin, blood gets "emptied" of glucose by insulin - "emptied" blood triggers cortisol production?

So 'not triggering' cortisol production would in turn keep GH low, but how does insulin lower GH?

Insulin lowers GH probably by lowering cortisol. Insulin and cortisol are antagonistic to each other but when i balance. If you eat starch or a big protein serving then you will release too much insulin and the blood sugar will drop to the point that the brain will think it is starving and signal for pituitary to produce ACTH, which will in turn tell the adrenals to make cortisol. Cortisol will break down some muscle, the liver will convert those aminos into glucose through gluconeogenesis and the brain will use that. This is overly simplified of course, there probably hundreds of feedback mechanisms along the pathways to control how much of each hormone is released. That's why it is not good to have big spikes on glucose, or big drops in glucose - the body goes in overdrive to compensate for these extremes. The way I think of it is as a pendulum - cortisol on one end and insulin on the other. If you swing the pendulum to one extreme (i.e. big sugar spike), initially it goes to both extremes but they kind of act as antagonists of each other and if everything works fine the pendulum swings become smaller and smaller and then it comes to rest.
Ideally, you should be eating things that do not swing the pendulum too much into either extreme. Sugar is good due to the fructose in it, which keeps the glucose from stimulating insulin too much. Fruit is best due to having ore fructose (on average) and various other substances controlling sugar absorption so that it does not lead to extreme insulin reactions.

 

[gretchen]

There's a lot of growth hormone products on the market; I've seen this one called Sero Vital-high at Ulta:
http://www.serovital.com/?___store=sero ... gle.com%2F

Despite what Peat says, there are a lot of testimonials that make it sound like it could be anti-aging:
http://www.serovital.com/product-review/

"It did what it said it would do. I had less intense hot flashes, I think some of my eyebrows grew back and I lost weight. Bad part was the fasting 2 hours before and after taking the product. I just ended setting the alarm 2 hours after I went to bed and took it then.
I slept really well also while taking this."
Trucka
27 Jun 2013

 

[jyb]

Despite what Peat says, there are a lot of testimonials that make it sound like it could be anti-aging:

You can really find good testimonials about anything really. Fish oils, nut oils, herbal stuff, facial creams, all sort of stuff. For every of these products, you will find some testimonials that are absolutely awesome. Are they fake (paid by marketing)? Is it placebo? Selection bias (only report if you were pleased with the product)? For me its impossible to take these seriously unless there is a clear user history to go through to get an idea on who's writing it.

 

[mujuro]

How do we know it wasn't the downstream effects of IGF-1 which shortened the lives of the animals? I'm a member of another board which focuses entirely on anti-aging, body recomposition and growth hormone (ghrelin mimetics, GHRHs), and everything I have ever read hitherto - over the past 3 years - has unequivocally painted IGF-1 or the chronic, sustained elevation of GH as the culprit in the aging process, not GH itself, which is produced in pulses throughout the day.

GH and IGF-1 are inversely related: also contrary to what I've learned. Actually, bodybuilders who use recombinant HGH often have blood IGF-1 tested because elevations in IGF-1 usually follow from the presence of GH, thus it is the only reliable indicator that they have a genuine product.

 

[step1234]

At 64, six months ago I started taking 1IU a day of somatropin. I took it just to heal better. Which it does. A cut that would take a couple weeks to completely heal does so in a week now. When I push myself exercising and get soar, the next day it is healed and not soar, that didn't happen before. I'm now following a lot of Peat's suggestions which are helping now too. I might try doing GH every other day to pulse it since I'm male and to take less. I read Peat's article on it being a stress factor. Does anybody of my near my age have any GH experiences?

 

[NathanK]

This thread was an education. Thanks.

This explains a lot too:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC300772/

 

[Nicholas]

lysine depletes arginine (whether depleting it excessively is up for debate) which would deplete cortisol. a lot of people notice stress levels go down while taking lysine (and therefore reducing growth hormone). just thinking out loud

 

[DaveFoster]

Ipamorelin was mentioned. It seems to amazingly improves sleep quality; how could something that releases a stress hormone be so restorative?

 

[Fractality]

Ipamorelin was mentioned. It seems to amazingly improves sleep quality; how could something that releases a stress hormone be so restorative?

Also, these GH secretagogues increase appetite. Isn't that potentially a sign of lower stress hormones?

 

[DaveFoster]

Also, these GH secretagogues increase appetite. Isn't that potentially a sign of lower stress hormones?

Cortisol can stimulate the appetite.

 

[Fractality]

Well, serotonin facilitates REM sleep, and cortisol can stimulate the appetite.

That surprises me. Do you have citations? My own personal experience says otherwise.