Quote:
Originally Posted by newdadkel
One is a cardiologist and another is a general surgeon who is branching out. They have both practiced for several years, so they are not new grads. Their credibility is not in question. There are actually medical conferences and symposia addressing anti-aging therapies all of the time.
Of course anything can hurt you no matter who is recommending it. This is not the point of this thread.
There is a lot of research into the effects, both beneficial and detrimental, of GH and Test. Like with anything else, you will always have people who go to the extremes: is some is good, then 1000x normal dose will be better.
What I am trying to discern is if anyone has actually gone in for the lab work and been put on the supplementation, and what they saw as a result.
Small doses of GH have been shown to be very beneficial. And for men with low testosterone, supplementation to normative values has been very beneficial as well.
|
Anyone who claims to provide an effective anti-aging regimen as simple as GH and androgens has lost all credibility, in my opinion.
Current medical opinion is that these factors are merely correlated to long lifespan, and are NOT causative. In other words, you can't just administer GH or an androgen and expect a longer life-span. In fact, studies have show that testosterone and estrogen are linked to increased mortality, such as prostate cancer. As for Growth Hormone, genetic studies indicate that mutations in the IGF-1 receptor (the receptor that binds to the primary product of Growth Hormone, Insulin-like Growth Factor-1 [IGF-1]) that decrease its function are associated with longevity/long lifespan. This is pretty new research (came out in 2008/2009), but it suggests that the growth hormone link is a genetic one: if your IGF-1 receptor is defective, you will have upregulated levels of GH and IGF. The research I've discussed:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2265137/
Please see this review article from the New England Journal of Medicine:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp020186
"A recent double-blind, placebo-controlled study involving 27 women and 34 men, 68 to 88 years of age, who were given growth hormone or placebo for 6.5 months confirmed the effects of growth hormone on body composition; there was no change in muscle strength or maximal oxygen uptake during exercise in either group.3 This study corroborated the findings of a study by Papadakis et al. involving 52 healthy men, 70 to 85 years of age, who were given placebo or growth hormone for six months.4 Not mentioned on the “antiaging” Web sites is a study of 18 healthy men, 65 to 82 years of age, who underwent progressive strength training for 14 weeks, followed by an additional 10 weeks of strength training plus either growth hormone or placebo.5 In that study, resistance exercise training increased muscle strength significantly; the addition of growth hormone did not result in any further improvement. Going to the gym is beneficial and certainly cheaper than growth hormone.
The second consideration is the effect of long-term administration of growth hormone. It is not known whether long-term administration of growth hormone in the elderly is potentially harmful — particularly with regard to the risk of cancer, given that older age is associated with an increased incidence of cancer.
In 152 healthy men, the relative risk of the subsequent development of prostate cancer was increased by a factor of 4.3 among men who had serum concentrations of insulin-like growth factor I in the highest quartile, as compared with those whose concentrations were in the lowest quartile. This finding does not demonstrate causality by growth hormone or insulin-like growth factor I, but it does raise concern about giving older men growth hormone, which increases serum concentrations of insulin-like growth factor I.
....
Antiaging therapy with growth hormone has not yet been proved effective according to objective outcome criteria.
"
Some of this is quite technical and complex - endocrinology is not a simple field by any means. But PLEASE, do not go off consulting with some quackjobs. A good resource to help you identify such misguided therapies/'doctors' is
http://www.quackwatch.org/01Quackery...opics/hgh.html
Stay safe, and consult your primary care doc before submitting to any therapies you are administered at the conference. I personally will steer clear of any 'anti-aging' regimens like these until a large randomized, controlled trial has validated its efficacy.