How and why to boost growth hormone....

Today's Post:  Friday, 7-20-2012

Everything else being equal, people who have ample amounts of growth hormone are stronger, have less excess fat, and are in enough better repair they heal when injured and age more slowly.

In the email from Jillian Michaels on 7-17 earlier this week, “The Hormone You Always Want More Of” that sparked the idea to do this post, she also says that ample growth hormone helps protect your heart and keep your bones strong.

The ideal in life as Dr Jack Farquhar from Stanford said earlier this year is not a long life where the extra years are limited with poor health many but extra years of good health. 

Having an ample supply of growth hormone is a key to doing that.

Some people pay thousands of dollars a year to get shots of human growth hormone or HGH. 

But this is dreadfully expensive.  Some studies show some side effects likely due to overdose.  Some people with cancer or cancer they didn’t know about find this artificial way to get growth hormone boosts their cancer’s growth too.  

Another very important reason for not doing it this way is that the natural ways to boost growth hormone have OTHER health benefits that taking the shots do NOT give you.

 Last but far from least, if the people who do this have to stop for any reason, doing this may stunt their ability to make growth hormone on their own.

That said, what are some of the ways to boost growth hormone naturally?

The overall theme is that a lifestyle that helps you stay healthy and lean boosts growth hormone release too in almost every part of it.

1.  Vigorous exercises where you periodically exert extra effort done most days of every week release growth hormone. 

(Doing such exercises slows aging in other ways, also helps prevent insulin resistance and high blood sugar; protects your heart; promotes good circulation; releases BDNF, the kind of growth hormone that grows new brain cells; it releases testosterone which is both a growth hormone and helps you enjoy sex – in both men and women.  And, possibly unlike HGH shots, such exercise REDUCES your risk of cancer.)

Exercises you do fast and then stop and rest and then repeat are one example.  Interval cardio is specifically that kind of exercise.  Dr Al Sears in his PACE program teaches doing such exercise AND gradually building up to do more or do it faster as you progressively add just a little more than last time.

The other one is strength training.  You can be progressive by gradually using more weight up to a point.  The other ways to do it include doing a set until you get to enough repetitions you find you can’t quite do the last one even with extra effort.  You can also do the exercises with a weight just light enough you can do 5 repetitions where you move the weight up slowly over a few seconds and then lower it that slowly for each of the 5 repetitions.  I’ve found that doing this few seconds up and a few seconds down on the last repetition but doing the first repetitions fast also works.  I think that allows you to build speed and power and get some interval cardio all in one set.

2.  Eating abundant health OK protein foods and almost completely avoiding high glycemic foods also boosts growth hormone in addition to preventing diseases and helping you avoid or stop being fat. 

a) Protein foods like boiled eggs from pasture fed hens and nuts if you aren’t allergic and wild caught fish and beans and lentils and some meat from animals fed only grass and even some meat and poultry  or dairy foods from animals fed grains but where almost all the fat is removed work.  You tend not to get extra hungry or too quickly or get the famine response when you eat lightly if you eat enough of these protein foods.  The protein also gives your growth hormone the building blocks to use to build you or rebuild you.

b) This means drinking no soft drinks or ingesting any high fructose corn syrup and virtually eliminating refined grains and eating even 100% whole grains in moderation if at all.  It also means to cut back even on real sugar to a seventh or less of what many people eat today. 

Sugar loaded foods a few times a week in small servings can be OK for people who exercise and are in good health.  But eating them several times every day will make anyone who does so fat and sick if done long enough.  Jillian Michaels says eating these things also cuts growth hormone release.

3.  Doing a partial fast two or three days a week may also boost growth hormone besides studies showing it helps people lose more fat than cutting back on calories every day.  (I’ve been eating a vegetable only lunch two days a week for fat loss and was delighted to hear it may also help me release growth hormone.)

4.  Jillian Michaels also notes that you release growth hormone during sleep about 5 times a night.  That means that reliably getting good sleep most days each month helps you release adequate growth hormone.  (It also means that if you cut the amount of sleep too much you may cut this back to 3 or 4 times a night.  That will reliably reduce growth hormone.)

There are five solutions to this that I’ve learned.

a) On weekdays at least work towards getting up at the same exact time and going to bed at the same exact time every day.  The more you do this, the better your sleep will be, the more time efficient it will be, and likely your growth hormone release will be better.

b)  For most people it helps to get at least 6 hours of sleep each night and no more than about 8 and a half hours.  The ideal seems to be 7 to 7 and a half.

c)   Make your bedroom conducive to sleep.  Have curtains and blinds and use as little light as possible.  Avoid having any TV’s or video devices in your bedroom.  Keep it reasonably cool and warm enough to the extent you can do so.  Have it be quiet or wear ear plugs if necessary.

d)  Avoid foods and drugs that cause poor sleep.  Much more than 300 mg a day of caffeine causes you to not sleep as well at night so you need more the next day.  But about that or a bit less mostly before 3 PM avoids this effect.  If you drink alcoholic drinks, stick to one or two and to the extent you can drink them early in the evening.  Avoid binge drinking. Excess alcohol causes poor sleep quality and even can cause early wakening.  Use niacin and sterols and foods high in soluble fiber instead of statins unless you have tested to be one of the few people for which statins are effective and you recently had a heart attack.  Statins deplete your energy and Lipitor particularly apparently quite often causes severe insomnia.

e)   A recent study found that morning exercise causes the people who do it to go through more sleep cycles at night and do so more thoroughly.  That means you boost growth hormone twice with morning exercise – both by the exercise causing growth hormones to be released and by giving your body more chances a night to release them!