HGH for Bodybuilding: How to Use Growth Hormone?
HUMAN GROWTH HORMONE
Human Growth Hormone is the most sought after drug in athletes. Though banned, there is no test for it at athlete events.The use of HGH by athletes has increased and it now has the reputation of being the ultimate anabolic drug an athlete can use. It also is the most expensive. Many of the top strength athletes use HGH and the cost of its use has run as high as $30,000 over the course of a year for one particular pro bodybuilder. Short term users (8 week duration) will spend up to $150 per daily dosage, And because the top athletes are rumored to use 4, HGH lust in the lower ranks has become more rampant. The most curious aspect of the whole situation is that I’ve never encountered any athlete using HGH to benefit from it, and all the athletes who admit to having used it will usually agree: it didn’t/doesn’t work for them. But, in the wacked-out world of competitive athletes, those same athletes also admit that they will continue to use it in the future as long as their competition does.
The whole Growth Hormone story-controversy is so bizarre, you should know a little of its history. Most of the Growth Hormone in America was given to children with growth disorders from the mid 1950s up until late spring of 1985. ‘Given’ in this case is the correct word. About 3500 children in the US have growth disorders that could be treatable with HGH. Originally HGH was extracted from the pituitaries of cadavers. Through the National Hormone and Pituitary Program, based in Bethesda Maryland, the United States Government funded the drug therapy for about 2300 children. It only cost the government $500 per child per year to do this, and additional children would have been given tree treatment if more pituitaries had been available (the Program, at its end, had access to 50,000 pituitaries a year). The rest of the children needing HGH bought it from two private companies, Serono (Asellacrin, 10 lUs per vial) and KabiVitrum (Crescormon, 4 lUs per vial), and the cost for the HGH from either company averaged $5000-$10,000 per patient, per year.
When it became common knowledge that adult athletes were using HGH to try to enhance their performance, there was an initial outcry that the children would not have enough of this scarce drug. The reality of thesituation was that plentiful supplies of the original HGH were never a problem, as athletes bought the Serono or KabiVitrum product, sometimes from a doctor or pharmacist, but mostly from black market sources (without the pharmaceutical companies’ knowledge, wink, wink). So the athletes never dipped into the free pool. In March of 1985 the National Institute of Health was hit with some chilling news. A Stanford University doctor, through autopsy determination, discovered a death caused by the rare Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a progressive brain disorder with an unusually long incubation period (decades) causing dementia and eventually death within a year. Creutzieldt-Jakob disease usually occurs randomly; the odds are one in a million of contracting it. This particular victim contracted the virus-like carrier, a prion (proteinaceous infectious particle), from Human Growth Hormone the victim had used between 1966 and 1976. Within a matter of months, two more similar deaths, both involving prior HGH use, were reported. Unfortunately, before 1977, the extracted HGH was only between 25-500% pure, with the remainder being unknown proteins, including, a few infectious prions.
From 1977 on to the end of the government program in 1985, Dr. Albert Parlow of
Harbor UCLA Medical Center extracted and processed all the NHPP’s HGH. His final
product had a purity of 95%, and has never tested positive for prions. However, over the protest~ of Parlow, and of course, Serono and KabiVitrum, the FDA stopped the
commercial sale of naturally derived HGH and suspended the activities of the National Hormone and Pituitary Program. While this controversy over naturally derived HGH raged on, a California company, Genentech, was finishing up its research and petitioning the FDA for approval of commercial production of synthetic Human Growth Hormone, using a process involving genetically altered Escherichia Coli (aka E Coli) Bacteria to ‘grow’ the hormone, which is a complex peptide chain of 191 amino acids. Genentech has one problem with their hormone: the synthetic peptide actually has 192, not 191 aminino acids, and this oneextra, obscure amino, methionyl, generates an antibody response, which inactivates the hormone in the body, in over 30% of the test subjects. Under ordinary circumstances, Genentech probably would not have gotten the FDA
approval for Protropin that it did in October of 1985. But Congress, in 1983, passed the Orphan Drug Act, which encourages the private sector to produce drugs for rare
diseases when companies usually would not because of no patent protection or high production costs. So, when the FDA approved Protropin in 1985, Genentech looked forward to a monopoly of the American Human Growth Hormone market for a guaranteed (by the Orphan Drug Act) seven years. Before making Protropin, Genentech had produced Humalin, an excellent synthetic
human insulin, which they marketed through the Eli Lilly company, and Humalin is still sold by Lilly today. But Lilly got wind of the notion that this time around Genentech was going to market Protropin directly, so Lilly, in retaliation, developed their own synthetic Human Growth Hormone, using the same E Coli Bacteria fermentation process, but refining it so that the peptide had the correct 191 sequence of aminos, with no extra methionyl at the end. The incidence of antibody reactions in test subjects was shown to be a reduced 2% as compared to Protropin.
This product, commercially known as Humatrope, was considered different enough from Protropin that the FDA approved its use and sale on March 8,1986, and Humatrope also is sheltered by the Orphan Drug Act, which technically protects it from any other synthetic competitors with the correct 191 amino count for seven years. Ironically, even when Genentech tweaked its original synthetic and bumped the methionyl amino from the peptide, the improved version could not be sold. And Serono, which just developed an elegant synthetic HGH (trade name: Saizen) using recombinant mammalian cell techniques resulting in the superior 191 count peptide cannot market their product in theUS. I guess you can imagine that between Genentech, the FDA, Lilly, and Serono, everyone’s lawyers are in high gear. By the way, the Orphan Drug Act is up for reacessment by Congress sometime in 1989. So where is the athlete in all this mess?
Not very far ahead, really. Of course, Lilly’s Humatrope is now the HGH of choice for
athletes. Many of the top pros and amateurs use HGH regularly simply because,
whether it works or not, they know that the competition is using it, so they all want the same advantage. It’s obvious that HGH works on stunted growth children. Salvatore Raiti, the former director of the National Hormone and Pituitary Program has said, ‘Yes, we know it works [on children] but we don’t know the optimal dosage.’ Assuming that HGH did work on adult athletes, could anyone determine the optimal dosage for enhanced athletic performance?
What about the horror stories: the bone distortions, organ problems, and premature
deaths that CBS’s 60 Minutes would like to attribute to Growth Hormone use? That has happened only to people having pituitary disorders; I’ve never even heard rumors of any bad side effects on athletes using HGH. But then, I’ve never seen any effects, period. No athletes got bigger, or stronger, or leaner while using just HGH. They just got poorer. Of course, many athletes have used HGH in conjunction with anabolic steroids, and did get some results, but from the steroid use, not the HGH use, I know, I will not be able to convince some of you that using HGH is a worthless
endeavor. Someone will always rationalize: I’ll use more; I’ll use Humatrope; I’ll take littleamounts every two hours, like it’s really naturally secreted, etc., etc. Let me sober you with this. I’ve seen some beautifully done counterfeit labels of Lilly’s Humatrope. They were going onto rebottled Human Chorionic Gonadotrophin, as this white, unreconstituted powder looks identical to synthetic Human Growth Hormone. And the sick probability is that the athlete who buys this take may indeed make more strength gains using HCG, which will increase his own Testosterone production, than it he used the real synthetic Growth Hormone. Just think about this: $400+ is a lot to pay for a $10 bottle of HCG. Remember, the less effective the drug is, the easier it will be to counterfeit with a different substance. The only other thing I have to say about the whole Human Growth Hormone issue is this: With all the drug testing going on at athletic events, the term ‘going for broke’ has never been taken so literally.But, since drug testing is on the increase, and many athletes will be using GH no matter
what view I take of it, I will hypothethize on the ideal way to use GH. My first thought on adults using GH is that probably they’re not using enough. Looking in the PDR, Genentech recommends .2iu per kilo of bodyweight for children, three times a week This would lead me to think that 2iu per 20 pounds of bodyweight would be the correct minimum dosage for adults. So, an average 200 pound male athlete would need 20iu, three times a week. Protopin is packaged in 10iu bottles, so the amount needed would be 6 bottles per week. If someone could afford this much GH, the next question arises: How do you make the entire 20iu dosage actively available? GH works in conjuction with Somatomedin C, which is spontaneously produced when GH is in the bloodstream. We don’t know if the body could generate enough Somatomedin C if a full daily dosage of GH were injected all at once, but I would guess not. Perhaps we will see improved response to GH 6 the dosage is divided into 6 or 8 smaller dosages, given every two hours throughout the day, In continuing the example, the 200 pound male athlete would be injecting 3iu every two
hours over a twelve hour period (six injections, 18iu), with a final 2iu injection before bed.So, until I’ve done more research on GH therapy, my three hints at improving its usefulness are:
1) Use the Lilly Humatrope or Serono Saizen only. Never settle for the Generic product.
2) Use a correct dosage, about 2iu per 20 pounds of bodyweight three times a week.
3) Divide the daily dosage into 6 or a smaller doages spaced two hours apart.
