Growth hormone exerts its actions either directly or indirectly through its intermediary insulin growth factors to every organ system of the body. As we will see, almost nothing escapes its magic touch. In the same ways that it grows the bones of young children, it increases the size of most organs and tissue. Even the brain is affected. The latest studies in animal’s show that it can regenerate damaged brain tissue.

An abstract of a recent report by a group of researchers in Denmark, sums up just how the hormone’s effects are. Untreated growth hormone-deficient adults have been shown to have increased cardiovascular mortality, reduced exercise capacity, reduced muscle strength, subnormal glomerularfiltraton rate and renal plasma flow, defective sweat secretion and defective thermoregulation, reduced energy expenditure and basal metabolic rate, abnormal thyroid hormone metabolism, reduced myocardial function and clinical sign of premature arteriosclerosis.  

Body composition has been found abnormal with increased fat mass, decreased lean body mass, decreased muscle fat ratio, visceral obesity, reduced extra cellular fluid volume, and reduced bone mineral content. Furthermore, two independent groups have reported impaired psychological well being as compared to normal subjects.

The effect of growth hormone is not as dramatic as that of some of the other hormones in the body. A sudden drop in insulin levels, for example, can send you into insulin shock, which can be fatal. But a drop in growth hormone levels after age thirty or so can send the body into the slow decline, which, untreated, we call aging, why do we age, and can growth hormone extend the quantity as well as the quality of life? These are e questions that we will look at.

The take home message is that the decline of growth hormone with age can be reversed. Even if the activity of growth hormone releasing hormone declines or the somatostatin increases, or the receptors become less responsive to the effect of growth hormone, these can all be overcome by the administration of growth hormone or growth hormone-releasing stimulants. In fact,  recently developed manmade chemicals do the job even better than nature’s own growth hormone releasing hormone.