This is waaay longer of a response than you expected, but “BS” unintentionally hit a nerve on this topic (and anti-aging / enhancement via medical science generally).
Yes, very real benefits, with caveats:
1. Slow and subtle. The slowest working PED those of us in this scene will likely ever use. For anti-aging / aesthetics be prepared to commit for the very long haul or don’t bother.
2. Within or not too far beyond physiological limits. The levels that produce significant anabolic results can make you ugly with long term use. This requires another commitment. To testing and managing IGF-1 / Z-score.
3. The older you are / the lower your baseline IGF-1 the more pronounced the aesthetic benefits. A 23 yo with average IGF-1 is wasting their time.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist. The narrative establishment medicine has regarding rHGH is one that uniformly denies, or at best, casts “doubt” regarding benefits of rHGH for “healthy” adults,
At the same time, the science clearly demonstrates benefits exist, even for “healthy” subjects. While trials using healthy people are rarer, they do exist, even mechanistically it's obvious rHGH can provide benefits.
The denials of rHGH doing anything positive in terms of performance enhancement and anti-aging are so over the top, it’s not an exaggeration to say it’s institutional gaslighting.
Even AI responds the same negative way medical professionals do regarding any potential benefit from this “forbidden” hormone. Denial, doubt, induce fear.
I spoke to someone in medicine about this, and it comes down to 1) establishment medicine’s hostility toward “turning aging into a disease to be treated” (yet logically, it is, and this crosses into bullshit “values” that handcuff science from helping people to the fullest of its capabilities), and 2) a deep seated fear that acknowledging ANYTHING positive regarding rHGH, will send the masses rushing to pin themselves with the “fountain of youth”.
rHGH is the *only* medication that has a federal law preventing doctors from prescribing it for any “off label use”.
As for accelerated aging, there’s some truth, not in the sense it makes you look visibly older, but that there’s a limit to cell regeneration capacity. GH drops like a rock around 25, the theory being that’s the point the body shifts from rapid cell turnover for growth (and quick healing), to “conservation” of the regenerative capacity of cells.
We simply don’t have very much info on decades of use. What happens to different tissues if you “use up” cell turnover capacity “early”. All I can say it this. The most likely indicator would be that some cells, instead of no longer turning over (and / or dying) once regenerative capacity is exhausted, keep growing as some form of cancer. On the other hand, it’s also possible we die at 100 with a mountain of unused regenerative capacity, wasted potential, No one knows.
The longest adult growth hormone deficiency patients who’ve been treated are about 20 years into it. There is no signal they have any higher rate of cancer than anyone else, or that if they get it, it’s any more dangerous. People with high IGF do have slightly higher rates of cancer. They also have better health overall and less likely to die from metabolic disorders like cardiovascular disease and diabetes, I’m going to suggest based on the documented impact of higher vs lower natural IGF-1, the higher group also has had a higher quality of life, sharper cognition, less depression, are more successful, more vigor, and look younger for a lifetime.
While the low IGF group has tons of regenerative capacity left over when they die prematurely from a heart attack, substance abuse, too slow and tired to dodge a bus, off themselves via a slow or fast form of depression motivated suicide, or just spend the last 30+ years of their lives so flat, sluggish, dull brained and ugly they wish they had the vigor left to end it.
* In many ways it parallels the prevailing attitude toward TRT a few years ago. The range is 150-1100. You’re 160, at 30 years old. Fat, depressed and unmotivated. “No testosterone for you, you’re in range, it’s *dangerous*, only to be used sparingly, and GOD FORBID, never to optimize.”
