GH and ACL surgery

[luissp]

Hi

Daughter, a teenager, is about to have ACL reconstruction surgery, and thinking of giving her GH, There´s been a study on this topic that´s been relayed in various medias, see below.

Anybody here has experience with the dosage and duration. Read a couple of days ago one could start 1 week before the surgery and go on for 1 month afterwards, I´m thinking a bit longer as she will be able to restart weight traing only the 2nd month with limitations and GH is used to avoid muscle atrophy, principally in the knee, which seems to help with the surgery prognostic. Her end goal is to get back to competitive fighting sports. She´s taken GH under doctor supervision to help her growth in the past but this time it will be probably sourced on the black market (I have Optis at home). Asked abt it to the surgeon btw, who reckons some patients (that clinic deal with lots of athletes) use GH and he didn´t seem to see a problem but he wouldn´t prescribe it himself ( could refer us to the endo, but I doubt it works, it didn´t seem to be a common procedure)
Any one has feedback to share on the issue ? I haven´t decided on the dosage yet.

The Use of Recombinant Human Growth Hormone to Protect Against Muscle Weakness in Patients Undergoing Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction: A Pilot, Randomized Placebo-Controlled Trial - PubMed

NCT02420353 ( ClinicalTrials.gov identifier).

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Human Growth Hormone Treatment After ACL Injury May Prevent Loss of Muscle Strength

Human growth hormone (HGH) treatment may improve long term outcomes for patients after anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) surgery.

www.michiganmedicine.org

 

[luissp]

Not much feedback, I thought people here would have experience taking GH around surgeries.
Found another study with positive outcome for the GH users where they gave 12IU (from memory, might be 15) 2 days before up to 5 days after surgery.
We have very little time to titrate up, going a few days at 3IU than thinking of 5IU from 1 week before surgery to the time she can do decent weight training with her injured leg (sometime in the 2nd month after surgery I think), but might change the dosage if I get more information.
Hoping the Optis are legit... used many of them btw but never noticed much from GH

 

[Millard]

I'm not sure many people want to touch this issue. I agree there's an interesting discussion here based on the published research.

Obviously, few people here would have a problem with adults making decisions to use black market products for themselves. The circumstances change when it is an adult making a decision for a (presumably underage) teenager. If she is a legal adult and can make decisions for herself that is another matter entirely.

I have no doubt that you have the very best interests of your daughter in mind and am making no judgment. It's just bad optics that would likely be perceived differently by the public at large.

I would exhaust legal options for therapeutic treatment by medical professionals perhaps including the physician that previously prescribed hGH in the past.

Also, I don't know if anti-doping is an issue in the sport organization she competes. Medically-prescribed and monitoring therapy will work in her benefit should it ever become an issue.

 

[luissp]

Update, hoping it might be useful to some:

We went through with the GH injections, from memory 3IU for a few days than up to 5IU a few days before surgery to about 5 weeks afterwards.
It seems to have helped quite a bit.
At every point after surgery we heard the quad looked strong, at 6 weeks after surgery we needed a report from the surgeon who wrote :
"Muscle very good"
And yesterday, abt 10 weeks after surgery, my daughter´s PT was wondering whether they were working too hard as her leg was so strong, with both legs already almost identical (she ´s a small girl and is still 5 lbs lighter than before the accident though)
He doesn´t like the idea to put too much pressure on the graft hence doesn´t see it a particularly good sign when people work hard and show strong legs or much mobility early in the rehab, like some high level competitive athletes we know do (they might be using GH as well, dunno, we know several competitive girls who went through the same procedure). But then he doesn´t think daughter is working too hard either. She didn´t want to mention the GH treatment, but I might bring it up later on.
So far we´re till we leaning on following the general recommendations about when to retake pivot and contact sports and wait 6 + months for that, but we´ll see how it goes. The treat of retearing the ACL is a nasty one.
Daughter is very happy so far she took the GH.

 

[luissp]

Note as well that according to the PT in the first rehab center we went (nothing wrong with them, dealing with a lot of athletes, we just had to move) the number one thing they look to allow return to sports, is Quad strength, so it looks good to retain a strong quad.

 

[Mac11wildcat]

The morals/ethics aside gH/tb500/bpc157 helped a client of mine almost half his knee surgery recovery.

The moral dilemma of giving your daughter grey/black market drugs is yours to navigate.