First, let me say I’m not wanting to turn this into a drug thread, but in order to lend some weight to my opinion, I do mention GH supplementation by injection. Sorry if I offend anyone.
So, I tend to agree with Carl on this one. As someone who has had dozens of lengthy discussions over a 25 year period with athletes of all kinds who use PEDs of all kinds, my belief is that growth hormone is a very, very weak anabolic agent. I actually spoke with Dr. Ron Katz by phone several times in 1985, and even he confirmed that for a normal, healthy individual, it would take fairly high doses (i.e. > 5i.u.) to see much improvement at all in a normal healthy individual under the age of 40. At that time, the only source was from cadavers, so very few even considered it. We all know of people, and I know several personally, that have had some amazing results, but those results came only with much higher doses, and almost all, including the infamous one’s like Lyle Alzado, were taking other PEDs as well.
To see results in a person without a deficiency, we’re talking 5-10i.u. per day range, and no amount of stimulation or supplementation is going to produce that. You might get results that can be measured by a blood test, but I doubt very seriously that any results will be measureable in terms of body composition or performance unless the subject has a pre-existing deficiency or injects high doses over a long period of time.
As I already mentioned, I certainly didn’t want to turn this into a drug thread, but I do think that the experiences of those actually injecting actual growth hormone should illustrate that efforts to induce positive performance or compositional changes by an increase in one’s own GH via stimulation or supplementation will probably be futile.
