What actually happens when you take Human Growth Hormone?

There are usually four types of purposes and results people are looking for when taking human growth hormone. The fitness category which includes muscle building, fat loss, recompositioning from fat to muscle, getting in shape professionally - increase sport related performance or generally getting in shape. The anti ageing category which includes improvement of skin, hair, nails, sight, better sleep, better metabolism, more energy, etc. The healing category includes faster recovery after injuries, burns, fractures, operations, etc. The forth category would be HGH supplementation for children or patients with growth hormone deficiencies due to various medical conditions. The first three categories are considered to be "recreational" use.

This information comes from a seasoned, frequent HGH user's personal experience which also matches the statistically most common results people get from using human growth hormone. There are always exceptions and special cases, but for a normal, healthy person who uses HGH for "recreational" general fitness and anti ageing purposes this article covers what can be expected. During the years I sometimes used the growth hormone to treat my injuries. I was never HGH deficient so I don't cover this aspect of usage.

Variables which affect the results people get from using HGH

Age: It's worth mentioning here that every decade of life the body's natural HGH production is reduced by half which means by the time you are 30 your body is producing 87% less human growth hormone compared to when you were a baby. By the time you are 40 this number is reduced by 96% and barely worth mentioning after that. Eventually your body only produces miniscule amounts of HGH to help with the metabolism. This means the older you are the more drastic the results will be when your body gets an influx of HGH.

Dosage: The results are dosage based, and the consensus for recreational (body building, fitness, training) dose has always been around 4IU per day (2IU in the morning and 2IU in late afternoon). I stuck by this dosage because it happened to be my optimal dose of HGH. If I increased it I got more side effects, If I decreased it I got less of the desirable results. I experimented thoroughly.

Health: The results will somewhat depend on your personal biochemistry and whether all relevant systems are working properly. People with diabetes have to carefully monitor their blood sugar levels during and several weeks after the HGH cycle. Growth hormone has an impact on the systems responsible to keep blood sugar levels in check.

Excess body fat: The amount of excess body fat on a person's body is proportional to the handicap which will obstruct the person's struggle to get rid of that fat. This is a very important metric to consider as it will affect the speed of progress. The underlying reason (disease, deriving happiness from food, poor willpower, negative self image, etc.) which caused the excess fat is most likely still present and will actively be going against the progress one is trying to measure. HGH by itself cannot do wonders. The person needs to cooperate and do the lion's share of the work.

Muscle memory: A person's fitness history has a big effect on the speed of progress. A retired professional sportsman who has not worked out for a while and might have put on unwanted fat may look as an average person but his muscle memory allows him to get back into top shape of his life much faster than a similarly looking person who never did much sports and has suddenly decided he wants that Baywatch type physique. This is similar to either just cleaning and fixing a sports car or building it from scratch. In this case the HGH can be considered to be a professionally equipped garage - useful in both cases but with different expectations regarding the completion speed.

HGH experience for a first time user is different when compared to a seasoned user

If this is your first HGH cycle your body is unprepared for the large amounts of growth hormone which means a lot of progress can be made before the body adapts. My first cycle was decades ago, but the gains I experienced made me really appreciate the hormone and devote my professional career to working with it.

The first thing I noticed was deeper sleep. While on HGH cycle I hardly changed position during the night which was otherwise uncommon for me. The night was over in the blink of an eye, I woke up with a "wow what just happened" feeling, very well rested and still in the same position I fell asleep in. This lasted for a while during the initial cycle but I didn't notice this result in subsequent growth hormone cycles or maybe I have grown accustomed to it. I also noticed that I suddenly felt like taking a short nap or even two in the afternoon.

After about a week into my first HGH cycle I noticed baby-smooth skin on the back of my hands. This effect still happens with subsequent cycles even nowadays after decades of on and off growth hormone usage. All of the body's skin looks and feels more youthful and well hydrated.

Here come the side effects. As I said, HGH affects your blood sugar levels. During the initial week or two there may come short periods when your blood sugar suddenly drops - you feel it as a raging hunger. Have some glucose sweets handy for this. The feeling goes away within 10-20 minutes or so. It didn't happen for me in the initial few cycles (or I don't remember it) but it is a known side effect of HGH. This tends to happen more often if the start of the HGH cycle also happens to be during a period when you get back to working out more intensively - your body is not yet used to either HGH or the activity levels so you throw it off by the combination.

A week or two into the cycle I notice aches in my feet/toes when first getting up in the morning. This lasts for a few minutes until I get accustomed to walking. In subsequent HGH cycles I noticed a similar feeling in my hands. I attribute this to water retention as explained below.

Around this time in the cycle (2-3 weeks) people tend to notice slightly bloated fingers, toes and face due to water retention caused by the HGH. While younger people might not appreciate the bloated face, it feels like a face-lift and gives more youthful appearance to older people. Water retention is temporary and goes away fully within 3 weeks after the end of cycle. It is also dosage-dependent so those who don't like it can tune it down by lowering the HGH dose. Water retention can give people the feeling like they are gaining weight or not achieving the fat loss they were hoping for because the water inflated cells temporarily offset the fat decrease. Because of this the true results of HGH cannot be appreciated until 3 weeks after the end of the human growth hormone cycle.

I started to notice repeating periods where I would get a tingling sensation in my outer three fingers and half of my palms. This often happened during a workout or woke me up in the middle of the night. I went to all sorts of examinations but back then doctors didn't have experience with this. It was carpal tunnel syndrome - nowadays a well known side effect of human growth hormone at moderate to high doses. This actually became a metric to determining one's optimal HGH dosage. The carpal tunnel syndrome is caused by expansion of cells in the wrist area around the carpal tunnel, through which the nerves are passing to your fingers and palms. As the carpal tunnel gets strangled from all sides this impacts the nerves which pass through it. Since the water retention of cells is dosage dependent, the optimal HGH dosage is high enough to feel the carpal tunnel syndrome but low enough for it not to bother you. The carpal tunnel syndrome intensity can range from it barely being felt to full on pain and feeling of hands being "asleep" permanently. A dosage adjustment is usually effective within a day or two.

Around a month into the cycle people tend to notice faster growth of hair and nails. This doesn't mean that HGH regrows lost hair but it does speed up growth of the cell types which are programmed to grow indefinitely (hair, skin, nails) - basically the cell types which protect us from the outside forces of nature.

At this point during my initial cycle I was getting disappointed by HGH, as the results were nowhere near what I expected. Human growth hormone came highly recommended for bodybuilding purposes but so far the muscle growth or strength increase was nothing compared to the results one gets from steroid usage. I continued with my first HGH cycle nonetheless.

A random fact here. All my relatives from both sides of the family wore eye glasses. My sight should have deteriorated at least two decades ago but I still see like a hawk. I have been doing a few two to four month long HGH cycles per year for most of my adulthood.

About two months into the first cycle while looking at myself in the mirror, I realized that I had achieved the "Baywatch" (see Frank Medrano on youtube) type physique while aiming for the bodybuilding type. Later in life when I grew up I came to appreciate that this is the most optimal type of physique for a male human being - it's what nature can build with food and hard work alone. Such a physique allows for proportional balance between agility, speed, strength and endurance. Sure you can take some of these attributes to higher levels (with steroids), but at the cost of balance between them. You can be huge and strong, but not as fast and agile as you would have been if you didn't over-do the muscle size. I came to appreciate the HGH as sort of balance aid when I stopped expecting from it what it cannot do. My body mass still increases (maybe 10-20% which includes the water retention and fat reduction) every time I do a proper three to four month long 4IU/day cycle but the direction and the goal is completely different from a typical steroid cycle.

Finally when the time comes to bring the HGH cycle to an end people either end it abruptly or ease out of it by halving the dosage to 2IU per day for a week, then 1IU per day for the final week. If you stop abruptly there tends be a few days long period of blood sugar instability where your blood sugar levels suddenly drop - making you extremely hungry. This happens to me a few times after every cycle. I keep some glucose candy nearby just in case.

That pretty much sums up the human growth hormone experience.