You need never grow old.
You can restore the liver, spleen and muscles to what they were when you were young. You may even be able to regrow brain cells. Wrinkles fade, and you'll be energized. You will lose body fat without dieting or exercising; your gray hair will darken, and your wounds will heal quickly.
In fact, if the plethora of ads for human growth hormone (hGH) and the products that claim to increase natural growth hormone production are true, nothing seems impossible.
But whether growth hormones are really the "cure" for aging that they're being mass-marketed as has become a source of great controversy.
Everyone agrees that growth hormones are essential for people who have a deficiency, including children who suffer from stunted growth and certain other syndromes and adults whose bodies don't make enough. The question is whether it helps or harms people who have a normal supply of their own naturally produced growth hormone.
Proponents of the use of growth hormones say it doesn't seem to do any harm and probably does a lot of good. But critics say that no scientific studies have documented positive effects that outweigh what they call very real and potentially devastating side effects. And there are questions about how much growth hormone an adult should have or to what level it should be supplemented once it naturally starts to diminish.
Testimonials are plentiful, including from Hollywood icons who take growth hormone injections to "stay young and sleek" and athletes who seek muscle mass and shortened recovery time following workouts. But the American Academy of Clinical Endocrinologists says that hard scientific evidence to document those benefits in a normal, healthy adult is scant.
On the other hand, at least one oft-cited study, conducted by Dr. Daniel Rudman and published just more than a decade ago in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that use of hGH in men older than 60 helped maintain bones, skin and muscle tone. The study has been praised for opening a new line of anti-aging research on the one hand and condemned on the other for the small number of subjects used — 21 men.
Growth hormone is one of six hormones made by the pituitary gland that are essential for physical growth and other vital functions. The tiny pituitary, located at the base of the brain, squirts the hormone into the bloodstream, usually during the earliest hours of sleep. It peaks in adolescence, and as the body ages, production of growth hormone slows down.
Before creation of synthetic growth hormone (several companies now make it), it was taken from the pituitary glands of cadavers — and it was only used for children with growth hormone deficiency because it was in very short supply and extremely expensive. After the hormone from cadavers was linked to a number cases of a degenerative and fatal brain disease in the United States and Europe, the practice was stopped.
Availability of a synthetic version has been a blessing to those with deficiencies, lowering the price and providing a nearly limitless supply. People with growth hormone deficiencies suffer decreased lean body mass and increased fat body mass. When physicians provide growth hormone to patients who don't make their own supplies, those symptoms improve.
Dr. James Grua, a Salt Lake endocrinologist, has a lot of experience with growth hormones. "I prescribe more than most for patients who are low, but I'm not doing the supplement type thing you hear about on late talk shows.
"For people with a deficiency, I am a firm believer that it helps most of them. It's FDA approved. But the real stuff is expensive and we only give it to those who are truly low." (A low dose for children costs about $7,000 or more a year, he said. Adults are bigger and get a higher dose and it costs even more. Most insurance companies will cover it, however, if testing demonstrates a true deficiency.)
The only delivery method that's scientifically proven to be effective is injection.
And there's some evidence that it has at least some positive effects for older adults. What isn't known is how much an adult needs, since it naturally dwindles with age (which proponents of supplementation say makes their case that people need more. Give it to them and they wouldn't age.)
"People have taken that idea (of improvements) and applied it to perfectly normal people and said maybe we can reverse all those things," said Dr. Barry Benowitz, chief of endocrinology at LDS Hospital and clinical professor of medicine at the University of Utah. "There are not good studies that show it can do it. And if you give them too much, there are significant side effects."
Those side effects may include diabetes, high blood pressure and arthritis, he said. There's also a fear that too much growth hormone may stimulate the growth of cancer tumors.
"Not only does no one know that taking it for a perfectly normal person helps, but no one knows what kind of doses could be used. The studies haven't been done. Growth hormone is probably abused as much as it is used," Benowitz said.
So-called growth hormone stimulators or inducers are another area of concern to Benowitz. "These inducers, at least some of them, are simply an amino acid that has not been shown to even increase growth hormone in the doses given and certainly has never been shown to have a benefit to the patient," he said.
He places part of the blame for the plethora of growth hormone dietary supplements — the non-injectable, nonprescription variety — on the law co-sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch in the late '90s which said dietary supplements were to be treated as food rather than as drugs and thus are not subject to the same Food and Drug Administration regulation that drugs get.
"It's a misguided law that has allowed some of the unregulated, unproven and untested drugs to proliferate on the market," Benowitz said.
But the cautionary approach suggested by most of the medical establishment has not slowed down attempts to market a huge array of growth hormone and growth-hormone- wannabe products. Look online for it and thousands of product listings appear. Besides making some of the claims at the beginning of this article, they may refer to research that was done using the FDA-approved synthetic growth hormone, rather than the products being hawked.
"As far as the supplement stuff, I think most of that is just baloney. They make so many claims. If you listen to late night radio talk shows, they're on one after another advertising things that claim to cure everything," Grua said.
Not all doctors agree. Dr. Ronald Klatz, who has written several books on the topic, believes so firmly in growth hormone benefits that he founded the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine. Klatz and Dr. Alan Mintz, a retired radiologist, have been outspoken in their belief that providing aging people with hGH has great value in terms of both quality of life and longevity. They tout hormone injections (available only by prescription), along with nutrition and exercise, as a three-pronged anchor to a new kind of medicine: anti-aging medicine. And they are quoted extensively by those selling nonprescription versions as to the benefits of growth hormone therapy.
Grua doubts a healthy adult using growth hormone would do much harm, but he said the possibility that a product could cause an existing cancer to grow has to be taken seriously. He doesn't give growth hormone to patients who have cancer at all.
And he believes scientific testing should be conducted to lay some of the other questions to rest. He acknowledges that boosting the naturally declining levels that occur with age might make people feel somewhat better. But only well-conducted, scientific studies will say for sure.
While most of his patients, with proven growth hormone deficiencies, say they feel much better with the treatment, the cost is still a sticking point. The symptoms might be treated in other ways much less expensively, he said. "I can give Prozac to a patient for depression. Still, I have become a believer. For may patients who are low on growth hormone, the benefit in terms of bone density, sense of well-being, muscle mass and strength, is real."
E-MAIL: lois@desnews.com