Rapamycin it is believed to extend life, while HGH is believed to shorten life. So it’s up to you which you choose. 
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Well that’s telling me. A longevity clinic in London advocates HGH so I was wondering …
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I think that is a gross over-simplification. Any dose of HGH? For any reason? With any individual?
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This is an over simplification, but you can think of Rapamycin as a potential longevity drug and HGH as a potential Healthspan drug or improving your quality of life. Most of the clinics are not using real HGH due to strict regulations, but many will use peptides to increase your own production like semorelin and CJC/ Ipamorelin. Since increased growth hormone is associated with increased IGF-1 and increase IGF-1 has been associated with a decrease in longevity, some people associate it with decreasing longevity along with its mTOR stimulation. Others think a balance or modulation of mTOR with inhibition and stimulation may be a path.
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Dah, that’s why three laughing emojis. The subject was beaten to death on another thread on these forums, and most I remember was that HGH goes counter to longevity. It may however have other health benefits.
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I agree with all the posts that have been made on this. Growth Hormone (GH) and the closely associated IGF-1 (Insulin-like Growth Factor - 1), are pro-growth, pro-healing hormones. They are sort of opposite of Rapamycin in many ways. Rapamycin decreases mTORC1, slows protein synthesis, slows cell growth and lowers growth hormone levels (which is down stream in the molecular pathway).
All the lifespan research that has been done on GH/IGF1 (they usually go up and down together), indicates that higher levels over the life of the mammal, shortens their lifespan. See this thread for details on this: IGF-1 inhibitors and lifespan extension?
A new company, Loyal for Dogs, is coming out with a new drug that lowers Growth Hormone/IGF1 levels to improve healthspan and lifespan in large dogs. Its raised over $60 Million in funding, and the FDA has approved the protocol for validation of it working and the clinical trials are in process. Their goal is to eventually bring their drugs to human applications (in fact Celine H., the founder of Loyal, has told me that the FDA is requiring them to provide human data even for their dog FDA approval, because the FDA likely expects some people to also start taking the dog medication prior to any human clinical trial or approval).
More news stories and information on Loyal for Dogs and their progress/press from past threads is here: Search results for 'Loyal dogs' - Rapamycin Longevity News
But - increased GH / IGF1 may be pro-health span and pro-healing if you are recovering from an injury, etc. But there have not been many papers on GH for healthspan and longevity (you might ask the “longevity clinic” you are talking to what research papers validate its use in longevity…). So the data is still pretty sparse in this area. Generally it was popular in the early days of “anti-aging medicine” because I think generally the results are that it makes you feel better and helps growth of muscle, etc. Similar in men to testosterone. But the longer term data is negative… I don’t think you want to be taking HGH for many years consistently, based on the lifespan data in animal studies.
Overall, the data in animals suggests a lifespan increase (and healthspan increase) of 15% to 30% for rapamycin.
The data suggests that higher GH levels (in animals, for their entire lifespan) are likely to shorten lifespans in animals by perhaps by 30% to 50% (animals with extremely low growth hormone levels - for example the Ames and Snell Dwarf mice) typically live up to 50% longer with their very low GH/IGF1 levels, compared to “wild type” (regular / normal) mice.
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The discussion in this podcast covers growth hormone use… queued up for when the growth hormone discussion starts:
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I opted doing Sauna daily which is also know for boosting IGF1 and HGH. Rhonda Patrick has many podcasts discussed this.
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Interesting, thanks. I even have a sauna blanket which I don’t use very much. However, I thought that raised IGF-1 was associated with an increased risk of certain cancers?
Absolutely - IGF-1 and Human Growth Hormone levels - that is why they are generally not considered “longevity” supplements for long term use.
But in the shorter term they may be helpful.
Related research:
A study of almost 400,000 British participants has identified a new link between raised levels of the growth factor IGF-1 and increased thyroid cancer risk and has confirmed associations with breast, prostate and colorectal cancer.
Unique supplement! Guaranteed results! Erases wrinkles! Ads for growth hormone (GH) replacement therapy promise to ameliorate the effects caused by decreases in circulating hormone levels as people age. Although GH therapy appears beneficial by some measures–it seems to tone muscles, for example–possible negative impacts of long-term treatment are unknown. New results suggest that blocking a GH-containing hormone network slows the duplication of tumor cells. The work adds to growing evidence that GH as well as insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) stimulates cancer growth, and it supports the notion that people should approach GH therapy with caution.
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There is no evidence that HGH causes cancer. It’s not carcinogenic. It actually prevents cancer in GH deficiency. Even bodybuilders abusing it in high doses aren’t dying of cancer (cardiac problems is typically what gets them).
However, through IGF-1, it does promote cell division, which theoretically increases the chance of faults (i.e. cancer), but I don’t know of any studies proving this. The most significant link between HGH and cancer is the fact that if you get cancer for whatever reason, the tumors will grow faster.
Greg Fahy said everyone’s lymphocyte to monocyte ratio increased in the TRIIM trial, which makes it extremely unlikely to get cancer. They used reasonable doses.
If you held a gun to my head and I had to bet all my money, I’d bet that responsible HGH use probably helps prevent cancer and promotes longevity.
Unfortunately, much fewer studies have been done in the last 20 years thanks to the unfair stigma that has become associated with it thanks to the government deciding that going after sports was a valuable use of resources.
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GH and IGF-1 importance for bone health. You don’t want low GH and IGF-1 all the time if you want strong bones.
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Think it’s important to mention that Dr Fahy’s protocol is to only increase HGH for a limited period one or perhaps a few times during one’s entire life.
So it’s not fair to characterize him as pro chronic HGH/IGF-1 increase.
In fact even the limited duration of HGH is only because of the goal of rejuvenating the Thymus and that is where he thinks the longevity and health value comes from - from the better thymus derived immune system - not from the HGHs overall effects.
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I’m not sure if there is “no evidence” but I agree we have not seen much cancer in the “growth hormone” crowd (and there was a relatively large number of them back in the haydays of the A4M (Anti-aging medicine Association) in the 1990s and 2000s when GH was widely pushed as an anti-aging therapy.
In the link I provided above it says:
Emerging evidence links the growth hormone (GH)-insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF1) endocrine axis to cancer development. While this putative correlation is of major translational relevance, most clinical and epidemiological reports to date found no causal linkage between GH therapy and enhanced cancer risk. Thus, it is generally agreed that GH therapy constitutes a safe pharmacological intervention. Source: Role of the GH-IGF1 system in progression of cancer - PubMed
I think the evidence suggests that generally there may be a small increase in risk of cancer, but it probably helps pre-existing cancers grow faster, and (in my mind the bigger issue) its associated with a shorter lifespan overall, unrelated to cancer, as demonstrated in the Ames / Snell dwarf mice that have very low GH and live much longer (though admittedly, these mice have issues you may not want to experience).
As you are making the case for, there is perhaps a case to be made for increased healthspan (especially if you are taking cancer screening like Gallerie / Grail, so know you don’t have any latent cancers), but we don’t have much data to go on in terms of how to optimize the dosing.
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Any sense of how long time period would be needed to do a burst of strength and bone building - say 2 months of extra focus on that per year or every other year or something?
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I do Grail roughly annually and also MRI based cancer screening, etc- but while they - even when layered on top of each other - can catch some of the cancer risk it’s still too early for them to get close to 100%
For me cancer (and to some extend neuro degeneration) is the least controllable main killer (vs cardiovascular and metabolic disease that we basically can control to a very high extent) and hence cancer risk is something where everything that can help me improve the odds are things I’d consider and anything that makes the odds worse I would think two and even three times about before even considering.
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Does that mean you would think twice about HGH? What if you were deficient?
@Neo A good question that I’ll add to my bone health interviews. My initial impression is that bone remodeling is happening all the time just like muscle breakdown and synthesis. So I’d guess that the same physical stimulus (serves both, and the same base health status (gut health, immune health, metabolic health, etc) affects both. Both are reliant on protein consumption with some nutritional differences related to structure. Until I get more information, I’m staying with my 48 hour cycle of high protein (hours 1-24 after weight training, and low protein (hours 25-48 after weight training), and then a 2 week major cycle of rapamycin dose followed by 48-60 hours of very low calorie/ low protein (and no weight lifting).
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You are right that bones are in a state of renewal. Perhaps quite a bit slower than muscle, but that is part of the way the dynamic works.
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