Maintaining healthy levels of Human Growth Hormone (HGH) is important for the body. HGH helps to:
- manage metabolism & body composition (percentage of fat, bone, and muscle)
- stimulate growth and cell regeneration
- boost muscle growth, strength, and exercise performance
- speed up recovery from injury and disease .
HGH also helps to slow the muscle loss / atrophy that occurs with aging, making it vital for the senior population to sustain healthy levels of this hormone.
This decline is what drives the aging process. Since higher levels of HGH help to make you healthier and stronger it is important to work to maintain these levels. To increase your body’s HGH levels:
1. Limit sugar intake which causes insulin to be released into the bloodstream:
- Increased insulin levels are associated with lower HGH levels.
- Refined carbohydrates and sugar raise insulin levels, so reducing their intake may help to optimize HGH levels.
2. Exercise is one of the most effective ways to significantly raise your HGH levels. Diet and lifestyle can significantly affect your HGH levels:
- High intensity exercise increases HGH the most, but all forms of exercise are beneficial.
- Intense exercise boosts the body’s natural production of HGH.
- High intensity interval training increases HGH levels dramatically.
3. Ingesting whey protein or another high quality protein source during recovery (after exercise) helps to increase optimal health & longevity.
4. Avoid fructose (unless engaged in long term, intensive cardio exercise that will burn the sugars), otherwise these sugars will be stored as fat. Fructose:
- Causes weight gain because it turns off the body’s appetite control system.
- Leads to decreased HDL (good cholesterol).
- Leads to increased levels of LDL (bad cholesterol) along with elevated triglycerides, elevated blood sugar and high blood pressure (metabolic syndrome).
- Inhibits fat burning.
- Promotes muscle atrophy (shrinkage/wasting).
Higher levels of HGH make you healthier and stronger. After 30 years of age, HGH levels begin to drop off dramatically. This decline is what drives the aging process, so it is good to exercise to help maintain these levels. Eating and exercising correctly will work to naturally optimize your HGH.
In order to promote the release of HGH after an intense workout be careful what you eat in the 2 to 3 hours following an exercise session:
- Restrict sugar intake post workout.
- Whey protein (or other easily digestible protein) assimilates quickly, going to the muscles to ensure recovery and maximize protein synthesis (within 10-15 min of consuming it).
- This benefit may continue for up to 48 hours after exercising.
Conclusion: Consuming whey protein after a workout will apparently increase muscle and also burn fat – at the same time.
1 to 3 sessions of high intensity exercise per week will help significantly boost HGH production in the body.
Also, consumption of fructose two (2) hours before or after a workout can offset HGH production.
Nancy L. Fitness 