Stuart Phillips · @mackinprof
23rd May 2017 from TwitLonger
No meaningful effect of GH on anything athletes would care about
Exogenous GH does little for athletic performance, that's what this meta-analysis concludes https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28514721. Of course if you read only the abstract you see things like fat loss, LBM gain, and say woah, what do you mean it doesn't affect athletic performance. It's a great example of why you need to read the paper and not just the abstract. Here are some small (relevant) snippets from the paper:
"Administration of GH in healthy young subjects increases... body weight and [LBM] and decreases fat mass... methods for quantifying lean body mass [DXA] do not reliably distinguish lean solid tissue from fluid mass... GH significantly increases extracellular water volume... and it is likely that fluid retention accounts for a major proportion of the increase in LBM reported in GH studies in healthy subjects."
"Three studies... reported no significant difference in aerobic exercise capacity between GH and placebo assessed by maximum oxygen uptake... there is only one study... evaluating anaerobic exercise capacity. This study... showed a significant increase in anaerobic work capacity assessed by sprint cycle ergometry..."
"One study... reported that GH treatment did not increase biceps... or quadriceps strength... assessed by 1-repetition maximum voluntary strength. Another study... evaluated change in the strength of seven muscle groups and reported no significant difference between GH and placebo... Similarly, one study... showed that neither muscle strength nor maximal explosive power were improved by GH treatment..."
and FTR the loss of body fat on GH was about 1.5kg. GH (alone) doesn't do much (anything) for athletic performance, but in combination (as it is usually used - i.e., with AAS) it 'works' but not much of that effect is GH in my view... besides, who wants to retain water, lose a little fat, and have marginal (at best) gains in any measure of performance?