The goal: to discover how much of my current condition can be reversed, repaired or otherwise corrected by enhancing levels of growth hormone (GH) and / or insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1).
The disclaimer: I talk about challenges & difficulties in here, some of it alluded to in other threads - not to weep in public, but to inform the reader of real stuff impacting this effort. None of this makes me special - it makes me ordinary: everyone struggles, so everyone understands how it can get. Without this element, the value of this effort will be lessened. Please bear with me - I promise not to cry!
The SYMPTOMS
For starters, listed below are the indicators offered by RedBaron of ‘Growth Hormone Deficiency Syndrome’:
· Increase in fat.
· Decrease in muscle and lean body structures.
· Decreased skin texture resulting in a less youthful appearance.
· Decreased bone density, onset of osteoporosis.
· Decreased brain function, loss of intellect with aging.
· Decreased sex drive.
· Decrease in overall physical and mental well being.
· Increase in sleep disorders, lower quality of sleep.
· Depression and fatigue.
...all of which I have been wrestling with (since '88, in spades) (’cept for the bone density?). I would add connective-tissue disorders such as arthritis & tendo-ligamentous issues, damaged cartilage, severe joint pain, tinnitus, masses of floaters in my eyes, carpal-tunnel syndrome, thinning hair & loss of color, cataracts, and frequent illnesses & infections (which I’ve been slow to recover from). What with one thing and another, I’ve been struggling upstream, it seems, for 15 years...and have aged 25 years in the process: at 35, I looked & felt 25; at 40, I looked & felt 30; at 54, I look and feel 65.
In short, I feel freakin’ O-L-D!!! And I have felt so since shortly after my daughter was born (that’s gettin close to 18 years): my shoulder has been all but un-rehabilitatable, one of my hips is starting to act up, my football-injured knees are painful when standing, sitting & taking stairs, I’m developing pinched disks & nerves, my thought processes are cloudy (for me), I never feel rested no matter how much sleep I get, and every day I go to bed with a longer to-do list than I woke up with; every day it’s harder and more painful and less rewarding to keep going & keep up.
One element I can't leave out is that these "symptoms" are not just a list of unrelated items: they are interwoven, making it virtually impossible for me to make much headway in any one area: I've tried a dozen or more different strategies, I've combines strategies, I made progress, for a time, in one area or another but could only progress so far. Grudgingly, I had to acknowledge that I was not able to effect sufficient change to turn things around; at that point, I began to research anabolics in an effort to at least injury-proof my shoulder; I was still convinced that if I could lift without pain, re-injury & the inevitable layoffs, I could rebuild. Studying anabolics led me to HRT, I began to look into the hormonal aspects, and that led me to GH, as the only single factor whose absence could account for so many of my issues.
The FACTORS
The key factors seem to be chronic high stress at home & at work, and depression, beginning w/ the breakdown of my first marriage & the resulting financial disaster, continuing through turning 40 & the subsequent deaths of my parents (all but my mother's death happened within 6 months). I had always been strong, resilient, cheerful - and had the constitution of a horse: a cold once a year maybe, but otherwise always healthy & positive. First my marriage broke down then my diet broke down, then my sleep (the baby helped with that); got bitter, resentful, angry, depressed, fat & unhealthy, in that order; after 3 years of that, wife left, took the one child, the one car, the one bank account, started screwing my "friends", then I turned 40, then my dad died. I've been depressed - and my health has been deteriorating - ever since.
All this led to an ultimate low point, right around my 54th birthday; in the absence of my daughter, away at school, and the absence of my wife, now gone for more than a year, I was consumed by self-hatred and a HUGE unwillingness to continue to live in the life I'd made for myself - I stopped caring about anything, even living.
Since that’s a mighty sucky way to go thru life (specially as I by rights should have another 25-40 years of active vigorous health ahead of me), I knew I had to change everything if I was going to live long enough to see my daughter graduate from college, see her happily married, see in her the miracle of a parent's love for her own child.
A complete renovation is immediately called-for! Gut it & rebuild it, all new everything on the inside!
Simply getting real improvement, real healing in my joints would break the blockade: then I could lift without reactivating old injuries, regain my strength and endurance & get on with the “doing” part of life.
The reason for going into so much detail is to look at the events and conditions that led to the overall suppression I believe I've been laboring under so long; in doing so, I want to make a case for premature suppression of GH in my situation, induced by factors other than age itself. if I can achieve a real turn-around in my health, my injury-prone state, my overall fitness and resilience, my state of mind and my ongoing hormonal balance, I think it will be a strong argument for the use of GHS/GHRP-6 in reversing premature, or 'shock-induced' symptoms of aging. Too bad I have neither the funds nor the lab-cred to undertake this as a properly sanctified research project!
So, I do it for me, so I can have a life I can stand to live in.
I do it for my daughter, who wants so much for her children to know their grandpa.
I do it because I just no damn good at giving up.
The mechanism will be GHRP-6, a synthetic peptide that stimulates the release of GHRH - growth-hormone-releasing hormone, the body’s GH trigger. I will be taking this in 3 forms:
- as d-lysate-3 GHRP-6, which reduces the impact of a GH co-factor, ghrelin (ghrelin not only stimulates appetite, it also stimulates GH release) by antagonising the GHS receptors in the stomach
- as GHRP-6 itself
- as hexarelin, a GHRP-6 ‘superanalog’ with some fascinating properties, most particularly including the reported ability to normalise long-term GH production and secretion (ie, beyond termination of hexarelin).
I will be taking these in the form of products by IBE: Ectotropin (100mcg d-lysate-3 GHRP-6), and Hexatropin (100mcg GHRP-6 & 100mcg hexarelin)
The disclaimer: I talk about challenges & difficulties in here, some of it alluded to in other threads - not to weep in public, but to inform the reader of real stuff impacting this effort. None of this makes me special - it makes me ordinary: everyone struggles, so everyone understands how it can get. Without this element, the value of this effort will be lessened. Please bear with me - I promise not to cry!
The SYMPTOMS
For starters, listed below are the indicators offered by RedBaron of ‘Growth Hormone Deficiency Syndrome’:
· Increase in fat.
· Decrease in muscle and lean body structures.
· Decreased skin texture resulting in a less youthful appearance.
· Decreased bone density, onset of osteoporosis.
· Decreased brain function, loss of intellect with aging.
· Decreased sex drive.
· Decrease in overall physical and mental well being.
· Increase in sleep disorders, lower quality of sleep.
· Depression and fatigue.
...all of which I have been wrestling with (since '88, in spades) (’cept for the bone density?). I would add connective-tissue disorders such as arthritis & tendo-ligamentous issues, damaged cartilage, severe joint pain, tinnitus, masses of floaters in my eyes, carpal-tunnel syndrome, thinning hair & loss of color, cataracts, and frequent illnesses & infections (which I’ve been slow to recover from). What with one thing and another, I’ve been struggling upstream, it seems, for 15 years...and have aged 25 years in the process: at 35, I looked & felt 25; at 40, I looked & felt 30; at 54, I look and feel 65.
In short, I feel freakin’ O-L-D!!! And I have felt so since shortly after my daughter was born (that’s gettin close to 18 years): my shoulder has been all but un-rehabilitatable, one of my hips is starting to act up, my football-injured knees are painful when standing, sitting & taking stairs, I’m developing pinched disks & nerves, my thought processes are cloudy (for me), I never feel rested no matter how much sleep I get, and every day I go to bed with a longer to-do list than I woke up with; every day it’s harder and more painful and less rewarding to keep going & keep up.
One element I can't leave out is that these "symptoms" are not just a list of unrelated items: they are interwoven, making it virtually impossible for me to make much headway in any one area: I've tried a dozen or more different strategies, I've combines strategies, I made progress, for a time, in one area or another but could only progress so far. Grudgingly, I had to acknowledge that I was not able to effect sufficient change to turn things around; at that point, I began to research anabolics in an effort to at least injury-proof my shoulder; I was still convinced that if I could lift without pain, re-injury & the inevitable layoffs, I could rebuild. Studying anabolics led me to HRT, I began to look into the hormonal aspects, and that led me to GH, as the only single factor whose absence could account for so many of my issues.
The FACTORS
The key factors seem to be chronic high stress at home & at work, and depression, beginning w/ the breakdown of my first marriage & the resulting financial disaster, continuing through turning 40 & the subsequent deaths of my parents (all but my mother's death happened within 6 months). I had always been strong, resilient, cheerful - and had the constitution of a horse: a cold once a year maybe, but otherwise always healthy & positive. First my marriage broke down then my diet broke down, then my sleep (the baby helped with that); got bitter, resentful, angry, depressed, fat & unhealthy, in that order; after 3 years of that, wife left, took the one child, the one car, the one bank account, started screwing my "friends", then I turned 40, then my dad died. I've been depressed - and my health has been deteriorating - ever since.
All this led to an ultimate low point, right around my 54th birthday; in the absence of my daughter, away at school, and the absence of my wife, now gone for more than a year, I was consumed by self-hatred and a HUGE unwillingness to continue to live in the life I'd made for myself - I stopped caring about anything, even living.
Since that’s a mighty sucky way to go thru life (specially as I by rights should have another 25-40 years of active vigorous health ahead of me), I knew I had to change everything if I was going to live long enough to see my daughter graduate from college, see her happily married, see in her the miracle of a parent's love for her own child.
A complete renovation is immediately called-for! Gut it & rebuild it, all new everything on the inside!
Simply getting real improvement, real healing in my joints would break the blockade: then I could lift without reactivating old injuries, regain my strength and endurance & get on with the “doing” part of life.
The reason for going into so much detail is to look at the events and conditions that led to the overall suppression I believe I've been laboring under so long; in doing so, I want to make a case for premature suppression of GH in my situation, induced by factors other than age itself. if I can achieve a real turn-around in my health, my injury-prone state, my overall fitness and resilience, my state of mind and my ongoing hormonal balance, I think it will be a strong argument for the use of GHS/GHRP-6 in reversing premature, or 'shock-induced' symptoms of aging. Too bad I have neither the funds nor the lab-cred to undertake this as a properly sanctified research project!
So, I do it for me, so I can have a life I can stand to live in.
I do it for my daughter, who wants so much for her children to know their grandpa.
I do it because I just no damn good at giving up.
The mechanism will be GHRP-6, a synthetic peptide that stimulates the release of GHRH - growth-hormone-releasing hormone, the body’s GH trigger. I will be taking this in 3 forms:
- as d-lysate-3 GHRP-6, which reduces the impact of a GH co-factor, ghrelin (ghrelin not only stimulates appetite, it also stimulates GH release) by antagonising the GHS receptors in the stomach
- as GHRP-6 itself
- as hexarelin, a GHRP-6 ‘superanalog’ with some fascinating properties, most particularly including the reported ability to normalise long-term GH production and secretion (ie, beyond termination of hexarelin).
I will be taking these in the form of products by IBE: Ectotropin (100mcg d-lysate-3 GHRP-6), and Hexatropin (100mcg GHRP-6 & 100mcg hexarelin)