Here’s the deal, anyone who spends any amount of time in a gym will very quickly learn that the culture is extremely clever in finding ways to stack different drugs in an effort to improve performance. There are a lot of “gym culture” trials going on, supported by the local doctor who also happens to lift at the gym.

Bottom line..HGH DOES work, for many people when combined with testosterone and or other steroids and the guys in the gym have figured out the formula and passed it on to the trainers and the trainers to the athletes.

All these formal studies are flawed because no one in the gym uses only one product..it’s all about stacking, cycling, new workout routines, etc.

Your best source is not the intellectual in the sterile setting but the people in the gym..just look at them.

First: what does tobacco have to do with baseball? The days of players with big wads of “chaw” bulging from their cheeks are 20+ years gone. And even if chewing tobacco is your issue, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that well over 75% of those who die from tobacco are smokers, not chewers.

Second: 170,000 people die from alcohol per year, out of how many that drink alcohol? Hundreds of millions, I’ll guess? Do hundreds of millions of people take steroids? Maybe if you came up with solid PERCENTAGES of the user:death ratio it would be a stronger case.

Third: Alcohol is legal to drink for those 21 and older. Taking steroids without a prescription is illegal.

One of the reasons alcohol is legal is because when consumed in moderation, it will not do damage to a healthy human body (the other reason is to collect taxes). However, with steroids there is a risk of damage when taken in any capacity.

Oh, and last I checked, drinking a glass of wine with dinner doesn’t increase muscle mass or help you hit homeruns. But then, I guess cheating, breaking the law, and ethical standards are not issues to consider when raising children.

The testosterone is detectable by tests. If there’s no benefit without the steroids, then testing for steroids should be adequate to ensure the “integrity” of sports. At least, to as great a degree as practical — there will always be ways to escape detection if one is dedicated to doing so.

There seems to be some reason to believe that HGH cannot improve athletic performance on its own. Catch the steroid users, and you’ve caught everyone who might benefit from HGH. Therefore, HGH need not be a concern to the testing agencies.

Thanks for the post, JC.

That assumption is patently ridiculous, and indicative of the white-tower mentality that has hampered educational efforts in this area. Why assume, why not get out into reality and find out how out of touch with reality these assumptions really are?

The conclusion many are left with is that HGH does have synergistic effects with testosterone/ steroids, and the absence of research is indicative of the fact that researchers don’t want to document this fact and risk being viewed as proponents of drug abuse.

I don’t suggest these studies are wrong or flawed, but they appear irrelevant (I hope I am mistaken), or at least a large segment of the community of people using HGH regards them as such.

And that’s the rub: if HGH is ineffective, IMO the scientific community has an obligation to communicate this information to those who can benefit the most from this information (those using/abusing HGH) it in a fashion that resonates credibility.

The problem is this community knows HGH does not provide hypertrophy (growth in cellular size). That is not why they are using it. Its common knowledge you’d be a moron to just use HGH.

HGH is almost always stacked with a steroid and/or testosterone. The theory behind the use of HGH as a PED (I dunno if its valid or not) is that the HGH provides the hyperplasia (or increase in the number of cells), while the steroid and or testosterone cycle that is stacked with HGH provides the hypertrophy (or growth in cellular size and perhaps increases in cellular maturity).

In simple terms, the theory behind stacking is that HGH creates new, immature cells (hyperplasia), while the steroids/testosterone provides the growth of the cells (hypertrophy). In essence, HGH creates more cells for the steroids/testosterone to “inflate” than there would be absent HGH.

I have no idea if this is scientifically credible, but its what you hear from any HGH proponent in regards to refuting this information.

I hope my understanding of the scientific studies is mistaken, but it appears these studies are irrelevant to the question at hand, which is HGH’s efficacy as a PED. To answer this question, don’t you have to study how HGH is actually being used/abused?

Even if I am mistaken and the synergistic effects of HGH when stacked with steroids/testosterone have been found to be non-existent in studies, the scientific community has done an exceptionally poor job of presenting this information in a meaningful fashion.

As far as I can tell, the “scientific proof” you have presented will continue to resonate as silly to those with knowledge of how HGH is actually used.

I hope my tone is not too harsh, I only wish to call attention to this (ostensibly) egregiously glaring hole in your article.

I only hope someone can point me to scientific evidence that can be used to refute the stacking theory, as there seems to be little dispute that HGH is bad for people, but the way to get them to stop using it is not to point out the downside risk (often minimized and ignored by user/abusers), but to make clear the pointlessness of the endeavor.