Disclaimer: This is for the purpose of education only. Don’t try to self supplement or self medicate.
How Peptide Dosing Works
Turns out we are indeed very straightforward predictable sacks of biochemicals. Our bodies grow, then plateau, with the same compounds producing a balance of homeostasis as adults that lead to growth as children.
Growth hormone (GH) produces the growth of a child, GH peaking at puberty. After that, GH serves to restore the adult to normal physiology, but, again, GH amounts then drop. There are different isomeric forms of GH produced by the pituitary – depending on what the body needs, thus production stimulated by different things, exercise, starvation, …
Peptides are being supplemented to safely increase both pulsing of GH in the body and growth hormone responsiveness at a cellular level everywhere in the body.
Because GH levels don’t plateau until the third decade of life, then declined steadily, such peptide care should not start until the third decade of life.
So, growth hormone secretion starts dropping about 15% per decade of adult life after age 30. We get muscle mass loss, aerobic capacity declines, and abdominal fat increases.
The drop in GH secretion is from decreased pulse amplitude; there’s very little change in the pulse frequency, remaining 9-10x/day for decades.
GH secretion peaks at 150 µg per kilo per day at puberty, dropping to 25 µg per kilo per day at age 55.
The first amplitude of GH secretion the drops is from the largest pulse of the day, the one that occurs in slow wave sleep right after we go to bed.
This is an important peak for many reasons. Again, it is the largest peak of the day. It is also when most of the repair occurs of the day, at the beginning of sleep.
There are many things that lead to a decrease in GH secretion pulse (not actual pulsing!) with age.
- decreased secretion of growth hormone releasing hormone (GHRH; = ghrelin)
- increased inhibition by somatostatin
- increased sensitivity of somatotrophs to negative feedback inhibition by IGF-1
- decreased pituitary sensitivity to GHRH
