What Does Growth Hormone Have to Do With Weight Loss?

The is definitely a link between your ability to get rid of stubborn fat and your level of human growth hormone or HGH.

Human growth hormone is a very important hormone that is intricately related to your ability to build muscle and burn fat. Therefore if your HGH levels are low, your ability to lose weight and keep it off can be substantially diminished.

To understand how HGH influences weight gain or loss, it is first essential to understand how we gain weight in the first place.

You gain weight when your body stores more fat from the calories you ingest than you burn for energy for your cells. Of course, as you well know, the kinds of foods you eat influence how they are burned or stored, but basically, how well your body burns or stores fat is a question of metabolism.

A slower metabolism occurs when you get older, and your levels of HGH and testosterone drop. Also, as HGH levels get lower and metabolism slows, a condition known as insulin resistance occurs, which also contributes greatly to weight gain. Low levels of HGH slow your metabolism and contribute to increased insulin resistance.

Can the Lack of HGH in My Body Lead to Weight Gain?

Lack of HGH is technically called growth hormone deficiency, or GHD. One of the characteristic symptoms of GHD is being overweight.

GHD is more common in children than it is in adults. In children with GHD, the most obvious and important issue is a failure to reach growth milestones. However, even in children with GHD, obesity is a problem.

Growth hormone deficiency most often is the result of childhood GHD that continues into adulthood. However, GHD in adults can occur even in people who had no HGH issues in their youth. The most common cause of adult-onset or age-related GHD is the normal and steady drop of HGH that occurs as people age. This age-related HGH loss is one of the main reasons that the older you get, the easier it seems to put on weight and the harder it is to take it off.

Obesity is one of the most common signs of age-related growth hormone deficiency. Patients suffering from age-related or adult-onset growth hormone deficiency (GHD) are far more likely to have issues with their weight.

This is because HGH is intricately related to your metabolism and how well your body burns the calories in the foods you eat for energy, or stores them as fat. Patients with GHD have a significantly slower metabolism, which results in more calories being stored as fat than are burned for energy.

This is why people with low HGH put on weight and have more trouble taking it off even while dieting and exercising.

How Does HGH Help to Improve Metabolism?

The main way that HGH helps people to better manage their weight is by raising your metabolism. One of the primary functions of HGH is to help to burn the proteins and fats in the foods you ingest into cellular energy.

HGH also helps you to build more lean muscle. Lean muscle raises your metabolism because even at rest, muscle craves and draws energy from your cells.

Does Growth Hormone Help in Weight Loss?

HGH therapy in and of itself is not a treatment for obesity. However, it is often used as part of an overall medical weight loss program, especially if you have already been diagnosed with age-related hormone decline leading to lower than normal HGH levels.

Because of its ability to help you build muscle and burn fat more efficiently, HGH therapy can be very effective in helping you get rid of stubborn fat, particularly belly fat.

Whether they have started their program with weight loss as a goal or not, almost all of our HGH patients lose weight as one of the primary benefits of growth hormone therapy. And for patients who have come to us with HGH deficiencies and who are obese, the results of adding HGH therapy to their medical weight loss program can be life-changing.

In such patients, growth hormone therapy not only aids in weight loss, but it can also help mitigate many of the dangerous complications that come with morbid obesity, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and an increased risk of heart disease.

In addition to boosting your metabolism, HGH therapy has been found to aid in weight loss in several other ways. One way is that HGH therapy increases the production and release of another hormone critical to maintaining a healthy weight – IGF-1.

Insulin resistance is a common condition in people who are overweight. Insulin resistance can be a precursor to diabetes. Insulin is the driving force of moving sugar from your blood into the cells where it is needed for energy. In people with insulin resistance, your body no longer reacts to the presence of insulin in the blood as it should, and more sugar stays in your bloodstream. By increasing the release of IGF-1, HGH helps to clean some of the excess sugar in the blood and convert it to energy, which is another way that HGH can help you to lose weight.

Again while HGH is not prescribed as a weight loss drug, countless studies have indicated the many benefits it can have in combating obesity and lowering your risk of diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and other complications of excessive weight.

Studies have found that increases in muscle mass by as much as 10% and decreases in total body fat as measured by body mass index of as much as 17%-20% are not uncommon in patients who have completed at least six months of HGH injections.

What Other Hormones Can be Useful for Weight Loss?

HGH is not the only hormone closely related to obesity and weight loss. Men with low testosterone will also find it easier to put on weight and much harder to take it off. This is because, like growth hormone, testosterone is also closely related to your ability to build muscle and to burn fat.

Men with low testosterone tend to be overweight. In particular, they have an excess of belly fat. One of the many benefits of testosterone therapy is weight loss and increased lean muscle.

Testosterone and HGH are not prescribed specifically for weight loss. However, when given together as part of a hormone replacement regimen for men, they can indeed help you to lose weight and get in the best shape of your life by raising your metabolism and increasing your body’s ability to build and maintain lean muscle.

HGH and testosterone injections alone could result in weight loss; however, in order to achieve your weight goals and for the fastest and most long-lasting results, our doctors combine hormone replacement therapy with an overall medical weight loss program that will include fitness and dietary counseling, exercise, behavior modification, and nutritional supplementation.