It's the most prominent "open secret" in professional sports. Anyone
who watches pro sports or participates in sports at the college or
advanced prep-school level can see the signs everywhere. Certainly,
it's no secret among the pro athletes themselves.
Across the board, in every sport, athletes are bigger, faster, stronger
than they were 20, even 10 years ago. They have greater endurance.
Their careers last longer. Athletes who retired in the 1980's can only
look on in bewilderment as the performance benchmarks they established
in their primes are blown away by a new generation of "super athletes."
Shortstops and second basemen hit tape-measure home runs.
Two-hundred-eighty-pound defensive linemen run 40-yard dashes in 4.4
seconds. Careers are extended to the point where the all-time baseball
record book has been completely rewritten from top to bottom in the
last decade.
What's it all about? In three words:
performance enhancing drugs.
When we speak of
performance enhancers, we're talking mostly about
steroids
and human growth hormone. In the last couple of years, methods for
detecting steroids have grown much more sophisticated. These roadblocks
have made it more difficult and potentially costly career-wise for
athletes to engage in steroid use. But in another area, that of
human growth hormone enhancement,
the blood testing protocols are in their infancy and barely exist at
all. And so players, because the competition is so incredibly fierce at
the pro level, take advantage of the existing technologies.
We'll take a look at some of those technologies, both exogenous
growth hormone therapy (injections) and
secretagogues
(supplemental methods of boosting one's own GH secretion), including
ProSource's own best-selling product in that second category,
DopaTech-HGH. But first, let's take a look at the science.
Your body's master hormone for support of youthfulness, vitality, strength, and elevated physical performance
Growth hormone, produced by the anterior lobe of the
pituitary gland, is a powerful factor that promotes cellular growth and
suppresses cell death, while increasing protein synthesis, plasma
glucose, and calcium levels. As such, it is closely associated with the
key processes that form the foundations of youthful strength, vitality,
and rejuvenation. When we're very young, we produce growth hormone in
abundance. But GH secretion declines after age 20, and drops off
steeply as we age, until it flat-lines after age 60 or so. As GH
production ebbs, the symptoms of aging (decreased vigor, reduced
endurance, diminished capacity for cellular repair and recovery after
exercise) advance. Clearly, you don't have to be a scientist to
recognize that
GH plays a major role in athletic performance, over both the short- and long-term.
While there really is no dispute in scientific circles about the many
physical benefits that spring from abundant bodily levels of growth
hormone, there is some difference of opinion about the best way to go
about attaining and maintaining those levels of GH.
Most experts who have studied or administered growth hormone therapy (that is,
growth hormone enhancement via a series of injections) agree that the positive benefits of such a regimen have a short duration.
Dr. Carlon Colker,
a bodybuilding and physical therapy consultant who has spent decades
observing the effects of growth hormone on professional bodybuilders,
says that, in his experience, "In order to gain any real strength or
size advantage, you'd have to take the shots daily over a lifetime.
That's more than anybody is really willing to do."
Add to this the fact that exogenous growth hormone therapy is very
expensive (often $1,000 a month or more for injections), and that it
artificially introduces more hormones into the body which may, in turn,
disturb the body's own homeostasis for hormone production, and it
becomes evident that a regimen of growth hormone injections has
significant drawbacks. Fortunately, other strategies for growth hormone
augmentation exist.
Macuna Pruriens, L-Dopa, and Growth Hormone
While one branch of science has pursued GH maximization
through the introduction of artificial hormones, another has been
dedicated to the augmentation of the body's own
GH secretion through the utilization of naturally occurring precursors. Central to this second strategy is a potent naturally occurring compound called
L-dopa or
Levodopa (3,4-dihydroxy-L-phenylalanine),
found in plants such as Macuna pruriens (or Velvet bean). L-dopa has
been studied in both traditional Indian Ayurvedic as well as modern
western medical systems for a variety of therapies. As a result of this
research, it was discovered that
L-dopa influences growth hormone (GH) output in humans during various clinical studies.
At least four studies discuss
L-dopa stimulating growth hormone in humans.
One study found that just a "500 mg oral dose caused a significant
increase in plasma GH levels in normal subjects"(1). The three other
studies all indicated L-dopa induced increases in GH levels to varying
degrees (2, 3, 4).
Many people are surprised to discover the
significant volume of published research that documents effective
supplemental means of supporting GH production. In another recent
clinical study, a unique botanical extract of Macuna pruriens,
standardized for 15% L-dopa was linked to elevation of GH levels from
one nanogram to 21 nanograms in just 90 minutes. Another study showed
that Macuna pruriens exerts powerful antioxidant effects, specifically
that it has an anti-lipid peroxidation property, which is mediated
through the removal of superoxides and hydroxyl radicals. Increased
L-dopa supplementation,
the cornerstone of secretagogue technology, can also be beneficial in
stimulating muscle growth through amino acid sparing and promotion of
amino acid transport into muscle cells.
Obviously, these are all beneficial physical outcomes for high-level
professional and amateur athletes. At the same time, natural (or
secretagogue) methods of boosting GH production have a pronounced
additional advantage in that they are entirely legal and do not subject
athletes to the risk of being penalized or banned by the administrative
agencies of their sports.
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Choosing a GH support supplement
Not surprisingly, the
GH support supplements
on the market today vary greatly in quality and efficacy. When choosing
a product in this category, you want to look for one that contains the
highest-quality ingredients, most specifically a
potent extract of Macuna pruriens, typically standardized for the same 15% L-dopa cited in the studies above.
ProSource's own DopaTech-HGH and
DopaLean-GH
, contains exactly such a dose, standardized to provide 300 mg of this powerful neurotransmitter.
In direct response to the media frenzy centered around performance
enhancing drugs in pro sports, we've seen a great escalation of
interest in secretagogues generally, and in
DopaTech-HGH
specifically. As orders for it have increased, we've been getting a
significant amount of positive feedback regarding Dopa-Tech's efficacy
and the results it delivers. As a consequence, DopaTech-HGH has one of
the highest reorder rates for any product of its kind.
Clearly, the science of GH support and maximization is here to stay,
regardless of the current media controversy. In fact, ridiculous media
demonization aside, GH research is a critical branch of scientific
inquiry devoted to the betterment of human life. Whatever supplemental
means you might be considering in order to keep pace with athletes who
are utilizing GH enhancements, a basic knowledge of GH science is a
must.
1.) Chihara K, et. al. L-dopa stimulates release of
hypothalamic growth hormone-releasing hormone in humans. J Clin
Endocrinol Metab. 1986 Mar;62(3):466-73.
2.) Garcia-Borreguero D, et. al. Circadian variation in neuroendocrine
response to L-dopa in patients with restless legs syndrome. Sleep. 2004
Jun 15;27(4):669-73.
3.) Lal S, et. al. Comparison of the effect of apomorphine and L-DOPA
on serum growth hormone levels in normal men. Clin Endocrinol (Oxf).
1975 May;4(3):277-85.
4.) Mims RB, et. al. Inhibition of L-dopa-induced growth hormone
stimulation by pyridoxine and chlorpromazine. J Clin Endocrinol Metab.
1975 Feb;40(2):256-9.
