The majority of us have gleaned our knowledge of this compound from the world of sports. Athletes have been caught illegally taking these supplements in order to enhance their physical performance in their competitive sport of choice.

It seems every variety of sport – bodybuilding, baseball, cycling, and etctera – has experienced their very own “cheating” scandal. The penalties can be severe, ranging from fines to stripped championships to lifetime bans forbidding the user from ever competing again.

HGH – Beyond the Sports Industry

Discovered by scientists in the 1920s, Human Growth Hormone is a naturally occurring substance produced by your body’s pituitary gland. It is an important part of your body’s healing and recovery process.

Without it, your body would not develop correctly. You would be stunted in height and your bones would not grow properly. HGH aids your muscles in repairing themselves after injuries or intense workouts.

Your body has a built-in gauge that determines whether you need more or less HGH production. Like any complex machine, the human body sometimes breaks down.

Who Needs Human Growth Hormone?

Individuals whose bodies have stopped producing adequate quantities of HGH may require prescribed doses to supplement.

In a study conducted by James Madison University on children diagnosed with Achondroplasia (Pituitary Dwarfism), use of Human Growth Hormone showed an increase in height of seven or more inches over two years. These increases enable more physically capable lives which has a positive impact on overall mental and emotional well-being.

A 1990 study conducted at the Medical College of Wisconsin proved that Human Growth Hormone could benefit people who are long past childhood.

The results, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, detailed research conducted on individuals in their 70s and 80s who received periodic injections of Human Growth Hormone over a six-month period.

The effects were impressive. The subjects showed an apparent reversal of the aging process in all major categories. Loss of belly fat, improved lean muscle mass, better bone density, and increased energy were some of the measurable conclusions.

The control group studied in this test exhibited no signs of the age reversal properties, indicating that Human Growth Hormone is indeed responsible. Studies conducted since then have produced similar results.

Outstanding Potential with Human Growth Hormone

You can’t rush out and buy HGH over the counter because too much of a good thing can be bad for you.

Some of you may remember Andre Roussimoff. He was a professional wrestling star who performed under the ring name of Andre the Giant.

Andre suffered from a condition called Acromegaly (Pituitary Gigantism), caused by excessive production of Human Growth Hormone. By age twelve, Andre stood 6’3” and weighed 240 pounds. At the time of his death at age 46, he was 7’4 and weighed 520 pounds.

Who needs Human Growth Hormone? You can get more information on human growth hormone and How to Live Beyond 100 Years, in my remarkable book. As with many medications and supplements, you should ask yourself why you want it.

Are you a baseball player looking to add another twenty feet to your homeruns? If so, it isn’t the right choice for you.

However, older adults who have consulted their doctor may benefit from the improved strength and flexibility of an HGH supplement.

Consider HGH with Caution

Be advised though, it’s not a permanent solution and you cannot take it forever. Overuse of Human Growth Hormone leads to tumors as well as thickening of the bony plates on the brow, chin, and wrists.

Consult with your doctor. Be open and honest about your current physical condition and what health goals you may have. The thing is: if you don’t take care of yourself and society crumbles, you could face poverty or worse. You need to stay fit and active; healthy, in other words.

Sold on the Internet in a formulation called “Liquid Trust,” the peptide hormone is marketed as a romance enhancer. Australian therapists are trying it alongside counseling for couples with ailing marriages. And police and military forces reportedly are interested in its potential to elicit cooperation from crime suspects or enemy agents.

With around 40 clinical trials under way using oxytocin to treat conditions such as autism and schizophrenia, there is a lot of optimism that the hormone could help people by boosting trust and reducing social anxiety.

But it’s emerging that this wonder hormone is not nearly as simple and friendly as people have tried to portray it.

True, there have been lots of positive studies. Thousands in fact, including the now-famous study that showed oxytocin helps to cement the bonds between prairie voles, which mate for life. It also triggers the motherly behaviour that sheep show towards their newborn lambs and is also released in humans during childbirth, strengthening the attachment between mother and baby.

Its reputation grew after a groundbreaking experiment published in 2005, in which Heinrichs and colleagues asked volunteers to play a game in which they could invest money with an anonymous trustee, who was not guaranteed to be honest. The team found that participants who had sniffed oxytocin via a nasal spray beforehand invested more money than those given a placebo (Nature, vol 435, p 673).

Many subsequent studies, involving groups of volunteers being given either oxytocin or a placebo and then carrying out a task to test their social skills, showed that people donate more money to charity, become better at reading emotions on other people’s faces, communicate more constructively during arguments, and perceive others to be more trustworthy, attractive and approachable. Together, the results fuelled the view that oxytocin universally enhances the positive aspects of our social nature.

But alert scientists have noticed major cracks in the image. It’s not that previous results were not “true”, as such. But it emerges that oxytocin is context dependent. If you are a friendly, sociable person, you’ll be more so with oxytocin.

But if you are socially inept, judgmental, jealous, anxious or inclined to sneer at others, it may make you worse! It may be the last thing to give autistic kids!

Simone Shamay-Tsoory at the University of Haifa, Israel, showed that as well as promoting trust and generosity, oxytocin can heighten feelings of envy and schadenfreude (Journal of Biological Psychiatry, vol 66, p 864).

Schadenfreude is the posh word for that nasty human trait of enjoying other peoples’ dismay. They get upset; you laugh (behind their backs, of course).

When volunteers played a gambling game, those who inhaled the hormone gloated more when they beat other players. They also felt sharper stabs of jealousy when the tables were turned. Clearly, oxytocin can produce antisocial as well as social behaviour.

Moreover, Jennifer Bartz from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, found that it only improves people’s ability to read emotions, if they are not very socially adept to begin with (Psychological Science, vol 21, p 1426).

Bartz and her team also showed oxytocin actually reduces trust and cooperation in people who are particularly anxious or sensitive to rejection (Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, vol 6, p 556).

It also gives people fonder recollections of their mothers, but only if they are secure in their personal relationships. If they are socially anxious, oxytocin makes them remember their mums as being less caring and more distant (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 107, p 21371).

Fathers too, I expect. I wonder if that is behind false memory syndrome and women denouncing their fathers, claiming they had been abused (women who were severely dysfunctional to start with).

There is a cultural context too. Carsten de Dreu at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands discovered that oxytocin-sniffers show more trust and cooperation towards their compatriots, but not people of other nationalities (Science, vol 328, p 1408). De Dreu says that oxytocin promotes a “tend and defend” response, one that drives people to care for those in their social circles and protect them from outside dangers. “It’s what we call the mama-bear effect,” he says. So, rather than promoting blanket goodwill, oxytocin strengthens biases.

Far from being simple, oxytocin is emerging as a very complex substance. It’s mediated through a protein found throughout the nervous and reproductive systems, which is coded by the so-called OXTR gene,

A change in one of the gene’s DNA letters, from A to G, makes people more socially sensitive. G-carriers tend to be more empathetic and less lonely. They are also more likely to turn to their friends in times of trouble, but only if they live in a culture where it is customary to seek companionship when distressed.

There were signs of these subtleties from the start. Jennifer Bartz has recently pointed out that in almost half the existing studies, oxytocin held sway only over certain individuals or in particular circumstances; it’s just that these nuances were overlooked in the general enthusiasm to find every possible good in this molecule (Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol 15, p 301).

Now the tendency is shifting towards new directions, in which the dark side is more closely observed, since it clearly exists.

Perhaps we should not be surprised that the oxytocin story has got more complicated. It promotes lactation and uterine contractions; sexual activity, penile erection and ejaculation; as well as social bonding and other factors. The hormone is found in everything from octopuses to sheep, and its evolutionary roots stretch back half a billion years.

We are come lately to the party and its effects on the human brain are bound to be varied and somewhat extraordinary. Maybe there is a bit of the primitive in all of us?