Q: Do human growth hormone pills help strengthen lungs and help get more oxygen to the brain and lungs?
A: Oral—or over-the-counter—human growth hormone (HGH) is as worthless as a car with no windshield and wheels. There's no research to show that the HGH pills are absorbed (studies that show effectiveness are from the placebo effect; 30 percent of the people who take something believe they benefit from it, even if it's a water pill). For actual HGH, there's a debate over its value. It has both risks and benefits, but it seems that it has more risks than benefits. That is, we see growth of all cells—cancer, not just muscle—as well as some bone and cartilage growth (which can promote carpal tunnel syndrome as well as fat loss). Our recommendation: Reduce your arterial aging to get younger, feel better, and have more energy.
Here's how:
- Avoid smoking, and avoid second-hand smoke
- Start walking 10 minutes a day and build about 20 percent more a week—12 min, then 14 min etc.—for three weeks and then 10 percent a week.
- After walking 30 minutes a day for 30 days, continue to walk every day, then get instruction and do weight training
- Learn a stress control technique
- Take the right vitamins—especially folate (800 mcg a day), B6 (8 mg a day) and B12 (800 mcg a day), plus an RDA or DV multivitamin a day without iron
- Talk to your doctor about getting your blood pressure under control through 4 fruits/5 vegetables and 600 mg of calcium and 200 mg of magnesium twice a day or blood pressure-control pills and 400 IU of vitamin D
- Talk to your doc about an aspirin a day (162.5 or 325 mg) with a glass of water (1/2 a glass of warm water before and after)
- Eat 4 fruits/5 vegetable portions a day; and 5 ounces of nuts and 12 ounces of fish—mercury and PCB free fish, like salmon (Atlantic or Alaskan, line-caught), freshwater bass, catfish, flounder/sole, herring, mahi-mahi, tilapia and whitefish—a week.
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