Many of you have asked about the so-called oral growth hormone (GH) boosters, ProhGH (Symbiotropin), and Regenesis. The advertisements for these products typically have a doctor or several doctors endorsing them, and this makes the product appear to be quite credible. Do these products work or are they just more rip-off jive?

Pro-hGH

Karlis Ullis, M.D., who practices anti-aging medicine, and prescribes hormones for age-related hormone deficiencies, investigated ProhGH, and found no increase in IGF-1, the measurement used to check GH activity, in 6 males, aged 55-72 after 1-2 months. He notes that ProhGH contains anterior pituitary tissue from pigs, and he (and I) recommend against eating animal brain tissue, as it has the potential to contain biologically active elements, and it may produce immune reactions. Not something anyone should fool with. While some people say ProhGH makes them feel better, this might be caused by the l-dopa in the fava beans (vicia faba) it contains - not increased GH. Of course, maybe it's just the placebo effect.

Regenesis

Dr. Ullis said that adding up the amount of GH that's supposed to be in Regenesis, doesn't add up. If it contains 50 ng. of GH per spray, and "even if it were to miraculously be absorbed (or even exist) it wouldn't come close to affecting the normal GH blood content, which is 10 ng. or more per ml. The blood is about 5 liters, which equals 5,000 ml. At 10 ng. per ml., our low end equals 50,000 ng. of circulating GH. At night we may have 125,000 ng. secreted. If you divide 50 ng. by 50,000 and 125,000 you get .001 to .0025 of the body's normal amount. Conclusion: it's foolish to expect results by adding between .001 to .0025 of the body's normal amount of GH to the total body pool. This is a "scam."

Final note: Merck recently dropped the oral GH booster MK-0677 because it wasn't effective enough to market, so why would these OTC products be any better? The answer is -- they're not.