HGH : Human Growth Hormone

Human growth hormones are secreted by our body but why? These hormones are important for our body. Human growth hormones are also known as HGH, these hormones are secreted by pituitary gland. This gland is located in the centre of the brain. This hormone performs some health related functions and also promotes overall growth of body. Supplements for this hormone are available and also people are taking it. This question is in every ones mind if this hormone is already produced by our body then why there is a need of taking its supplements. There is confusion that whether we really need these supplements for some reasons or persons involved in this business are promoting it just to make money.

People take these supplements to stay young or to stop signs of aging, increase in height. At some point of your age you actually need these hormones for further development of your body. The secretion of HGH hormones does not remains constant through out life. At the age of 20 the production of hormone starts reducing and when decreases till the age of 35. At this age our body needs this hormone for many reasons that include health related issues.

The only way of getting Human Growth Hormone (HGH) till the mid 1980s was by extracting the pituitary glands from the cadavers that came mostly from Africa. But later in 1980s it was discovered that the human growth hormone extracted from the cadavers was the reason for causing Creutzfeld-Jacob disease (CJD) which was a rare condition that occurred mostly in the children that had been administered with the cadaver extracted HGH. Thus this form of HGH was pulled off from the market. In 1985, the exact copy of the DNA of the human growth hormone was produced synthetically by the Eli Lily pharmaceutical company in their lab. This leads to the production of the recombinant human growth hormone. But it is a very difficult process to exactly copy the 3D structure of the HGH having 191 amino acids.

But due to advancement in the medicine field, the rHGH is being produced artificially for use as a drug to treat people having a deficiency of the human growth hormone and several other artificial HGH supplements are present as health and fitness supplements. Only the injection form of the HGH is legal and tested but there is a big question on the safety and effectiveness of the other supplements.