Something that I had never believed was possible was to increase a person’s potential final height by ingesting any type of amino acids. However this study I found seems to suggest such an idea.
Med Hypotheses. 2001 May;56(5):610-3.
Parr TB
Source
Department of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA. tyParr@compuserve.com
Abstract
A new technique for controllable elevation of night time growth hormone (GH) release in adult humans involves a synergy between oral intake of the naturally occurring compounds acetyl-L-carnitine (500 mg) and L-ornithine (25-100 mg) taken at night time sleep after a 3 to 4 hour fast. The set point for normal hypothalamic GH release appears to include a ‘whole body’ mitochondrial State 3 status ‘feed back loop’ controlled by systemic acetyl- L-carnitine levels.
Copyright 2001 Harcourt Publishers Ltd.
Analysis: The interesting thing about this PubMed published paper is that it is written in a Medical Journal or magazine which seems to be just theory and guesses, not based on real experiments and data.
From the website for the Medical Hypotheses magazine…
‘Medical Hypotheses will publish papers which describe theories, ideas which have a great deal of observational support and some hypotheses where experimental support is yet fragmentary’. (Horrobin DF, 1975 Ideas in Biomedical Science: Reasons for the foundation of Medical Hypotheses. Medical Hypotheses Volume 1, Issue 1, January-February 1975, Pages 1-2.). Medical Hypotheses was therefore launched, and still exists today, to give novel, radical new ideas and speculations in medicine open-minded consideration, opening the field to radical hypotheses which would be rejected by most conventional journals. Papers in Medical Hypotheses take a standard scientific form in terms of style, structure and referencing. The journal therefore constitutes a bridge between cutting-edge theory and the mainstream of medical and scientific communication, which ideas must eventually enter if they are to be critiqued and tested against observations.
Analysis Continued: I checked the author of the paper and it seems that he/she has written other posts before so it is not just some person who ic a complete kook.
I wanted to look for references and other studies that might validate or disprove this person’s hypothesis but some results I did find were very interesting.
So I typed in the article name “A new technique to elevate night time growth hormone release and a potential growth hormone feedback control loop.” into google to see what it would give me. One of the results I got was from a Medical Textbook named “Amino Acids and Proteins for the Athlete: The Anabolic Edge, Second Edition (Ball) BY Mauro G. Di Pasquale”
The article is cited on page 422, and I have clipped the page. It would seem that it is not just the acetyl L-carnitine and the L-orthonine but a few other common supplements that we can get over the counter which have growth hormone stimulating abilities.
Reference #11 shows that the Acetyl L Carnitine can increase IGF-1.
There is also something called Alpha-glycerylphosphorylecholine used to increase the GH response to GHRH
There is another compound known as cytidine 5-diphosphocholine
The most interesting one is reference #126 which states that “molatonin stimulates growth hormone secretion through pathways other than the growth hormone-releasing hormone. So what does this mean?
The growth hormone-releasing hormone is also known as GHRH, which is created by the hypothalamus, not the pituitary gland. This is the hormone that usually triggers the anterior part of the pituitary gland to release somatropins and somatostatins which act as a feedback loop system to control hormone releasing rates.
It would seem that melatonin has been able to cause the release of the pituitary growth hormones in another way besides triggering the GHRH.
So to wrap up, there seems to be at least 5 compounds we have discovered in this recent finding which can potentially lead to increased GH release leading to height increase in people with open growth plates. They are…
- Acetyl-L-Cartinine
- L-Ornithine
- Melatonin
- Alpha-glycerylphosphorylecholine
- Cytidine 5-diphosphocholine
The original author of the paper suggests that one should take the supplements on an empty stomach after fasting for 3-4 hours right before going to sleep.
This is interesting I had always known about melatonin but it had only done so much. As a 17 year old boy I’m assuming by growth plates are open. That being said would there be any harm in taking all five supplements before bed? I’d really like to here your take on it, even if this is all based on theory.