What can you do about decreasing growth hormone that comes with age?

Sacramento has a growing functional medicine industry that in some cases or sometimes works with a variety of amino acids to help prevent rapid loss of growth hormones as you age. For example, check out Sacramento's Center for Functional & Integrative Medicine. Also see the Sacramento site, Functional Medicine University, and check out one of Sacramento's Holistic Medicine sites. See the reviews for Sacramento on Functional Medicine at the site, Functional Medicine Sacramento.

Functional medicine is defined as personalized medicine that deals with primary prevention and underlying causes instead of symptoms for serious chronic disease. See the site, DirectoryCompHealthcare | Healing Artists of the Sacramento Region. See the Sacramento site, "The Center for Functional and Integrative Medicine."

What causes decreasing lean muscle mass, increasing body fat, increasing waist size, and rising levels of dangerous low-density lipoprotein (LDL)? It's not just aging. It's diminishing pituitary gland function. It's the act of secreting less growth hormone. Sure, growth hormone slows down when you're no longer a growing child. But as an adult, you need some growth hormone for healthy metabolism.

The problem is as you age, for example in men, approximately after the age of 25, growth hormone release declines by 50% every seven years. That's one way to describe the 7-year itch physiologically rather than psychologically. But if you wolf down hormones, it may cause growth where you don't want it. So what do you do? You improve your pituitary function to prevent tissue breakdown.

When tissues breakdown, you lose muscle, gain fat, and your LDL rises. Besides aging, other factors for the problem of not enough growth hormone is lack of sleep and a sedentary lifestyle. You could get stuck in taking growth hormone blockers. Don't do that either.

What can you do? Sometimes choline helps. Sometimes amino acids help. For people without heart disease or conditions, some take a little arginine and ornithine, which are amino acids. The purpose people take these is to preserve lean muscle mass so you can exercise more effectively.

Some people take the amino acids glutamine and glycine. But if you take too much and unbalance your entire metabolism, you'll be, well, out of balance. However, glycine and glutamine in a balanced, normal amount might help to stimulate the release of growth hormone already in your body.

You need to realize growth hormone is secreted at different times during the day, especially during exercise as well as soon as you fall asleep. You could look into various pituitary support foods or even supplements or choline or amino acids such as arginine and ornithine. But beware of arginine if you have had a heart attack or other heart issues. You could look into glutamine and glycine as an optimal pituitary support. But before you take supplements, check out whether you need them in the first place. Are you getting these amino acids from foods? Is it enough?

You don't want to overload on amino acids, either. And if you have diabetes, kidney, or liver disease, you need to ask your doctor or other healthcare practitioner before you take any amino acids that target the pituitary gland. So check out the ways you can help your own body preserve what growth hormones it already makes naturally.