What's up athletes!Tthis is Dr. Jason Barker with the Natural Athlete's Clinic
and today we're going to talk about growth hormone. Very very important
hormone in our bodies. We make a lot of it when we're young to help us grow into
adults and when we become adults it's more scarce. So it does three main things
that are really important and one is it helps keep your metabolism efficient so
that you can burn energy instead of storing it as fat. It also is important
for body composition again maintaining the balance between fat and muscle
tissue. We lose muscle as we age and we gain fat more readily that way and then
of course tissue repair. That's a big one as we age because if you get injured or
you get sick having adequate amounts of growth hormone is gonna help you heal so
you can stay in the game. Okay so what are some ways that we can maintain
and support our own growth hormone production as we age? Because by the way
we lose about fifty percent of that growth hormone every seven years so
declines pretty rapidly throughout adulthood. So the first thing you can do
is get rid of belly fat. Okay if you have belly fat that's a sign and
a symptom of inefficient metabolism and it actually blocks the release of growth
hormone. So we're working on getting rid of that belly fat and of course excess fat.
Overall you're gonna have a lot more success producing your own natural
growth hormone in your body. A second thing that's really important is
avoiding sugar. So this goes along with losing the belly fat but sugar is the
enemy of growth hormone. When we eat sugar we release the hormone insulin. Insulin is a
storage hormone and also absolutely cuts off and blunts that release of growth
hormone. So if you're eating a lot of sugar or a high glycemic diet - you know
foods that turn into sugar more rapidly: breads, pastas, bagels, cookies, crackers,
white rice, stuff like that, you're really gonna short-circuit how much growth
hormone you produce. So now I'm not saying you can't ever have anything
sweet or never have like a an energy bar while you're training - this is over the
long-term, a higher glycemic diet, high sugar diet is going to blunt that growth
hormone production. So a supplement you can use is one is called arginine
which is an amino acid. So arginine is great at releasing hormone or growth
hormone while we're sleeping. So in speaking of sleep, most of our growth
hormone is actually released while we're sleeping most of it also being before
midnight. I've spoken about this before, the
golden hours of sleep are between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. if you're going to
bed at midnight or later, you're really missing out on a great opportunity to
make that growth hormone. So again if your sleep is poor or you have insomnia,
you're not gonna be able to make as much growth hormone so luckily though
there's a couple of other things we can use to help you sleep better and help
produce that growth hormone. One of those is GABA which is
gamma-aminobutyric acid and that's actually a naturally occurring naturally
occurring inhibitory neurotransmitter in your brain and we can take it as a
supplement. And of course it helps relax you so that you can fall asleep. And then
the studies have shown that it'll actually boost that growth hormone
production while you're sleeping. Okay another one you can use is melatonin.
Good old melatonin has been around for forever. It's a great sleep aid for most
of us. Also we've also have seen studies that when we take melatonin at
bedtime it'll help release that growth hormone. So you're seeing a pattern here
- things that help you sleep also help produce that growth hormone at night so
that's pretty cool. Now of course the most important thing
you can do to maintain your growth hormone production as you age is getting
exercise. Okay so all exercise helps boost growth hormone production. But the
best one is high-intensity interval training. When we exercise closer to our
lactate threshold that's actually when we make the most growth hormone.So think
about incorporating some kind of high-intensity interval training in your
workout regimen to get the best effect on producing
your own growth hormone. Now last supplement that you can use is one
called ornithine that's an amino acid. Also studies show taking at bedtime
helps raise that growth hormone. And of course we have growth hormone support
which is a combination of that ornithine and arginine. You can take those once,
take those together, you can take it with a melatonin - you'll have very very sweet
dreams. You'll also be rocking the growth hormone at night while you're sleeping
getting a lot of work done so pretty cool. I hope all of these help you
guys out. If you enjoyed this video please give it a like. If you have not
subscribed to the channel yet please do subscribe. And of course please share
this video with any of your endurance buddies especially Masters athletes. We
need that growth hormone again because remember you need it for tissue repair,
you need it for body composition, and you need it for healthy metabolism.
Thanks for watching guys!