Split Dosage/Increasing Dosage

[ww-ford]

Hello fellow gym freaks.

I've been using Nutropin for just over 4 weeks. I started out the first week on 2.5-3.25 IU/Day, then moved up to 5 IU/day in 2 dosages. I take my first dosage in the morning when I wake up, and my 2nd dosage either right before bed, or if I wake up in the middle of the night I will take it then.

I have seen zero negative side-effects from using HGH, and have decided it may be in my best interests to up my overall dosage for each day. If I was to do this, I would also be interested in splitting the dosage down even more from 2 to 3 possibly even 4 injections a day. We all know the body handles things better in smaller dosages, and from what I've read 2.5IU in one shot is more than the body is used to handling on any given endogenous release. Please correct me if that information is wrong, but I believe I read somewhere the body releases less than 2.5 IU a day total of endoGH.

What do you guys thinking about splitting into a Morning/Afternoon/Night, or Possibly even Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night dosage somewhere around 1.5 IU-2IU/dose? It just seems logical to me that you'd be ensuring the body is using all it gets to its full potential instead of possibly wasting some of it? Just food for thought...so please let me know!

I'm keeping detailed logs/photos of all my progress/workouts/injections/girth measurements/body fat UWW so I will be able to provide a more indepth report on HGH and it's effects. Can't wait to share that with you guys..

Day 1:
Weight: 171
Body Fat: 15.1%

Day 30:
Weight: 190
Body Fat: ?

I am due for an Underwater weighing to determine my current body fat on July 3rd. But I can say from my own opinion I've probably lost just a little bit of body fat. I gained 12 overall inches in the first month.

Thanks guys!

Dub

[RedBaron]

There are a few things that the folks here would need to know before we can comment too much on your present course of action. The first thing would be your age. If you are young and have a healthy and kicking pituitary gland, then I certainly wouldn't be injecting my HGH morning, noon, evening, before bed, and at night. That is a guaranteed recipe for shutting down your body's own HGH. While in a short run that isn't a HUGE deal, over the course of an average length HGH cycle, I would have to say at best it isn't wise. If on the other hand you said you were in your 50's, or had a disease of the pituitary, your proposed course of action may be appropriate.

The other thing that we would need to know is what your goal is. At 171 and 15% fat I am going to assume that bodybuilding isn't the present goal. Is it sports related? General fitness related? or ??? ?. Depending on what you are trying to accomplish, that is really going to dictate the smartest way to proceed.

The other thing to understand is that side effects with HGH are not immediate. At four weeks in, you're assuming that 3 IU's is producing no sides so you have just about doubled the dose. Realize that a couple of weeks from now your joints might swell up to the point that your arms are falling asleep and you can't close your fist. That is the reason we suggest ramping up ... to avoid sides. After the sides are already flaming, then it is going to likely take 2-3 months for them to go away completely. Better to never have to deal with them than completely nail yourself right out of the gate.

In an average 30 year old, your body is giving you an average of about 1.5-2.0 IU's of HGH per day. In teens it is true that a teen will have periods of time where they pulse a couple of IU's 10-12 times over a week or two just before a growth spurt. The question is though how that plays into adults, and again what the adult's goal is.

In general terms at lower doses, it would be best for a normal, healthy, <45 year old adult to take their HGH at one of the following times - 4 am, upon waking, early afternoon. Those offer numerous benefits that have been discussed at length through the years here, and will have a minimum impact on your pituitary's own function. Taking your HGH right before you go to bed will raise your somatostatin levels and will pretty effectively blunt your body's own secretion of HGH from the pituitary at night. Unless your pituitary is already dead, that wouldn't be a great move.

As far as the dosing protocol, there again it is going to depend on what you are trying to accomplish. If your sole goal is to elevate your measurable IGF-1 levels (the lion share coming from the liver), then you are correct that it seems that keeping the doses at 2-3-4 IU's per injection and increasing frequency seems to get that particular number elevated the most effectively. A lot of us are questioning how important that is though. It is certainly a marker that you have legitimate HGH and that it is doing its work, but I am not so sure I would get overly concerned about that marker beyond that if you are not a growing child. HGH also triggers the release of IGF-1 from the muscle tissues themselves ... still IGF-1 but in a slightly different form. There are some other peripheral actions as well. Some of these other functions actually seem to benefit from larger dose HGH in less frequent injections. As you can see, there are a million-and-one variables depending on who you are and where you are going.

I see a few problems with what you are proposing, but give all of us a better idea of where you are trying to take your cycle and we will be able to offer a more educated guess as to a good path. Best of luck.

[ww-ford]

My dosage has already been at 5 IU/day for the last 3 weeks. I only used 2.5 IU for the first week for "ramping", although this may not have been a long enough ramp period. Either way, 5 IU/day with no sides at this time. I do understand it could take another day, week, month to develop sides. So do you suggest staying at 5 IU for another month? Should I slowly ramp during this next month to reach my desired dosage, unless of course the rise of side effects during the ramping period?

As far as my goals go.. I'm a martial artist, so general fitness, flexibility and power are always my first and foremost concerns. I am by no means a body builder, but I do have a decent frame for my size, and I'd definitely like to put on some more muscle mass.

I am 24 years of age now. Up until 18 years old I was continually putting on about 50lbs a year just eating bullshit and being a lazy ass...between 18 and 19 I managed to drop 121 lbs going from 291lbs down to around 170. Needless to say the weight took it's toll on my body. The main thing I had hoped for HGH to help was to help help get rid of my love handles. Due to my extreme weight-gain and loss in a short period of time, my body left some unproportional areas of fat, particularily my abdomen area.

What I mean is that my arms themselves look good, shoulders look great, my calves are pretty defined as well. They are all well-defined, with good shape. Now my stomach/abdomen area however have a decent amount of fat left over, which gave me some love handles.

If I had to prioritize the list though, it would go in this order:

Burn Fat (reduce love handles/tighten skin around abdomen)
Muscle Gain
Repair/Anti-Aging

So my first and foremost goal would be to burn this fat and help get rid of these damn love handles!

I've heard many schools of thought on using HGH and whether or not it affects the pituitary or can promote it "shutting down". I've read multiple reports from individuals who were using HGH in larger doses, and for very extended periods of times and who all claim their IGF-1 levels were all normal when tested after stopping their use of GH.

I understand the theory behind the pituitary not excreting GH based on it already being present in the blood stream, but would this make the pituitary "die" over time? I guess I like to use the idea of like increasing your cardio-vascular strength, and having a resting heart rate of 40bpm vs. someone who has 72bpm or higher. In a lifetime your heart will beat almost half of that of someone who has an "average" heart-rate. Thus allowing your heart to function nearly 2 times as long. I'd like to use that school of though for how the human body works. If you use it less, you can use it more (longer).

If the theories of a dying pituitary are true, then how many days on/off do people recommend? I'm currently on 5 IU/ED morning/night injections. I missed 3 injections over a month (all at night), so really, I was more or less 6-on, 1-off every week.

Since my goal is to ultimately burn fat, where should my diet be? My trainer insists that I keep my calories up to help gain muscle and to just up my cardio training to help keep my fat burning up. Should I maintain a higher-calorie count, or should I go towards a more fat-loss diet? Will I be able to lose as much fat with maintaing a 3,500+ calorie a day diet? My current regiment consists of 3 days weight training, 3 days cardio. My trainer wants to up this to 5 days cardio, and still 3 days weight training.

Thanks guys!

Dub

[RedBaron]

For fat-loss, repair, general health, and muscle building support quite honestly 5-6 IU's of HGH is going to be just fine. You may be one of the lucky ones and never experience sides from it. Some people don't, and others can take just a couple of IU's and have some pretty painful experiences.

I would probably suggest that you take two 3 IU injections of HGH in one of two ways. Either take a 3 IU injection at 4am with the second being at 9:00am or 1:00pm, or just take one at 9am and another at 1pm.

It isn't really a case of your pituitary "dying", but what happens when we suppress our body's own natural triggers long enough is the body becomes lazy. It is like it forgets about its natural sequence of triggers and doesn't produce the amount of hormone XXX that it used to. The gland itself remains totally capable of secreting the same as it always did, but it just doesn't. Since the body is somewhat lazy and will do this, what we want to do with any alteration that we make in its normal system of checks and balances is to manipulate them in the most "system friendly" way we can while still gaining the benefits we need to meet our goal.

With HGH, and especially given your age, I would avoid the night-time injections and stick with early morning and if needed early afternoon to get your 6 IU's in.

As to your diet, you will find that it is a pretty tight balancing act when dialing in your calories. You have to keep the calories up enough to keep your metabolism humming and keep growth happening, but at the same time low enough that your bf% continues to drop. What you will want to do is to monitor your progress. As long as you are dropping a pound or two of fat at reasonable intervals, run with it. If you slam a brick wall, then it is time to manipulate the calories just a smidge up or down to see if you are not getting enough to stoke the fire or getting too many to continue your loss. The single biggest favor you can do yourself is to eat 6 small meals instead of three monster ones. Beyond that, I would personally make boneless-skinless chicken breast, boneless-skinless turkey breast, fish, water pack tuna, and whey protein your sole protein sources. I would make whole grains (harder to find than you might think ... look at the labels not the names on the packages, some are deceptive), sweet potatoes, low glycemic index pastas, and steel-cut oats your carb choices. For fats, stick to raw nuts, avocado, olive oil, flax seed, and *****-3 oils.

Eat ~1 gram of lean protein per pound of body weight. Eat ~100 -150 grams (200 if your energy level plummets) of clean, complex carbs, and make sure you take in a bit of healthy fat each day. Healthy fat actually makes it easier for your body to pull out and dispose of body fat. Eating like this for six small meals each day will certainly result in some fat loss, especially given your HGH use.

For the window around your HGH injections, avoid your carb meals for an hour before and two hours after. Instead (if it is time to eat) choose a lean protein, healthy fat meal (vege's like green beans, etc. would be a-okay to throw into the mix as well). That will help avoid a rise in blood glucose levels in your blood-stream, and will also allow the HGH to do its bit in forcing your body to burn fat for fuel for that window.

Finally, if you don't have one, buy yourself a $10 blood glucose monitor and use it periodically. While HGH won't necessarily elevate your BG levels significantly, it most definitely has the potential to. Taking a periodic peek to make sure you aren't cruising for a nice case of insulin resistance is a good thing to do. Best of luck to you in your continued progress toward your goal.

[ww-ford]

Thank you for the indepth repsonse.

My diet is very well-kept and very much on par with what you discussed. 6 meals a day, at least 1g of protein per lb of body weight, mostly whole, fresh raw foods.

What should my % of daily fat intake be? I'm usually around 15-20% daily calories from fat but the trainer is urging me towards 10% of my daily calories. I eat mostly only raw foods so the majority of my fats are healthy fats. I just really love almonds and almond butter, so it's hard to stay at 10% eating those. Will being at 20% damper my results?

I will up to my dosage to 6 IU/day in 2 seperate 3 IU dosages. How many hours should I have slept before I alert myself to take my injection? I usually go to bed around 1 AM, so 4 AM would only be 3 hours of sleep. Should I wait till later?

Thanks for the idea, I'll definitely be investing in a BG meter.

[ww-ford]

RedBaron:

Based on the #'s you gave me

(185g of protein x 4) + (200g of carb x 4) = 385g/1540 calories

To figure out my total fat needs, I took 1/.85 = 1.17, I then took 1.17 and multiplied by my total carb/prot for the day.. (1.17 * 385 = 452 total g for the day) I then took15% of that (68g) to determine my daily total intake.

(68g of fat x 9) = 612 calories

1540 (carb/prot) + 612 (fat) = 2152

So 2,200 calories is obviously low enough for me to shed fat, but will this be high enough to gain muscle? I'm currently sitting at 185 lbs. Thanks for all the help!