why not just take igf1 if thats what hgh turns to?

**GORILA-UNIT** · 06-29-2008, 11:27 PM

maybe a stupid quesion but some one please educate me, why r we not just taking igf1 instead of gh. What is the difference and wats the best way to stack them together. thanks

**RedBaron** · 06-30-2008, 01:04 AM

Not a stupid question at all. Here is where we are at.

Back in the day, myself and many other bodybuilders of the time experimented with huIGF-1. There were a few problems with it ... it was expensive, we had to inject a pretty healthy dose, and for the most part our interest was in local growth as we theorized that the active life of the IGF-1 would be short enough that it would only benefit the area immediately around the injection site. A few of us seemed to agree that it did result in some growth locally, but not anywhere near an acceptable amount to make it worthwhile and a worthy investment.

When LR3 came along, a good number of us gave it a try, experimenting with systemic application as well as site injections for local growth. While it resulted in some nice muscle fullness and some awesome pumps, a good bit of fat loss, but not really too much else.

We now have Increlex, an IGF-1 approved to treat children with growth problems. The problem still remains though ... if you are not a child with growth problems getting Increlex is the impossible dream. It is not prescribed in lieu of HGH as of yet. While some research organizations have had huIGF-1 in the past, for cell culture work these days LR3 is the one being used. So that leads to reason number one ... huIGF-1 is not readily available to consider as a substitution for an HGH cycle.

The other thing that is a big question mark is whether huIGF-1 would be as effective in normal, healthy adults as it appears to be in growth deficient children. While it seems to work well for them, the fact remains that HGH triggers both huIGF-1 that is secreted by the liver, but additionally a sightly different structured growth factor secreted by the muscle tissues themselves. It has been theorized that this growth factor is the one doing the lion's share of the muscle growing in adults. Certainly the jury is out, but if this theory turns out being right, then it would still be more advantageous to take HGH over huIGF-1 in normal adults. HGH and huIGF-1 offer multiple benefits in the body, but I certainly wouldn't call IGF-1 the ONLY benefit that HGH has to offer. That alone would want me to take advantage of its other functions.

All of these factors are the main reason you don't see hoards of people taking huIGF-1 instead of HGH. There may come a day where it becomes available as a prescription product for adults (either as an HGH replacement, diabetic medication, or ???), and if that happens we will start seeing some significant human data that will tell what merit if any it has for anti-aging and athletic applications.

If you were to stack these two together, I would inject your HGH as you always have done (maybe experiment and adjust the doses as your IGF levels will likely begin to soar), and then use the huIGF-1 as we did in the past ... in local site injections to give a boost to lagging areas. While a portion of the IGF-1 will go systemic, it stills gives the first crack at some growth factors to the tissues in the most need of help. The rest of the IGF will likely be bound and go systemic for use another day by some other part of the body.

At any rate, this is just a very superficial look at some of the issues of the reasons for the current state of HGH being the protocol for adults, but perhaps it offer a little insight as to the whys and hows. There is a lot we still don't fully understand about the actions of growth hormones, growth factors, and just plain growth in general. Every set of researchers that has claimed to crack all of the mysteries have been met with a large body of data the strongly points to them being mistaken - in part or wholy. I don't see that changing for a good bit of time yet. To add to that, the fact that our present society is not interested in making the healthy the best they can be and exploring options to provide that makes any significant data about non-existent. Until that environment changes, the progress on extending life, providing a higher quality of life into old age, and maximizing the performance of humans is going to run along at a snail pace.