 Hey everybody, Dr. O here. Let's talk more about growth hormone. So growth hormone is also known as somatotrope and I don't use that term just in case you ever see it. Let's just start here with number one. It's controlled by the regulatory hormones from the hypothalamus. So we have growth hormone releasing hormone which would increase the release of growth hormone and growth hormone inhibiting hormone which would stop it. So what does growth hormone do? I've already mentioned that its target is all cells in the body. You'll see that there are certain cell types that it really, really stimulates, but the target would be all cells. So let's just go through the list here. So first we have a glucose sparing effect. So one of the main things growth hormone does is that it tells your body to burn more fat for fuel so you can preserve glucose for growth instead of just basic metabolism. But we usually think about growth. So quickly growth hormone is going to lead to the increase in protein synthesis. You're going to build more proteins and you'll see it here, an increase in the uptake of amino acids and you're going to have an increase in growth both of the amount of protein in cells and an increase in cellular proliferation. And then the third thing here is that it reduces apoptosis. So apoptosis is a wildly important idea. Apoptosis is this idea of directed cell suicide or destroying cells that are no longer needed. So something like fasting would actually increase apoptosis and maybe get rid of some of these cells that aren't doing their job. Growth hormone is going to leave them there. So this is great. Again, if you're trying to build, you're trying to grow. You're going to burn fat for fuel. You're going to have more cells. You're going to get bigger muscles, better cartilage, these kind of things. You see the bone cells, muscle cells, nervous system cells, immune system cells. That's awesome if you're trying to grow, right? So you want growth hormone when you're growing, going through puberty, your brain's growing, all these kind of things. But as we get older, if we're constantly exposed to growth hormone and then some like growth factor and we reduce apoptosis, these are the kind of cells that can maybe become inflammatory cells that do more harm than good, or they can become pre-cancerous cells, or if they're already pre-cancerous cells, they can become cancerous cells. This is what I mean when I say growth is not always good. It's good when you're supposed to grow, but you don't want too much of this kind of signaling as we get older. That's my personal opinion. This is where maybe fasting or going through periods of time where you're trying not to release a whole bunch of growth hormone, or maybe when you're at least going through times where you're going to use these hormones by exercising, that's why that's going to lead to maybe some more longevity. The last thing here is what's known as the diabetogenic effect. It doesn't mean growth hormone causes diabetes, but it means the growth hormone raises your blood sugar levels. It does so by, we already said, it spares glucose by using more fat for fuel, but it will also have your body turn more glycogen from the liver into glucose. So you're going to have all this fuel available, more blood sugar and fat to burn for fuel so that you can build, you can grow. It takes a lot of energy to grow. So that's going to be how growth hormone works. If there's too much growth hormone or too much IGF-1, insulin-like growth factor 1, then the hypothalamus is going to notice that and it's going to release growth hormone inhibiting hormone, which should bring the levels back down to normal, unless of course you're taking growth hormone injections or these types of things. All right, so that is how growth hormone works. I will definitely come back and talk more about when we want to not be growing and when we want to get rid of maybe these pre-cancerous cells and that kind of stuff at a later date. OK, I hope this helps. Have a wonderful day. Be blessed.