There’s been a lot of confusion surrounding growth hormone and I do if one. With this in mind here is a quick rundown of the differences between the two substances as well as similarities.
The first thing to understand is the working of growth hormone itself. Growth hormone in its raw form is useless to the body unless it binds with insulin to form IGF-1 or insulin like growth factor one. This reliance on Insulin to make growth hormone active Is what gave birth to the theory of combining insulin and growth hormone. This combination has been widely used in bodybuilding and sports. One of the key differences between the two substances is that unlike growth hormone IGF-1 has no clinical application and this means that it was never manufactured for use in sick patients. This by definition means that all the IGF-1 that was manufactured was made specifically for the body building industry.
I say was manufactured because currently no more IGF-1 is being manufactured. This may be in part due to the inflexible nature of the substance as well as recent statements by top bodybuilders like Ronnie Coleman that the substance does not work very well, this despite rumours that all pro bodybuilders were using IGF-1 at one time or another.
One of the most common misconceptions is the comparison that is drawn between growth hormone and how well it works compared to IGF-1. It is important to understand that this comparison is not fair. It’s a little like comparing two people taking steroids with one person training and the other during no exercise at all.
Growth hormone relies on insulin to become active and therefore combining it with insulin will naturally yield better results. From this it would seem that IGF-1 is the solution and that theory is essentially correct. The problem arises when one looks at physiology and the way the body responds to insulin. Insulin is one of the most unstable substances released by the body to regulate blood sugar content And the nature of its primary role makes it a dangerous substance.
The statement that different people react differently to chemical substances could be no truer of insulin. A seasoned bodybuilder who has been using insulin for years will be able to tolerate a much higher dose than the first time user. In addition, the discrepancy between effective and lethal dose can be very narrow indeed. Typically, when one begins to use insulin a pyramid dosage strategy is used. Both a shortage and abundance of insulin can lead to serious medical problems and for this reason having control over the amount of insulin is critical.
This highlights one of the main problems with IGF-1 in that the insulin component cannot be controlled separately from the growth hormone. This control is vital in making sure the optimal amount of insulin is used. A further advantage of separating growth hormone from insulin is that complete control is gained over the insulin use allowing the user to be able to treat or dose depending on the situation.
This dependency on insulin is another reason why growth hormone, when being used without insulin, should be administered in small doses, as larger doses would simply be a waste. In summary, IGF-1 is GH combined with insulin.
I hope this will help more people understand the relationship between growth hormone and insulin and that some theories do not work as well in practice as one would expect
Common misspellings of Insulin and IGF-1: abd ad adn amd an anf ans egf-1 ensulin gif-1 ibsulin if-1 iff-1 ig-1 igd-1 igf- igf1 igg-1 ihf-1 imsulin inaulin indulin insilin inslin insuin insukin insulen insuli insulib insulim insuln insulon insulun insylin inulin inuslin isnulin isulin nad ogf-1 ond onsulin qnd snd ugf-1 unsulin
