There are lots of good reasons to try and follow a healthier diet.

You lose weight, you feel good, but the main reason

to live a longer, happier, more productive life.

Welcome to the Nutrition Facts Podcast. happier, more productive life.

Welcome to the Nutrition Facts Podcast.

I'm your host, Dr. Michael Greger.

Did you know that taking human growth hormone,

Samantha Troopin, may actually accelerate the aging process, here's our first story.

Of all the anti-aging clinic scams, the selling and administration of human growth hormone has been called perhaps the most blatant

and organized form of quackery today.

It all started, promisingly enough, with a small trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine. And, 8 pounds of lean mass over a period of 6 months compared to 9 guys who weren't injected.

Newspapers around the world heralded the result.

Anti-aging clinics popped up to offer the injections for $4,700 per month or more and the

popular press churned out books extolling the hormone's age-reversing properties.

After all, that's how much muscle mass one might lose over 10 to 20 years of aging.

That's assuming, though, that what they gained was muscle.

The original study didn't measure muscle strength or performance, but

larger, longer, and better, i.e placebo-controlled study subsequently did and found zero

benefit. A meta-analysis of studies of growth hormone for

athletic performance found that it may even worsen exercise capacity.

Wait, how can you gain pounds of lean mass but not get any stronger by retaining pounds of water?

The lean mass was mostly just due to fluid retention. In fact, obvious

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