Pulse: Growth Hormone Basics

There's a slight difference between what Gary Taubes says and what Brad Pilon says: Taubes says that the main precondition for fat loss is to lower insulin levels. He does say that you need some other hormonal responses, but that basically everything else is antagonistic to insulin, including growth hormone, adrenaline, noradrenaline, and glucagon.

Pilon says that you can actually suppress fat loss by suppressing GH levels, which I'm not sure about-I'm still doing the research. It is clear that having a high GH level reduces muscle breakdown and inhibits free fatty acids from going back into the fat cells, as well as encouraging the use of free fatty acids for energy.

Basically, what this means is, a low insulin level "opens the fat cells up" and a high GH level will protect your muscle from being burned while encouraging fat to come out of the open fat cells and be burned for energy. This is a great turn of events for fat loss.

So how do you increase GH levels in ways that we can manipulate in our own bodies (without a prescription)?

1. Fasting
2. High protein meals
3. Exercise
4. Sleep

Things are just getting interesting now that we know how to cut calories, control insulin, and increase GH. Stay tuned: we're going to start putting this knowledge into practice.

Pulse: the Basics

I decided to make a series out of the post I've been working on--it's called "Pulse" and I'll let Brad Pilon kick it off.



Take home points:

1. Insulin levels must be low for fat loss to occur
2. Growth hormone must be released for fat loss to occur


Brad implies but does not explicitly state a few things here. The first is that calories out must be greater than calories in. The second point is that fasting drops insulin levels, raises GH levels, and cuts calories.

I'll be back tomorrow with more.