Growth Hormone

Growth hormone is a licensed prescription medicine for people whose bodies do not make enough of it, but the muscle and anti-ageing uses that drive grey-market sales have been tested in people and mostly disappoint.

Grade A · Approved medicine or robust human trials.

A lab-made copy of the body's own growth-hormone trigger that is an approved prescription medicine in the US for shrinking deep belly fat in people with HIV, but is not licensed in the UK.

Grade A · Approved medicine or robust human trials.

A growth-hormone-boosting pill that genuinely raises IGF-1 and adds a little lean mass, but in every completed trial it failed to make people stronger, healthier or better-functioning. Its maker abandoned it.

Grade B · Human trials exist but are incomplete.

A synthetic fragment of the body's own growth-hormone-releasing hormone that nudges the pituitary to make its own growth hormone. Once an approved medicine, now sold grey-market for largely unproven anti-ageing claims.

Grade B · Human trials exist but are incomplete.

A lab-made peptide that prompts the pituitary to release a burst of growth hormone. It is a licensed single-dose diagnostic test in Japan but is sold elsewhere as an unlicensed research chemical for bodybuilding and anti-ageing, where long-term evidence barely exists.

Grade C · Some human data, far from settled.

An old experimental peptide that genuinely makes your body release a burst of its own growth hormone, but which was never turned into an approved medicine and is sold today only as an unlicensed research chemical.

Grade C · Some human data, far from settled.