Thursday, November 02, 2006

Searching for the Fountain of Youth?

Searching for the Fountain of Youth?: "Searching for the Fountain of Youth?
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America's obsessive quest to defy aging has spawned countless products designed to help you look and feel younger. But if you are thinking about purchasing one of those products -- a commonly advertised substance called HGH, short for human growth hormone – you better think twice. Not only are you likely to be disappointed, you may be putting your health at risk.
The HGH fad is a typical story of naive consumers and shady marketers -- but what makes it stand out is the way the fad grew: All it took was one highly misinterpreted 1990 article in a reputable medical journal to launch a multi-million dollar industry -- still thriving on unproven claims.
HGH is a large, complex protein molecule made up of 191 amino-acid building blocks. It’s produced in the pituitary gland, a peanut-sized organ in the base of the brain.1 Scientists first began to focus on the growth hormone in the early 1940s as they struggled to understand and help a group of children of abnormally short stature who were unable to grow. They learned that injecting the children with ground-up pituitary glands, harvested from cadavers, could stimulate new growth in the children.1,2 "

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