Should I Take a Growth Hormone Supplement for My Skin?

This column first ran in Valerie Monroe’s newsletter, How Not to F*ck Up Your Face, which you can subscribe to on Substack.

Q: SeroVital keeps popping up in my Instagram feed. It’s a powder or capsule containing something that allegedly stimulates human growth hormone and claims to improve muscle mass, skin tone, and sleep. I don’t know if this is a question for your dermatologist friends or would require a different expert. Maybe you can investigate?

A: As curious as you Dear Reader, I slid over to the SeroVital website to get a handle on
whatever it is they’re selling. The first thing I noticed was this disclaimer:

SeroVital has been shown in a double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial to increase mean, serum (blood) growth hormone levels by 682%. All other benefits/effects noted in these testimonials/reviews are the individuals’ personal opinions and have not been studied in relation to the SeroVital compound. Individuals may have received free product or compensation in exchange for their honest review. Individual results will vary. 

So I was skeptical about the product, which claims to increase your body’s “youth hormone.” You can treat yourself to it for only $119/month with this caveat: We recommend at least 3 months of consistent use to see the best results. That’s a recommended starter investment of $357.

I’m not out to kill the germ of hope SeroVital might plant in your aging outlook. But I want you to see how easy it is to make a product sound like magic with what appears to be scientific evidence. For help with that, I enlisted dermatologist Heidi Waldorf.

“SeroVital contains a mix of amino acids that have been shown to indirectly increase the release of human growth hormone (HGH),” she wrote in an email. “I found one double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over, randomized study (the most trustworthy) of 16 healthy patients and one open-label, single-arm study (less reliable) of 45 fibromyalgia patients showing improvement of HGH levels and some associated markers,” she wrote. Small studies—and for Waldorf, big questions. Like… why increase HGH? What are the benefits?

Some background: HGH is important for increasing bone and muscle growth in children and teens. An injectable form is used as a treatment for children with syndromes associated with a natural deficiency and for some healthy kids to increase height.

Anyone who has read a U.S. airline magazine has likely seen ads for life extension clinics offering HGH for adults. They usually include photos of older men with muscular bodies and minimal body fat. The premise is that HGH supplements can help reduce weight, increase muscle mass, strengthen bones, and improve memory. Sounds great. So… the downside of increased HGH?

The body doesn’t secrete HGH continuously, but in spurts related to stress, sleep, and exercise, wrote Waldorf. In otherwise healthy people, excessive HGH carries risks including heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, sleep apnea, paresthesias (burning or tingling sensations), and cancer, including breast cancer. As for how much HGH a person needs—like, say, a 40-60-year old woman—Waldorf says she has never found a reason to test a patient’s HGH, nor has she tested her own.

What about the studies on SeroVital’s website? Are the results convincing?

“The studies published in peer-reviewed medical journals are limited. Only one of the two is double-blind, randomized, and placebo-controlled in healthy individuals—and that includes only 16 subjects. The other study is open-label and single-arm; both the patients and investigators knew what was being taken and the goal results, which can lead to bias—and there was no comparison with any other treatment or placebo. Only fibromyalgia patients were tested,” wrote Waldorf.

She considers these preliminary results that are worth substantiating with larger studies. Unfortunately, because supplements don’t require FDA approval, companies have no motivation to do them. You can read more about the shortfalls of supplements in Dr. Jen Gunter’s formidable Substack, The Vagenda.

As with other supplements, while it may be important to replenish a deficiency, taking more may be unnecessary or harmful, said Waldorf. Do you want assurance that your HGH levels are healthy? “The amino acids linked with HGH stimulation are arginine, lysine, and ornithine,” wrote Waldorf. Good food sources of arginine are nuts/seeds, legumes, seaweed, dairy, poultry (especially turkey, which is why some trainers recommend eating turkey slices before and/or after workouts), and fish. Ornithine is found in meat, dairy, eggs, nuts, grains, and beans. Lysine-rich foods include meat, dairy, nuts, legumes, and seeds. So, eating a nutritious diet with enough protein provides HGH-friendly amino acids, she wrote.

I wasn’t completely surprised to find one class-action suit against the company that owns SeroVital, in which the plaintiffs argue they were lured by false advertising and that the supplement did nothing for them. So, though I understand the wish there was reliable science behind it, for now I’d buy it only if I could pay with magic beans.

Originally published on Oct. 22