H
heightt
Iron
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2026
- Posts
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Hi everyone. I turned 13 recently, my parents are around 5'6" and I have come up with a plan for GH + AI for height. Please tell me what you think. I am aiming to do a half dose rather than the commonly recommended, to keep on the safe side and am willing to give up an inch to 1.5 inches of height for safety. (From what I can tell one can expect about 3" height boost from GH + AI and I presume halving the dose would give up about half the gains)
Plan Summary:
-Get bone age scan next week
Note I have reason to believe my bone age is older than chronological, I'm guessing I'm nearly 14 in bone age
-Order GH + AI in time to start when my bone age is 14. It seems the peak growth is from bone age 14 to 15.5, is that correct? I have already gone through 1/2 of my growth spurt, judging from my recent growth and how close I am getting to my midparental height.
-Get first set of blood tests including GH, E2, T, glucose, IGF-1
-Start GH dose at 1 IU (.33 mg) for a few weeks, then increase to sustained dose of 2.3 IU (.75 mg) thenceforth
I calculated that as I weigh 75 lb. (35 kg) and they recommend 0.042 mg/kg/day, which gives 1.5 mg dose per day, and half of that is .75 mg
-AI will start with .5 mg and maybe go up to 1 mg after 2nd blood test
-Anastrozole seems most accepted (letrozole is 'too powerful')
-Blood tests of all markers at the 3 week mark, then after another 3 more weeks, then every 6-8 weeks after that
-As far as how to use the blood tests, I guess you just try to keep everything in "middle of the range"?
-Bone age scan every 3 months as another way to reassure myself besides blood tests that everything appears to be going on as expected within the body
-Given cost of HGH, I can afford to do this for 1.5 years. Assuming growth effectively ends at bone age 15.5, would it be more beneficial to do GH+AI from 14 to 15.5, or from 14.5 to 16? (The AI would slow bone aging so I think I could start half a year later and still be in the growth period for the whole 1.5 years)
Reasons for playing it safe:
-Doses are based off studies, which are mostly on GH-deficient children. Presumably if you make normal levels of GH this would be an overdose
-I think researchers are tempted to dose higher than they would for their own children, for example, because of the unconscious bias to try to get a clear success result in the study
-The treatment is new, the oldest randomized controlled trial (and maybe the only one?) was Mauras et al. 2016. Anything new is a bit scary. They thought GnRHa was a good idea, and it made sense logically (slow puberty and you have more time to grow) and then found it was damaging the puberty process by "diminishing whole-body protein synthesis" and "increasing adiposity" (Mauras 2016 p. 4985). It seemed growth hormone or AI by themselves was really helping PAH (Predicted Adult Height) and then they found when the kids stopped growing it wasn't much difference in final height (Varimo et al. letrozole study). There was even the Japan study where giving growth hormone actually made the kids shorter by closing the growth plates too fast. We can measure IGF-1, E2, T and all the rest but there are still dozens of powerful chemicals acting in the body that would be affected by growth hormone and AI and these interactions haven't been discovered yet.
-One can think of permanent changes to organs. If you are still short after GH/AI you can get leg lengthening surgery, but if your heart is overthick or your lungs are weird because of overgrowth, there's no remedy. Height is so important to a happy life, but loss of energy or malfunction due to a malformed body detracts from a happy life too. We know about the bone density being affected by AI and acromegaly when there's too much GH, and the scoliosis, but there are always other things to be discovered. Looking at history of the development of medical treatments, we're still in the learning phase of height augmentation. I'm sure that in the next 10-20 years they will discover drawbacks to the GH+AI treatment, and in 20 years I bet we won't be doing GH+AI but something quite different.
Plan Summary:
-Get bone age scan next week
Note I have reason to believe my bone age is older than chronological, I'm guessing I'm nearly 14 in bone age
-Order GH + AI in time to start when my bone age is 14. It seems the peak growth is from bone age 14 to 15.5, is that correct? I have already gone through 1/2 of my growth spurt, judging from my recent growth and how close I am getting to my midparental height.
-Get first set of blood tests including GH, E2, T, glucose, IGF-1
-Start GH dose at 1 IU (.33 mg) for a few weeks, then increase to sustained dose of 2.3 IU (.75 mg) thenceforth
I calculated that as I weigh 75 lb. (35 kg) and they recommend 0.042 mg/kg/day, which gives 1.5 mg dose per day, and half of that is .75 mg
-AI will start with .5 mg and maybe go up to 1 mg after 2nd blood test
-Anastrozole seems most accepted (letrozole is 'too powerful')
-Blood tests of all markers at the 3 week mark, then after another 3 more weeks, then every 6-8 weeks after that
-As far as how to use the blood tests, I guess you just try to keep everything in "middle of the range"?
-Bone age scan every 3 months as another way to reassure myself besides blood tests that everything appears to be going on as expected within the body
-Given cost of HGH, I can afford to do this for 1.5 years. Assuming growth effectively ends at bone age 15.5, would it be more beneficial to do GH+AI from 14 to 15.5, or from 14.5 to 16? (The AI would slow bone aging so I think I could start half a year later and still be in the growth period for the whole 1.5 years)
Reasons for playing it safe:
-Doses are based off studies, which are mostly on GH-deficient children. Presumably if you make normal levels of GH this would be an overdose
-I think researchers are tempted to dose higher than they would for their own children, for example, because of the unconscious bias to try to get a clear success result in the study
-The treatment is new, the oldest randomized controlled trial (and maybe the only one?) was Mauras et al. 2016. Anything new is a bit scary. They thought GnRHa was a good idea, and it made sense logically (slow puberty and you have more time to grow) and then found it was damaging the puberty process by "diminishing whole-body protein synthesis" and "increasing adiposity" (Mauras 2016 p. 4985). It seemed growth hormone or AI by themselves was really helping PAH (Predicted Adult Height) and then they found when the kids stopped growing it wasn't much difference in final height (Varimo et al. letrozole study). There was even the Japan study where giving growth hormone actually made the kids shorter by closing the growth plates too fast. We can measure IGF-1, E2, T and all the rest but there are still dozens of powerful chemicals acting in the body that would be affected by growth hormone and AI and these interactions haven't been discovered yet.
-One can think of permanent changes to organs. If you are still short after GH/AI you can get leg lengthening surgery, but if your heart is overthick or your lungs are weird because of overgrowth, there's no remedy. Height is so important to a happy life, but loss of energy or malfunction due to a malformed body detracts from a happy life too. We know about the bone density being affected by AI and acromegaly when there's too much GH, and the scoliosis, but there are always other things to be discovered. Looking at history of the development of medical treatments, we're still in the learning phase of height augmentation. I'm sure that in the next 10-20 years they will discover drawbacks to the GH+AI treatment, and in 20 years I bet we won't be doing GH+AI but something quite different.
