Growth Hormone in Skin Care
Companies always trying to invent new anti aging ingredients. Aside the basics like retinol, alpha, beta hydroxy acids, sunscreen, there are those other ingredients like Growth Hormone, DNA, Stem Cells, peptides.
Let’s look what is growth hormone in skin care? Is it worth it?
Growth hormone fuels childhood growth and helps maintain tissues and organs throughout life. It’s produced by the pea-sized pituitary gland — located at the base of the brain. Beginning in middle age, however, the pituitary gland slowly reduces the amount of growth hormone it produces.
Growth factors are proteins that regulate cellular growth, proliferation and differentiation under controlled conditions. They play an essential part in maintaining healthy skin structure and function.
Growth factors are secreted by all cell types in the epidermis and dermis including keratinocytes, fibroblasts and melanocytes.
This natural slowdown has triggered an interest in using synthetic human growth hormone (HGH) as a way to stave off some of the changes linked to aging, such as decreased muscle and bone mass.
If you’re skeptical, good. There’s little evidence to suggest HGH can help otherwise healthy adults regain youth and vitality. Alternatively, HGH treatments may increase the risk of other medical conditions. Experts recommend against using HGH to treat aging or age-related conditions.
There’s debate among dermatologists as to whether topically applied growth factors can penetrate the skin enough to be effective. It has been asserted that growth factors have a large molecular size that prevents them from entering the epidermis. However, several clinical studies, over the past 15 years, have highlighted the benefits of topically applied growth factor products showing improvements in the appearance of fine lines, wrinkles, texture, and discoloration. Combinations of growth factors with antioxidants (eg, vitamin C) and peptides (eg, cytokines) tend to show results sooner, typically within 4–8 weeks.
It has been hypothesized that when growth factors are applied to the skin in high concentrations, a small fraction penetrates the superficial epidermis, and initiates a communication chain that leads to stimulation of dermal fibroblasts to produce collagen.
Advances in biotechnology over the past decade have created multiple sources of growth factors. They can be derived from several different human cells grown in a laboratory (skin cells, bone marrow stem cells, fat stem cells), extracted from one’s blood (PRP – Platelet Rich Plasma), or bioengineered from non-human sources such as snails and some plants. However, fat stem cells are likely to produce growth factors that help the functioning of fat cells, and bone marrow stem cells are likely to produce growth factors that improve the functioning of the bone marrow.
Ideal growth factors for the skin would be produced by fibroblasts.
Most of the research on human growth factors for skin has looked primarily at the issue of wound healing, and at short-term use. Much remains unknown at this time, especially regarding long-term risk or stability, when growth factors are used in cosmetics and applied to the skin. Well-controlled clinical studies are lacking.
In my opinion growth hormone in skin care is a debatable ingredient.
If there is skin care cell, it could possibly increase the growth of it potentially?
I think sticking to true and tested ingredients that are safe for sure is always the best.
Brilliant Massage & Skin,
Burlington, Vermont
