Keep Sugar Intake Low
More sugar means more insulin which means less HGH.
If your going to consume sugar try and keep it to one sitting a day.
Make sure this is not near any of the big HGH spikes – avoid before bed and post workout.
Sugar is bad!
Sugar is terrible for you. Added sugar is everywhere and it has very little nutritional value. Most fitness goers will know to avoid the substance as much as possible in the interest of shedding fat and building lean muscle. A 2003 report by the World Health Organization (1) presented evidence that sugary drinks increased the risk of obesity by adding to energy intake. To illustrate the point, if you ate at a calorie maintenance and drank 1.25 litres of Coca-Cola a day on top of this you would be in a caloric surplus of 525 calories. In theory this would lead to gaining 1 kilogram or 2.2 lbs of fat every 2 weeks.
Obesity is on the rise in the western world with a dangerous cocktail of poor education, poor self discipline and sugary foods fuelling this epidemic.
Sugars negative health effects include:
- Obesity and metabolic syndrome
- Diabetes onset
- Cardivascular disese
- Addiction
- Tooth decay
- Fatigue
Detrimental to Bodybuilding
Too much sugar is also detrimental to bodybuilders as it will likely add body fat as it spikes insulin (2) so high.
It can be argued that if calories were kept at maintenance or lower there should be no weight gain.
However – sugars empty calories could be put to much better use if they were replaced by rich proteins, carbs and fats – useful for muscle building, high energy and as hormonal fuel.
Too much sugar will stop someone maximising their potential gains.
One study (3) in 2013 found that in 74 men, glucose ingestion decreased testosterone by 25% on average for at least 2 hours.
This drop was enough to make some men to be have technically hypogonadal (clinically low_levels of testosterone.
Falls in testosterone are far from ideal for natural bodybuilders and won’t maximise fat burning and muscle building efforts.
Sugar reduces HGH
In short, more sugar means more insulin which means less natural HGH (4).
A very common practice in the fitness world is to consumer sugar in one form or another after a workout in order to restore glycogen and utilize the insulin the build muscle.
As discussed in the post-workout nutrition article, working out boosts HGH tremendously and insulin brings it back down.
As discussed in the weightlifting article, weightlifiting can increase HGH levels in young athletes by 600%.
While there are benefits to post workout sugar, the benefits of this massive HGH will outweigh these.
As a result more and more of the online fasting community are reducing there post workout nutrition to just whey protein as the insulin spike is limited.
Some are even fasting for hours post workout to take full use of the exercise induced HGH spike.
The Verdict
If you want to maximise natural HGH then taking advantage of exercise induced HGH is critical and would need no sugar to be consumed at any point, including after a workout.
References
- Joint WHO/FAO Expert Consultation (2003). “WHO Technical Report Series 916: Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases” (PDF). Retrieved 2013-12-25.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3054432
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22804876
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10484056
