Bodybuilders have been chasing higher levels of human growth hormone ever since they learned what it’s capable of. And for good reason — HGH not only boosts the body’s lean muscle production, but higher levels can decrease overall body fat percentage, improve cardiovascular health, sleep quality, recovery speed and even slow down the aging process.
HGH or Human Growth Hormone is secreted by the anterior pituitary gland in the brain and plays a vital role in the proper functioning of your body. Acting as your body’s foreman, it instructs your skeletal bones and muscles to grow larger and stronger while speeding up the conversion of excess fat into energy. In other words, it’s responsible for youth, vitality, energy and all the characteristics we associate with being in peak physical condition.
The body secretes HGH in decreasing amounts throughout our entire lives. When we’re young the secretion is at its peak — but after the age of 25 to 26, levels begin declining steadily. The side effects of low HGH are exactly what you’d expect: loss of strength, increased body fat, poor sleep quality and slower recovery from training.
Although the amount of growth hormone your body produces is partly genetically determined, there are several things you can do to make the pituitary gland release more of it naturally. Here’s everything that actually works.
1. Sleep — The Single Biggest Driver of HGH Production
This has been said countless times, but rarely do people take it seriously enough. About 80 to 90% of HGH is released while you sleep. The pituitary gland releases the highest growth hormone quantities — around 40 to 50% of the entire daily dose — between the third and fourth REM sleep stages. If you fall into a routine of getting little sleep, less growth hormone is produced and your body starts feeling the negative effects almost immediately.
The average recommended 7 to 9 hours of deep, uninterrupted sleep has proven to be optimal for natural HGH release. Even though the time of day you sleep doesn’t matter as much as the duration, sleeping at night is more beneficial since melatonin secretion is higher in darkness — and melatonin and HGH production are closely linked.
Practical tips to maximize HGH during sleep:
- Lower your room temperature before bed — an overheated room disrupts sleep cycles more than most people realize
- Avoid staring at screens (phone, TV, laptop) close to bedtime. The blue light emitted tricks your brain into thinking it’s still daytime, suppressing melatonin and blunting HGH release
- Don’t drink caffeine, soda or excessive water in the hours before bed
- Keep a book next to your bed — it will calm you down without the blue light problem
- Consider a melatonin supplement — it not only helps you fall asleep faster but directly aids natural HGH production
- If you suffer from insomnia, try aromatherapy, massage or sound therapy before reaching for sleep medications
2. Train Short and Intense
It is well established that HGH levels increase significantly with intense physical training. The key word is intense — not long. Keep your workouts short, heavy and purposeful.
Aim to finish your session in 45 to 60 minutes. Training for more than 90 minutes will actually decrease HGH and testosterone because prolonged training raises cortisol — the stress hormone that directly suppresses HGH production.
When it comes to cardio, short and hard beats long and slow every time for HGH. Fifteen minutes of sprint intervals will trigger a far better hormonal response than an hour-long jog. High-intensity interval training creates lactic acid buildup in the muscles, and lactic acid is one of the primary signals that triggers the body to release more HGH.
HIIT workouts are your best tool here. Heavy compound lifting — deadlifts, squats, bench press — in the 3 to 5 rep range also produces a strong HGH response. Train hard, get out in under an hour, and let the hormones do the rest.
3. Stop Eating Before Bed
This is one of the simplest and most overlooked ways to increase HGH — and it costs nothing.
The body releases the greatest amount of growth hormone during the first two hours of sleep. Eating a large meal right before bed, especially one containing starchy carbohydrates, creates an insulin spike that directly suppresses this HGH output. Insulin and HGH work against each other — when one is high, the other is low. You can’t have both elevated at the same time.
Stop eating 2 to 3 hours before you go to sleep. Your last meal should be lean protein and non-starchy vegetables — chicken breast, fish, turkey, cottage cheese, leafy greens. Avoid starchy carbs like pasta, bread, white rice, cereals and potatoes in the evening entirely.
Going to bed slightly hungry is not a bad thing. In fact it’s one of the more effective things you can do for muscle gain, fat loss and HGH production simultaneously.
4. Eat Low Glycemic Throughout the Day
HGH levels increase significantly when insulin levels are low. More precisely, GH declines when blood sugar is high — because insulin is elevated to bring that sugar down. Consuming large amounts of high-glycemic carbohydrates throughout the day can almost completely halt GH release. A high-carb, low-fat diet is essentially devastating to growth hormone levels.
The solution isn’t to eliminate carbs — it’s to be strategic about them. Eat low glycemic carbs throughout the day — vegetables, fruits, oats, sweet potato, brown rice. Save the higher glycemic carbs for immediately after training, when elevated insulin is actually beneficial because it drives amino acids into muscle cells and amplifies the HGH-driven muscle building response.
A proper HGH-friendly diet is built around: lots of protein (eggs, lean meats, cottage cheese), low glycemic carbs (vegetables, fruits) and healthy fats (nuts, olive oil). Eat most of your protein about 2 hours before and immediately after your workout.
5. Intermittent Fasting
As already discussed, higher insulin levels suppress HGH production. Intermittent fasting has gained popularity precisely because of its ability to lower blood sugar, improve insulin sensitivity, ease digestion — and significantly increase HGH release.
Some studies have shown HGH can be up to 5 times higher after a 24-hour fast. This hormonal peak causes the body to burn fat as fuel instead of breaking down muscle protein — which is exactly what every serious lifter wants. How long one fasts varies by preference, but a window of 10 to 18 hours, three times a week, is generally recommended for maximum health benefits and HGH secretion.
The most practical approach is the standard 16:8 method — eating within an 8-hour window and fasting for 16. When you break the fast, do it with a low-glucose meal to avoid the insulin spike that would undo the hormonal benefit you just earned.
6. Lose Body Fat — Especially Around the Belly
How much body fat you carry is directly connected to your HGH production. People with higher levels of body fat — particularly belly fat — are significantly more likely to have impaired HGH production and elevated disease risk. One study showed that people with three times more belly fat had half the HGH levels of lean individuals.
What’s particularly interesting is that excess fat has a bigger suppressive effect on HGH in men than in women. An obese person can have dramatically lower HGH and IGF-1 levels compared to someone lean — but the good news is that after losing a significant amount of fat, those levels return to normal.
Out of all fat deposit areas, visceral belly fat is the most damaging to HGH production. Losing it won’t just improve your aesthetics — it will directly optimize your hormonal environment.
7. Cleanse Your Liver
This one rarely gets mentioned, and it should. All the HGH released by the pituitary gland is processed by the liver and then metabolized to create IGF-1 — the insulin-like growth factor responsible for anti-aging protein construction, growth and HGH development functions. If your liver is sluggish or overworked, this conversion is impaired and you lose much of the benefit of whatever HGH your body does produce.
Poor dietary choices, alcohol and processed foods put constant strain on the liver. You might not notice obvious symptoms — the liver rarely complains loudly until things are serious — but it can simply fail to function at its optimal state. Limit toxic, processed food products and cut alcohol out entirely if HGH optimization is your goal. Alcohol particularly undermines hormonal health in multiple ways simultaneously.
8. Keep Stress Low
Cortisol — the stress hormone — is HGH’s direct enemy. When cortisol is chronically elevated, HGH production drops. Managing stress isn’t just good for your mental health; it’s a direct hormonal intervention.
Researchers have found that after watching a comedy film, the concentration of HGH in subjects increased by 88%. It sounds almost too simple, but the mechanism is real — positive emotional states reduce cortisol and create a hormonal environment where HGH can be released more freely.
Do more of whatever genuinely relaxes you. Socialize. Get outside. Stop training when you should be resting. Overtraining is itself a chronic stressor that suppresses HGH as much as any other lifestyle factor.
9. Use the Right Supplements
Several natural compounds have strong evidence behind them for increasing HGH production. These aren’t magic pills — they work best when the sleep, training, diet and lifestyle factors above are already in place. But when stacked on top of good fundamentals, they can meaningfully move the needle.
Amino Acids
Amino acids are the building blocks of the body and several of them are directly linked to HGH production.
L-Arginine is a semi-essential amino acid with numerous positive effects — improved exercise performance, immune enhancement, accelerated recovery and increased HGH production. A study at the University of Turin showed that arginine supplementation led to subjects having three times higher growth hormone levels than the average for their age group. Importantly, arginine appears to work best when taken before bed rather than before training — the body doesn’t tend to produce much additional HGH when arginine is taken during exercise.
L-Ornithine is derived from arginine. High doses have successfully raised growth hormone levels in studies — in one study, 50% of subjects experienced significant increases in serum growth hormone. When administered together, L-Arginine and L-Ornithine appear to offer meaningful anabolic benefits driven by GH release.
L-Lysine, when taken together with Arginine, can trigger the release of growth hormone. In a study at the University of Rome, 15 healthy male subjects given 1,200mg of Arginine combined with L-Lysine had biologically active growth hormone elevated by two to eight times.
L-Glutamine is the most abundant amino acid in human muscle. It directly regulates both the production and breakdown of protein and immune cell activity, and is converted into glutamate which can directly enhance growth hormone secretion.
Glycine is a non-essential amino acid. Recent studies have documented that oral glycine raises growth hormone levels in humans, particularly when taken before sleep.
L-Arginine supplementation is covered in more depth here if you want the full breakdown.
GABA
Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is the brain’s major inhibitory neurotransmitter — a potent calming compound for both the brain and nervous system that also helps produce quality sleep. Research has shown that GABA supplementation increases HGH levels by 400% at rest and 200% during exercise. A single oral dose of 5 grams administered to 19 subjects in one study significantly elevated plasma growth hormone levels.
GABA works through a completely different pathway than the amino acids above, making it a useful addition to any HGH-focused supplement stack. Note: if you are currently taking a gabapentin medication such as Neurontin, a GABA supplement will neutralize the drug’s effect — consult your doctor first.
Green Tea (EGCG)
Green tea is one of the less obvious but well-documented ways to increase HGH. The active compound is epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), which has a direct correlation with the body’s HGH levels.
In a study by the Alternative Medicine Review, participants who consumed green tea products on a calorie-restricted diet for 90 days increased their HGH levels by 320%, compared to only 20% in the placebo group. Their IGF-1 also increased by 24% versus 15% in controls, and they lost nearly three times as much weight as the placebo group. The results took time to appear — consistent daily consumption over weeks and months is what produces the benefit, just as with training and diet.
BCAAs
Taking BCAAs (Branched Chain Amino Acids) has also been shown to increase HGH levels. They work primarily by reducing exercise-induced muscle damage and keeping cortisol levels in check — which, as already covered, indirectly supports HGH production by keeping its primary antagonist at bay.
The Bottom Line
None of these work in isolation. Sleep is the foundation — without 7 to 9 hours of quality sleep, no supplement or training method will compensate. Build on top of that with short intense training, low-glycemic eating, no food before bed, and intermittent fasting two to three times a week. Then add the supplements as the final layer.
The people who optimize all of these simultaneously don’t just increase HGH — they create a hormonal environment where muscle grows faster, fat comes off more easily, recovery happens quicker and the body functions closer to how it did a decade ago. That’s what HGH actually does when you stop suppressing it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does intermittent fasting really increase HGH that much? Yes — some studies show HGH levels up to 5 times higher after a 24-hour fast. Even shorter fasting windows of 16 hours produce meaningful increases. The mechanism is simple: fasting keeps insulin low, and low insulin allows HGH to rise.
How long before bed should I stop eating? At least 2 to 3 hours. Your last meal should be lean protein and non-starchy vegetables only. Starchy carbs in the evening create the insulin spike that suppresses the HGH release that would otherwise happen in the first hours of sleep.
Can I increase HGH without supplements? Absolutely. Sleep, training, diet and fasting are the primary drivers. Supplements add to an already optimized foundation — they don’t replace it. Someone sleeping 8 hours, training intensely for 45 minutes, eating low glycemic and doing intermittent fasting will produce significantly more HGH than someone taking every supplement on this list but sleeping 5 hours and eating pizza before bed.
What workout is best for HGH? Short, heavy compound lifting and HIIT cardio. Keep sessions under 60 minutes. The lactic acid produced by intense training is one of the primary signals for HGH release. Long, slow workouts do not produce the same response.
Does stress really lower HGH? Yes, directly. Cortisol and HGH compete — when one is chronically elevated, the other is suppressed. Chronic overtraining, poor sleep and psychological stress all keep cortisol high enough to meaningfully blunt HGH production over time.
How much arginine should I take for HGH? Studies showing HGH increases used doses ranging from 5 to 9 grams. Take it before bed rather than pre-workout, as the research shows it works better at rest than during exercise. Combining it with L-Ornithine and L-Lysine appears to amplify the effect.
