One of the things that normally happens when a person stops exercising is that they tend to lose muscle mass quite rapidly once they are out of their teens or early twenties. Under those conditions, people become deconditioned very quickly. In fact, one of the major problems that happens to people who are in a hospital and have to be in a hospital bed for a period of time is that they become weak because of their loss of a lot of muscle mass. What we've found is that, if you continue to take Power Maker, you don't put on muscle just lying around but, on the other hand, you'll lose it very, very slowly. Well back in the early 70's, we came to the conclusion that one of the major reasons that, with age, a person gets fatter and less muscular, that their wounds heal more slowly, and that their immune system functions less well is that there is a decline in the release of growth hormone.
Growth hormone is a hormone that is produced and released by the pituitary gland in the brain.
As people age, the amount of growth hormone that they release in response to the usual stimuli declines. In youths, doing heavy exercise will cause a large release of growth hormone and that would enable a person's muscles to adapt to heavy exercise and become bigger and stronger. But as people get older, that response declines and so people tend to lose muscle mass and become weaker. The decline in the release of growth hormone is something that concerns us greatly, particularly because of its effects on the immune system, especially the T-cell part of the immune system, which protects you from things like viruses and cancer. So, we started studying back in the mid 70's to find out what could be done to restore the normal, youthful release of growth hormone.