Question
Have you heard of Bovine growth factor or Bovine Growth factor serum? Friend of mine is pushing me to buy some, says it’ll add huge amounts of muscle.
Is he right?
Answer
In most cases, raising growth factors such as IGF-1, IGF2 etc with an oral pill, powder or potion and growing significant amounts of muscle with it is futile.
I’ll define “significant” BTW, as 10lbs or more. I just haven’t seen it with these products, at least not to any great degree.
The one notable exception may be colostrum, which I heard from a number of people about great weight gains, most of that being muscle.
Colostrum and other milk based growth factor products aren’t necessarily bunk BTW. Everyone from MASS to Pat Arnold has used them in their protein powders.
MASS includes colostrum in their whey, and it does a number of beneficial things. They also sold it solo IIRC.
Pat used to have a product called GF-PRO and my God did that taste good. If memory serves he spray dried bovine serum plasma right into it.
The consensus with both products seemed to be it settled better on your stomach and you recovered faster.
I would tend to agree with both assessments having used plenty of both.
I always looked at growth factors as a small but important part of the process.
Plus the way I train now seem to give me high IGF-1 levels (top of the range).
In addition, I’ve always been a big fan of loaded stretching, which also releases things like IGF-1, MGF etc etc. I don’t pretend to know all of them, but do know loaded stretching helps in getting them to help in the muscle building process.
In all candor though, I think to make “significant” gains in muscle with these growth factors, you have to inject them.
Fortunately, from what I can see they’re still readily available as “research chemicals.”
Power of Insulin
Finally, I’d remind you not to forget about the power of your own insulin.
It is IMO, the most powerful muscle building hormone and largely under your control, even into old age.
You can’t say the same about testosterone, growth hormone etc as you age. At least to the same degree.
Anyway, Bovine growth factors aren’t entirely hocus pocus. Certainly colostrum is worth looking into, especially now that the price has come down many years after it was first proposed for bodybuilding purposes.
You’ll likely need to inject these growth factors though, combined with your training, diet and other efforts to realize the kind of gains that you seek.
Hope that helps.
