Studies: Growth Hormones Don't Improve Performance

Athletes who take human growth hormone may not be getting the boost they expected. While growth hormone adds some muscle, it doesn't appear to improve strength or exercise capacity, according to a review of studies that tested the hormone in mostly athletic young men.

"It doesn't look like it helps and there's a hint of evidence it may worsen athletic performance," said Dr. Hau Liu, of Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose, Calif., who was lead author of the review.

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The Supplements Made Me Do It

As a child, I couldn't get away with rule-breaking by saying, "The devil made me do it!" Yet this is essentially what some Major League Baseball players say when accused of steroid use: "The supplements made me do it."

Today star pitcher Roger Clemens is expected to testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform about performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. The players and their representatives who have spoken so far -- to legislators and the press -- have offered a litany of excuses for how they ended up in the midst of a steroid scandal. The most preposterous, by far, is that dietary supplements are to blame.

Clemens, for example, has repeatedly denied using steroids or human growth hormone. But he acknowledged that he has been injected with vitamin B-12. Tainted B-12 was how Orioles first baseman Rafael Palmeiro explained his failed steroids test in 2005. In his congressional testimony last month, Baseball union chief Donald Fehr blamed not just dietary supplements, but Congress for insufficient regulation.

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Is Human Growth Hormone the Fountain of Youth?

Marie Miano, like some professional athletes, takes human growth hormone — but she has a prescription.

"I feel like the fountain of youth because I feel better than I did before. I feel younger, I feel healthier." she said.

At 54, she started growth hormone injections after reading actress Suzanne Sommers' book — just one Hollywood celebrity sold on HGH.

Actor Sylvester Stallone freely admits he used the hormone as he prepared for his latest Rambo movie.

"The way people think of HGH is archaic," the actor said on the Today Show.

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Army Searches for Youth Potion in Mitochondria

The hip-hop world has been all a-flutter, lately, over accusations that 50 Cent and Mary J. Blige took human growth hormone, or HGH, to get big and stay youthful. Army scientists want their soldiers to stay strong and spritely, too. But they're taking a slightly different approach, in a new program for "Optimized Human Performance." Instead of HGH, the Army is looking for its fountain of youth in mitochondria -- the body's powerhouses, which turn sugars into energy.

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