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Stop Eating Carbs Before Bed to Increase Growth Hormone

 there seems to be a prevailing notion that eating carbohydrates at night will somehow prevent natural growth hormone release from occurring and therefore hinder muscle protein synthesis. This is presumably due to carbohydrates causing insulin to be raised and therefore causing growth hormone to be inhibited. As some of you may already be aware, growth hormone secretion is at its maximum during sleep. It makes sense to want to maximize your natural hormonal milieus in order to promote anabolism.  However, what proponents of this misconstrued theory choose to forget – or just flat out don’t know – is that insulin, too, is anabolic. Nonetheless, for argument’s sake, I will solely focus on growth hormone and how a carbohydrate meal at night might – potentially (never?) – lead to less muscle protein synthesis.




For starters, it is true that when insulin is elevated (via ingested carbohydrate), growth hormone is inhibited and therefore low in concentration. However, this hardly deserves much attention given the numerous other factors that go into muscle hypertrophy. Nevertheless, some still translate this single piece of information into meaning that growth hormone will somehow be blunted to the point of no release and therefore inhibiting muscle protein synthesis altogether.

Eating before you go to sleep, especially starchy carbs will increase sugar levels in your blood.Insulin gets released also in your blood to normalize this spike in blood sugar levels. This is bad because about 80-90% of HGH (the Human Growth Hormone that controls aging, controls metabolism, cell growth and repair, and regulates your lean body mass to fat ratio )  is released while you sleep. High levels of insulin in your blood restrict the quantity of HGH released in your bloodstream.

So what can you do to maximize HGH production?

– Eat about 3 hours before you go to bed. Eat all your calories from carbs during the day.

– Your last meal should be some sort of lean protein and non starchy carbs like vegetables. Avoid starchy carbs  like pastas, breads, white rice, cereals, and potatoes. Good sources of lean protein include chicken breast, low fat cottage chease, fish, turkey, and casein if you are trying to build muscle.
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