Growth hormones
Growth hormone is not a sex hormone. It does, however, play a role in feminization/masculinization during HRT, as it plays a fundamental role during puberty. This page is aiming at informing you about it, and proposing ways to naturally stimulates its production. But it is also a strong warning not to try and take exogenous growth hormones.
A hormonal factor that is not often addressed is the role of growth hormones. As its name states, growth hormone is a key component in tissue growth and repair. It is released in a pulsatile way (at a regular time in the day - actually usually at night during sleep), and its average levels vary in the different stages of life. High during childhood and puberty, they decrease in our twenties. After that, their levels are dependent on the needs: spurts will occur after body traumas in order to stimulate healing, or after intense physical activity (which actually creates many little muscle traumas). In the frame of medical transition, you could compare the role of growth hormones to the role of building workers when sex hormones are the architects. Sex hormones decide what and where to build, growth hormones do the actual building.
The age-related factor explains why starting hormone therapy at younger age (before or in the early twenties) usually leads to faster and stronger development.
Warning
This information, however, should not be read as an encouragement to find growth hormones online and start taking them. This is a very bad idea, for so many reasons. Not only does it constitute a serious health hazard, but if you’re taking it to enhance feminization, you might just reach the opposite effect, as exogenous growth hormones can cause a disproportionate “thickening” of the face (nose, eyebrow, chin…) - even in comparison with typical male features (in case some transmasc people would think this sounds nice)What you can do, however, is to aim at adopting a lifestyle that will naturally stimulate the production of growth hormones. Such lifestyle includes:
- Relatively intense exercise (i.e. is “intense” an exercise the day after which you feel pain in your muscles)
- Sleeping (avoid sleep deprivation, and get as much sleep as possible)
- High protein intake (plant-based protein is protein too).
- Low sugar intake
Sources
Growth Hormone-Releasing Hormone: Clinical Studies and Therapeutic Aspects
Reciprocal interactions between the GH axis and sleep
Human growth hormone response to repeated bouts of aerobic exercise