on Twitch
I went through the official site line by line, read the clinical study in full — the one everybody quotes and nobody opens — and compared every single dose against what the research actually uses. Verdict: there's something real here. And there's a very large "but".
I have been taking this product since 2001. I have no commercial relationship with the manufacturer, and nobody paid me for my time investigating. You deserve to know that before reading on, because I'm about to spend twenty minutes methodically dismantling the claims made for a product I take every day. My full experience, both sides of it, is in section 06.
Let's get one thing out of the way first. If you came here for a tidy "it's a scam, run" verdict, you're going to be disappointed. If you came for "it's the fountain of youth, click here", you're going to be even more disappointed. Believe me, I'd have preferred a simple answer too. Simple answers are easier to write, and let's be honest, they share a lot better.
Unfortunately this product sits stubbornly in the middle. And it's precisely because nobody bothers doing the sorting that people hand over $350 for six months of tablets thinking they're buying something other than what they're actually buying.
So let's do the sorting. Claim by claim, milligram by milligram.
01 — The productWhat are we actually talking about
GenF20 Plus is a dietary supplement sold since the early 2000s by Leading Edge Health, a company registered in Canada with an entity in Cyprus. It contains no growth hormone whatsoever. It's marketed as a "releaser" — something that nudges your pituitary gland into producing more of its own.
That distinction isn't marketing fluff, it's basic physiology. Growth hormone is a protein. Swallow it and your stomach dismantles it before it can do anything useful — a point the New England Journal of Medicine spelled out in print back in 2003.4 So on this specific point, the manufacturer is right not to claim otherwise.
The system comes in two parts, taken together twice a day: enteric-coated tablets and an oral spray.
Current pricing on the official site:
| Package | Total | Per month | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 month | $69.95 | $69.95 | ≈ $839 |
| 3 months | $199.95 | $66.65 | ≈ $800 |
| 6 months | $349.95 | $58.33 | ≈ $700 |
So somewhere between $700 and $840 a year. That's a very decent bicycle, or three years of gym membership. Hold on to that comparison — it comes back later, and not as a throwaway line. Though many customers claimed this product changed their lifes in just a few months, so a yearly subscription might not be necessary.
02 — The medical proofThe clinical study, actually read
The official site leads with one number, in large friendly type: 28% increase in IGF-1 in 12 weeks. And to its genuine credit — rare enough in this industry to deserve a mention — it links straight to the full study. Most supplement sellers just say "clinically proven" and bank on nobody checking. I checked. That's where it gets interesting.
The study is real, published in 2015 in a peer-reviewed journal. Randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, run across five centres in India. Seventy participants enrolled, sixty-one completed the full 84 days. For a dietary supplement, that's a properly built trial.1 The study isn't the problem. What was done with it afterwards is.
To be completely fair about what this means: it isn't fraud. The adjustment used is a legitimate statistical method, and the authors are upfront about why they reached for it. But in clinical research, a result you get by changing the analysis after discovering the first one came up empty has a name: exploratory. It means "interesting lead, needs confirming". It does not mean "proven".
Eleven years on, that confirmation still hasn't arrived.
Fine — but what about how you actually feel?
Because deep down, you don't care about IGF-1. Nobody wakes up thinking "my serum markers feel a little low this morning". What you want to know is whether you'll sleep better, have more energy, lose the belly.
Good news: the trial measured all of that. Bad news:
| What was measured | Result versus placebo |
|---|---|
| Energy levels | No difference |
| Sleep quality | No difference |
| Memory | No difference |
| Libido | No difference |
| Body fat | No difference |
| Lean muscle mass | No difference |
| Waist circumference and BMI | No difference |
| Overall self-rated satisfaction | No difference |
Energy, sleep and memory genuinely did improve during the trial. Statistically significantly, even. The catch is that it happened in both groups — including the people swallowing cellulose tablets and berry-flavoured water.
In other words: the placebo group felt exactly the same benefits. That's not nothing — it shows the placebo effect works remarkably well on these particular symptoms. But it also means that if you feel better after three weeks on GenF20 Plus, this trial gives you no basis for crediting the product.
One last thing honesty requires me to mention: the study was funded by the company that sells the product. The research organisation states it is independent, and I've no reason to doubt the quality of its work. But when a company funds the only study of its own product and no outside team has ever reproduced the finding, you deserve to know that going in.
03 — The dosesThe real problem, and it's arithmetic
This is the part I found most revealing. And credit where it's due: the site publishes the exact dose of every ingredient. Plenty of competitors hide behind a "proprietary blend" that tells you nothing. Here, it's all on the page.
Which means it can be checked. And what's on that page is… educational.
One essential clarification before comparing anything, because this is exactly where most articles go wrong — including an earlier version of this one. The dose is four tablets a day: two for breakfast, two for lunch. Avoid taking them for Dinner, you don't want to feel energized in your sleep. The product label lists amounts per four-tablet serving, which is the real daily dose.
Those are the figures used below.
The site itself runs a box headed "the truth about HGH supplements", explaining that the industry's standard trick is to include effective ingredients at doses so low they do nothing — just enough to print them on the label. The paragraph ends with: that's why GenF20 Plus stands out from the crowd.
So let's compare what's in the bottle against what the studies showing an effect on growth hormone actually use.
For arginine, the reference work is unambiguous: you need 5 to 9 grams to get a response. Below that, nothing. Above 13 grams you get no extra effect, just gastrointestinal misery.5 GenF20 Plus delivers 520 milligrams a day — ten to seventeen times below the effective range.
For GABA, the documented effective dose is around 3 grams, and the effect is genuinely impressive — up to a 400% rise at peak.6 GenF20 Plus delivers 200 milligrams a day, fifteen times less.
And here's the comparison that bites hardest, because it doesn't rest on a theoretical threshold but on an actual trial. Researchers tested an arginine + ornithine + lysine combination at 2 grams a day in weight-trained men. Effect on 24-hour growth hormone: none at all.7 GenF20 Plus delivers 1,020 mg of those three amino acids combined — roughly half of a dose that, at full strength, had already achieved nothing.
This paradox deserves a calm look, because it holds the whole case together. The trial on the finished product shows a small IGF-1 signal in the over-40s. Yet the individual doses sit far below the thresholds known to do anything.
Three readings are possible, and I don't have the means to settle between them: either the sixteen-ingredient combination produces something the isolated ingredients don't; or the enteric coating genuinely improves absorption; or the signal is a statistical artefact of a trial that was too small. The manufacturer argues for the first. The third remains the most economical explanation as long as no independent replication exists.
04 — The ingredientsOne by one, in plain English
Sixteen ingredients, all listed on the label. Here's what the research says about each, at real daily doses, with a three-level verdict.
| Ingredient | Per day | What the science says | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| L-Arginine | 520 mg | Genuinely raises GH — at 5–9 g. Here it's 10 to 17 times short. | Underdosed |
| L-Glutamine | 460 mg | GH studies use around 2 g. Useful for recovery in its own right. | Underdosed |
| L-Glycine | 460 mg | Documented sleep effect at 3 g before bed. Six to seven times short here. | Underdosed |
| L-Tyrosine | 400 mg | A fair dose for a thyroid hormone precursor. But no demonstrated link to growth hormone. | Beside the point |
| L-Lysine | 400 mg | The "ten times more effective with arginine" claim traces to a 1981 study at 1.2 g, never replicated. | Close, unproven |
| Tribulus terrestris | 320 mg | A standard commercial dose. No demonstrated effect on testosterone or GH in healthy men. | Unproven |
| Astragalus root | 240 mg | Interesting herb for immune support, but nothing to do with growth hormone. | Beside the point |
| Colostrum (10%) | 200 mg | The IGF-1 it contains is a protein, destroyed by digestion. Contains milk: allergen. | Doesn't survive digestion |
| Deer antler velvet | 200 mg | Sold as an IGF-1 source. A published study concluded oral intake does not raise blood IGF-1.8 | Doesn't survive digestion |
| GABA | 200 mg | Real and dramatic effect on GH… at 3 g. Fifteen times short here. | Underdosed |
| L-Isoleucine | 160 mg | Branched-chain amino acid. Standard sports doses are measured in grams. | Underdosed |
| L-Valine | 160 mg | Same family, same remark. | Underdosed |
| Anterior pituitary powder | 120 mg | Dried bovine tissue. No published clinical study supports this use. | Undocumented |
| Phosphatidyl choline | 100 mg | An emulsifier, meant to aid absorption of the rest. Plausible, unproven here. Contains soy. | Technical role |
| L-Ornithine | 100 mg | Positive studies use roughly 0.1 g per kilo — about 7 g for a 70 kg adult. Seventy times short. | Underdosed |
| GTF Chromium | 0.4 mg | 333% of the daily value. A common supplement dose; effect on blood glucose modest and debated. | Sensible dose |
The table is more nuanced than it first looks, and that's worth saying plainly: several ingredients sit at perfectly ordinary supplement doses — tyrosine, lysine, tribulus, chromium. This product isn't filled with dust.
But not one of them reaches the documented threshold for acting on growth hormone — which is the product's entire stated reason for existing. The only ingredient at a dose fully consistent with its purpose is the chromium, which is beside the point.
05 — The credentialsThree appeals to authority, three fact-checks
The site leans on three pillars of credibility. I checked each one, because this is exactly where a reader's trust is won or lost.
The doctor who recommends it
Dr Steven Lamm, Director of NYU's Men's Health Center and a familiar face on American television, wholeheartedly recommends the product.
Dr Lamm is real and does hold that post. He is also the medical advisor to Leading Edge Health — the manufacturer — and endorses several of the same company's other products, including two sexual performance supplements.
This isn't a scandal, and it isn't illegal. But a recommendation from the manufacturer's own medical advisor doesn't carry the same weight as an independent assessment, and the homepage mentions that relationship nowhere.
The New England Journal of Medicine study
The site quotes Dr Daniel Rudman, published in that prestigious journal in 1990: six months of growth hormone produced changes in lean mass and fat equivalent to 10 to 20 years of ageing. The quote is accurate. The study is real. It essentially founded the entire anti-ageing industry. The small snag is what happened next — which the site forgets to mention.
That study involved twelve men over sixty receiving injections of growth hormone, not tablets. Dr Rudman maintained until his death that his work carried no anti-ageing implications whatsoever.
In 2003, exasperated at watching its article used as a sales pitch, the journal published an editorial. The key line: if people are induced to buy a "human growth hormone releaser" on the basis of research published in the Journal, they are being misled.4
The same editorial adds that oral amino acid formulations sold as GH releasers are in fact based on studies of arginine given intravenously. Which is not the same thing as swallowing a tablet.
So: the site cites a scientific journal that published a piece specifically telling people not to do what the site is doing with its citation. That's remarkable enough to sit with for a moment.
The second quote, the one from "the book"
The site also quotes Dr Ronald Klatz, president of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, from his book Grow Young With HGH. That same book is named in the 2003 editorial above as one of the vehicles that spread the misreading of the Rudman study. A credential citing a credential disowned by the original source: at some point the loop closes on itself.
And then there's the footer
Right at the bottom of the homepage, below the order button, in small print, the manufacturer writes something I wasn't expecting to find. It concedes that while the efficacy of growth hormone injections is established in specific circumstances, studies on the efficacy of oral supplements for general wellness are, as things stand, not conclusive. And it states that its confidence in the product rests on naturopathic research literature, on its own clinical test, and on customer feedback.
It's remarkable on two counts. First because it flatly contradicts the top of the same page: you can't run "the #1 rated HGH releaser" as a headline and "the studies are not conclusive" in the footer without one of those two messages being surplus to requirements. Second because it places its own level of proof on the record.
Naturopathy is an alternative health approach: it isn't built on experimental method and doesn't generate evidence of efficacy in the clinical sense. That doesn't mean people who turn to it are wrong to do so — many arrive there because they felt rushed or unheard by conventional medicine, particularly with the diffuse complaints that come with age, and that expectation is entirely legitimate. But a legitimate expectation doesn't convert into evidence. The manufacturer itself files naturopathic research on the same line as "customer feedback", which tells you the rank it assigns to it.
06 — The testimonialsWhat they prove, and what they don't
There are a lot of them. Some are verified through an external review platform, which is a genuine plus — it means a real purchase sits behind the review.
That said, take one review displayed on the homepage, rated four and a half stars out of five and flagged "verified buyer". The author explains that he grew two inches taller at thirty-eight, without working out, and that his hands and feet got bigger. He's delighted about it.
In adults, the growth plates in the long bones are fused. You don't get taller. What a pathological rise in growth hormone does cause in adults is thickening of the extremities — hands, feet, facial features. That condition is called acromegaly, it's serious, and it warrants an urgent medical appointment.
So this testimonial is either inaccurate, or a description of symptoms that should have sent this person to an endocrinologist. It is displayed as a selling point. Neither reading is reassuring.
The likeliest explanation is also the most mundane: he mismeasured. Nobody measures their own height carefully from one year to the next. And his enthusiasm gives him away — someone genuinely presenting with acromegaly would be alarmed, not thrilled.
The second case is more serious
In the same review block, with the same four-and-a-half-star rating and the same "verified buyer" badge, a customer tells the following story. Diagnosed with hypothyroidism and prescribed levothyroxine, she felt weak and sleepy. She started GenF20 Plus alongside it, without telling her doctor. She notes that the pharmacy told her she needed to, and that she chose to keep it to herself. Since then her energy has returned and the symptoms have stopped.
The first is logical. Regaining energy, feeling less sleepy, digestive trouble settling down: that is precisely what levothyroxine does once the dose is properly adjusted, after a few weeks. This person is describing a thyroid treatment that is working, and crediting the supplement for it. Two things start at once, only one of them acts, and the credit goes to the wrong one. It's a textbook confounding factor — and eliminating exactly that is what blinded trials are for.
The second is a safety issue. This testimonial features a patient on thyroid medication concealing her supplement use from her doctor, after an explicit warning from a pharmacist. It is displayed as a selling point. And the detail that finishes it off: in the manufacturer's own clinical trial, thyroid disorders were an exclusion criterion.
The product has never been tested on this profile.
More broadly, a testimonial cannot separate a product from a placebo. That's structural, not a criticism of the people writing them: they know what they took, they paid for it, they want it to work. Neutralising that bias is the entire reason double-blind trials exist. And we've already seen how this one turned out.
Both of these people gave the product very high ratings, and that deserves saying plainly: they are sincere, they really did buy it, and nothing suggests they are trying to mislead anyone. Their satisfaction is real. It's the interpretation that's in question, not their good faith.
So ask yourself one question in front of any testimonial, here or anywhere else: what else could have produced this effect, other than the product? A treatment started at the same time, a habit that changed, a season, a rough measurement, or simply wanting it to work. If you can find even one other plausible explanation, the testimonial no longer proves anything: it tells a true story, wrongly attributed.
Run that exercise on the reviews on the official site. And while you're at it, run it on mine.
Which brings me to mine
I've just spent several paragraphs explaining that a testimonial proves nothing. Mine is no exception, and that is precisely why it sits here, at the end of this section, rather than in the shop window.
At 22 I was obese, with more than thirty kilos to lose. I started this product hoping to burn fat faster. What I noticed was a surge of energy that had to go somewhere. So I took up fitness and weight training, hard. Within a few years I'd built an athletic body — and with it a confidence that shifted everything else: dating, career, the lot. This product changed my life.
Twenty-five years later, the healthy habits have held, despite a father's schedule that rarely leaves a spare minute. But I now take a single tablet a day. The recommended dose of four gave me migraines and disturbed nights. Dropping to one is where I found my balance — and incidentally a box lasts four times longer, which is no small thing at this price.
So there are both sides of the coin.
Now I have to be honest about what my story demonstrates, and above all about what it doesn't.
What transformed my body was years of training. Not the tablet. You'll see in the next section that one hard training session raises growth hormone by 300 to 500% — five times more than this supplement has ever shown. If my hormones moved back then, the gym is by far the most economical explanation.
The product was present while I changed my life. That is not the same as having caused it. Though to be honest i was feeling energized on a day to day basis... So GenF20 Plus must have done something. And today I swallow 130 mg of arginine a day. Forty times below the lowest documented effective dose.
I feel less energized than i was more than 20 years ago, but it's better for my daily schedule. Sometimes with my Father's schedule, i just don't have the time or simply can't go to the gym like i could when i was without children, and it would become a problem if i was taking the recommended dose of 4 tablets, then feel energized but without the time to spend all of this energy.
A word about those migraines, because they matter. The clinical trial did record a headache among its adverse events, alongside the digestive complaints. The manufacturer, meanwhile, talks about a product with no known side effects. My experience lines up with the trial, not with the sales copy. And let me spell out what I should have done at the time instead of adjusting on my own: recurring migraines and disturbed sleep are grounds for stopping and speaking to a doctor.
So: a real effect, or the effect of a placebo you believe in all the harder because it cost you a fortune? I don't know. That's the most honest thing I can write after twenty-five years: I've never had my IGF-1 measured, never seen an endocrinologist, and the only published trial found no difference from placebo on everything I believe I feel.
What I know is that my life changed at that moment. What I don't know is what changed it. Your call — just as I invited you to make it on the others. Though deep inside i am quite sure GenF20 plus was the engine that changed my life... I just can't prove it!
07 — What actually worksAnd costs nothing
Since we're on the subject of raising your growth hormone naturally, it's worth looking at what moves the needle most. The numbers here are frankly awkward for the supplement industry.
A decent training session beats any supplement on the market, for free.
Two other documented levers sit alongside it: deep sleep, during which most natural secretion happens, and fasting, whose amplifying effect on secretion peaks has been established for decades.1
I know. "Sleep, move, eat properly." It's the most tedious advice in the known universe and I'm the first to roll my eyes when someone serves it to me. But we're not going to lie about the numbers just because they're boring.
08 — Price and guaranteeRead the small print
The "67-day money-back guarantee" is everywhere on the site. It's real, and it's a generous window. Three conditions are worth knowing before rather than after:
- You must return two empty containers. Not opened: empty. So you need to have consumed two months of product to qualify... One explanation is they know their product is the best, and that after 2 boxes you'll want to continue.
- Shipping isn't refunded, and the parcel must physically reach the warehouse within 67 days — not be posted, arrive.
- One refund per customer. Which, for a product the manufacturer recommends taking long-term, is worth noting.
None of this is illegal or even unusual in the sector. But between "try it risk-free" and "consume two months, then ship the empty bottles back at your own expense", there's a gap the banner ad doesn't quite capture. Though seeing all of the good customer testimonials, their return policy is somewhat rarely used...
A note for readers outside the United States: orders ship from the US or Cyprus. Factor in the delivery time, and be aware that depending on the value of the parcel, import duties and local sales tax may be added on arrival. That's not bad faith on the seller's part — it's just a line item nobody budgets for.
09 — VerdictSo, buy it or not?
I promised not to dodge, so here goes.
What the product genuinely has going for it
- It has been through a real randomised, double-blind trial published in a peer-reviewed journal. In this product category, that's the exception rather than the rule.
- The manufacturer publishes exact doses instead of hiding behind a "proprietary blend". That allows verification — which I did, and it doesn't flatter them, but the transparency deserves credit.
- Tolerability looks fine: in the trial, side effects were limited to acid reflux, occurring about as often on placebo as on the product.
- The company is identifiable and contactable, with real addresses and a guarantee that exists. This is a long way from a website thrown up last Tuesday.
What doesn't hold up, and it doesn't hold up badly
- The only positive result in the only study comes from a fallback analysis on a subgroup. The primary result, the one that was planned, showed nothing.
- Not one felt benefit — energy, sleep, libido, body shape — beat placebo. Not one.
- No ingredient reaches the documented threshold for acting on growth hormone. Arginine, the product's headline act, sits ten to seventeen times below the effective dose; GABA, fifteen times.
- Two ingredients sold as IGF-1 sources are proteins your stomach destroys before absorption.
- The most prestigious scientific credential cited is a journal that published a piece specifically to condemn this use of its own research.
What I'd tell a friend
If you're over 40, curious, and $350 doesn't hurt: go ahead if you fancy it. The product is reasonably safe and the guarantee is real. But go in assuming that what you feel will most likely be a placebo effect — which, incidentally, is not nothing: in the trial, the placebo genuinely did improve energy and sleep.
If you're under 40: the only signal detected in the study was confined to the over-40s. In younger participants, nothing. Keep your money. Which again is the opposite of what i felt, as i began to use this product in my 20s, but again these are things i can't prove... Try it for yourself if you're in your 20s and tell us your results!
If you're expecting a physical transformation — losing the belly, building muscle, smoothing out wrinkles: that is precisely what the trial measured and failed to find. Your $700 a year buys three years of gym membership, and training beats the supplement by a factor of five on the very hormone in question.
If you take any medication, or you're diabetic, hypertensive, on thyroid hormones, pregnant or breastfeeding: talk to your doctor first, no negotiating. Every one of those was an exclusion criterion in the clinical trial. Nobody knows what this product does in those situations, because nobody has tested it.
Sources
- Sonawane N., Kale V., Erande S., Chaudhary J., "Effect of GenF20 Plus on serum IGF-1 levels in healthy adults: a randomized controlled study", Open Access Journal of Clinical Trials, 2015;7:35–42. Trial registration CTRI/2011/06/001784, funded by DM Contact Management.
- Official site genf20.com: homepage, ingredients and order pages, accessed July 2026.
- Rudman D. et al., "Effects of human growth hormone in men over 60 years old", New England Journal of Medicine, 1990;323:1–6.
- Vance M.L., "Can Growth Hormone Prevent Aging?", New England Journal of Medicine, 2003;348:779–780. See also Drazen J.M., "Inappropriate Advertising of Dietary Supplements", same issue.
- Collier S.R., Casey D.P., Kanaley J.A., "Growth hormone responses to varying doses of oral arginine", Growth Hormone & IGF Research, 2005;15(2):136–139.
- Powers M.E. et al., "Growth hormone isoform responses to GABA ingestion at rest and after exercise", Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 2008;40(1):104–110.
- Study cited in Kanaley J.A. et al., Journal of Applied Physiology, 2006: combined arginine-ornithine-lysine supplementation at 2 g/day, no effect on 24-hour GH.
- Syrotuik D.G. et al., International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, 2005: oral consumption of deer antler velvet does not raise serum IGF-1.
- Kanaley J.A., "Growth hormone, arginine and exercise", Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care, 2008;11(1):50–54.
- Federal Trade Commission enforcement actions, 2005 and 2007, concerning anti-ageing claims for supplements and sprays marketed as growth hormone releasers.
Have you taken it? Tell us.
This article is worth what its sources are worth. The comments below will be worth what your experiences are worth — and I'm particularly interested in the ones that don't match the official story.
Three things are genuinely useful to me and to the next reader:
- How long you took it — three weeks and three years are not the same evidence.
- What you felt, or didn't. "Nothing happened" is a data point. It's also the one you'll never see on a manufacturer's page.
- If you stopped, why. Cost, side effects, boredom, no results — all of it counts.
Negative reports are welcome here. I have no commission riding on this page, so a comment saying it did nothing for you costs me exactly nothing — and tells the next reader more than another five-star review would.
If you have ever had your IGF-1 measured while taking this product, please post the numbers — before and after if you have both, and your age. Nobody on the internet has that figure from a real long-term user. One honest lab result would be worth more than everything I wrote above, whichever way it points.
And if you're reading this while experiencing symptoms that worry you, don't post about it and wait — see a doctor. Comments sections are not a place to get medical answers, including this one.