[Victorian Rose]

Hello  I am close to starting a program at the moment and was interested in L-Arginine.  Have you guys tried it? How much do you take and what brand has worked for you?

Studies have shown taking 6,000 mg L-arginine a day raises HGH, probably because L-arginine provides the nitric oxide required to make HGH.  L-arginine is an amino acid, meaning you already get it every time you eat protein.  Except dairy, which has very little.  So if you use much less than 6,000 mg it is unlikely to make a significant difference compared to your diet.  The problem with simply downing 6,000 mg L-arginine in the morning is that you'll get explosive diarrhea.  You need to spread it out extremely well throughout the day to avoid irritating your stomach.  Even 2 or 3 portions might not be spread enough.

HGH is important to NBE, but I'm not sure how important.

Since it's just 1 molecule, nearly all brands should be the same.   Unless some have impurities, which is unlikely these days.

Plus as suggested you can already get it from your diet if you pick the right foods, and then you'll get other nutrients on top of it.  All meat is a good source.  Though some of the best sources are seafood, especially shellfish including lobster and crab, and turkey.  Pumpkin seeds are also a great source and sprouted pumpkin seeds are one of the healthiest foods in the world.  One of my nutritional mixes with the very most concentrated foods includes it.  To sprout, soak in water for at least 4 hours.  The downside to pumpkin seed is the high omega 6 content which you need to counterbalance with extra ALA, EPA, DHA and DPA omega 3s.  Chia or flax seeds are good for ALAs, seafood or fish oil for the other 3.  Shellfish are super healthy too, especially oysters.  Turkey isn't that special otherwise, so seafood and pumpkin seeds may be better options.

Otherwise if you try to individually down every little helpful nutrient from pills instead of food, you may find yourself downing 50+ different pills and still not getting some of the even more obscure and minor items found in food.

Also, I plan on adding those to the list of foods I add to my diet.  I was looking into taking fish oil and flaxseed oil but read that it may become dangerous so I decided to stick with just fish oil.  It wasn't very clear as to how much makes it dangerous but since I am not sure that's why I decided to just take fish oil. I don't want to just take pills instead of food but like I said, I think I just want to make sure I'm getting enough of everything.  Thanks for all your advice, Joe. Always appreciated.