IGF-1, or Insulin-Like Growth Factor-1, has an insulin-like effect because it can actually affect blood sugar levels. Insulin’s job is to push glucose and amino acid into muscle tissue and help repair and grow tissue, which is also called hyperplasia.

Increlex is the pharmaceutical brand of IGF-1. But pharmaceutical companies didn’t make this for bodybuilders. It was actually developed to help kids with growth hormone issues such as pituitary dwarfism right. And they were trying to help blast bone receptors with a large enough amount of HGH to signal growth. They discovered that using IGF for that purpose actually worked better. This is because HGH doesn’t have a direct muscle-building impact on the body.

HGH relies on stimulating the receptors responsible for causing the release of IGF-1. But the problem was that the IGF only stays active for like 20 minutes. This is because of something in your body called binding proteins. The purpose of these binding proteins are to identify and deactivate foreign bodies to render them ineffective. So, scientists added a chemical group to the IGF to prevent the binding proteins from degrading it so quickly.