This is my first outline, still very rough and basic and missing one or two essential elements, of the sane cycle. A project I have been working on in past months to outline a steroid/diet/supplementation plan that allows you to stay healthy, increase your health and still add a nominal amount of LEAN mass to your frame while maintaining of lowering fat.
Any and all comments are extremely welcome.
Introduction
It has long been my goal to demonstrate that steroid use cannot only occur without causing any harm, it can actually benefit us in lengthening our life-span and increasing our quality of life. Since in essence, steroids have never led to the death of any person, and that they are far less lethal than most over the counter products, such as plain aspirin, they should really be legal. And since they are prescription medication, any use of these products should occur under medical supervision. But hey, some idiots did make them illegal and good luck finding a doctor that will help you, much less one that actually knows what he is talking about.
That is why I set out to write this. It is in no way complete, it is merely a quick rundown of several facts and the safest conclusions I could make based on them. But it should empower you to convince your health-care provider to help you, and educate him on how to do so.
Many people who have known me throughout my quest to refute the dangers of steroid use have asked me for help in proving these facts to sceptics and laymen, and this is EXTREMELY difficult because of the large amount of propaganda they have had to endure over past years. This may still be a tad too scientific for the dumber individuals, but may serve as a tool to educate smarter friends and relatives. And I hope that it may do so.
Cycle duration
For cycle duration I have chosen 12 weeks. Its rather arbitrary and its certainly not something you should consider absolute fact. A cycle doesn’t have to be 12 weeks to be safe. But we have ample evidence to suggest that with proper post-cycle, full HPTA recovery can be made in less than 50 days (1) , and since most people do not like to play pincushion and employ for the majority long-acting products, 12 weeks is sufficiently long to reap all the benefits of your cycle and get adequate gains.
As a rule we will use equal time off as on. So after the cycle (post-cycle not included) you will stay off 12 weeks. Recovery should be established in less than 50 days, so technically after 2 months you could already safely start another cycle, but since physiology is not linear math and not everyone will be able to complete the cycle and post-cycle as per the instructions, we should offer ourselves some leeway. So we will cycle on 12 weeks, then stay off 12 weeks before recommencing
Product Choice
We need to be realistic about the products we use as well. I could outline all sorts of magnificent exotic cycles, but chances that you will be able to find all the needed products without taking a second mortgage on your house or get swindled by less than reputable dealers is slim. Therefore we opt for the more available products. First of all we will exclude products that are no longer made or are extremely hard to find, that includes drostanolone (Masteron), quinbolone (anabolicum vister), mibolerone (cheque drops), formebolone (esiclene), clostebol (megagrisevit), MENT, methandriol, metribolone, furazabol (miotolan), Norethandrolone (Nilevar), ethylestronol (orabolin), Stenbolone, oxabolone (steranabol), etc.
Of what’s left, we need to make a selection. Halotestin is out. Too androgen mediated, too liver toxic. Trenbolone and nandrolone (Deca-Durabolin, Laurabolin, Durabolin) are excluded because they are too suppressive. Andriol because it is ineffective, oxandrolone (Anavar) because a useful dose (75+ mg per day) is too expensive, and Methenolone (Primobolan) because of its price. Primo is a decent androgen, but seems to have no other mode of action.
Most of these products would have been excluded for other reasons anyway, with the possible exception of trenbolone and oxandrolone.
We will also exclude methandrostenolone (Dianabol) and oxymetholone (Anadrol). While these are useful drugs at the beginning of a cycle, especially as far as bulk and strength, they fall outside of what we are looking for : a long term cycling plan with relatively lean results. On top of that I want to make a case for stanozolol (Winstrol/Stromba) and I do not feel comfortable recommending the use of two orals, due to liver toxicity (eventhough liver toxicity is a tad exaggerated, but then that just allows us more leeway with the winny).
That leaves us with three products : testosterone, boldenone (equipoise) and stanozolol (Winstrol/Stromba). Can you build an effective cycle with clean and proper results, with only these three substances ? Of course you can. But before we delve into that, let me defend my choice of products.
In defense of testosterone
Apart from being the most effective steroid, it’s also the sanest choice with regards to health. It makes sense that by administering the exogenous variant of our prime androgen, we will not allow anything in the body that would normally occur to fall into disuse, nor allow anything that would normally not happen to occur. Because a lot of studies and conclusions are based on findings with testosterone, we can only safely make these assumptions about testosterone. That is why we not only use it, it will be the base for our cycle. And it should be for any health-conscious cycle.
Testosterone is the most effective steroid commercially available today. This observed in the real world, since even with the necessary bulk, testosterone increases lean body mass more than any other steroid we have access to. More than the stronger androgens, and more than the stronger estrogens. That is because testosterone has a very diverse mode of action. Testosterone is the most present androgen in the body. Its also the most important endogenous androgen in muscle tissue. But everywhere else in the body, that role is put aside for Dihydrotestosterone (DHT). Now DHT is a reduced version of testosterone with a saturated A-ring (steroids are lipophillic, 19-carbon, 4-ring structures made from cholesterol). These other tissues are rich in an enzyme called 5-alpha-reductase. When testosterone binds to this enzyme, its 4,5-double bond is broken and two hydrogen atoms (hence dihydro) attached to the spaces that are freed on the A-ring. DHT is a much more potent androgen, roughly three times the affinity of testosterone for the androgen receptor.
Many people regard DHT as the enemy, because among these androgen-specific tissues are the scalp (aggravating a genetic tendency to hair loss) and the skin (causing outbreaks of acne). But in fact DHT is more than that to us. Since it is the prime androgen in nerve tissue, it will be imperative to have ample DHT levels for optimal neuromuscular response. This is why many people taking the 5-alpha-reductase inhibitor finasteride (Proscar) find that their strength does not increase, or even decreases. Secondly we tend to forget that DHT is a potent anti-aromatase. The aromatase enzyme is the enzyme that converts testosterone to the estrogen estradiol (E2). As we will discuss next, E2 certainly has its benefits as well, but too high a concentration will result in excess adipose storage and more water retention (bloat). Certainly we don’t need this if it can be avoided. Since this is a long term plan, we are in no way planning to walk around like the “stay puffed marshmallow man”. By blocking the 5-alpha reductase we have a shift towards aromatization of testosterone, because there is more testosterone available (not converted to DHT) and there are more aromatase enzymes (not taken up by DHT). This could in turn lead to problems with feminization and gynocomastia (breast growth in men). So as you can see, DHT is quite important in this equation.
A more important issue is perhaps the prostate. Prostate cancer is a disease of modern society. And steroid use has been known to cause or aggravate Benign prostate hypertrophy, a growth stage of the prostate gland in middle-aged men. Because the prostate is androgen specific, DHT is often named as the culprit. But the latest research determines that estrogen is in fact the causative factor, although a level of androgenic action is required. Androgens have actually been proferred as a therapeutic means to treat BPH.
As we mentioned already, testosterone is a substrate for the aromatase enzyme and converts to E2. A female hormone. Here too demonisation has made E2 the enemy. And yet again we are overlooking several factors. First of all, bloat, fat gain and gyno occur only at very high concentrations of E2, something we should be able to avoid if we are sane with our doses. And if not, we have numerous anti-aromatase drugs at our disposal, of which I favour Mesterolone (Proviron) as it is a DHT analogue, will increase free testosterone and does not block E2 entirely in low doses, so we still reap the benefits. So what are the benefits of E2 ? Well, estrogen enhances gluconeogenesis (use of glucose for tissue repair and energy storage) (2) , increases the release of human Growth Hormone (3) and can increase androgen receptor upregulation (E2 makes testosterone more effective as an androgen) (4).
Lastly we consider actions not mediated by either the androgen or the estrogen receptor. This could in large part explain why testosterone is still the greatest steroid available, despite there being more potent androgens and more estrogen mediated drugs. A combination of trenbolone, a much stronger androgen, and oxymetholone (which has direct estrogenic action, without requiring aromatisation) only yields roughly the same amount of mass as equipotent or even lesser doses of testosterone. Why ? Well this brings us back to the point I raised about using a base that is equal to the endogenous alternative. Because certain processes may not be activated by these bastard hormones. One study (5) showed that testosterone had more effect in ductal branching in prostate tissue than did DHT, which would indicate a non-AR mechanism, since DHT is more potent at the AR, especially in the prostate. Could it be the estrogen factor ? No, because the DHT prohormone 3-alpha (5-alpha-androstan-3a,17b-diol) had the same effect as testosterone, and 3-alpha does not aromatize. So there is another mechanism in play here, which certainly supports the thesis that there is more to testosterone than merely agonism of estrogen and androgen receptors. Another study demonstrated that testosterone may upgrade beta-adrenoreceptors in vivo, through a non-AR mediated mechanism (again testosterone outperformed DHT in this area), and since administration of estrogen receptor antagonists showed no significant changes, we can also state it was not ER-mediated. The relevance of this in regards to muscular hypertrophy may be a lot greater. This did in large part determine the diet I planned with this cycle and the use of beta-adrenergic agents. So testosterone has proven beneficial in three separate fashions, and easily allows a defense of its selection.
But safety played a factor in my decision as well. Many theories about the evils of steroids were debunked these past few years, and most of the studies that disproved this long-standing anti-steroid propaganda, used testosterone as a substrate. So the only safe conclusion as far as these studies go is that TESTOSTERONE, and not steroids in general, is safe and beneficial. That is not to say the others are not as safe, but there is no proof that gives us any certainty that they are. One of the main reasons against the use of steroids has been cardiovascular risk. Several studies have looked at this closely, and not only did they determine that testosterone did not pose a heart risk (6) , they also concluded that low testosterone levels induce cardio-vascular risk (7), whereas supraphysiological administration seemed to decrease the risk (8) (decreases in total cholesterol, HDL and LDL, LDL/HDL ratio and apoplipoprotein B, a marker for cardiovascular risk). In conclusion it is safe to state that testosterone is actually good for your ticker, and as normal levels of testosterone decrease with age, a good case is to be made for Hormonal Replacement therapy in the interest of cardiovascular health. Lastly testosterone was also shown to increase mental health (9), as it increased cognitive performances in older men. So testosterone cannot only promote more lean mass than any other steroid, it can also make you live longer by decreasing heart risk, and get better quality out of your remaining years by enhancing cognitive performance and fighting dementia.
Hence my case for using testosterone as a base of our safe cycle.
Any and all comments are extremely welcome.
Introduction
It has long been my goal to demonstrate that steroid use cannot only occur without causing any harm, it can actually benefit us in lengthening our life-span and increasing our quality of life. Since in essence, steroids have never led to the death of any person, and that they are far less lethal than most over the counter products, such as plain aspirin, they should really be legal. And since they are prescription medication, any use of these products should occur under medical supervision. But hey, some idiots did make them illegal and good luck finding a doctor that will help you, much less one that actually knows what he is talking about.
That is why I set out to write this. It is in no way complete, it is merely a quick rundown of several facts and the safest conclusions I could make based on them. But it should empower you to convince your health-care provider to help you, and educate him on how to do so.
Many people who have known me throughout my quest to refute the dangers of steroid use have asked me for help in proving these facts to sceptics and laymen, and this is EXTREMELY difficult because of the large amount of propaganda they have had to endure over past years. This may still be a tad too scientific for the dumber individuals, but may serve as a tool to educate smarter friends and relatives. And I hope that it may do so.
Cycle duration
For cycle duration I have chosen 12 weeks. Its rather arbitrary and its certainly not something you should consider absolute fact. A cycle doesn’t have to be 12 weeks to be safe. But we have ample evidence to suggest that with proper post-cycle, full HPTA recovery can be made in less than 50 days (1) , and since most people do not like to play pincushion and employ for the majority long-acting products, 12 weeks is sufficiently long to reap all the benefits of your cycle and get adequate gains.
As a rule we will use equal time off as on. So after the cycle (post-cycle not included) you will stay off 12 weeks. Recovery should be established in less than 50 days, so technically after 2 months you could already safely start another cycle, but since physiology is not linear math and not everyone will be able to complete the cycle and post-cycle as per the instructions, we should offer ourselves some leeway. So we will cycle on 12 weeks, then stay off 12 weeks before recommencing
Product Choice
We need to be realistic about the products we use as well. I could outline all sorts of magnificent exotic cycles, but chances that you will be able to find all the needed products without taking a second mortgage on your house or get swindled by less than reputable dealers is slim. Therefore we opt for the more available products. First of all we will exclude products that are no longer made or are extremely hard to find, that includes drostanolone (Masteron), quinbolone (anabolicum vister), mibolerone (cheque drops), formebolone (esiclene), clostebol (megagrisevit), MENT, methandriol, metribolone, furazabol (miotolan), Norethandrolone (Nilevar), ethylestronol (orabolin), Stenbolone, oxabolone (steranabol), etc.
Of what’s left, we need to make a selection. Halotestin is out. Too androgen mediated, too liver toxic. Trenbolone and nandrolone (Deca-Durabolin, Laurabolin, Durabolin) are excluded because they are too suppressive. Andriol because it is ineffective, oxandrolone (Anavar) because a useful dose (75+ mg per day) is too expensive, and Methenolone (Primobolan) because of its price. Primo is a decent androgen, but seems to have no other mode of action.
Most of these products would have been excluded for other reasons anyway, with the possible exception of trenbolone and oxandrolone.
We will also exclude methandrostenolone (Dianabol) and oxymetholone (Anadrol). While these are useful drugs at the beginning of a cycle, especially as far as bulk and strength, they fall outside of what we are looking for : a long term cycling plan with relatively lean results. On top of that I want to make a case for stanozolol (Winstrol/Stromba) and I do not feel comfortable recommending the use of two orals, due to liver toxicity (eventhough liver toxicity is a tad exaggerated, but then that just allows us more leeway with the winny).
That leaves us with three products : testosterone, boldenone (equipoise) and stanozolol (Winstrol/Stromba). Can you build an effective cycle with clean and proper results, with only these three substances ? Of course you can. But before we delve into that, let me defend my choice of products.
In defense of testosterone
Apart from being the most effective steroid, it’s also the sanest choice with regards to health. It makes sense that by administering the exogenous variant of our prime androgen, we will not allow anything in the body that would normally occur to fall into disuse, nor allow anything that would normally not happen to occur. Because a lot of studies and conclusions are based on findings with testosterone, we can only safely make these assumptions about testosterone. That is why we not only use it, it will be the base for our cycle. And it should be for any health-conscious cycle.
Testosterone is the most effective steroid commercially available today. This observed in the real world, since even with the necessary bulk, testosterone increases lean body mass more than any other steroid we have access to. More than the stronger androgens, and more than the stronger estrogens. That is because testosterone has a very diverse mode of action. Testosterone is the most present androgen in the body. Its also the most important endogenous androgen in muscle tissue. But everywhere else in the body, that role is put aside for Dihydrotestosterone (DHT). Now DHT is a reduced version of testosterone with a saturated A-ring (steroids are lipophillic, 19-carbon, 4-ring structures made from cholesterol). These other tissues are rich in an enzyme called 5-alpha-reductase. When testosterone binds to this enzyme, its 4,5-double bond is broken and two hydrogen atoms (hence dihydro) attached to the spaces that are freed on the A-ring. DHT is a much more potent androgen, roughly three times the affinity of testosterone for the androgen receptor.
Many people regard DHT as the enemy, because among these androgen-specific tissues are the scalp (aggravating a genetic tendency to hair loss) and the skin (causing outbreaks of acne). But in fact DHT is more than that to us. Since it is the prime androgen in nerve tissue, it will be imperative to have ample DHT levels for optimal neuromuscular response. This is why many people taking the 5-alpha-reductase inhibitor finasteride (Proscar) find that their strength does not increase, or even decreases. Secondly we tend to forget that DHT is a potent anti-aromatase. The aromatase enzyme is the enzyme that converts testosterone to the estrogen estradiol (E2). As we will discuss next, E2 certainly has its benefits as well, but too high a concentration will result in excess adipose storage and more water retention (bloat). Certainly we don’t need this if it can be avoided. Since this is a long term plan, we are in no way planning to walk around like the “stay puffed marshmallow man”. By blocking the 5-alpha reductase we have a shift towards aromatization of testosterone, because there is more testosterone available (not converted to DHT) and there are more aromatase enzymes (not taken up by DHT). This could in turn lead to problems with feminization and gynocomastia (breast growth in men). So as you can see, DHT is quite important in this equation.
A more important issue is perhaps the prostate. Prostate cancer is a disease of modern society. And steroid use has been known to cause or aggravate Benign prostate hypertrophy, a growth stage of the prostate gland in middle-aged men. Because the prostate is androgen specific, DHT is often named as the culprit. But the latest research determines that estrogen is in fact the causative factor, although a level of androgenic action is required. Androgens have actually been proferred as a therapeutic means to treat BPH.
As we mentioned already, testosterone is a substrate for the aromatase enzyme and converts to E2. A female hormone. Here too demonisation has made E2 the enemy. And yet again we are overlooking several factors. First of all, bloat, fat gain and gyno occur only at very high concentrations of E2, something we should be able to avoid if we are sane with our doses. And if not, we have numerous anti-aromatase drugs at our disposal, of which I favour Mesterolone (Proviron) as it is a DHT analogue, will increase free testosterone and does not block E2 entirely in low doses, so we still reap the benefits. So what are the benefits of E2 ? Well, estrogen enhances gluconeogenesis (use of glucose for tissue repair and energy storage) (2) , increases the release of human Growth Hormone (3) and can increase androgen receptor upregulation (E2 makes testosterone more effective as an androgen) (4).
Lastly we consider actions not mediated by either the androgen or the estrogen receptor. This could in large part explain why testosterone is still the greatest steroid available, despite there being more potent androgens and more estrogen mediated drugs. A combination of trenbolone, a much stronger androgen, and oxymetholone (which has direct estrogenic action, without requiring aromatisation) only yields roughly the same amount of mass as equipotent or even lesser doses of testosterone. Why ? Well this brings us back to the point I raised about using a base that is equal to the endogenous alternative. Because certain processes may not be activated by these bastard hormones. One study (5) showed that testosterone had more effect in ductal branching in prostate tissue than did DHT, which would indicate a non-AR mechanism, since DHT is more potent at the AR, especially in the prostate. Could it be the estrogen factor ? No, because the DHT prohormone 3-alpha (5-alpha-androstan-3a,17b-diol) had the same effect as testosterone, and 3-alpha does not aromatize. So there is another mechanism in play here, which certainly supports the thesis that there is more to testosterone than merely agonism of estrogen and androgen receptors. Another study demonstrated that testosterone may upgrade beta-adrenoreceptors in vivo, through a non-AR mediated mechanism (again testosterone outperformed DHT in this area), and since administration of estrogen receptor antagonists showed no significant changes, we can also state it was not ER-mediated. The relevance of this in regards to muscular hypertrophy may be a lot greater. This did in large part determine the diet I planned with this cycle and the use of beta-adrenergic agents. So testosterone has proven beneficial in three separate fashions, and easily allows a defense of its selection.
But safety played a factor in my decision as well. Many theories about the evils of steroids were debunked these past few years, and most of the studies that disproved this long-standing anti-steroid propaganda, used testosterone as a substrate. So the only safe conclusion as far as these studies go is that TESTOSTERONE, and not steroids in general, is safe and beneficial. That is not to say the others are not as safe, but there is no proof that gives us any certainty that they are. One of the main reasons against the use of steroids has been cardiovascular risk. Several studies have looked at this closely, and not only did they determine that testosterone did not pose a heart risk (6) , they also concluded that low testosterone levels induce cardio-vascular risk (7), whereas supraphysiological administration seemed to decrease the risk (8) (decreases in total cholesterol, HDL and LDL, LDL/HDL ratio and apoplipoprotein B, a marker for cardiovascular risk). In conclusion it is safe to state that testosterone is actually good for your ticker, and as normal levels of testosterone decrease with age, a good case is to be made for Hormonal Replacement therapy in the interest of cardiovascular health. Lastly testosterone was also shown to increase mental health (9), as it increased cognitive performances in older men. So testosterone cannot only promote more lean mass than any other steroid, it can also make you live longer by decreasing heart risk, and get better quality out of your remaining years by enhancing cognitive performance and fighting dementia.
Hence my case for using testosterone as a base of our safe cycle.