I wonder what the consensus view on trying to use exogenous testosterone for gaining muscle mass, I always thought it was somewhat risky.
There are also a lot of secondary effects that people underestimate. For example, the extra testosterone (beyond normal levels) will result in excess estrogen, which can grow excess breast tissue in males. There are medications that can interrupt this process, but getting the dosage right is difficult and many people fluctuate around ideal values. Fluctuation and low estrogen values will cause significant mental health effects. Again, these are theoretical avoidable under perfect conditions yet almost everyone ends up with some of it eventually. I had a friend who tried using testosterone all the “right” ways with excessive lab tests, HCG, cycling, SERMs, AIs, and everything else. It still ended up destabilizing his mental health and making him prone to anger and bouts of sadness/crying. He denied it for a long time because he thought it couldn’t possibly be his by-the-book protocol, but eventually we got him to admit it was a problem. Denial runs deep.
Basically: Don’t go down this path unless you accept that it’s going to have significant downsides and consequences, many of which are long lasting or permanent. And definitely don’t dabble in taking testosterone or steroids as an early step in a weightlifting career or as a trial to see if it gives you a boost. The consequences can/will be permanent for the rest of your life.
Can, not will. You're right though to point out that the body loves homeostasis and will downregulate endogenous testosterone production if serum levels are high from supplementation. Testicular atrophy from extended use is a real potential problem.
Unfortunately, TRT clinics are like the Internet Viagra doctors: they are drug dealers with an MD.
If you have low testosterone then see an endocrinologist or a urologist for treatment. There are certainly cases where exogenous testosterone injections are indicated, but depending on the kind of hypogonadism in question there can be better alternatives that don't involve injections or infertility.
It's worth noting that the secular testosterone decline is not a "new normal," but rather basically every man in the West is suffering from some kind of hypogonadism. We can speculate about the causes, but the precipitous drops in average population serum testosterone levels measured over the past decades is anything but natural or normal.
> many of which are long lasting or permanent
True, but not all of the permanent effects are negative. Exogenous testosterone causes muscle cell nuclei to multiply, and there is a permanent anabolic effect as a result. It's nowhere near as dramatic as being on exogenous androgens, but it's still significant.
Any supplementation will, by definition, raise serum levels higher than they were before the extra testosterone was added.
This is what causes the downregulation, so of course it will happen. Like I said, people like to be in denial about this because it doesn’t necessarily happen right away, but it happens.
> True, but not all of the permanent effects are negative.
That’s a weird way of looking at it. Those extra muscle nuclei won’t be of much use if you discontinue TRT and your endogenous system is too atrophied to keep up with basic bodily needs. You have to look at the big picture.
Your comment is a good example of the denial I was talking about: For whatever reason, some people don’t want to believe that the negative effects will happen to them, and they want to ignore the consequences or change the subject to only talk about the positives.
Does this apply to Longfolia leaf (Tongkat Ali)?
No -- Tongkat and other naturally occurring compounds like Fadogia increase testosterone by stimulating the body's production of Luteinizing Hormone, which in turn spurs the testes to produce more testosterone.
If you want to know more about this, the Huberman Lab podcast has visited the topic several times. His view is that Tongkat and Fadogia are safe to take for long periods of time without interruption ("cruise") and he has stated that he himself takes them as a supplement.
Hypogonadism means the gonads don't produce enough testosterone naturally.
So yeah, if you give testosterone to a bunch of old, fat, unhealthy [1] men with hormonal problems, it might help them lose weight and keep them alive longer.
[1] No offense, just calling it like I see it
Adipose tissue also inhibits testosterone production. So anyone who has high body fat should reduce that.
If you were on TRT and wanted to restore fertility, it's a good way to do it. You probably wouldn't want to be on it permanently since it has some mood side effects due to it's estrogen blocking effects.
Also this study means nothing to me. They're looking at a few overall risk factors. There are potentially thousands of factors to consider, all interrelated and deeply codependent. Such is human biology.
Science at large still doesn't truly know how hormones work and interact in their totality within the human body.
Meanwhile, many cardiologists and doctors still buy into the saturated fat myth and myopic "all cholesterol is bad and will lead to heart problems" myth perpetuated by the sugar industry decades ago. So I'm not taking anyone's word yet on any of this.
Ironically, bodybuilders tend to be an amazing source of bleeding edge anecdata on all of this stuff.
It’s difficult to quantify risk because the people who die are always celebrity coke heads. They tend to die during binge sessions where they’ve slammed 5g of cocaine and had 12 shots.
Steroids increase BP so you need to manage that and you can’t be doing things like cocaine or drinking. The more you take, the worse your BP. That and the cocaine will be the killer.
I’m yet to see anything obviously harmful about testosterone. Some of the drugs that have branched off it have signs of harm but that might be due to increased strength or changed structure.
People are talking about your penis shrinking or whatever. Your testes do shrink but it’s not permanent. You need to make sure all traces of the drugs are out of your body before the system will start back up and that’s where people get stuck. Some drugs have metabolites that can last years. Testosterone isn’t the same but still takes time depending on the half life of the form.
Ironically women have the easiest time of it. Their hormone system doesn’t care about testosterone so they can go on and off whenever they want. The downside for women is the androgenisation. They start growing facial hair, deepening their voice and enlarging their clit. That’s a dealbreaker for most women for obvious reasons so a woman would need to be seriously committed to this.
For men, having a thicker beard and masculine features is a good thing so that’s fine. It will accelerate your rate of hair loss though.
It affects your personality. You are happier, braver, more focused and more aggressive. You feel like the leader of the pack no matter how pathetic you are. That confidence might be good or bad for you. You’ll be a lot more likely to approach women because you are continously aroused. You may be more of a cunt.
In summary, like all things it is a trade-off. You might die, but you’ll be the best you could ever be at physical sport. If you don’t care about sport then that’s not a great trade. Some people do drugs at weekends and kill themselves for parties. Lots of people make trades. This isn’t a casual trade to make, you need to think it through.
Not to nitpick, but this actually isn't true. A lot of these women don't run testosterone, but do run PEDs like Anavar (oxandralone) or SARMs like Ostarine that have a very high anabolic-androgenic ratio.
> Their hormone system doesn’t care about testosterone so they can go on and off whenever they want.
Their hormone system does, in fact, care about testosterone. The difference, however, is that women naturally produce an infintesimally small amount amount of testosterone compared to men, so post-cycle effects and treatment protocols will be vastly different.
Cream for skin is same thing but over the course of a day. Plus it’s crazy expensive.
Eventually decide it’s not worth it and start finding out why levels are low and try and fix underlying causes.
TRT forums are kind of fascinating because they're full of people who though (or, sadly, were convinced by TRT clinics) that TRT was going to be amazing, solve all of their problems, and make them feel like 20 year olds again.
Then the realities of getting your hormones from imperfect exogenous sources and dealing with all of the imperfect complications thereof set in. A lot of disappointed stories from people who feel marginally better but thought it was going to cure every struggle in their lives. Unfortunately, a lot of people with depression issues also end up in TRT clinics because hypogonadism is a more palatable diagnosis than mental health issues for many.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Multiple-dose-pharmacoki...
While we know all about esters, doctors think “lmao just give a 3 day half life every 14 days bro” which is why people like this end up screwed.
The worst is psych meds. They put people on monthly injections for anti-psychotics despite the fact that they clearly don’t last a month. Those patients then end up going insane for the last week of every month putting everyone at risk. Two week injections would solve it, but no. Monthly.
Medicine as a field just doesn’t seem to realise how much of a difference dosing interval makes. Whereas recreational users know because daily vs weekly is ridiculous obvious through side effects.
Your math is way off. A TRT dose of testosterone is going to be something like 70-125mg/week. A bodybuilding dose is going to be ~250-350mg/week (often used in conjunction with other compounds like Deca-Durabolin, Trenbolone, Primobolan, Anavar, etc).
An extremely aggressive bodybuilding regimen for a highly experienced anabolic steroid user is rarely going to clear 10x the total milligrams of all AAS compounds injected/ingested when compared to low-dose TRT.
Also, in any human regardless of age and sex, adding a typical TRT dose of testosterone to your system is definitely going to add immediate and noticeable muscle mass.