My Thoughts on Anabolic Steroids...

Racepicks said:

I firmly believe that some people are genetically predisposed for good health. While some people live a lifetime seemingly battling one health issue after another, others seem to live their lives in virtually excellent health.

Why do I bring this up? Because I think if we are going to discuss what dosages of Anabolic Steroids affect health, we should also consider my theory on health. That is, if you are one of the lucky ones who possess this genetic predisposition, you will probably not be affected by higher dosages.


How can I reach this conclusion? Let's look at it this way.


There is a 35 year old fitness trainer, he follows an ultrahealthy diet. Obviously trains every day, cardio, etc., and is the picture of a healthy human being.......except, he suffers a massive heartattack. How does that happen?


Then there is the 92 year old man who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day, consumes a few shots of whiskey everyday, eats whatever he wants....and is still alive at 92?

I know, this is a simplistic comparison. But I believe you see what my premise is. I would like to hear what others think.

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Well, you certainly are right - health is 80% luck/genetics.

But we can influence the remaining 20% and we shouldn't disregard doing that. Percentages obviously pulled out of certain orifice


Regarding the example - I can tell you that the 92 year old packaday smoker will be pretty miserable.
Had he not smoked, his quality of life would be much different.

Sully said:

I’ll preface my post with the same disclaimer as yours. This is all just my opinion and I don’t claim to infallible in any way.



I’ve always felt that it’s dangerous to state that a certain amount of gear, regardless of the hormone in question, is a “sweet spot”. Everyone responds differently to every hormone, and at different amounts. There can’t be one certain amount that just works best for everyone, there are just too many variables in play.



Diet, training, gear experience, body fat percentage, amount of muscle mass, healthy, weight, standard hormone levels without gear, genetic propensity for side effects. These are just a handful of the myriad of moving pieces that work together to determine how an individual responds to a cycle. And notice that I didn’t even bring up which hormones they were using or what amounts? Or the use of an AI. There are just too many pieces to the puzzle to make blanket generalizations about how much gear is ideal for any one individual.

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Every thing sully says far as I see spot on !!!!

Best cycle I ever did in terms of looks AND how I felt was a doozy. Not sure I'll ever go this high again but:
900mg week eq
100mg test prop eod
100mg tren ace ed
100mg var ed

I never felt much different going up to a gram or more of test, just more sides. I've always done better with a small test base and cranking up the anabolics like tren, eq, npp

Racepicks said:

I'm not sure why the fad of small Test/large Anabolic doses. I'm not saying it is wrong, but all of a sudden this is the "in" thing. I have always, and still believe, that Test is best. But that's just me! Jano, did you say you were not a big believer either? Is their a scientific reason for your view?

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I feel like keeping it easy and simple is a good way to prevent the complications.

High testosterone always had good results for me, so why complicate it and risk additional problems?
Especially if it's not necessary.

That's my view.

Racepicks said:

I'm not sure why the fad of small Test/large Anabolic doses. I'm not saying it is wrong, but all of a sudden this is the "in" thing. I have always, and still believe, that Test is best. But that's just me! Jano, did you say you were not a big believer either? Is their a scientific reason for your view?

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Ok, here’s my take on low Test/high whatever, since I have been a vocal proponent of it.

1.) It’s not for everyone. I’ve said this many times before. If Test works well for you and doesn’t give you a lot of side effects, then run all the Test you want. Low Test works better for certain people than it does for others. We’re back to the whole bio-individuality topic that we touched on earlier in this thread. Everyone responds differently to every hormone. Test is no exception.

2.) Low Test/high Androgens works best for those that experience side effects related to estrogen conversion. Especially when it comes to Tren, lots of guys experience really severe side effects. I learned this the hard way. I dealt with bad anxiety attacks, gyno, night sweats, Trensomnia, cystic acne, etc. For me, the only solution that really worked was lowering my Test dose to TRT levels. I’ve suggested lowering Test for friends that are struggling with Deca-dick. They were going the usual route of running twice as much Test as Deca and it still wasn’t working. Lowering Test, and adding in a small dose of Aromasin, typically solves most of their problems, IMHO. I’m going to guesstimate about an 80% success rate.

3.) I don’t see it as a fad. Personally, I regard it as another tool in my toolbox. I still usually recommend that guys start with the old school method of cycle structure. If they get into it and start having problems, then I recommend they lower Test and add in a small dose AI (if not already running one) as a potential solution. I will never believe that there is only one “right way” to do anything in any of this. Just as there are multiple ways to train and different ways to structure a diet, there are many different ways to structure a steroid cycle. If guys are recommending it as a one size fits all solution to everyone, I would simply ignore those people and move on.

Unfortunately, this is one topic that I have absolutely no science to back up my position with. I just know that it works for me, and has worked for the majority of guys that I’ve recommended that try it. It’s not 100%, though. I admit that freely. Then again, neither is the more conventional method of high Test. High Test just doesn’t work for me. The side effects are rough and I’m unable to fully control some of them, even with a large dose of AI’s. It’s just the reality of my particular body chemistry.

Hopefully I was able to clarify a few points about the topic. I’m not proselytizing or evangelizing for it, just trying to explain that it’s a viable alternative for those that can’t seem to avoid side effects any other way, no more, no less.

Racepicks said:

While I'm on the subject of high test doses, I'm wondering what people think about this:

Back in the not too distance past, the rhetoric we heard was that if a little Testosterone was good, a ton more was better.

The theory was presented as a fact. You could grow on 750mgs. of test. You can grow even more on a gram. You will get even bigger using 2 grams. Actually, if you could tolerate the sides, 4 or 5 grams would make you a monster. Basically, there is no point of diminishing returns. I'm sure there are still many people who believe this is what the Pros do, despite their claims of low doses combined with great genetics. Jano and Sully, what do you guys think?

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I think I talked about that a few posts ago. Diminishing results make it a bad idea for your common gym-goer to run absurdly high doses - however if you are a Pro, then every 1% of difference plays in your favor and they'll do it.

Injecting more will always be easier than doing one more hour of training or forcing one more meal down when you are already on verge of puking.

Well, there is a point at which all the androgen receptors are saturated, so AAS won't help any more past that and then there's a point at which the difference between 60% and 80% of activated receptors (made up numbers) won't do nothing without ancillary hormones (thinking insulin).

I get too many side effects from high test. I prefer to use about 500mg and I add 1-2 other compounds at similar doses. The older I get the less I tend to use. Moving forward I will mainly use test, primo, deca and mast and avoid tren and orals.

Racepicks said:

So...help me understand. Once receptors are saturated, what can one do to reset these receptors. Looks like we're back to cycling again. Go off for a few months? Seems to me if receptors get saturated, if you never come off, they will never reset. So, that makes the theory of staying on non-stop suspect. Seems that your gains will eventually stall if you never give your receptors a rest. What am I missing?

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I would like to understand this better also. I did read something awhile ago about hgh helping with this. I’ve never run hgh so I couldn’t say for sure.

Racepicks said:

So...help me understand. Once receptors are saturated, what can one do to reset these receptors. Looks like we're back to cycling again. Go off for a few months? Seems to me if receptors get saturated, if you never come off, they will never reset. So, that makes the theory of staying on non-stop suspect. Seems that your gains will eventually stall if you never give your receptors a rest. What am I missing?

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You don't reset them. There is not such thing as 'resetting' androgen receptors.

Saturated receptors = all are activated. That's what you want. You have limited amount of receptors which can be activated and going 'off' won't change that.


Also, it's more complicated than that:

When you are natty, you have for example 1000 receptors in a cell.

Now, let's say that 400 of them are activated on average.


Now you run a nice cycle of 600 test and you increase the saturation to 750 activated receptors. You get nice results.


Now you add 5 grams of trenbolone in there and you have 950 activated receptors. You run it for 5 years straight. The cell increases the number of receptors to 1200 over the 5 years, because of extreme stimulation. The activated receptors remain at 95% - so over time it slowly rises to 1140, so the tren actually becomes more efficient over time. (but your results get worse nevertheless, because you can't gain as much mass when you are 350 lbs mass monster compared to 135 lbs wimp)

Now, you drop back to natty. But you still have activated 40% of the receptors, but now the 40% is not 400 receptors, but 480. So you get significantly better results from your natty levels. If you remain on natty test levels, the number of receptors will slowly (it could take 5-20 years for all I can tell) fall back to 1000... But you actually get results from a heavy cycle for 20 years

This had been extensively talked about during some sciencey talks I've been on with WADA - it's part of the reason why the people who get caught doping get quite long bans.




You also have insulin receptors and they work on VERY different principle... You actually can reset those and many do


I apologize if this is badly explained, it's really hard for me to do that in English.

The plateau is very real, but as far as I can tell it's not caused by body adapting to AAS use, but rather by different factors.

1) Yes, that's what you want. [You can't however, due to side effects]
2) Yes.


You are completely right, insulin 'unlocks' GLUT-4 glucose receptors, making the cell gouge itself.

By using insulin in my example I meant that with insulin the body adapts to it - and you need more and more insulin. So with using insulin you actually need to 'reset the receptors.' For example if you use 30 ius of slin for bodybuilding purposes you will get huge fast and then, after few weeks it suddenly has no effect. (the adaptation is pretty rapid, especially with abuse of high doses and from my experience as well)

Racepicks said:

I would have thought that saturating all your receptors would not be possible due to metabolic or biological factors. What side effects could you expect in an attempt to saturate these receptors?

Someone did mention the possibility of HGH enhancing receptor saturation in some way. Do you see that as a possibility.

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Well, saturation of 100% receptors in not physically possible. What I mean by saturating them is a number close to 100%.


Side effects expected would involve a lot of heartburn, high blood pressure and possibly acne
But really, you'd probably get into risk of dying from malignant hypertension.



HGH has nothing to do with androgen receptors at all.