Boron - All My Patients Use It and So Should You

A couple of studies were performed to investigate any effects of boron supplementation on strength and TT, with a limited number of trials having included freeT, SHBG and E2 as readouts.

Boron 3 or 10 mg had no superior impact on strength or TT over placebo.
Boron 10 mg had a inconsistent impact on E2, one study showed a decline of E2 and another one showed an increase of E2 with supplementation in healthy men.
No study demonstrated an impact on SHBG. Naghii 2010 demonstrated that after a week of 10 mg boron supp freeT increased but SHBG was unaltered.

A theory is that boron interferes with the binding of T to SHBG and thereby increases freeT but for a SHBG lowering effect of boron there is actually no evidence for.

For the scientifically interested ones.
I was trying to figure out from where the idea comes from that boron is able to decrease SHBG.

The only article that reported SHBG along with boron supplementation is from Naghii et al, 2011 and in the abstract the following statement can be found:

ā€˜Six hours supplementation showed a significant decrease on sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG), high sensitive CRP (hsCRP) and TNF-alpha level.’

In the results section this statement can be found:
ā€˜Six hours boron supplementation had no major effect on hormone concentrations except SHBG showed significantly (P = 0.000) lower concentrations following boron consumption.’

Interestingly when you look at the data (table 1 and 2) they dont appear to be stat different at all. SHBG 32.20 vs 29.70 with SD around 8 and 9.

Doing a simple 2 sample t test shows that they simply screwed up. Its far from being stat significant. How this can pass a peer review process is interesting the least.

Also the 7 day supplementation data dont show any impact of boron supplementation on SHBG levels.

So at least from the literature the is no shred of evidence that boron has an impact on SHBG whatsoever.

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@johann77
If SHBG changes by up to 50% per day how is it possible to test the effect on levels and actually know it caused the change?

I’m going to hijack this thread for a sec.

@dextermorgan you are injecting IM right?

Yes sir.

Your protocol is 200mg/wk, ED. Am I correct?

That is also correct

Nice. I could use some help :stuck_out_tongue:
What kind of needle size are you using? I want to switch to IM and I got 30g (with fixed needle) and 27g. Both 1/5. Which one would be better?

I use 28-30g 1/2 inch needle 1CC insulin syringes. Mostly 28g. You’ll be fine with either 27g or 30g. I inject in the delts only.

In the middle of the purple

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On excelmate I’ve read that 1/2 needles are for subq because IM injections need to go much much deeper into the tissue. Any truth in that?

But if you are injecting with it and everything is fine then I guess it isn’t a problem at all?

I was thinking to inject into a tight

That’s why I inject in the delts. There’s very little fat there. Injecting in the delts is almost impossible to fuck up. 1/2 inch is more than enough. It’s easy and I never have any muscle soreness or PIP in the delts from injections. I don’t know why anyone would inject anywhere else. Plus you literally can’t even feel it.

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Alright I will inject in delts then. Since its my virgin muscle… Did you had any PIP on first injection? Because I want to climb tomorrow.

But then again who cares haha.
Do you know the maximum volume for delts?

Nope. No issues. Maybe 2-3ml/week would be as much as you’d want to do before looking for other areas to add but that’s cycle territory.

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Alright then gonna pin delts tomorrow.
Thanks for the help. Appreciate it

The diurnal variation is only about 15 to 20%. And this is adressed by drawing the blood in a well defined time window, eg always between 8 and 9 am.

From Plymate et al, 1989

Or do you mean the day to day variation?

Andersson et al, 2003 followed 27 men over a time period of 17 months and took monthly blood samples. They demonstrated a variation between the measurements (intraindividual variation) of 17%.

Short term and long term variability of SHBG of about 20% was confirmed by a more recent study of Brambilla et al, 2007.

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I do the same… 1/2" 0.5cc 30g to delt. It’s as painless as I’ve found. I’ve noticed that when the needle first touches my skin, if it feels like it’s going to hurt, move it a 1/2" or something and you’ll usually not feel a thing. I assume it just depends where nerves actually are or something.

Regardless though, I truly can’t fathom there being a better way. It makes me cringe every time I hear someone talking about sticking a 1" or 1.5" needle in their calf or thigh or ass or whatever other body part that they for some reason think is easier, because it isn’t.

I’ve been doing 3x a week to the same left delt since I started back on injections (5 weeks I think?) and haven’t had any issues with using the same arm every time. It just works.

Yeah definitely. I did inject today and had to problem with climbing. Wonderful.
Although is it possible to get a scar after year of everyday pinning?