Thank you for answers. I would say pretty good. You have any instagram or etc to see your latest looking?
In the throws of Sarcopenia (muscle wasting), I look like a shell of myself. I don’t use instagram and am only on a couple other forums, non-weightlifting ones.
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You’re 73 years old my friend. Thats to be expected. All the greats are pretty much like that now with many not even making the average life span. If you’re in good health and enjoy your hobbies I’d say you’ve got nothing to fret over.
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Wanted to say
This has fallen out of popularity. People hardly ever use it.
I’ve never heard of anyone (currently) using it
Its a prohormone, but in it’s unconverted form still holds a degree of anabolic/androgenic activity.
Methylandrostenediol
I thought I read that at a cellular level, the nucleus changes remain after stopping AAS, so the muscle is easier to build back when lost and maybe easier to maintain if you work at it. Not really 100% on the science.
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I can’t thank you enough. Blessings hommie
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I should say that when I was stacking multiple AAS’s, it is difficult to know which ones are working as I wanted. I used Methandriol in the very early 1980’s, and always found that it was easy to achieve a dry look. Maybe it was because it did very little, neither good or bad.
Related, timely article. There are some irreversible changes that happen once exposed to supraphysiologic dosages of AAS (which includes supraphysiologic for a male vs female). AUC (dose and duration) play a huge part of course as well as training, nutrition, etc. Good discussion folks and thanks for the topic @RT_Nomad.
Good observation. Two concepts here: pharmacokinetics vs pharmacodynamics.
@RT_Nomad had a decent washout period (PK) for the drug each time (6-8 weeks) but from what we know about duration of action with AAS he was never truly off AAS from a pharmacodynamic standpoint. Yes some changes in muscle glycogen, water, etc but a very different result for a user that does one 8 week cycle once per year than following the cadence above (8 weeks on and 6-8 weeks off).
Obligatory nod to the graph that keeps on giving:
You can think of this graph in reverse if its helpful:
Example:
Great related example:
Nice shorter time example:
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Allow me to add a little practical experience to the theory.
Please know for certain that there was no science available that I was aware. There was no internet. I had rumors shared, plus my Caveman Scientific Method:
- Define the desire
- Form an hypothesis
- Execute the plan
- Analyze the results
- Draw conclusions
I believed based on limited information:
- Small amounts of AAS’s are effective (10 to 15mg per day of Dianabol)
- Administration needs to be cycled for health/sex reasons
- Time “on cycle” and time “off cycle” could be done at a 1:1 ratio
My primary metric was strength on the bench press.
Observed results:
- Strength increased starting 10 days into the cycle (almost like clockwork)
- Strength dropped off gradually, but fairly quickly during “off cycle” starting at 2 weeks.
- I was prone to injury trying to lift the same weight “off” as I had peaked while “on”
- While strength dropped measurably, my muscle size loss was only slightly visible: mostly a little fullness.
- My percent bodyfat remained about the same.
Conclusions: The 1:1 ratio of time “on” to time “off” with low doses of Dianabol was effective as a method to steadily progress toward my goal: To look like I am not out of place in a national amateur Bodybuilding contest.
(In 1978 I began stacking AAS’s and follow about the same protocol.)
Much seems to follow the science you posted, but strength is stark, undeniable reality. Strength goes, but like the theme of my thread, strength returns rapidly when back “on”.
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As I remember it @RT_Nomad used dianabol only cycles for a long time. That means he was truly off during those 6-8 weeks.
Correct for 1971 thru 1976.
By far, my favorite steroid if I could only use one.
Good clarification for part of the time he was using AAS.
I am not familiar with pharmacodynamics literature with respect to dianabol only. Let’s say for sake of argument it’s four weeks then I could buy your argument (roughly 2 weeks PK washout + 4 weeks PD). Thanks.
Dianabol has a half life of 3-6 hours.
So he would be off 6 out of 6 weeks.
If I’m not missing something
PK vs PD. Seem my diatribe above. Once you’ve removed 99.9% of the drug and metabolites it still takes time for the body to come back to its pre-drug baseline. E.g., lipids after you washout 17-AA, glucose metabolism, muscle impact, etc.
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This is true. When i remove orals like stanazolol or anavar that gives me the most strenght of all drugs, it takes 3-4 weeks for me to lose it.
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This is probably one of the seldom times we disagree strongly on something.
I don’t think you can. Nearly all of the effects of the drug in this graph are gradually building processes and not entirely dependent on the drug. For example the change in body composition on TRT has many variables that are only partly dependent on testosterone but get influenced by testosterone (activity level, energy level, hunger). To ascribe the effect to the direct action of the drug is simply wrong. It’s a passive effect.
Now if you discontinue the drug, you won’t get fat and lose muscle in a day again, because simply, you have to consume the energy and adapt the activity level. But the effect of the drug preventing that or positively influencing said changes end when the drug leaves the body. The proteins get degraded while not being synthesized any longer and so on.
It’s possible that there’s time needed to adapt to the new circumstances, for example liver values and you could say that the effect lingers but in actuality the body just needs time to repair stuff, it’s not that the drug is still active.
In terms of liver values for example the time ON the drug is not equal to the effect time. You don’t get a strong increase in liver enzymes from the first dose, the effect cumulates. That means after coming off and going on again (if the time for getting the effect = time for getting rid of it) you had the 6-8 break weeks by that logic.
The toxic and pharmacological effect of the drug is there until it leaves the system. After that it’s the body going back to baseline. This applies to going on the drug too. I know that is what you are saying but putting the effect only on one end and defining the time in which the drug already left the body as time on is in my opinion simply wrong. If we are talking about toxicity the body starts repairing the damage shortly after. It’s not time on just because there’s still a measurable difference.
That’s like saying you are still cutting your hand because blood is still coming out of the wound.
Thanks for your thoughts. I think we are closer than you think.
To be more specific let’s properly define elimination half life vs duration of action (e.g., how long will your bench press stay above baseline once stopping?) for the drug. To make this simpler let’s use the example of a well studied enzyme family:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1586/ecp.11.30
In this example, is the drug acting as a competitive inhibitor or mechanism-based inhibitor?
For mechanism-based inhibition aspirin and its effect on platelets is a decent example I think.
The aspirin is long gone but takes more time for the platelets to get replaced and recover to baseline.
I’d argue there is lots of mechanism-based interaction and influence with AAS on the human body (not too mention tissue accumulation) and therefore the additional duration of action for a reasonable cycle once you stop taking the drug (even for an oral 17-AA) is going to be much longer than simply 5 or even 10 times the elimination half life.
Intuitively we know this is correct since 6 weeks on = 6 weeks off will result in a much different result after a few years than 6 weeks on and 1 year off.
For something like nandrolone ester (which my original comments were really geared towards) its going to be a while 4-6 weeks for the drug to be eliminated (and don’t forget some of the downstream metabolites are around for a lot longer).
You are correct the time after the drug is eliminated from the body where duration of action is still in effect is an indirect effect from the mechanism-based influence of the drug (tissue metabolism, etc). This is why you protest me lumping this into the term pharmacodynamics?
So back to your example, the knife has been removed from the skin but the blood is still coming out for a while and its going to be a few weeks (or more) for the skin to heal (depending on the depth of the cut 
). In a hit and run, the person is still laying out on the side of the road even though the car may be long gone.
If we were to draw graphs of PK profile on and off the drug vs time then also duration of action for say bench press on and off (with appropriate transients) we would probably draw very similar functions I would imagine. Good to get the terminology right though.
I agree with nearly everything so you’re probably right. The only definition I can’t accept is the use of “duration of action” for after effects of a drugs who’s action has long been gone.
There is no mechanism based action in steroid action as per the definition. But the downstream effects of binding and translocating as well as the synthesis steps could represent such an action.
Yes. And I protest calling it mechanism-based. I don’t protest there being after effects.
What do you think about my point that the onset of the effects should then also be taken into account? Because I think it’s two different things entirely if you count the effect time or the actual drug action time.
Most people report effects only after a few weeks on cycle, would you then also subtract these weeks from the cycle length?
You present a large quantity of scientific information and theory. Scientifically we are gathering more information and forming ever advancing, comprehensive hypotheses. But I have lived too long and seen biologists change their beliefs on what is biological “fact”.
I have always approached steroids based on little science and monitoring measureable indicators. The only metric that I feel any confidence is strength.
All my cycles included an oral. And most every cycle I could feel a strength surge at 10 days in. And I seemed to always feel a strength decline 2 weeks into “off cycle”.
I know that side effects can occur most any time after the first steroid use, and I suppose last until your last breath.
I have taken Deca on many cycles and the strength decline came at about 2 weeks “off cycle” (I considered “on” Deca to be for 2 weeks from the last injection.)
I always approached steroids from the positive measureable results. The notion that there is some activity that continues for weeks or months after a cycle seems of no positive value. So I ask: What is the pragmatic value of the information?
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