First Cycle Check

[quote]joyfull wrote:
@cyco yeah makes sense all those things played a role (and represent definite progress).

as far as serms instead of ai’s, i found it thought-provoking that shadowpro recommends nolva instead of any ai. and william llewellyn in his book offers serm protocols as being equally as viable as ai’s for managing estrogen. i’m finding that it is a difficult process of trial and error to get the sweet spot on dosing my AIs. i don’t see how anyone could get it right without at least 3 different blood work labs, and by that time you probably want to up the dose and that changes things. also, your body will get more sensitive over time to e.g. aromasin, further complicating things. it’s definitely simpler to just take nolva at 10mg/day or 20/mg a day and be done with it. but there’s still other problems with high estrogen (blood pressure, hepatic adenoma, etc).

@german for sure. i take mine daily and have an alarm set on my phone so i never forget. if you can’t take it daily then you probably shouldn’t be doing steroids but that doesn’t stop people as we see every day on this forum lol. do you notice any differences between daily and 2x daily? there’s no hard data, but looking at the study cyco linked, it would seem that estrogen levels do fluctuate enough at the 12h vs 24h blood samples that it would significantly stabilize estrogen. i do notice a difference between eod and ed at least. [/quote]

yeah, i just do not agree with running a SERM on cycle, unless it’s Ralox and you’re trying to treat gyno. (i’ll leave that alone so i don’t get banned)

one issue with AI’s is lowering estrogen too low. (i know this seems like an obvious point but i’ll try to explain here…)

now, if we look at how men react to AI’s and how women react, the results are waayyyy different. i believe this has a lot to do with aromatization… now if you just take Aromasin on it’s own, you can expect a drop in estrogen by 40%. but for women, they can expect 80-95%! now when we go on cycle, if we don’t take HCG, then our testes pretty much shut down. which also means, the testes are no longer causing testosterone to aromatize into estrogen… so all the sudden, we see guys “bottom out” their estrogen on cycle. so either a) we use a lower AI dose or b) we add in HCG on cycle.

^another issue there, is maintaining a good ratio between test to estrogen. i’ve read where some guys were still “in range” for estrogen, but their test was so much higher, that they felt like shit until they let it creep up a bit.

i think this is an interesting bit of “bro-science” being right… most guys will use something like .25 mg of A-dex EOD on cycle, and it works really well, a lot of the time (even though the studies are usually a dose of .5-1 mg/ED )…

anyway, another issue in dosing an AI is understanding how the aromatiztion process works, too.

^for those interested in long term use of AAS/PED’s, then i think you need to keep abreast of TRT research, as that seems to be showing a lot of those things as well…

agreed on only using serms on cycle for gyno management. but i think bodybuilders have a yolo mindsent and don’t care so much about health as they do about 1.) results and 2.) minimizing symptoms. that explains the easy fix of just running a serm.

i didn’t know that about hcg and testes aromatizing. i cycle and bridge with no hcg, and .5mg adex EOD was too much at 500mgs EW. I had telltale symptoms of low estrogen. I feel like even with 12.5mg ED of aromasin i’m still not at a good spot, but getting blood work soon so i can figure out where to go. it was interesting that 25mg vs 50mg had the same effect (actually 50mg lowered e slightly less…).

i probably should look at trt research more. i’ll mosey on over to that forum and check it out.

[quote]joyfull wrote:
@cyco yeah makes sense all those things played a role (and represent definite progress).

as far as serms instead of ai’s, i found it thought-provoking that shadowpro recommends nolva instead of any ai. and william llewellyn in his book offers serm protocols as being equally as viable as ai’s for managing estrogen. i’m finding that it is a difficult process of trial and error to get the sweet spot on dosing my AIs. i don’t see how anyone could get it right without at least 3 different blood work labs, and by that time you probably want to up the dose and that changes things. also, your body will get more sensitive over time to e.g. aromasin, further complicating things. it’s definitely simpler to just take nolva at 10mg/day or 20/mg a day and be done with it. but there’s still other problems with high estrogen (blood pressure, hepatic adenoma, etc).

@german for sure. i take mine daily and have an alarm set on my phone so i never forget. if you can’t take it daily then you probably shouldn’t be doing steroids but that doesn’t stop people as we see every day on this forum lol. do you notice any differences between daily and 2x daily? there’s no hard data, but looking at the study cyco linked, it would seem that estrogen levels do fluctuate enough at the 12h vs 24h blood samples that it would significantly stabilize estrogen. i do notice a difference between eod and ed at least. [/quote]

I don’t really see any difference besides maybe slightly less change in bloat(which is good when I don’t want my weight fluctuating since my coach needs accurate numbers). Ive tried 2x week and EOD but I notice myself getting moody by the time my next dose rolls around. That’s just how it goes for me though

[quote]joyfull wrote:
agreed on only using serms on cycle for gyno management. but i think bodybuilders have a yolo mindsent and don’t care so much about health as they do about 1.) results and 2.) minimizing symptoms. that explains the easy fix of just running a serm.

i didn’t know that about hcg and testes aromatizing. i cycle and bridge with no hcg, and .5mg adex EOD was too much at 500mgs EW. I had telltale symptoms of low estrogen. I feel like even with 12.5mg ED of aromasin i’m still not at a good spot, but getting blood work soon so i can figure out where to go. it was interesting that 25mg vs 50mg had the same effect (actually 50mg lowered e slightly less…).

i probably should look at trt research more. i’ll mosey on over to that forum and check it out. [/quote]

maybe i wasn’t clear, but you just mentioned my point…

because you weren’t using HCG (and therefore the testes weren’t as active), the AI was too much.

@german i would give it a go but i have tabs so it’s hard to break smaller than 12.5mg per dose

@cyco no you were clear i was just saying my experience beared that out.