[quote]lazyaxus11 wrote:
Aprroximately a year or so ago, maybe a little less, a friend and I both did cycles of masterdrol. Obviously for myself this was a stupid mistake, and I have stated that over and over, but thats neither here nor there.
Anyways… That was my first time to take anything other than regular supps. My buddy had run a few test only cycles before that and had good results, no sides of any kind, no gyno, and he didnt take pct, he just tapered off the test each time. I’m thinking he ran 400-500 mg’s a week, no more.
I’m 19, he is 26, we both took 30mg’s a day of masterdrol from legal gear for 4 weeks. I used Nolvadex for pct and he used some kind of over the counter pct. Everything went good, we both kept most of our gains in strength and weight, only losing a tad bit of weight after it was all said and done.
Now, about 10 months later, we have both noticed a hard lump under one of our nipples. My left, and his right. I seem to have a smaller lump under my right as well, but not nearly as bad as my left. There is a little pain if I mess with it or rest my chest on anything. I can even notice a little difference in the appearance of my left nipple.
So wtf should I do? I’m thinking about just waiting it out and seeing if it gets worse. It doesnt really seem to be changing, but I can’t tell for sure all the same. I have thought about trying letrizole by itself with no test and seeing if it clears up, but I know my sex drive will just bottom out completely, and I really dont want to mess with anymore steroids for a few more years. So do you guys have any suggestions? [/quote]
II.THE THEORIES AND ARGUMENTS
1.) Delayed Gyno is some direct pro-estrogenic effect from SD.
COMMENT: This has been discarded because a) SD is supposed to aromatize very weakly. If it would have some “secret” pro-estrogenic action, its very short half-life (estimated 8 h) would prevent any DELAYED action.
2.) Some steroids, among them SD are supposed to cause a rebound of testosteron production after several weeks / months of recovery after a cycle. Some guys called this the “SD-echo”. The overshooting test is responsible for consecutive convcersion to estrogen via aromatase and finally leads to gyno.
COMMENT: There is probably something like a “testosteron-echo”. Several people have reported such observations, but no one of them got actually gyno! The increased testosteron protects you from getting gyno even if your estrogen is elevated by providing a beneficial test-to estrogen-ratio.
3.) There is no “delayed gyno from SD” phenomenon at all. From thousends of people who did a SD-cycle there are relatively few who reported this issue. Some people are genetically prone to get gyno even after slight hormonal imbalances. Such imbalances can be caused by ANY steroid and are not specific for SD or the PCT. After all, there might be a “gyno-hysteria”, with paple falsely reporting “gyno” even when they feel their nipples itch a bit, which seems to occur quite often when taking steroids.
COMMENT: Well that argument is hard to beat, because we don’t have the numbers. I have gathered 11 people who reported delayed gyno just by looking on two forums. It can be assumed that there a quite a few more, whom we don’t know because they just never come to these forums. A realistical estimation would be to say: We have appr. 10 reported gyno-cases on 1000 people who used SD (that would be a rate of <1%). Well in medicine a rate of 1% is HIGH!!! Huge pharmaceutical companies get in HUGE trouble even if 10 people from 1 million get some serious adverse effects from a drug(remember the Lipobay scandal or the COX-2 scandal?). So, an adverse effect that is in the range of 1% is not a seldom or rare effect.
Even if half of the people who reported gyno don’t have real gyno, there are more than enough cases to make this a considerable ISSUE!
- Improperly off-tapered PCT led to estrogen rebound, that causes the gyno after some time.
COMMENT: Well, as we see in the graph, we have virtually all combinations of down-tapering, up-tapering, constant dosing etc. So even if theoretically correct, proper downtapering during PCT seems to not protect entirely against delayed gyno.
5.) The use of Aromatase-Inhibitors after a steroid-cycle is the key for delayed gyno. It has been hypothesized that AIs lead to a huge up-regulation either of estrogen-receptors or the aromatase-enzyme, or both. When testosterone is slowly recovering after a cycle and has not yet reached full capacity-levels, the explosively ramping up of estrogen-production (aromatse upped) will lead to massive estrogenic action at peripheral tissues (additionally by highly sensitized tissue-receptors). This leads to a SIGNIFICANT dysbalance of the testosteron-to-estrogen-ratio wich is the main signal for breast tissue to grow. At that moment gyno-development starts, and after some some weeks you can not only feel it but also see it!
COMMENT: This is my favoured theory so far. It is very logical in itself. However, we don’t have experimental evidence for that, so it still remains a theory. What speaks dor this teory is that litterally ALL cases I found on BB.com as well as on AM-forum did their PCT with an AI alone or in combination with Nolva. Their might be one single exception to this (there is a guy called “Dmitry” or alike whose posts I didn’t entirelly understood. He seems to have used only Nolva for PCT, but that is not clear). Even if there would be one case, there are 11 cases that stands against. So, possibly AIs are not the ENTIRE explanation but they SEEM to be the major RISK-FACTOR to develop delayed gyno after SD.
However, the overall risk to get delayed gyno after sd is about 1%. From this 1% 0.9% can - possibly-be accounted for by AIs.
- (UPDATE) The combination of a STRONG shutdown of testosteron-production (induced by a STRONG androgenic substance) with a STRONG estrogenic hypersensitation (induced by an AI) seems to be crucial in order to push the ratio of testosteron-to-estrogen-(receptor-action) beyond a critical threshold for developing gyno.
COMMENT: Several forum members have pointed to the observation that apparently all delayed-gyno cases have been reported from users who had an AI during PCT + SD during ON cycle. To date no reports have appeard on delayd gyno after other designer steroids like Pheraplex (PP) or one of the E…Max derivates. This is in fact an intriguing point. It has been suggested that SD may have stronger androgenic side effects then PP /Emax.
Moreover, there was a sidenote from BigCat that delayed gyno has also been occasionally observed in people who were on “traditional” steroids (e.g. testosteron), which also have STRONG androgenic action. Taken together, The synergistical interplay of these said factors can be summed up as follows:
the stronger the estrogenic hyperactivity (induced by AI) AND the stronger the testosteron-hypoactivity is, the higher is the risk to develop delayed gyno. (It’s again the RATIO)
This is in fact almost the same as was proposed in theory Nr.5, with the exception that the amount of testosteron-shutdown is more appreciated now.
So, my precluding thoughts are:
If you plan to do a cycly with a steroid that has strong androgenic action and if you are ANXIOUS to get gyno or if you ever had (pubertal) gyno or if you have a highly sensitized estrogenic system by one or more previous steroid cycles, than you should at least THINK about using or not using AIs for your PCT because Ais seems to add to the risk to get gyno.
The intake of DHEA to support PCT is a standard recommendation in the Superdol and PCT threads. However, BifCat pointed to the fact that during PCT, the intake of an additional steroid or pro-steroid might slow down the recovery of the testosterone-production.
If that holds true, than the addition of DHEA will even further impair the testosteron-to-estrogen-ratio during and after PCT and by that further increase the risk to get delayed gyno. That was a very good pont. Unfortunately we don’t have enough data. I know that 2 of the 11 subjects I mentioned above did take DHEA. Perhaps these guys could post that information here.
This was not written by me, but its information I wanted to share with you.