MAG-10 + Methoxy-7 = Awesome.
Alpha Male + Rez-V = Waste of Money.
For $100 a pop, I’ll wait on this one.
I expect individual variation will make any ballpark estimate more useless or even deceptive than useful. It would also be unwarranted at this time as it takes a lot of cases to be able to come up with such figures that have actual meaning to them, instead of possibly being statistical noise (that is, possibly an artifact of several people being lucky or unlucky.)
I do think that phosphatidyl serine, for example, is a beneficial supplement. Not necessarily that for a given individual it should edge out using something else, as it’s not practical to use everything that’s beneficial, but it’s one of the beneficial things that are out there. But I don’t think the benefit is from reducing cortisol.
If it were, we would all be singing the praises of Cytadren – which really does work in reducing systemic cortisol, to any degree desired. But, having a no-doubt-about-it real cortisol inhibitor with which we can evaluate the value of such a thing, the result is, no value except hardening for contests or being a poor anti-aromatase (limited because of needing to limit the anti-cortisol effect) and of course, value if truly having a disease state of excess cortisol.
So I don’t doubt that what you took benefitted you, I just find it dubious, for that reason, that cortisol reduction is the reason. There are other benefits to PS.
11-T should not affect systemic cortisol levels much.
The single best use, if you would, please read some previous posts on that. (I know there have been a lot of posts and it’s tiresome to do so, but those that have, are probably finding it tiring reading the same answer repeatedly.)
The 11-T plus “black market items” and HRX might make a lot of sense if visceral fat is a stubborn personal problem: in other words, if a gut tends to remain even as the rest of the body leans up. But if fat is lost fairly evenly across the body, and any gut reduces right along with everything else, then personally I would save the money. Unless perhaps in the final stages of getting ripped or shredded.
Doesn’t cortisol have a positive effect on muscle breakdown PWO? Thus leading to the muscle being repaired and stronger/bigger.
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
They just don’t have the budget to put 50 million dollars into R&D like Big Pharma does (deliberate understatement, btw).[/quote]
The sad thing is that despite spending hundreds of millions, Big Pharma still comes up with a ton of stuff that with time is proven not to work, or not to work well.
There is a fundamental reason for this. Discussing it will maybe make clear why so many times I say that reporting results from a small number that have tested a product would be meaningless and is better not done, that a ballpark figure would be meaningless, etc.
The thing is, and for some sad reason this is something the vast majority of scientists don’t understand, have never even heard of, is that the concept of “statistically significant” has rather little to do with how likely it is that something is true. That’s not what it’s about at all.
When a study is, say, “Significant to p < 0.05” (the usual standard for scientific publication" this does NOT mean that there is a less than 5% chance that the conclusion is wrong. Not at all whatsoever. What p = 0.05 for example means is that IF chance were the only factor involved, i.e. if actually placebo was used in both groups, then 5% of the time the random variation that was observed was sufficient that the theory would appear to be validated, when in fact there was no effect at all.
How that relates to how likely it is that the theory – for example, that the drug works – is true is pretty sad. I forget the exact mathematics (there is a mathematical proof on it) but approximately speaking, you have to multiply by whatever probability would best have been assigned to the theory before the data was considered.
So if for example you have the theory that if rats will live at least 10% longer if they drink out of water bottles that have been swirled to the left before being placed in the cage versus unswirled water bottles, this obviously is a theory that before there was any data, one would consider pretty unlikely. It’s hard to establish a number, but let’s say it’s the case that one personally calls this theory no better than a one-in-a-million chance of being right.
Well, you do a study with 30 rats in the swirled-water group and 30 rats in the unswirled-water control group, and of course in each group some rats die young, some die at an about average age, some live to be old rats.
One percent of the time, let’s say, chance alone will result in the swirled-water group happening to have enough rats who are longer-lived (for reasons having nothing to do with swirling of water) that the average indeed is 10% longer life.
So, now you have a study that you can report in the scientific literature to not only p < 0.05, but p = 0.01, that swirling the drinking water results in 10% longer life for rats!
Of course this does NOT mean that there is now only a 1% chance the theory is wrong.
Approximately speaking, if beforehand you would have assigned the likelihood of this theory being right as less than one in a million, you should now call it being less than one in ten thousand. There’s still a 99.99 percent chance that it is wrong, that chance alone did give the result.
Because there are hundreds of thousands of experiments done every year – or perhaps even millions – on things that are unlikely to be true, and 5% will by chance LOOK true to p <= 0.05 even though chance alone was the cause, there are therefore thousands of findings reported every year where the statistics are taken by people to mean “It’s almost certainly true” when in fact their conclusion should be, “Regardless of being p = 0.01 or even p = 0.001, that’s not enough to conclude that this is likely to be true.”
And unfortunately, the fairly random drug discovery process used by the pharmaceutical companies has it quite unlikely that any given compound tested is useful.
Thus, when they test thousands of them, and some give positive results to p < 0.05, um, well most of those are the result of chance. The compounds are crap, but they tested lucky, with it being inevitable that some would test lucky what with so many tests being done.
Unfortunately, it’s very hard due to biological variation to get results such as p < 0.000001 which really would be quite strong evidence that a thing, though unlikely at first glance, does work.
[quote]jehovasfitness wrote:
Doesn’t cortisol have a positive effect on muscle breakdown PWO? Thus leading to the muscle being repaired and stronger/bigger.
[/quote]
If muscle catabolism caused by cortisol stimulates hypertrophy or increase in strength, I was unaware of this and don’t think that it is so.
If it were so then boosting cortisol might be quite the performance enhancer. It doesn’t seem anyone has found that.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Aragorn wrote:
They just don’t have the budget to put 50 million dollars into R&D like Big Pharma does (deliberate understatement, btw).
The sad thing is that despite spending hundreds of millions, Big Pharma still comes up with a ton of stuff that with time is proven not to work, or not to work well.
There is a fundamental reason for this. Discussing it will maybe make clear why so many times I say that reporting results from a small number that have tested a product would be meaningless and is better not done, that a ballpark figure would be meaningless, etc.
The thing is, and for some sad reason this is something the vast majority of scientists don’t understand, have never even heard of, is that the concept of “statistically significant” has rather little to do with how likely it is that something is true. That’s not what it’s about at all.
When a study is, say, “Significant to p < 0.05” (the usual standard for scientific publication" this does NOT mean that there is a less than 5% chance that the conclusion is wrong. Not at all whatsoever. What p = 0.05 for example means is that IF chance were the only factor involved, i.e. if actually placebo was used in both groups, then 5% of the time the random variation that was observed was sufficient that the theory would appear to be validated, when in fact there was no effect at all.
How that relates to how likely it is that the theory – for example, that the drug works – is true is pretty sad. I forget the exact mathematics (there is a mathematical proof on it) but approximately speaking, you have to multiply by whatever probability would best have been assigned to the theory before the data was considered.
So if for example you have the theory that if rats will live at least 10% longer if they drink out of water bottles that have been swirled to the left before being placed in the cage versus unswirled water bottles, this obviously is a theory that before there was any data, one would consider pretty unlikely. It’s hard to establish a number, but let’s say it’s the case that one personally calls this theory no better than a one-in-a-million chance of being right.
Well, you do a study with 30 rats in the swirled-water group and 30 rats in the unswirled-water control group, and of course in each group some rats die young, some die at an about average age, some live to be old rats.
One percent of the time, let’s say, chance alone will result in the swirled-water group happening to have enough rats who are longer-lived (for reasons having nothing to do with swirling of water) that the average indeed is 10% longer life.
So, now you have a study that you can report in the scientific literature to not only p < 0.05, but p = 0.01, that swirling the drinking water results in 10% longer life for rats!
Of course this does NOT mean that there is now only a 1% chance the theory is wrong.
Approximately speaking, if beforehand you would have assigned the likelihood of this theory being right as less than one in a million, you should now call it being less than one in ten thousand. There’s still a 99.99 percent chance that it is wrong, that chance alone did give the result.
Because there are hundreds of thousands of experiments done every year – or perhaps even millions – on things that are unlikely to be true, and 5% will by chance LOOK true to p <= 0.05 even though chance alone was the cause, there are therefore thousands of findings reported every year where the statistics are taken by people to mean “It’s almost certainly true” when in fact their conclusion should be, “Regardless of being p = 0.01 or even p = 0.001, that’s not enough to conclude that this is likely to be true.”
And unfortunately, the fairly random drug discovery process used by the pharmaceutical companies has it quite unlikely that any given compound tested is useful.
Thus, when they test thousands of them, and some give positive results to p < 0.05, um, well most of those are the result of chance. The compounds are crap, but they tested lucky, with it being inevitable that some would test lucky what with so many tests being done.
Unfortunately, it’s very hard due to biological variation to get results such as p < 0.000001 which really would be quite strong evidence that a thing, though unlikely at first glance, does work.
[/quote]
that was very informative–thank you.
Hello Bill,
I’m sorry if you already answer this, but after such an extensive thread I’m getting a bit confuse.
I’m getting my bottle tomorrow and I want to get the best use out of it (obviously), however, I’m planning on using it only once per day, if anything, for convenience purposes, I shower in the mornings before heading to work, so I’m planning on using it then. I do my training late at night but if I understand correctly the effects are pretty much independent from our workout schedule.
However, do you still recommend showering, in my case, at nighttime to “clean off” whatever is left over on my skin before I go to bed with my wife? What about the clothes that I wore? Is my wife going to start sounding like Lurch Adams after handling them for a month during laundry time?
I would really like to just get my spraying done in the mornings and forget about it. Do you see that as a productive way of using it and STILL getting results? Or should I find a way to work in the second spraying to really see results? Is there anything else you would recommend? By the way, I’m still planning to do the 2-weeks ON/OFF cycling.
Lastly, I usually wear cologne, do you see any problems with that even if 11-T has already dried?
Thank you very much for ALL your information!
[quote]m1sf1t wrote:
However, do you still recommend showering, in my case, at nighttime to “clean off” whatever is left over on my skin before I go to bed with my wife? What about the clothes that I wore? Is my wife going to start sounding like Lurch Adams after handling them for a month during laundry time?[/quote]
No, transfer would be insignificant, and it would take far more of this compound to have any possible effect than could transfer this way.
Or as a practical example: Androsol was a much more potent androgen (fully as androgenic as testosterone), and the amount applied was nearly three times as much, but there was never an issue of any effect on women from transfer except an apparent airborne pheromone like effect that did not require, but tended to cause, contact.
You’re really not going to transfer any 17-ADR (11-T) directly anyway. It has gone into the stratum corneum of your skin. What can get onto your clothes or someone else is dead skin cells that have some amount of 17-ADR in them, but they, if getting into contact with another person, will be a truly poor source for transdermal delivery.
Not only would the amount of 17-ADR getting onto another person by transfer of skin cells be an utterly tiny fraction of the dose, but it won’t deliver well either. There’s no way to put a figure to it except it has to be far, far below what results from direct application.
And it is not as if a trace of 17-ADR might be problematic, as it is not a sex hormone and is present in women as well already. So increasing that by a tiny fraction of one percent, if even that happened at all, could not realistically be significant.
However, spraying on certainly could be.
Oops, missed part of the questions:
[quote]m1sf1t wrote:
I would really like to just get my spraying done in the mornings and forget about it. Do you see that as a productive way of using it and STILL getting results? Or should I find a way to work in the second spraying to really see results? Is there anything else you would recommend? By the way, I’m still planning to do the 2-weeks ON/OFF cycling.
Lastly, I usually wear cologne, do you see any problems with that even if 11-T has already dried?[/quote]
Yes, there should still be satisfactory effect, just not as much, from once a day.
The cologne should be no problem unless the application amount is truly ridiculous, which I’m sure it’s not in your case, and anyway I would tend to think cologne wouldn’t be applied to the same areas. But if for some reason it were, and applied lightly, it should not matter.
will the product stimulate were it would be hard to sleep if aplied at night.
Biotest should make a pheromone that would be nice 
thanks Bill
A few questions:
Did Biotest conduct studies on human subjects prior to releasing this product? If so, what were the results?
I understand results vary, etc…but where are the simple hard facts like “Adult male, 28 yrs of age, 5’10” 180lbs 15% bodyfat, after 2 weeks showed reduction of 3% bodyfat, +4lbs muscle, +20lbs on bench" etc…
I like esoteric scientific masturbation as much as the next guy, but it seems like the only way to get good data on whether products like this are worth the cost is to wait for people to buy them and post their results/opinions.
In this case, with a new product and virtually zero hard evidence of exactly what gains to expect, (no examples, test subjects, etc…) that presents a classic marketing hustle situation: “We’ve only got limited stock, it’ll be sold out fast and there might not be anymore!” And then by the time anyone reports results, if they are unimpressive and deemed not worth the cost, well, it’s too late for all the people who already ordered and bought the hype. I’m not saying this is a hustle, but like any good hustle, it has to blend in with the legit products that are actually worth the money…
All that said, I’ve ordered 2 bottles and as a long time customer I have faith that Biotest has released a good product. But still, it would certainly stem my apprehension if some good test subject results were posted. $225 is a bit of a step above the average bottle of BCAA purchase.
[quote]ryanjm wrote:
But still, it would certainly stem my apprehension if some good test subject results were posted. [/quote]
x2
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
…
And unfortunately, the fairly random drug discovery process used by the pharmaceutical companies has it quite unlikely that any given compound tested is useful.
Thus, when they test thousands of them, and some give positive results to p < 0.05, um, well most of those are the result of chance. The compounds are crap, but they tested lucky, with it being inevitable that some would test lucky what with so many tests being done.
Unfortunately, it’s very hard due to biological variation to get results such as p < 0.000001 which really would be quite strong evidence that a thing, though unlikely at first glance, does work.
[/quote]
excellent post and one that I as well all too often neglect to think about when reading articles or considering hypotheses.
This part caught me as particularly interesting—are you saying that the high-throughput lead compound screening methods used are less than useful? I would think it is extremely useful to find first compounds for further experimentation. You have to find a process that at least gives you an approximate base for further experimentation.
Now in and of itself, if you screen, say 100,000 compounds initially (which for the rest of you guys is fairly usual), and come up with say 1000 that give a P value of <0.05 that doesn’t really say anything. But at least it gives you a starting pool for likely candidates, right? I don’t know of any other alternative arrangement in any case. It’s the best money can do IMHO. Or do I miss your point?
Maybe this was already covered but, what about applying sun tan lotion or skin moisturizers. How long must we wait after we apply 11-T?
[quote]ryanjm wrote:
A few questions:
Did Biotest conduct studies on human subjects prior to releasing this product? If so, what were the results?
I understand results vary, etc…but where are the simple hard facts like “Adult male, 28 yrs of age, 5’10” 180lbs 15% bodyfat, after 2 weeks showed reduction of 3% bodyfat, +4lbs muscle, +20lbs on bench" etc…
I like esoteric scientific masturbation as much as the next guy, but it seems like the only way to get good data on whether products like this are worth the cost is to wait for people to buy them and post their results/opinions.
[/quote]
Not to be harsh, because I’m not trying to be at all, but do you have any idea how much good thorough human trials cost?? Holy Jumpin’ Jehosephat. Small pools are often decried as unreliable, though I generally like having at least a small study to go on vs. none, and large pools are unholy expensive. Expensive enough to be prohibitive given coffers far short of Big Pharma.
Academia almost never has the coffers to do large scale human studies either, even given tremendous grant money. That is one of many reasons (others being legal, human rights, ethics, disclosure, hassel, complexity, uber red tape, etc.) that animal trials are almost exclusively done in academia over human trials.
Of course, this is in areas related directly to biochemical research and metabolism–exercise physiology/kinesiology, soft sciences (psychology, et al.), and other biological experiments are often conducted on human subjects.
However, when it involves injecting, spraying, ingesting or otherwise applying some sort of experimental compound to a human being to see what happens, it’s almost completely prohibitive cost-wise, not to mention red tape and human rights/legal issues.
Take your typical Quintiles studies you can volunteer for. Many I’ve seen offer 1500-3000 dollars for participation. Lets say you offer $1,000. Now lets say you have 100 subjects…that’s 100,000 dollars for 1 study. Even 100 subject studies are considered small by many when the subject is drug innovation (granted these are supplements, but they’re in most aspects the same thing in purpose and intent of use).
That’s already extremely prohibitive, almost certainly beyond most academic research budgets, and really hard on small companies as well. Multiply that by however many trials you need, and you’re easily way over the R/D budgets of anyone except Merck et al.
It has arrived.
So because I’m sick and tired of hearing the “lets see clinical studies” crowd always harping in on things, I’m going to attempt to clear things up for you all. Ryanjm, this is not directed at you personally. Just getting fed up with that comment in general, as it seems to be popping up from people like BADASS MENTALITY and others who’ve never ordered supps from here, or are chronic critics of supplements in general. I’m just pissed at people like that.
Here’s a link to an article discussing the R&D costs associated with with clinical trials (ie–human studies).
http://dev.innovation.org/archives/DiscMed04-Drug%20Cost-Dickson-Gagnon.pdf
very interesting overall, actually, to figure out how the industry works for those of you so inclined. I recommend reading through it regardless, it’s fairly short.
big thing— Average costs associated with validation = 15 million for phase 1 and 16 million dollars for phase 2. That’s well before you get out of clinical trials and into Drug Review process.
pre-human Animal tests alone typically amount to 1.5 million dollars or so, with total costs about 800 million dollars.
So if even $100,000 is difficult (an understatement) to achieve for supplement R&D budgets on human trials, let alone 1.5 million, you can see the difficulty in getting anything even remotely resembling comprehensive testing for ANY supplement, let alone one that will most likely be banned soon/immediately.
It’s the nature of the beast. Nothing you can really do about it, unless you’re Bill Gates and you invest your personal stash. Responsible supp companies (of which there are extremely few) do what they can in a cutthroat and rapidly vacillating industry. They conduct in house and small scale studies as they can afford, most of which end up as proprietary knowledge to avoid competitors coming up with anything like it. Or they avoid doing something altogether if they can’t figure out something because of ethical/safety reasons…which is not very likely in my view when i look at a bunch of the side effect ridden prohormone crap products and dishonestly marketed products available today. Biotest is one of a kind, or nearly so, in that regard (in a good way, obviously).
So basically, there’s always some risk involved with a supplement, and people acknowledge it when buying supps. It either comes from the risk of the product not working, or the risk of side effects/safety/purity.
here’s an extremely brief blurb from Wiki:
[quote]jisboss wrote:
It has arrived.[/quote]
Could you post some before pictures of yourself, and then 2 week pictures and 4 week? I am fascinated by this product, and would like to know if I should save up for it.
[quote]ryanjm wrote:
A few questions:
Did Biotest conduct studies on human subjects prior to releasing this product? If so, what were the results?
I understand results vary, etc…but where are the simple hard facts like “Adult male, 28 yrs of age, 5’10” 180lbs 15% bodyfat, after 2 weeks showed reduction of 3% bodyfat, +4lbs muscle, +20lbs on bench" etc…
I like esoteric scientific masturbation as much as the next guy, but it seems like the only way to get good data on whether products like this are worth the cost is to wait for people to buy them and post their results/opinions.
In this case, with a new product and virtually zero hard evidence of exactly what gains to expect, (no examples, test subjects, etc…) that presents a classic marketing hustle situation: “We’ve only got limited stock, it’ll be sold out fast and there might not be anymore!” And then by the time anyone reports results, if they are unimpressive and deemed not worth the cost, well, it’s too late for all the people who already ordered and bought the hype. I’m not saying this is a hustle, but like any good hustle, it has to blend in with the legit products that are actually worth the money…[/quote]
Firstly, the evaluation was informal, not directed by me, and I don’t myself have the results of each person. So I couldn’t give it to you if I wanted to.
Secondly, for reasons I’ve already explained although you feel it would be a really meaningful thing and you’re completely entitled to feel however you want about what is meaningful to you, it really is not meaningful. Doing that with very small sets of data can readily be more deceptive than meaningful. So I wouldn’t do it if I had it.
Here’s an example: We have another product that has an active which converts in the body to the same substance as one that has been the object of some, though not much, scientific study. A published study on that compound found, to publishable statistical significance but based on rather few subjects, that there was a very important (if real) effect that we do not claim. However, we were interested if our product, which delivers much more of the same active, which was proven by blood tests, has this activity that was reported.
I warned that the published study should not be taken too seriously given the small number of subjects and the extent of individual and random variation, the reasoning being same as explained in a recent post. We did a DEXA study that was much more precise than the published study, and guess what, no effect on average. (Some changes were positive, some were negative, just random variation.)
How would it have been liked if we had claimed that in a published study, this person got this positive result, that person got that positive result, etc when the fact is, in a more precise study that activity does not exist?
In this case I don’t have a fear that the activity doesn’t exist, but I certainly don’t think it appropriate or valid to quantitate it at this time. Actually, I’m really sure I explained this already. I understand not having read all the posts as there are a lot, but in future, I’m not going to answer any further demands for quantitation as that has been thoroughly covered.
Yes, “Feels like I’m on Deca!” and “I gained 5 lb LBM!” (neither true in my case with this, they are just examples) are great ways to sell things and may be true of individuals in a small sample, but may in fact be in reference to products that don’t work when such claims are made. If anything as a consumer I would be more worried by such an approach than reassured, myself.
[quote]HunterKiller wrote:
jisboss wrote:
It has arrived.
Could you post some before pictures of yourself, and then 2 week pictures and 4 week? I am fascinated by this product, and would like to know if I should save up for it. [/quote]
I’m doing a thread about it in T-Cell. I’ll add pics after 2 weeks, 4 weeks assuming I see a difference.