Bill, you’ve stated before that small 12.5mcg doses of t3 would not suppress your thyroid. Would it make sense to do a 6 week cycle of t3, going up to 100mcg and tapering back down, then do several weeks of 12.5mcg before coming clean. Would this allow for restoration of thyroid while preventing a rebound?
I would suppose so.
And on the 100 mcg/day, my personal opinion and observation (including of other people) is that a diet can go just as fast with the same LBM retention at 50 mcg/day as at 100 mcg/day, or if 100 mcg/day is faster the difference is small enough to not be anything you can be certain of, small enough to appear like no difference.
Bill, I had read on another thread about your low dose long term use of T3 being effective. What was the dose, duration, and results? Thanks.
A mere 12.5 mcg/day, which is at most only half-replacement. I intitially recommended cycling off, to be completely certain not to harm anyone with my advice, but as for myself, was pretty sure it could be used indefinitely. I used it for 6 months or so straight (did not make a record of the dates though so the number is not precise) with zero problems. Not one person has had the slightest problem. Yet the benefits are obviously noticeable. I’d say it is worth, all else staying the same, 0.5 lb of fat per week if not really dieting, and more than that if thyroid is otherwise depressed from dieting.
Actually it may be better than this, because when not really dieting, I ate considerably more calories, I would think 500 per day extra or more, yet slowly lost fat, so that would work out to more like 1 lb per week. But in early weeks of dieting, where fat loss would be good anyway and thyroid was not yet depressed, it was not worth 1 extra lb – in other words, it didn’t push a 2 lb per week diet to 3 lb per week, but only 2.5. I don’t know the reason for the apparent discrepancy.
So Bill, If I would take 12.5mcg T3 for lets say 4-8 weeks, I wouldn’t need any steroids to prevent muscle loss? I would just have to increase my calorieintake with +500, and eat 1.5-2g protein/lbBW? Do U think that would be enough to prevent muscle loss?
No, if you want to lose fat, increasing calories and using 12.5 mcg/day T3 without any androgens is not the way to do it. I was using androgens (should have mentioned that) but the comparison was to using androgens but no added thyroid. In other words by keeping all else the same but adding 12.5 mcg/day T3 I was able to eat more and still lose a little. (Since I was quite lean, low 7’s which dropped into mid sixes, fat loss was pretty obvious.)
If you are dieting, you can expect some muscle loss unless you have a lot of room left in how much you can grow naturally, and T3 will not help avoid that. Nor, at that dose, will it result in much greater problems (if any greater) with LBM retention. But androgens would reduce the losses.