(This thread was made by "Big Cat" from bodybuilding.com)
This is my first outline, still very rough and basic and missing one or two essential elements, of the sane cycle. A project I have been working on in past months to outline a steroid/diet/supplementation plan that allows you to stay healthy, increase your health and still add a nominal amount of LEAN mass to your frame while maintaining of lowering fat.
Any and all comments are extremely welcome.
Introduction
It has long been my goal to demonstrate that steroid use cannot only occur without causing any harm, it can actually benefit us in lengthening our life-span and increasing our quality of life. Since in essence, steroids have never led to the death of any person, and that they are far less lethal than most over the counter products, such as plain aspirin, they should really be legal. And since they are prescription medication, any use of these products should occur under medical supervision. But hey, some idiots did make them illegal and good luck finding a doctor that will help you, much less one that actually knows what he is talking about.
That is why I set out to write this. It is in no way complete, it is merely a quick rundown of several facts and the safest conclusions I could make based on them. But it should empower you to convince your health-care provider to help you, and educate him on how to do so.
Many people who have known me throughout my quest to refute the dangers of steroid use have asked me for help in proving these facts to sceptics and laymen, and this is EXTREMELY difficult because of the large amount of propaganda they have had to endure over past years. This may still be a tad too scientific for the dumber individuals, but may serve as a tool to educate smarter friends and relatives. And I hope that it may do so.
Cycle duration
For cycle duration I have chosen 12 weeks. Its rather arbitrary and its certainly not something you should consider absolute fact. A cycle doesn?t have to be 12 weeks to be safe. But we have ample evidence to suggest that with proper post-cycle, full HPTA recovery can be made in less than 50 days (1) , and since most people do not like to play pincushion and employ for the majority long-acting products, 12 weeks is sufficiently long to reap all the benefits of your cycle and get adequate gains.
As a rule we will use equal time off as on. So after the cycle (post-cycle not included) you will stay off 12 weeks. Recovery should be established in less than 50 days, so technically after 2 months you could already safely start another cycle, but since physiology is not linear math and not everyone will be able to complete the cycle and post-cycle as per the instructions, we should offer ourselves some leeway. So we will cycle on 12 weeks, then stay off 12 weeks before recommencing
Product Choice
We need to be realistic about the products we use as well. I could outline all sorts of magnificent exotic cycles, but chances that you will be able to find all the needed products without taking a second mortgage on your house or get swindled by less than reputable dealers is slim. Therefore we opt for the more available products. First of all we will exclude products that are no longer made or are extremely hard to find, that includes drostanolone (Masteron), quinbolone (anabolicum vister), mibolerone (cheque drops), formebolone (esiclene), clostebol (megagrisevit), MENT, methandriol, metribolone, furazabol (miotolan), Norethandrolone (Nilevar), ethylestronol (orabolin), Stenbolone, oxabolone (steranabol), etc.
Of what?s left, we need to make a selection. Halotestin is out. Too androgen mediated, too liver toxic. Trenbolone and nandrolone (Deca-Durabolin, Laurabolin, Durabolin) are excluded because they are too suppressive. Andriol because it is ineffective, oxandrolone (Anavar) because a useful dose (75+ mg per day) is too expensive, and Methenolone (Primobolan) because of its price. Primo is a decent androgen, but seems to have no other mode of action.
Most of these products would have been excluded for other reasons anyway, with the possible exception of trenbolone and oxandrolone.
We will also exclude methandrostenolone (Dianabol) and oxymetholone (Anadrol). While these are useful drugs at the beginning of a cycle, especially as far as bulk and strength, they fall outside of what we are looking for : a long term cycling plan with relatively lean results. On top of that I want to make a case for stanozolol (Winstrol/Stromba) and I do not feel comfortable recommending the use of two orals, due to liver toxicity (eventhough liver toxicity is a tad exaggerated, but then that just allows us more leeway with the winny).
That leaves us with three products : testosterone, boldenone (equipoise) and stanozolol (Winstrol/Stromba). Can you build an effective cycle with clean and proper results, with only these three substances ? Of course you can. But before we delve into that, let me defend my choice of products.
In defense of testosterone
Apart from being the most effective steroid, it?s also the sanest choice with regards to health. It makes sense that by administering the exogenous variant of our prime androgen, we will not allow anything in the body that would normally occur to fall into disuse, nor allow anything that would normally not happen to occur. Because a lot of studies and conclusions are based on findings with testosterone, we can only safely make these assumptions about testosterone. That is why we not only use it, it will be the base for our cycle. And it should be for any health-conscious cycle.
Testosterone is the most effective steroid commercially available today. This observed in the real world, since even with the necessary bulk, testosterone increases lean body mass more than any other steroid we have access to. More than the stronger androgens, and more than the stronger estrogens. That is because testosterone has a very diverse mode of action. Testosterone is the most present androgen in the body. Its also the most important endogenous androgen in muscle tissue. But everywhere else in the body, that role is put aside for Dihydrotestosterone (DHT). Now DHT is a reduced version of testosterone with a saturated A-ring (steroids are lipophillic, 19-carbon, 4-ring structures made from cholesterol). These other tissues are rich in an enzyme called 5-alpha-reductase. When testosterone binds to this enzyme, its 4,5-double bond is broken and two hydrogen atoms (hence dihydro) attached to the spaces that are freed on the A-ring. DHT is a much more potent androgen, roughly three times the affinity of testosterone for the androgen receptor.
Many people regard DHT as the enemy, because among these androgen-specific tissues are the scalp (aggravating a genetic tendency to hair loss) and the skin (causing outbreaks of acne). But in fact DHT is more than that to us. Since it is the prime androgen in nerve tissue, it will be imperative to have ample DHT levels for optimal neuromuscular response. This is why many people taking the 5-alpha-reductase inhibitor finasteride (Proscar) find that their strength does not increase, or even decreases. Secondly we tend to forget that DHT is a potent anti-aromatase. The aromatase enzyme is the enzyme that converts testosterone to the estrogen estradiol (E2). As we will discuss next, E2 certainly has its benefits as well, but too high a concentration will result in excess adipose storage and more water retention (bloat). Certainly we don?t need this if it can be avoided. Since this is a long term plan, we are in no way planning to walk around like the ?stay puffed marshmallow man?. By blocking the 5-alpha reductase we have a shift towards aromatization of testosterone, because there is more testosterone available (not converted to DHT) and there are more aromatase enzymes (not taken up by DHT). This could in turn lead to problems with feminization and gynocomastia (breast growth in men). So as you can see, DHT is quite important in this equation.
A more important issue is perhaps the prostate. Prostate cancer is a disease of modern society. And steroid use has been known to cause or aggravate Benign prostate hypertrophy, a growth stage of the prostate gland in middle-aged men. Because the prostate is androgen specific, DHT is often named as the culprit. But the latest research determines that estrogen is in fact the causative factor, although a level of androgenic action is required. Androgens have actually been proferred as a therapeutic means to treat BPH.
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