Why should you reduce your BF% before running an AAS cycle?

[Turkish Juicer]

Testosterone riskier for fat men with short andro-genes

Some bodybuilders can use stuff literally for years without stopping, going through as much tren, deca, testo and primo in a week as a modest juicer does in a complete course. To make matters worse they experience no pain, while others are told by their doctors to stop after just six tiny doses of Sustanon. So how does that work? Endocrinologists from Muenster in Germany came up with some indicators. Fat percentage and the length of the gene for the androgen receptor determine how risky testosterone is for men.

The researchers describe an experiment they did with 66 men in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. The men did not produce enough testosterone themselves, so the researchers gave them injections of Nebido, a new testosterone preparation produced by Bayer Schering Pharma. Bayer Schering Pharma is the new name for what used to be Schering, and Nebido is an injectible testosterone undecanoate (TU). TU is a long-acting ester based on castor oil. The men got a 1000 mg injection mg in weeks 0, 6, 18 and 30. This schedule allows the testosterone level to rise gradually, reaching the desired level by week 30. After week 44, the researchers gave the men an injection if their testosterone level dropped below the week-30 level.

During the testosterone course – which by the way was pretty modest – the researchers monitored the men for side-effects. They measured cholesterol levels, thickness and haemoglobin levels in the blood, as well as heart rate and blood pressure in the men. Now 16 of the men in the study had a BMI of higher than 30. That counts as obese. [In this case you can exclude the possibility of the extra kilograms being the result of hard but healthy muscle mass.] The researchers discovered that it was the fat men who reacted badly to the Nebido course.

In the figure below you can see the chance of the fat men exceeding a critical value compared to that of the not-so-fat men.



The less fat you have, the less likely you are to develop side effects from steroids .

Another factor is genetic tendency. To be more precise: the length of your gene for coding the androgen receptor in your cells. This is the protein that testosterone or other androgen steroid hormones have to attach themselves to in order have an effect. The gene for the receptor contains a piece of genetic material that repeats itself: the CAG sequence. The number of times that the gene repeats the sequence varies from 15 to 35. The fewer the number of CAG sequences, the greater the chance that testosterone will make men’s blood too thick.

The figure below shows the relationship between the concentration of testosterone reached in the blood, the number of CAG sequences, for the androgen receptor and the thickness of the blood. If the blood becomes so thick that the haematocrit value rises above 50 percent, doctors halt testosterone therapy .



Still. You can’t do anything to change your androgen receptor, but you can do something about your fat percentage. If you want to use steroids as safely as possible, it’s worthwhile thinking about reducing your fat percentage first. The same researchers recently published a study in which they provide another reason to start on steroids only once your fat percentage is low enough: they discovered that low-fat bodies are thriftier with their testosterone.

Source: J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2007 Oct;92(10):3844-53.

ergo-log


Get more out of your steroids – lose weight first

The lower your body fat percentage, the more effective your testosterone-ester injections will be. Endocrinologists in Muenster, Germany, discovered this when doing research on hormone preparations for male contraceptives. Their article will be published soon in the Journal of Andrology.

The aim of male contraception is to get the testes to stop producing sperm. The classic way of achieving this is to halt the production of the hormones LH and FSH by the pituitary gland – and you do that by administering sex hormones. FSH and LH stimulate the testes to produce sperm and testosterone. If you add exogenous androgens, the brain thinks that there are already so many hormones circulating in the body that the testes don’t need to do anything, and then stops the production of the stimulating hormones – and thus the production of sperm.

So far, most attention has been focused on slow-release testosterone-esters, and the German research is no exception. The researchers gave forty male test subjects slow-release testosterone undecanoate.

The researchers gave the test subjects a thousand milligrams of testosterone-ester in two doses, six weeks apart. The more body fat the men had, the lower the increase in concentration of testosterone in the blood from the injections. In the figure below the grey curve represents the testosterone level of men with less than ten kilograms of body fat. The black curve represents men with more than eighteen kilograms of fat.



The units not shown on the horizontal axis represent time spans of two weeks.

It would seem that body fat inhibits the rise in the blood testosterone level after injections are given. You might argue that fat men tend to be heavier than thin men, but according to the researchers, body weight plays only a minor role in the inhibitory effect of the fat reserves. You see the effect more clearly if you look at the free testosterone levels .



That fat men react less well to testosterone can also be seen from the effect of the injections on the LH levels. These decreased by less in the fatter men.



The researchers do not know how body fat makes testosterone less effective. A popular theory is that fat cells are capable of converting testosterone into estradiol. The Germans found no confirmation of this, however, as the fat men had similar estradiol levels in their blood to those of the slim men.

If fat men are to use testosterone-esters as a form of contraception, they will need higher doses, the researchers speculate. The testosterone injections may also take longer to become effective in fatter males. And the same will apply to chemical athletes.

Source: J Androl. 2009 Apr 2. [Epub ahead of print].

ergo-log


Fat belly neutralises DHT

Those spare tyres around the middle are even worse for men’s androgen levels than we thought. Enzymes in fat tissue not only convert testosterone into estradiol, but also transform the androgen DHT into inactive compounds.

Overweight men more often have a shortage of androgen hormones than thin men do. In trials doctors have treated the problem with an anti-oestrogen like letrozole , and there are also cases of fat men becoming more healthy as a result of testosterone injections.

But fat men who put all their faith in testosterone therapy and do not try to lose weight may be making the wrong choice. The more fat men carry, the less they react to testosterone therapy. And what’s more, fat men are also more likely to develop side-effects from testosterone therapy.

Canadian researchers at Laval University have shown that enzymes in fat reserves deactivate DHT – and that they do this even more so, the bigger the fat layers. The more fat that men carry, the more DHT changes as a result into 5alpha-androstane 3alpha,17beta-diol and 5alpha-androstane 3beta,17beta-diol. Anti-estrogens are not able to hinder this conversion.

The researchers examined pieces of subcutaneous fat and abdominal fat from fat and thin men. They discovered that especially in subcutaneous fat there is a high level of conversion of DHT into 5alpha-androstane 3alpha,17beta-diol. The enzymes that activated DHT were more active in mature fat cells [mature adipocytes] than in fat cells that had not yet reached maturity [pre adipocytes].







So the more fat you have, the more DHT is deactivated in your body. But that’s not the whole story, as you can see directly above here. If men put on weight, then by kg bodyweight, the DHT deactivating enzymes become more active.

For keen strength athletes who could do to lose a bit of fat, the take home message is clear: Lose weight.

Source: J Endocrinol. 2006 Dec; 191(3): 637-49.

ergo-log

[Rwy]

This was a good read. My barber mentioned my hair was thinning in the back. I have no MPB anywhere in my family. Everyone has hair into their 80's so it is obviously from test. I did start a cycle at a really high bf% before moving on to trt. I am much lower now but I wonder if this was a cause for my hair thinning. I am getting labs again this week with DHT included. Need to ty and get to the bottom of it!

[Brazensol]

I'm on trt on if I understand this correctly I should need a progressively smaller weekly dosage as my body fat percentage drops and my lean mass increases. This will be interesting to see as I will keep my current maintenance dose and see if the labs confirm this. I have a hunch it will based on my last labs. HOWEVER, to clarify, I inject Monday a.m. and Thursday p.m. I usually have blood drawn late Thursday afternoon so I can see what the low point is. On my last lab I did not inject my Monday a.m. test cyp until late Monday so that puts me about 12 hours off what I normally do. Even still I was in the 720's on the last lab and I'm usually in the high 500's. I don't know if the 12 hours is enough to account for the difference or the 20+ pounds I had lost since the previous labs. Probably both factors play into this but to what degree I don't know.

[AlinSR]

I always notice that aas don't work too well for fat guys.

[trenhead1]

Coming from a fat guy who uses aas u don't see much inprovment in the mirror just results on lifts and scales

[songdog]

Good job bro.

[Doom44]

good post mate

[Turkish Juicer]

Thank you.

[cruzetor]

amazing article, thank you so much, i learned a lot from this

[MajorPectorial]

Some great info yet again tj. ;-) Good read. Lookin sharp in ur avvy too bro

[vladan]

great info, keep on bro.

[Gaspaco]

Good job TJ, as always!

[lovbyts]

Good write up. Should be another sticky so we can point newbies who question every day, Why do I need to get below 15% body fat?

[Shadow530i]

Great read, I wonder if there's a noticeable difference between 10% and 6% bf

[Turkish Juicer]

Great read, I wonder if there's a noticeable difference between 10% and 6% bf

10% is a considerably low BF%.

The difference between 16% and 10% would be more significant than the difference between 10% and 6%, per se.

[Buster Brown]

Thanks TJ, great info. Motivates me to keep carb cycling!

[clarky.]

Great info mate.

[Bigjd707]

good post for those interested in a cycle. See a lot of people beyond 15% bf trying to ask questions

[bbiiggllaadd]

Good post mate

[DuggyPhresh]

Seems all these boards are in consensus on less than 15% body fat before starting a cycle, correct?

[MickeyKnox]

Awesome post TJ!

This completely supports what we have been saying all along. Good job bro.

[stpete]

I didn't read a damn thing.

But i'm pretty sure it's spot.

[bigsiv]

Great post TJ definitely should be made a sticky. Great Avi as well

[Brazensol]

Got my labs back. Test was 757.4 (193-740) ng/dL so it came back a little high. This might support the above post in that more lean tissue = more efficient test usage. But unfortunately this was not an exact apples to apples comparison to my last labs since I took the dose ~12 hours closer to the blood draw than I normally do. Usually, I take it Monday morning but took it Monday evening this time. Also, I can't find my previous lab paperwork but I am pretty sure they used a different range, something like 350-1100, so until I find that or have my wife reprint it for me, I can't calculate the true difference between labs. Still, previous test level was in the mid to high 500's range so something may indeed be going on because I don't think 12 hours would make that much of a difference. My bf% on the previous lab was 32.3% and 27.6% (both with the same bod pod) on the most current lab.

[Turkish Juicer]

My bf% on the previous lab was 32.3% and 27.6% (both with the same bod pod) on the most current lab.

You should do something about this...

[Live for the PUMP]

Great post bro

[t-dogg]

Thank you.

Good post!

[Brazensol]

You should do something about this...

Did you miss the down from 32.3 to 27.6? That's almost 5%! Not bad, eh? Currently estimate ~25% now and dropping. Will do another bf assessment at the end of the month and hoping to be ~22-23%. I can't do it overnight! Though I wished I could.

[Brazensol]

Got my labs back. Test was 757.4 (193-740) ng/dL so it came back a little high. This might support the above post in that more lean tissue = more efficient test usage. But unfortunately this was not an exact apples to apples comparison to my last labs since I took the dose ~12 hours closer to the blood draw than I normally do. Usually, I take it Monday morning but took it Monday evening this time. Also, I can't find my previous lab paperwork but I am pretty sure they used a different range, something like 350-1100, so until I find that or have my wife reprint it for me, I can't calculate the true difference between labs. Still, previous test level was in the mid to high 500's range so something may indeed be going on because I don't think 12 hours would make that much of a difference. My bf% on the previous lab was 32.3% and 27.6% (both with the same bod pod) on the most current lab.

The point I was attempting to make was the same dose of test cyp was coming back with higher blood levels and this might be supportive of the op about the body being more efficient with testosterone with lower bf percentages. The only wild card is my timing was off by twelve hours but I don't think that is enough to account for the higher blood level on the last test.

[Brazensol]

Then again this might not apply to those on trt.

[BBJT200]

great article, thanks for sharing!

[Turkish Juicer]

bump