Half Life or Active Life (Research on the matter was inconclusive)

[FireWithin]

I've researched countless pages across the internet and the moment I think I may have a suitable answer it is destroyed by another source.

I'm currently on my first cycle consisting of teste for 10 weeks. I'm currently on week 5. I understand everyone metabolizes at different rates depending on age, BF%, injection frequency, muscle used, etc.

Without having the resources to get proper blood work done is there a way to get a close approximation on the half life or active life of Testosterone Enanthate?

A common answer is 10.5 for the half-life but then I'll read 10.5 is the active life and so forth. I've read the half life being as low as 4 days.

I also read that in the beginning your half life will be longer than mid cycle. So basically for someone in my shoes how can I get a close approximation for the half or active life of teste?

Mainly what I am trying to achieve is having the smallest or least amount of spikes as possible. I'm currently using 250/ML of teste every 3.5 days. My buddy is doing 500/ML once every 7 days. Who is spiking more and why? Also is there an updated graph from a study that shows the life span of teste? Is the reason why most sources conflict due to dosage size?

[Lunk1]

Think of it in simple terms. Every drug has a half life. The more frequently you use it the less peaks and valleys you will experience. 3.5 days is the number used for the enethate esther based on it's half life although to be very technical, breaking the dose up and doing ED pins would create the least amount of roller coaster effect (not necessary IMO).

[FireWithin]

What is so golden about 3.5 days if no one can agree on the half life? I wouldn't want to do everyday pinning but I can see how your limiting your body on how much it can absorb but does it really work like that with a long lasting ester such as enanthate? I have several questions in my original post that would help me out a great deal in understanding all of this. I'm a thinker so thinking in simplistic terms only brings up more questions. Thanks though bro for commenting and giving me your 2 cents.

[Lunk1]

There are variables but most will agree that the half life ranges between 5-7. This is why E3D pinning is found to be the most effective at taking full advantage of the hormones half life, creating the most steady blood levels with the least amount of injections.

[Docd187123]

There are many different types of half lives. Lunk is spot on with the terminal or elimination half life which is the time required for plasma levels to drop by half once steady state concentration is achieved.

If stability of plasma levels is most important to you then injecting more frequently will create lower peaks and higher troughs. You're injecting more frequently so technically the amount of 'spikes' is more but they'd also be more like little bumps than anything else. This is where people typically inject every 3.5days or twice a week.

If stability isn't as important than you can inject less frequently while still staying within the terminal half life. This is usually done with one injection every week for the enanthate ester.

More frequent injections will create more stable levels but the trade off is lower concentrations. Less frequent injections will create higher peaks and more of a drop off in levels since you're waiting longer to inject but the troughs will still be higher than those of more frequent injections. Those that cannot tolerate the sides that are usually associated with less frequent injections do much better with pinning twice a week. Others experience no negative effects from pinning once a week and prefer it that way. Try both if you're curious and see which you prefer.

You will experience more spikes bc of more frequent injections but your buddy's spikes will be larger. The elimination half life is not affected by the size of the dose. It will always be the same (within slight tolerances due to other variables) but active half life can change bc a larger dose requires more terminal half lives to be fully metabolized increasing the length of time it has any biological effect on you.

[FireWithin]

Perfect, that half life range correlates with what my buddy said as well. On this particular topic it seems many confuse the active life with the half life which is what threw my mind into a whirlwind.

Now why is E3D pinning more effective than half life pinning? You can mentally illustrate the spike when your adding full value to half value but isn't the same size of spike occurring with E3D pinning except your levels are climbing more than falling? Would this be consider a good type of spike?

-=-EDIT-=-

When I posted this reply I did not see your post Docd. You explained everything in great detail, thank you. Only question I have now is how much of a role are these plasma level spikes playing on muscular gains?

[Docd187123]

Little to none. Nothing scientific really to back that up besides total AUC being pretty similar