Q: “Which is better for a woman to use, long-acting injectable steroid esters, or short-acting? I mean in terms of risk of virilization versus anabolic benefit. And, should women front-load anabolic steroids at the start of the cycle as you say men should.”
A: In and of itself, the things that matter here are blood levels and convenience, rather than the esters themselves. The esters have no effect on either anabolism or virilization.
The answer to your question really depends on application.
When unfamiliar with a given an anabolic steroid or dosing of that steroid, a short-acting version is the better choice, as if the amount used proves too high, the steroid will rapidly clear the system on discontinuance.
So for example if wishing to use testosterone, even though it’s inconvenient to inject daily, it would be better to gain experience with testosterone propionate first rather than testosterone enanthate or testosterone cypionate.
Or if wishing to use nandrolone, it’s better to start with nandrolone phenylpropionate than with nandrolone decanoate.
On establishing desired dosing with the shorter acting ester, and being confident that the dosing is correct, it’s then better to switch to the longer acting ester. This is because it will provide more stable blood levels. I would still maintain an injection frequency of preferably at least three times per week, again, to achieve more stable blood levels.
I generally recommend that women not frontload anabolic steroids, as starting with lower blood levels and only slowly building up can be safer, better tolerated psychologically, and results are still usually excellent. However, when familiar and confident with a given dosing level, frontloading may be employed.
A last point on this is that to obtain accurate dosing, usually it’s best to dilute an injectable steroid product into a new sterile vial. For example, if wishing to inject 10 mg/week of testosterone propionate per week and dividing this into 7 injections per day, that would be only about 1.4 mg/day, where the product is 100 mg/mL. That is impossible to measure accurately with a syringe. Diluting it 10 times – for example, combining 1 mL of the product with 9 mL of a suitable sterile oil – will enable accurate dosing. Here, one would be measuring “14 IU” with an insulin syringe, rather than “1.4 IU.”
Further, half-cc insulin syringes will give more accurate measurements than will 1 cc syringes, let alone 3 cc syringes.
About the author
Bill Roberts is an internationally-recognized expert on anabolic steroids and performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). He received a bachelor degree in Microbiology and Cell Science and completed the educational and research requirements for a PhD in Medicinal Chemistry at a major American university.
Bill entered the nutritional supplement industry prior to completing his doctoral thesis but his education was invaluable so far as being able to design/improve nutritional supplement compounds, since it was in the field of designing drug molecules and secondarily some work in transdermal delivery.
His education was not specifically "geared" toward anabolic steroids other than expertise with pharmacological principles having broad applications. This has allowed Bill to provide unique insight into the field of anabolic pharmacology with knowledge of points which he would not have known otherwise.
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