I’m not well equipped to answer this question by experience as a TRT bro, but it’s basic enough that I feel fine answering.
if you’re serious about keeping your hair, test+5ARI is the only thing you can run safely with piece of mind.
Even test cycles that get high enough (in mg) can be theoretically hair unsafe, because even megadosing Dut at 2.5mg/day (5x normal dose) only lowers scalp DHT by ~70% (serum ~96%, fwiw I’m not entirely sure the degree to how scalp DHT works in this context, but it’s in the literature. I know DHT is hard enough to test accurately in bloodwork, so it could be a measuring artifact, someone like
@Type-IIx might have more technical insight here). Bottom line is, you should assume that even with the perfect 5ARI protocol, *some* amount of DHT is still reaching your follicles. Whether that is significant is up for debate, but it’s a question mark that should make you treat even high-dose test-only cycles with some skepticism as far as being hair safe.
Only Test and Nandrolone are at all significant substrates for 5ARI activity. And as you probably know, 5ARIs make Nandrolone less hair-safe. So 5ARIs only protect you from your Test.
This means that 5ARIs do virtually nothing against any other steroid. (Good graph in Peter Bond’s work, Book On Steroids iirc, showing 5AR activity of popular compounds). So whether it’s Primo, Mast, EQ, Tren, the hormone will be able to freely bind to your follicles and nuke them, completely unaffected by your 5ARI. For all we know, some of these molecules at the follicle level could be more benign than Test itself (assuming use of a 5ARI), but I don’t think theres any way to get certainty on that matter. Hershberger assays are interesting but not super useful for the real world.
Beyond test, the relative hair-safety of anything else is literally just bro science and anecdotes. You can look at the clinical trials (of those that exist) for the drugs that were once brought to market and see how often hair loss was reported, but you’ll also presumably be taking these drugs at multiples of those clinical doses.
It’s also worth being skeptical of thinking that because something was/is used in women, that it’s relatively safe. Good heuristic, but consider how hair-friendly the female hormonal profile is, and how even 6-month courses of androgens can only do minor damage, which might not even be noticed because they have had ~zero miniaturization up until then.
I’ve lurked and read all the threads here, what literature can be found on the subject, in search of similar answers to you; that one day maybe I can find some cool hair-safe cycle that I can run if I ever decide to blast. But unfortunately the only confident answer you’re likely to find is Test+5ARI.
As an aside, there are a few
@Type-IIx posts floating around here theorizing why Anavar is reported as skewing hair safe, something to do with its structure not being super active in the scalp or something like that, iirc. Will probably make for some interesting reading.
I am curious, if you’re concerned about your hair, why not up your test instead of adding EQ? I get running high test is a chore WRT E2/bloat management, but you can take an AI and remain largely hair safe versus rolling the dice and seeing how you react to EQ, which if you don’t, will take quite a while to clear your system. Just food for thought.
More seasoned members will surely add more experience-based nuance, hopefully.
