readalot
Member
So you want to dabble with AAS for body dysmorphia or cosmetic reasons?
Step 1. Understand the basic workings of hpt(g)a - hypothalamic pituitary testicular (aka gonadal) axis. Control theory. Where does testosterone exhibit negative feedback? H or P? How about estradiol?
Step 2. Understand PCT. What is it? Is it necessary? When is it necessary?
Step 3. Understand basics of pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics for the drugs you are considering
Step 4. What's your plan? Inject some stuff and come back to the forums in 10 to 12 weeks and ask what to do next? Short, medium, long term goals? How do you plan on using AAS? Intermittent cycles, stay on all the time, blast and cruise, TRT plus intermittent abusive "cycles"?
Step 5. Go study up on TRT. What is it? How is it properly done? That may come in handy later down the road (hint).
Step 6. What are you going to use? How do you know it contains what's on the label?
Step 7. Learn proper aseptic injection technique. Where are you going to inject? Hopefully you will be injecting something and not running some oral only protocol. But wait, what about 50 mg/day of
Step 8. Diet and training? You know all that boring stuff. What's your waist circumference to height ratio? Why is that important when you start flooding your body with aromatizing AAS. Get your BF down before you start your foray into AAS. Understand the concept of hysteresis as it applies to a metabolic fit vs metabolically unfit person? What does metabolically unfit mean? Is there a case for exogenous testosterone to aid a metabolically unfit male? Sure. Is 200 or even 500 mg/week the best option to address that? Understand risk reward and tradeoff concepts.
Step 9. Bloodwork? What is it? What should you pull before you ever take anything? What are the standard markers? How do you measure TT and FT? What is TT and FT? CMP/CBC/lipids/E2....what are those? Fasting insulin? What else?
Step 10. First "cycle": 200 (OK 250 if you are really feeling frisky) mg/week Testosterone ester for 12 to 16 weeks. Repeat blood work. What are realistic expectations for lbm gained? How did you do? What did you track? What happened to your waist circumference?
No don't throw 50 mg/day of oxandrolone and some primobolan and some ______ _____ in there too. Why? No, not 500 or 350 mg/week of Test ester. What are you going to after the 12 to 16 weeks? Take more. Go back to baseline? Will you get back to baseline?
There is a whole bunch more but this list neatly fits into 10 items.
- Long term heart and health surveillance
- preexisting arrythmia or other health conditions
The list goes on and on.
Discuss and happy reading. Hopefully we can get this into a neat 100 point worksheet list that newcomers can read well in advance of any dabbling.
Thoughts/additions?
Too bad no edit feature after 30 min. Well that's a start.
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