Considering a first cycle....all your confusion cleared up here.

[readalot]

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 mild oxandrolone for my first cycle? Needle sizes, etc.

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.

 

[readalot]

exhibit

Typo.

exhibit exert

 

[readalot]

Forgot to also add the age floor.

What do you think would be a good recommendation @Alpine* ?

 

[Looksmaxphen]

Nice,thanks for the info

 

[narta]

Step 10. First "cycle": 200 (OK 250 if you are really feeling frisky) mg/week Testosterone ester for 12 to 16 weeks.

I like most of it, but I hate this cookie cutter dosage. Do I need the same dosage as a 5'5" 160lbs? I am 6'4" 230lbs baseline. Better give recommendations on a mg/kg scale

 

[Nilatac]

Thing is that using only 200 or 250 mg/week is not smart to say at least. You shutdown yourself to take with 30-50% more than what a doctor prescribe for trt. Are you going on a cycle or are you going on a "sport trt"?.
Even if is double than natural is still not high enough to make it worth the shutdown and the hassle going on a cycle.

Doesn't even matter if it's your first cycle. 500 mg is the minimum I would take if I would start my first cycle now with everything I know so far.
Testosterone isn't as bad as is rumored.
I will take a oral like dbol or drol for the first 8 weeks because why not. I like orals and until test gets to his steady peak to have something that will work better.
Neither orals aren't that bad as they are rumored.

You don't have to increase the dosage for every cycle you do. You can run the same cycle several times.

It's not a set in stone recipe. Dosage especially is very person dependent even for a beginner.

After your first cycle you will know if you are gyno prone or not. If you are use test as a baseline and take other aas. I wouldn't take a ai just to be able to take more testosterone when there are other aas than don't have the estrogen problem

 

[readalot]

Tool to Assess your TT dose response --Percentile Curves

Continuing the dose response thread over here. This would be a great place to crowdsource data. https://forums.t-nation.com/t/tool-to-assess-your-tt-dose-response-percentile-curves/277628 https://thinksteroids.com/community/threads/readalot-aka-tareload-introduction.134419973/post-3171563 I...

thinksteroids.com

Free & Bioavailable Testosterone calculator

Compare 200 mg/week Test ester and 500 mg/week to weekly endogenous production for eugonadal male.

Where does 200 mg/week and 500 mg/week of test ester put most on TT/FT (ng/dl)? Example.

Why is 500 mg/week problematic as a general guideline for someone starting their first cycle in the context of harm reduction and minimum effective dose?

Does cycling really make any sense at all?

Think about the 2 parameters that govern pharmacokinetics of injectable Test ester: distribution volume and clearance.

What governs these?

Figure - PMC

A randomized, double‐blind clinical trial was conducted to investigate long‐term abuse effects of testosterone cypionate (TC). Thirty‐one healthy men were randomized into a dose group of 100, 250, or 500 mg/wk and received 14 weekly injections of ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Table - PMC

A randomized, double‐blind clinical trial was conducted to investigate long‐term abuse effects of testosterone cypionate (TC). Thirty‐one healthy men were randomized into a dose group of 100, 250, or 500 mg/wk and received 14 weekly injections of ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

What's a typical distribution volume for testosterone ester in adult male?
Estimates on range?

Is there a strong correlation of dose response vs body mass/lbm?

Significant covariates for tT included baseline weight, baseline albumin, and change in weight and albumin from baseline. Power models for baseline weight and albumin, linear models for change in albumin, and exponential models for change in weight resulted in the lowest objective function values (OFVs). The Forest plot of covariate effects (Figure 1)1) illustrates that albumin, change in albumin from baseline, and change in weight from baseline are not clinically important for the testosterone PK parameters, as the majority of 95% confidence interval (CI) of these covariate effects fall within the interval of 0.8 to 1.25. On the other hand, a heavier subject (95th percentile, 110 kg) is estimated to have a 1.23 (95% CI = 1.16–1.32) and 1.58 (95% CI = 1.17–2.3) fold higher CL/F and V/F compared to a typical subject (median = 85 kg), respectively, suggesting weight had a modest effect on TC PKs. However, considering the natural variation in testosterone concentrations, weight‐based dosing is not likely to be needed for an i.m. injection of TC. Of 496 observations for covariates weight, albumin, and globulin, missing values were replaced by the previous measurements in 30 (6.05%), 9 (1.81%), and 10 (2.02%) time points, respectively. Basic goodness of fit (GOF) plots for tT are shown in Supplementary Figure S1. Prediction‐corrected visual predictive checks (VPCs) stratified on dose groups are shown separately for intensive and extensive sampling periods in Figure 22 . Overall, the GOF plots and the prediction‐corrected VPCs indicated that the model adequately describes the central tendency and the variability of the PK profile of testosterone

 

[readalot]

This guy and type llx are like cousins. They both write a bunch of nonsense quoting studies or research made 60 years ago on 5 guys or studies that don't have real life applications.
But quoting from a studies makes you looking smart same as quoting from Einstein.

Moving the above out of the QSC thread to avoid derailing that thread.

You must be the type of guy that talks smack yet too cowardly to tag the bloke you speak ill of. @Type-IIx just so you know.

@Nilatac take a look at post above this one. How about these?

Legit "TRT tele" clinics that prescribe NPP?

Not advertising for them at all, but try Defy for HRT. They are telehealth and are actually pretty thorough in speaking with you and take their time. They didn’t try to sell me extra shit, and only prescribed something if I asked about it. I have been pretty impressed. They don’t do NPP but they...

thinksteroids.com

Mountain Biking Endurance + Intro

I haven’t read it, I’ve done it. Just because people repeat something in a web forum doesn’t make it true. Well, all due respect, an n=1 reporting positive effects isn't any more convincing than many claiming 0 effects. Placebo effect can be a mofo to distinguish in a small sample size. And you...

thinksteroids.com

What orals affect the liver the least?

What orals affect the liver the least? And do inj orals affect the liver less than oral versions?

thinksteroids.com

Free test measurement units/format?

Got this value on free test a few months ago, I've seen free test displayed in various formats in multiple places on the internet but never understood what's the most common way to observe it. Also, feel free to give me your thoughts on the value itself. Is it of any significance without...

thinksteroids.com

And on and on and on.

But tell me more how my posts have no real world applications. I am all ears.

To redeem yourself and indicate some integrity, examine the material above, my posts here, at EM, at TN, and then issue a written apology. That would be fair of you.

 

[Nilatac]

I block that guy a while back same as I block you now.
My life is boring but not that boring to read your nonsense. You and his as well