The Demise of Prohormones Part IV

4) Misuse or abuse?

I have zero evidence to back the following statistic up, but I’m willing to bet the house that I’m within 5% points of the actual figure. 98% of prohormone users have no business using prohormones. I know that maybe hard to swallow for you, but it’s true. And that includes me.

I had no business using 1-AD. My diet was pathetic. I had not a clue as to how many calories I was consuming a day. My training, if you could call it training, consisted of unlimited sets of the bench press and barbell curls. I was clueless.. But I wanted results NOW. Gyno be damned, I wanted to bench 275 pounds, and 1-AD was my ticket. Idiot!

And every day, I see myself 10 years ago over, and over, and over again.

I’m by no means an expert in fitness. I’m not certified by any personal training or strength training association. Everything I know, I’ve learned from Siff, Zatsiorsky, Thibadeau, Poliquin, Boyle, and Defranco. And of course, 10 years of experimentation on my own body. But I’d be willing to say 99.9% of the trainers and coaches in the fitness industry would agree with the following two statements regarding fitness:

1) Progressive overload is the key to mass and strength gains.

2) There are no shortcuts when it comes to the iron.

I have a simple 3 question survey to determine if you’re ready for prohormones. If you can answer the following 3 questions with certainty, you’re ready to dive into the dark side

1) Can you tell me exactly how many calories you’ve consumed every day during the last 2 months, including the macronutrient breakdown? By the way, you’ll also need to know your RMR.

2) Can you show me every workout you’ve done in the last year?

3) Are you already taking protein, creatine, beta alanine, and fish oil?

If you know the answers to those questions, you’re definitely on the right track. In fact, you know more than 98% of the rest of the weightliftng community.

Remember, prohormones are a band-aid, and a poor one at that. They never definitively answer the true problem. They’re a short-term fix for a long-term problem. And in the end, they’ll do more harm than good….

The Demise of Prohormones Part III

What does two guys, $2000, a phone number, and a website equal? A supplement company

Before the FDA’s ban bonanza, what companies were leading the way in prohormones? Not the big ones like BSN, Cytosport, or Dymatize. Too much risk for them. It was the “garage chemists”, small, unheard of companies that seemed to be springing up everywhere. Why? Because anyone can create a supplement company. In fact, it’s probably one of the cheapest businesses to start. I should know. I along with another pharmacist created one two years ago for $5000.

 

All you’ll need is a couple thousand dollars, a website, and a phone number. It’d probably be smart to pay $500 for a LLC for liability purposes, and get a cheap insurance plan. You won’t need any equipment. You won’t need a warehouse. In fact , you don’t even need a degree in chemistry. A high school diploma would do just fine. The contract manufacturer will do the large majority of the work. All you need to to is sell (in fact marketing is far more important than an educational background in chemistry, biology, etc.). Who cares about safety and effectiveness. That’s the FDA’s responsibility. As long as it’s new, people will buy it. And when the FDA pulls it off the market, or heaven forbid it kills someone, we pull our money out and file chapter 8 on our LLC.

 

Now that’s a small exaggeration. But essentially, that’s all that’s needed to start a supplement company. Some of these companies just can’t be trusted. All they see is dollar signs. I cringe every time I see a new company spring up, and all they make are prohormones. I cringe even more when these guys on the message board, who by the way have no business using prohormones, volunteer to provide feedback for the company on the latest, greatest prohormone. Unbeknownst to them, they actually are human guinea pigs. Why risk your health for a 15 pound increase on the bench press?

 

General rule of thumb: If you don’t know what the president of the supplement company looks like, and the ads use a clinical study you cannot find on pubmed.org, avoid the company at all costs because they’re probably operating our of their basement.

The Demise of Prohormones Part II

The price factor

$80… Really? or 2 vial of Test

Prohormones are expensive. On top of that, they change so often and have so many chemical variations, who really knows what works and what doesn’t. For me, Androsol was a complete bust, while 1-AD gave me almost zero mass gain but a decent strength gain (15 lbs on the bench). So to get a 15 lb increase on your bench, you’ll probably have to go through 3 or 4 different prohormones, which comes out to around $150.

 

When it comes to prohormones, there just doesn’t seem to be a reliable measuring stick. It’s like comparing apples to oranges. It’s a crap shoot. A single change on a chemical structure can completely change a chemical’s functionality.

You and I have both seen it before. A new prohormone is released, and the first question on every supplement message board on the internet “How does it compare to prohormone x in terms of size and strength?” And then the argument of “my prohormone is better than your prohormone” ensues. All the while, no one, not the user, not the manufacturer, and not even the FDA, knows exactly how this prohormone is going to impact the body. The only thing that’s for sure is your wallet will be a little lighter.

Weekly Supplement BS Report - The Demise of Prohormones

1st of a 4 Part Series

I’m against prohormones. There, I said it. In fact, I think they are the single worst thing that has happened to the dietary supplement industry. They are the epitome of what the the industry has become: dangerous, greedy, and uneducated.

But before you shut me out.. Let me explain because just like you, I’ve used my fair share of prohormones over the years. And it took me awhile to come to the above conclusion.

I was there when Mark McGwire first made 4-AD a household name. I saw the -diols take over the diones. I was a guinea pig when Biotest created Androsol, then a year or so later Mag-10. I also witnessed Patrick Arnold revive prohormones with 1-AD. And as ashamed as I am to admit it, I’ve used more than a handful over the years. So to argue I’ve never been down that road could not be farther from the truth.

So here’s my reasoning…

1) The 25/75 rule

Unfortunately, prohormones reluctantly give you 25% of the benefits of steroids, while graciously giving you 100% of the side effects.
Gyno, hairloss, acne, elevated liver enzymes, postcycle crash, etc. I’ve seen them all with prohormones. And yet, I never see the big strength gains or mass gains that you get with 500mg of test. And for those that would argue, I highly doubt you’ve ever seen someone or personally been on 500mg of test. Just last year, I had a member of my gym, who hadn’t lifted a weight in almost 4 years, do a cycle of 500mg of test cyp to “jumpstart” his return to the iron. The first day he could barely get up 175 lbs on the bench. By the end of the 8 weeks, he was well over 300 lbs. And this is a guy with a PR of 230 lbs on the bench previously. Not one side effect. And post cycle went relatively smoothly. I think he ended up keeping almost 90% of his gains. And this is a pretty typical response to a low-moderate dose of test.

In the prohormone world, you’ll never seen those type of gains. But I guarantee you’ll see some gyno, some hairloss, an acne flair up, and with the newer ones, a pretty depressive postcycle crash. So why risk it? Personally, I’d rather take the risk of getting my vial of test confiscated and a slap on the wrist from the police than risk a 15 lb increase in my bench press and a case of gyno from superdrol.

I like to make the following comparison to help illustrate my point. If you were looking for an exercise to add the most mass and strength to your upper body, would you pick the bench press or a dumbbell flye? I think 99.9% of you would choose the bench press. In fact, you could probably do 4 sets of 10 reps of dumbbell flyes every day for 5 years, and still not achieve the mass and strength you’d get from the bench press in only 3 months time. However, you’d probably still get the soreness, the fatigue, and even the overtraining.

I know most would disagree with me, but if you take an unbiased look at the clinical evidence, a cycle of just test would actually be safer than the large majority of the prohormones on the market. If the FDA would consider a restricted steroid access protocol (like I’ll describe in my next article), the prohormone market would be extinct in a day. Why? Because if you give a gymrat a choice between test or superdrol, they’d be an idiot to even consider superdrol. Test beats it in every category: results, safety, and price.

And tomorrow…. The Price Factor

Weekly Supplement BS Report

 

Just last week I ran into an old buddy at my gym. He’d just finished his workout, and was guzzling down a protein drink in a can I’d never seen before. I asked him the usual questions: where he got it, how much did it cost, and how much protein was in it. Even though it was a cheap knock-off brand, it had 35 grams of protein per can. And to my surprise, that was the second can he had drank in the last 20 minutes. For those that lack math skills, that’s 70g of protein in 20 minutes. And even more surprising, he was grinning ear to ear because he thought it was all going straight to his muscles. Apparently, he also lived by the mantra “more is better.”

 

Now if you read my article a couple weeks ago about protein pulsing, you probably have an idea where I’m going with this. Anything in excess is unhealthy for you, even water. So guess where almost 50g of that 70g of protein went? Fat and oxidation. No one needs 70g of protein at one sitting. In fact, according to the majority of clinical studies out there, no one really needs more than 20-25g of protein at one sitting. 70g of protein at one sitting is no more anabolic than 25g of protein at one sitting. The only benefit the extra protein provides is extra calories. And for many of us, that’s not really a benefit.

 

20-30g of protein is more than enough protein to switch your body from a catabolic state to an anabolic state. Rarely will a clinical study use more than 25g of protein. Why? Because that’s all that’s needed to turn on muscle protein synthesis. Anything more than that, and it’s not being used for its intended purpose: muscle protein synthesis. A study I had in the protein pulsing article looked at the correlation between the amount of protein consumed and muscle protein synthesis. The result: 40g was no more effective than 20g. And anything excess was oxidized.

 

Why do people consume more than 30g in one sitting? Why do manufacturers put 40g of protein in one serving? I have no idea. Stupidity maybe? Ignorance?

 

It makes entirely more sense to split up the 40g shake. Take 20g now, and then 20g 2 hours later. You’ll get a much longer anabolic response. And I’d be willing to bet, you’ll also lose a little fat.

 

Stop wasting your money. Train smart. Eat smart. Supplement smart.