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Testosterone now available as a cream!


New Petchburi Pete

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An excellent point mailuk....I never thought of the fact that adding the extra amount could affect natural production...I guess if I don't have a problem I shouldn't really source a solution.

 

Perhaps SR is exhibiting Board 'Roid' Rage?

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OK,

The testosterone cream I provided info about ("Derma - test 100" now available in Thailand), and Testoviron Depot for IM injection used in LOS, as well as the Androgel (gel form of testosterone which is a steroid and a hormone and is used in America) are not used for body building, although sometimes bulking out is seen with it's use. They are all mainly used as hormone replacement therapy for men with low enough levels of testosterone to warrant their use. Also, they can indeed suppress natural production, and that is why their use should be strictly monitored by a qualified physician. They all are used mainly to increase libido; and, they are very effective at doing this. Some men report that with replacement therapy they do not need any of the ED meds. Testosterone replacement therapy can also increase one's energy and sometimes elevate mood.

 

The body builders use anabolic sterods, and some of the formulations do include certain forms of testosterone, although not all. Some bodybuilders also use the testosterone forms cited above to increase libido as well. I think it's a male thing. With respect to testosterone, many guys feel that the more the better. However, overuse poses certain medical risks as already mentioned.

 

Again, my best recommendation, in keeping within the context of the original thread, is that if you feel your libido is decreased, seek the advice of a competent physician. :wave:

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Lowjit,

Thanks for all the well articulated, reasoned posts on the subject.

I recently had a knee replacement here in the States, and at 51 am having a slow time with regaining muscle mass. I have spoken with my doctors here about using testosterone or HgH augmentation to give me a boost. However, proactive use of medical technology/understanding is not part of their daily practice. Perhaps concerns with liablility, or being perceived as Quacks by the medical community. One doctor friend is talking to some colleagues about the subject, two have used HgH during soft tissue rehab to great effect, besides noting a overall improvement in health, alertness, attitude "youthfulness".

My current priority is to return to the balanced muscle mass I had before this long (20 yrs), slow decline. A recent request for info on another forum led to a very well reasoned suggestion that Andriol and dinabol would be a good, short term combination for regaining and improving muscle mass. Do you have any knowledge on this aspect of using testosterone?

My longer term interest is in using whatever knowledge is available to have the longest productive life I can have. In this regard, do you have any experience with HgH?

Thanks,

Jim

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Jimmy,

even I don't do any sports at the moment I am still a member of a sports forum. There the use of steroids is discussed daily.

The use of Steroids for muscle growth is proven by thousands of Bodybuilders, but the side effects are well documented too:

 

- Most gains will fade as soon as you stop using Steroids, that's why many athletes enter a vicious cycle not being able to stop taking the drugs. For example, if you stop taking Testosterone it can take months to return to your old level of libido, but of course this will make a trip to LOS much cheaper. :)

- akne

- bitch tits

- more body hair

- deeper voice

- decrease of libido and shrunken testicles!

- much higher risk of heart diseases

- severe mood swings (roid rage)

 

Therefore, if you plan to take any kind of Steroids I would recommend to consult a real good specialist, who knows 100% what he is doing and who has a lot of experience in this field.

 

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PS: here is an recent article from the NY Times on Testosterone. The article disputes the "roid rage", but the funny thing is that bodybuilders write about this frequently. This seems to be a big cause of trouble with girl friends: the men become overly aggressive, but lose interest in sex... :p

 

Does Testosterone Build a Better Athlete?

 

By NATASHA SINGER

Published: August 10, 2006

 

TESTOSTERONE injections can make male rats more aggressive in marking their territories, cause castrated red deer to grow antlers, and induce female rhesus monkeys to screech like males. In studies on humans, testosterone injections have increased and strengthened muscles.

Skip to next paragraph

Franke Fife/AFP â?? Getty Images

 

FASTER, STRONGER? Tests that indicated high testosterone levels for Floyd Landis during the Tour de France have again raised questions about whether such substances provide an unfair advantage.

 

But does taking testosterone â?? a controlled substance whose possession is illegal unless prescribed for medical reasons â?? automatically improve athletic performance?

 

In sports, testosterone shots or creams are supposed to be magic bullets that spur athletes to train harder, run or bicycle more quickly, jump higher, swim faster, hit a baseball farther, recover sooner, and, letâ??s not forget, increased sex drive and combativeness. Certainly, the idea that taking doses of the hormone gives competitors an unfair advantage is behind the brouhaha over Floyd Landis, the 2006 Tour de France winner who French officials say tested positive for elevated testosterone on the day of his remarkable comeback during Stage 17. Mr. Landis has denied taking any performance-enhancing substances.

 

But some leading experts who study testosterone are not convinced that supplementing the hormone improves endurance or overall athletic performance. Unlike a hyper-caffeinated sports drink, the synthetic hormone does not provide an instant jolt, but works over time to bulk and fortify muscles.

 

What other effects taking testosterone may have on athletes is the subject of heated debate.

 

â??A long-term buildup of testosterone would produce results,â? said Allan Mazur, a professor of public affairs at Syracuse University, who has studied how the natural hormones of college athletes fluctuate before and after competitions. â??But we donâ??t know the short-term effects of using testosterone on an athleteâ??s performance, or whether it even has a short-term effect at all.â?Â

 

Secreted by the testes and adrenal glands, testosterone is the male sex hormone that generates and maintains secondary sexual characteristics like a deep voice and body hair. It also plays a role in body fat, and in muscle size, strength, and function.

 

Some athletes illegally use anabolic steroids, the muscle-promoting drugs or hormonal substances that are chemically related to testosterone, in the form of injections, skin patches, creams or pills. These steroids can stimulate muscle building. But they will not transform couch potatoes into pole-vaulters.

 

â??Steroids are not going to take someone without athletic ability and turn them into a star athlete, or teach you how to swing a bat and connect with the ball,â? said Douglas A. Granger, the director of the behavioral endocrinology laboratory at Pennsylvania State University. â??But if you have a certain athletic presence, testosterone could take you to the next level.â?Â

 

Steroids first became popular among American bodybuilders in the 1950â??s after they began to suspect that gold-medal-winning Soviet weightlifters were using them, sports researchers said. But the American medical establishment did not believe that supplemental testosterone could promote muscle growth until the 1990â??s when scientists began examining its effects, said Dr. Shalender Bhasin, a professor of medicine and chief of endocrinology, diabetes and nutrition at Boston Medical Center.

 

In 1996, Dr. Bhasin published a study in The New England Journal of Medicine on the impact of testosterone injections, given once a week for 10 weeks, on healthy adult males. The idea was to see whether testosterone might be used therapeutically in muscle-wasting diseases like AIDS. For volunteers who received testosterone, their triceps and quadriceps became larger and they had increased muscle strength during bench presses and squats.

 

â??Synthetic steroids take you from being a natural normal male to being a supermale with muscles that are bigger and stronger,â? said Dr. Donald H. Catlin, the director of the Olympic Analytical Laboratory, a drug-testing facility, at the University of California, Los Angeles. â??Athletes love to take steroids because they work.â?Â

 

But do bigger, steroid-enhanced muscles generate big winners?

 

â??We assume that, if you are stronger, you will perform better, but that might not necessarily be true,â? said Michael S. Bahrke, a steroids researcher in Ellison Bay, Wis., and co-editor of a book called â??Performance-Enhancing Substances in Sport and Exercise.â? â??For football and baseball players, explosive muscle mass might relate to more power, but it is difficult to document that it leads to better performance.â?Â

 

Larger muscles might even be detrimental for certain athletes. For marathoners, enhanced muscles could put more weight on joints than they can handle, leading to injuries, Dr. Bahrke said.

 

In addition to joint problems, taking steroids can cause side effects like oily skin, acne, shrunken testicles, sterility and male breasts. Synthetic testosterone can also inhibit good cholesterol, increasing the risk of heart disease.

 

But withdrawal, which can make some men deflate like used balloons, may be the most troubling problem. Taking steroids suppresses menâ??s own natural testosterone production. After athletes stop taking testosterone, the body may take weeks to months to return to normal hormone levels.

 

â??In the meantime, you will have decreased muscles and decreased sexual function, such stressful withdrawal symptoms that many people go right back on testosterone,â? Dr. Bhasin said.

 

Because of the possible side effects, doctors rarely experiment on humans by dosing them with testosterone unless it is for medical reasons. Without that kind of empirical data, scientists can only speculate on how testosterone may affect a personâ??s competitiveness and athletic ability, researchers said. But there are some intriguing observational data.

 

Observational studies of humans show that hormone levels may fluctuate during competitions. For example, Alan Booth, a professor of sociology and human development at Penn State, has conducted several studies with Dr. Mazur, and with Dr. Granger, in which they measured the testosterone in saliva samples taken from a variety of college athletes. Their studies found that many male and female athletesâ?? testosterone levels increased before competitions. After the competitions were over, among men, the winnersâ?? testosterone levels tended to rise temporarily while the losersâ?? testosterone tended to drop.

 

The researchers cannot prove why the hormone fluctuated, but Dr. Booth theorized that post-game testosterone fluctuations may have originated during ancient tribal warfare, the kind of continuing life-or-death competition that would require long-term physical and mental readiness.

 

â??If you win, you know you are going to be challenged again soon, so higher testosterone would keep you prepared for the next challenge,â? Dr. Booth said. A dip in testosterone might make losers disinclined to fight further, he said. â??Lower testosterone may keep individuals, who lost and got seriously wounded, from engaging in another immediate battle where they might suffer even more damage.â?Â

 

But Dr. Bhasin said that such testosterone oscillations may play no role. Testosterone has been shown to rise a little in anticipation of exertion, like a treadmill run, he explained. â??But the explanations of cause and effect between athletic performance and testosterone are very weak.â?Â

 

Other researchers have speculated that taking testosterone may stimulate fine motor skills that improve athletesâ?? hand-eye coordination or help athletes recover from exertion by increasing the amount of oxygen in their bloodstreams.

 

Dr. Bhasinâ??s research contradicts some locker room myths. In his own study, the volunteers injected with testosterone neither experienced improved endurance nor exploded in â??roid-induced rage, he said.

 

â??There have always been a lot of misconceptions about testosterone,â? Dr. Bhasin added. â??Iâ??m very hopeful that clarity will emerge, but right now there is a lot of folklore.â?Â

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Lowjit:

 

>>Again, my best recommendation, in keeping within the context of the original thread, is that if you feel your libido is decreased, seek the advice of a competent physician.<<

 

 

IMO guys suffering from low libido really should look into it. However, finding a doc willing to prescribe testosterone might be very difficult. Most are just as susceptable to the current hype and hysteria over steroids as the general public. So they will look at you as if you are nuts if you brought it up and will never prescribe it to anyone even when tests/symptoms demonstrate low testosterone as the cause of the malaise. And if a person tests in the "normal" range for testosterone this should not end the inquiry. Boosting one's levels to the upper range may make a huge difference in quality if life.

 

 

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" ... finding a doc willing to prescribe testosterone might be very difficult. Most are just as susceptable to the current hype and hysteria over steroids as the general public. So they will look at you as if you are nuts if you brought it up and will never prescribe it to anyone even when tests/symptoms demonstrate low testosterone as the cause of the malaise."

 

This is a far departure from the truth. One should consult with an endocrinologist. Hormones are their specialty. They are more than happy to prescribe when it is warranted. In no way will an endocrinologist view you as "nuts," but rather as intelligent enough to seek help should one suspect a problem. Andropause is a buzz word in the medical community in the States these days; and, testosterone sales prove it.

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I disagree with your disagreement :cool:

 

Testosterone levels decline as you age. Lets say the "normal" range for T in a 30 year old male is between 400 and 800; and for a 50 year old male is between 100 and 300 (these numbers are not the actual range i chose them randomly).

 

If you are 50 years old and your T level is below the normal range, i. e. at lets say 85, and symptoms are:

 

No or very low sex drive

Feeling run down through out the day

Sleepy

No energy

Depressed

 

Your general practitioner MIGHT refer you to an endocrinologist. OTOH he might ignore the T level since its not too far below the "normal" range and try to treat your symptoms with pharmaceuticals such as prozac.

 

 

Now lets say you present to your doctor with the exact same symptoms, and again you are 50 years old but your T level is 150. Now he definitely will not refer you to an endocrinologist because according to his training the hypothalimus-pituitary axis is functioning fine as shown by the fact that your T level is within the "normal" range.

 

So you either start the vicious cycle of taking pharmaceuticals or you just live with your "old age" symptoms.

 

This is unfortunate. Alot of docs out there simply don't agree with anti-aging medicine and the result is alot of 50 and 60 year old guys who could be living very energetic lives instead live like run down old men. If your T level is in the low range and you have the above symptoms, it would behoove you to consider T supplementation. For some men, a T level that falls within the "normal" range is inadequate for that individual hence the symptoms. If administration of T would resolve the symptoms then there is no reason for doctors to decide that you should not have it. It is the patients decision to make.

 

Obviously some doctors will readily prescribe T in an effort to relieve the symptoms. But I submit to you that most doctors will not prescribe T. Because the patient's T level falls within the "normal" range (the doc is possibly concerned about liability or just plain conservative). The "normal" range of T level varies widely between individuals and is an insufficient basis on which to determine if hormone replacement therapy is warranted.

 

 

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