Blog Entry #81
By Admin – Steroidal.com
Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is growing in popularity in North America and Europe, as more men wish to feel youthful again. The symptoms of low testosterone are not pleasant and if it’s possible to avoid them, we’d suggest you do so. Low testosterone symptoms are often difficult to live with and these include, erectile dysfunction, lethargy, difficulty sleeping, infertility, hair loss, depression, mood swings, loss of muscle mass and low libido.
There are a number of different products with varied delivery methods on replacing a low testosterone level. These range from, testosterone creams, inserted pellets, weekly and monthly injectable testosterones, sprays, oral tablets and finally testosterone gels applied once or twice per day. The delivery method we’re going to look at today is testosterone gels and how long its positive and negative effects last.
As well as exogenous testosterone, human growth hormone can also be prescribed in some states for anti-ageing, longevity or hormone replacement. We recently wrote about oral human growth hormone possibly being available in the future, but right now, injectable human growth hormone is the only real, authentic delivery method. This is also what we’re going to look at, and its effects on the body, both good and bad and how long these effects last.
A March 2011 USA study, in University of Southern California and published in Clinical Endocrinology looked at the effects of testosterone gel and injectable HGH given to 112 men. The men were aged between 65-90 and untrained to begin with, nor trained during the trial.
The men were told to apply 5-10 grams of 1% testosterone gel and inject 0.3-0.5 micrograms of pharmaceutical grade Nutropin growth hormone per day for 16 weeks, which is a pretty average and common dose of both compounds for anti-ageing.
This trial looks mainly at what gains from the HRT doses of testosterone and growth hormone were made in the time they were receiving the compounds, and also what was left up to three months after finishing the course of drugs. Unfortunately, as you’ll see, not much was left when they finished the drugs.
The figure below shows the total lean body mass the man had built up over 17 weeks, then shows how much was left at 28 weeks, showing less than 50%.
Their 1 rep max (1-RM) was tested which showed that only just over 30% remained after the course of drugs had finished.
The amount of fat the group had also lost was examined, which showed around 1.3kg being lost when on the drugs, with almost all of the fat returning once the testosterone gel and GH injections had stopped.
Finally, their hormone levels of both testosterone and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), which is a hormone regulated by growth hormone and used for muscle growth, also returned once the drug protocol had finished.
As you cans see, the positive effects of testosterone and GH treatment were short lived, but HRT protocols don’t usually last for three months and should last a lifetime once started. If you do stop you’re course of HRT drugs, expect to see some changes in body composition and hormone levels.
Source:
Clin Endocrinol (Oxf). 2011 Mar 4. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2265.2011.04014.x.
