Planning a first Anavar run on top of TRT and HGH

[Tbagger]

Last year I dropped a little over 100lbs, and this year the aim is to get shredded. Right now I am sitting at 205lbs and roughly 17% bodyfat. TRT began about 2 months ago and I am on 150mg/wk today. Next month, when the shipment lands, I switch from Tesa/Ipa over to HGH. I saw my doc today for bloodwork, we got talking about my goals and optimisation, and he ended up writing me a script for a 6 week cycle of 10mg Anavar. So the plan as it stands: a 6 week run of 6mg/wk Reta (that is my maintenance dose), 250mg/wk test-c, 4iu/day HGH and 10mg/day Anavar. After that I go back to my usual cruise of 150mg test, possibly keeping 1-2iu HGH in. This would be my first foray into AAS, so I was wondering whether you guys had opinions? I am 42m and my labs are pretty spot on. I thought about asking in MESO, but they are ruthless over there - they would basically tell me I am burning money on a weak cycle, push me to raise everything, and tell me to throw tren in lol.

 

[Mr. Blonde]

Works for me. MESO can fuck off. These are your goals and your body. Ignore the knuckle dragging juice heads on that side. Take your cues from the knuckle dragging juice heads on this side.

Begin the hgh at a low dose and titrate upward. Some water retention is possible while you're on it. At that oxandrolone (anavar) dose you will not even need NAC or Tudca to protect the liver. On top of that, oxandrolone is primarily cleared through the kidneys. Drink plenty of water. No booze. And keep your diet on point while running gear - nutrient partitioning is real. If you eat shit, you'll look like it. Eat right and you'll look like it. Lift and do your cardio too.

Best of luck yo!

 

[Tbagger]

Mr. Blonde said:

Works for me. MESO can fuck off. These are your goals and your body. Ignore the knuckle dragging juice heads on that side. Take your cues from the knuckle dragging juice heads on this side.

Begin the hgh at a low dose and titrate upward. Some water retention is possible while you're on it. At that oxandrolone (anavar) dose you will not even need NAC or Tudca to protect the liver. On top of that, oxandrolone is primarily cleared through the kidneys. Drink plenty of water. No booze. And keep your diet on point while running gear - nutrient partitioning is real. If you eat shit, you'll look like it. Eat right and you'll look like it. Lift and do your cardio too.

Best of luck yo!

Appreciate the tips! Seems I'm already heading in the right direction. Just a tweak or two needed along the way.

My plan is to begin at 1iu and titrate up to 4 across roughly a month, and I'm braced for some water retention. Should any of the sides show up - joint pain, numbness - I'll back down to the highest dose that keeps them away.

I'm already on NAC to support my glutathione cycle, plus milk thistle and cod oil for the liver.

For warmup at the gym I run 10min, then put in 90min of weights 4-6 days a week, and most evenings I add a 2 mile walk. I would like to work some HIIT cardio into my off days, although summoning the will to actually do it is another matter lol.

And lastly, the diet is decent but these days it could use some tightening. Since I reached maintenance around 6 weeks back I have let it slide. Calories are still holding, though more sweets are getting in than they should. My water intake definitely needs more attention - getting the full gallon down daily is a struggle, and counting my protein 2 shakes I only manage somewhere around 70-90 oz.

 

[Calm Logic]

Tbagger said:

Last year I dropped a little over 100lbs, and this year the aim is to get shredded. Right now I am sitting at 205lbs and roughly 17% bodyfat. TRT began about 2 months ago and I am on 150mg/wk today. Next month, when the shipment lands, I switch from Tesa/Ipa over to HGH. I saw my doc today for bloodwork, we got talking about my goals and optimisation, and he ended up writing me a script for a 6 week cycle of 10mg Anavar. So the plan as it stands: a 6 week run of 6mg/wk Reta (that is my maintenance dose), 250mg/wk test-c, 4iu/day HGH and 10mg/day Anavar. After that I go back to my usual cruise of 150mg test, possibly keeping 1-2iu HGH in. This would be my first foray into AAS, so I was wondering whether you guys had opinions? I am 42m and my labs are pretty spot on. I thought about asking in MESO, but they are ruthless over there - they would basically tell me I am burning money on a weak cycle, push me to raise everything, and tell me to throw tren in lol.

And when is this quack going to recheck your liver values, your lipids, and so on?

The notion that a low "clinical" dose such as 10 mg is safe for a cycle is BS - bro science. All it means is less damage, whether or not a lab test catches it. And realistically nothing lets you monitor the invisible harm that shows up right away, such as endothelial function dropping (possible from the first week at 10 mg) or arterial stiffness creeping up subclinically (achievable inside a 6-week cycle).

That damage does reverse, sure, but you are essentially borrowing against your cardiovascular health at a high rate of interest, repayable later through aggressive recovery and flawless labs. All in exchange for temporary gains.

Plenty of doctors will not even prescribe TRT, topical testosterone gel included, so yours sits at the far opposite end. A few years back, in Israel: "The Ministry of Health warns the public against the use of Dianabol and Anavar anabolic steroids."

For plain TRT, some suggest a lab panel like this:


https://www.reddit.com/r/Testosterone/s/IIvOCBE5KF

 

[Omxxl]

Tbagger said:

Last year I dropped a little over 100lbs, and this year the aim is to get shredded. Right now I am sitting at 205lbs and roughly 17% bodyfat. TRT began about 2 months ago and I am on 150mg/wk today. Next month, when the shipment lands, I switch from Tesa/Ipa over to HGH. I saw my doc today for bloodwork, we got talking about my goals and optimisation, and he ended up writing me a script for a 6 week cycle of 10mg Anavar. So the plan as it stands: a 6 week run of 6mg/wk Reta (that is my maintenance dose), 250mg/wk test-c, 4iu/day HGH and 10mg/day Anavar. After that I go back to my usual cruise of 150mg test, possibly keeping 1-2iu HGH in. This would be my first foray into AAS, so I was wondering whether you guys had opinions? I am 42m and my labs are pretty spot on. I thought about asking in MESO, but they are ruthless over there - they would basically tell me I am burning money on a weak cycle, push me to raise everything, and tell me to throw tren in lol.

Friend, your approach is a really interesting one, and I think you will see plenty of improvement.

The part I cannot follow is dropping your HGH down to 1-2 units; I would hold it where it is. What I certainly would not do is open at 4 units straight away. Personally, once I passed 3 units I got carpal tunnel pain, swelling and blood sugar spikes.

My suggestion: if you can, get your blood sugar and IGF-1 measured first, then step the dose up by 1 unit a month until you find the ceiling where side effects appear - then come back down. If nothing goes wrong at that level, I would sit there for at least 6 months.

The other thing that matters is diet - adding Anavar will not meaningfully cut your calorie intake. In fact, for real body recomposition I would hold calories at normal, or alternate blocks of a slight surplus with blocks of a slight deficit.

 

[latviantower]

I'm on hgh at a lower dose, 2 iu, and water retention hit me for sure. A morning dose of dandelion root clears it up in no time.

 

[Calm Logic]

Mr. Blonde said:

Works for me. MESO can fuck off. These are your goals and your body. Ignore the knuckle dragging juice heads on that side. Take your cues from the knuckle dragging juice heads on this side.

Begin the hgh at a low dose and titrate upward. Some water retention is possible while you're on it. At that oxandrolone (anavar) dose you will not even need NAC or Tudca to protect the liver. On top of that, oxandrolone is primarily cleared through the kidneys. Drink plenty of water. No booze. And keep your diet on point while running gear - nutrient partitioning is real. If you eat shit, you'll look like it. Eat right and you'll look like it. Lift and do your cardio too.

Best of luck yo!

Appreciate the tips! Seems I'm already heading in the right direction. Just a tweak or two needed along the way.

My plan is to begin at 1iu and titrate up to 4 across roughly a month, and I'm braced for some water retention. Should any of the sides show up - joint pain, numbness - I'll back down to the highest dose that keeps them away.

I'm already on NAC to support my glutathione cycle, plus milk thistle and cod oil for the liver.

For warmup at the gym I run 10min, then put in 90min of weights 4-6 days a week, and most evenings I add a 2 mile walk. I would like to work some HIIT cardio into my off days, although summoning the will to actually do it is another matter lol.

And lastly, the diet is decent but these days it could use some tightening. Since I reached maintenance around 6 weeks back I have let it slide. Calories are still holding, though more sweets are getting in than they should. My water intake definitely needs more attention - getting the full gallon down daily is a struggle, and counting my protein 2 shakes I only manage somewhere around 70-90 oz.

Black coffee is another route for liver support, and so is the oral supplement TUDCA.

NAC at very high amounts is what they use for Tylenol overdose, though it can push hematocrit levels up. When Anavar gave me drug-induced liver injury I threw NAC, glutathione, black coffee, TUDCA and some milk thistle at it. None of it seemed to do much - my liver enzymes still needed several months before they came back to normal.

 

[slick1]

Good for you Tbagger. Don't give the negative remarks from the AI know it all's a second thought - Copy & Paste is about all they have got. Your body is remarkably resilient and corrects for most of what you throw at it that it does not care for. Trust your Doc and let him do his job, ignoring any naysayers who imagine they know better when they actually don't know shit, particularly about you, your goals, and the monitoring protocols the Dr has set. The plan sounds solid, keep watching your bloodwork, and rock on!

 

[Calm Logic]

slick1 said:

Good for you Tbagger. Don't give the negative remarks from the AI know it all's a second thought - Copy & Paste is about all they have got. Your body is remarkably resilient and corrects for most of what you throw at it that it does not care for. Trust your Doc and let him do his job, ignoring any naysayers who imagine they know better when they actually don't know shit, particularly about you, your goals, and the monitoring protocols the Dr has set. The plan sounds solid, keep watching your bloodwork, and rock on!

One more reason women outlast men. And likely a male doc as well - men are generally bigger risk takers. (A number of docs who take risks in their own lives turn out to have undiagnosed bipolar disorder. I once worked at a rehab specialising in doctors hooked on alcohol or other drugs.)

People adore excuses for their bad habits, so I am well aware this subforum will not love me. Head over to Meso, though, and the advice is to at least get a CT calcium score if you have any real history of obesity. That is before even mentioning Lp(a), ApoB, NMR and the rest of the fancy lipid panels a doc rarely orders.

Healthy by our standard and healthy by Meso's standard are worlds apart (much as anyone without abs counts as "skinny fat" to them). Meso wants those labs at elite level before you wreck them with assorted compounds and the damage they stack into. Some of the guys there will not touch AAS until LDL drops under 70; even then they would get ahead of it with a statin, ideally adding Repatha. But that is how they rationalise using something they already know does harm. Their harm-reduction logic ends up rather odd next to us on GLPs fretting over comparatively small things like endotoxins.

At Meso they are healthy on paper, in the labs. What is missing is enough cardiovascular testing such as imaging. Part of that is fear - any cardiologist with a conscience would deliver a hell of a lecture about AAS use, so they simply avoid going. Especially since they already look like they are on steroids, and some imaging results speak for themselves, LVH (left ventricular hypertrophy) among them. And rather than admit to AAS use, they will sometimes feel they have to lie about family history so insurance will cover heart imaging, etc.

As I have linked previously, a number of guys on Meso hold that test alone is the way to go, with the other compounds existing only to look good on stage. Others call HGH overrated and say you may as well just run tesa - which stands to reason, given how few guys sit at the low end of IGF-1, next to how common secondary hypogonadism from obesity, aging and so on actually is.

 

[slick1]

Calm Logic said:

slick1 said:

Good for you Tbagger. Don't give the negative remarks from the AI know it all's a second thought - Copy & Paste is about all they have got. Your body is remarkably resilient and corrects for most of what you throw at it that it does not care for. Trust your Doc and let him do his job, ignoring any naysayers who imagine they know better when they actually don't know shit, particularly about you, your goals, and the monitoring protocols the Dr has set. The plan sounds solid, keep watching your bloodwork, and rock on!

One more reason women outlast men. And likely a male doc as well - men are generally bigger risk takers. (A number of docs who take risks in their own lives turn out to have undiagnosed bipolar disorder. I once worked at a rehab specialising in doctors hooked on alcohol or other drugs.)

People adore excuses for their bad habits, so I am well aware this subforum will not love me. Head over to Meso, though, and the advice is to at least get a CT calcium score if you have any real history of obesity. That is before even mentioning Lp(a), ApoB, NMR and the rest of the fancy lipid panels a doc rarely orders.

Healthy by our standard and healthy by Meso's standard are worlds apart (much as anyone without abs counts as "skinny fat" to them). Meso wants those labs at elite level before you wreck them with assorted compounds and the damage they stack into. Some of the guys there will not touch AAS until LDL drops under 70; even then they would get ahead of it with a statin, ideally adding Repatha. But that is how they rationalise using something they already know does harm. Their harm-reduction logic ends up rather odd next to us on GLPs fretting over comparatively small things like endotoxins.

At Meso they are healthy on paper, in the labs. What is missing is enough cardiovascular testing such as imaging. Part of that is fear - any cardiologist with a conscience would deliver a hell of a lecture about AAS use, so they simply avoid going. Especially since they already look like they are on steroids, and some imaging results speak for themselves, LVH (left ventricular hypertrophy) among them. And rather than admit to AAS use, they will sometimes feel they have to lie about family history so insurance will cover heart imaging, etc.

As I have linked previously, a number of guys on Meso hold that test alone is the way to go, with the other compounds existing only to look good on stage. Others call HGH overrated and say you may as well just run tesa - which stands to reason, given how few guys sit at the low end of IGF-1, next to how common secondary hypogonadism from obesity, aging and so on actually is.

Ahh yes, same as how we all bend the truth to our doctors about the peptides and GLP1 we are on, which somehow still work wonders on our bloodwork and lab results.....On paper, naturally!

 

[Tbagger]

Omxxl said:

Tbagger said:

Last year I dropped a little over 100lbs, and this year the aim is to get shredded. Right now I am sitting at 205lbs and roughly 17% bodyfat. TRT began about 2 months ago and I am on 150mg/wk today. Next month, when the shipment lands, I switch from Tesa/Ipa over to HGH. I saw my doc today for bloodwork, we got talking about my goals and optimisation, and he ended up writing me a script for a 6 week cycle of 10mg Anavar. So the plan as it stands: a 6 week run of 6mg/wk Reta (that is my maintenance dose), 250mg/wk test-c, 4iu/day HGH and 10mg/day Anavar. After that I go back to my usual cruise of 150mg test, possibly keeping 1-2iu HGH in. This would be my first foray into AAS, so I was wondering whether you guys had opinions? I am 42m and my labs are pretty spot on. I thought about asking in MESO, but they are ruthless over there - they would basically tell me I am burning money on a weak cycle, push me to raise everything, and tell me to throw tren in lol.

Friend, your approach is a really interesting one, and I think you will see plenty of improvement.

The part I cannot follow is dropping your HGH down to 1-2 units; I would hold it where it is. What I certainly would not do is open at 4 units straight away. Personally, once I passed 3 units I got carpal tunnel pain, swelling and blood sugar spikes.

My suggestion: if you can, get your blood sugar and IGF-1 measured first, then step the dose up by 1 unit a month until you find the ceiling where side effects appear - then come back down. If nothing goes wrong at that level, I would sit there for at least 6 months.

The other thing that matters is diet - adding Anavar will not meaningfully cut your calorie intake. In fact, for real body recomposition I would hold calories at normal, or alternate blocks of a slight surplus with blocks of a slight deficit.

My aim on cruise is to hold IGF1 in the upper end of the normal range. 4iu would push it well into super-physiological territory, and my testosterone along with it.

Whenever I am fucking around with peptides and compounds that move hormone levels, lipids or liver/kidney enzymes, every one of my labs gets checked monthly.

And my diet is solid. I have let it slide a little lately, but I am getting it back under control.

 

[Timfok]

Tbagger said:

Omxxl said:

Tbagger said:

Last year I dropped a little over 100lbs, and this year the aim is to get shredded. Right now I am sitting at 205lbs and roughly 17% bodyfat. TRT began about 2 months ago and I am on 150mg/wk today. Next month, when the shipment lands, I switch from Tesa/Ipa over to HGH. I saw my doc today for bloodwork, we got talking about my goals and optimisation, and he ended up writing me a script for a 6 week cycle of 10mg Anavar. So the plan as it stands: a 6 week run of 6mg/wk Reta (that is my maintenance dose), 250mg/wk test-c, 4iu/day HGH and 10mg/day Anavar. After that I go back to my usual cruise of 150mg test, possibly keeping 1-2iu HGH in. This would be my first foray into AAS, so I was wondering whether you guys had opinions? I am 42m and my labs are pretty spot on. I thought about asking in MESO, but they are ruthless over there - they would basically tell me I am burning money on a weak cycle, push me to raise everything, and tell me to throw tren in lol.

Friend, your approach is a really interesting one, and I think you will see plenty of improvement.

The part I cannot follow is dropping your HGH down to 1-2 units; I would hold it where it is. What I certainly would not do is open at 4 units straight away. Personally, once I passed 3 units I got carpal tunnel pain, swelling and blood sugar spikes.

My suggestion: if you can, get your blood sugar and IGF-1 measured first, then step the dose up by 1 unit a month until you find the ceiling where side effects appear - then come back down. If nothing goes wrong at that level, I would sit there for at least 6 months.

The other thing that matters is diet - adding Anavar will not meaningfully cut your calorie intake. In fact, for real body recomposition I would hold calories at normal, or alternate blocks of a slight surplus with blocks of a slight deficit.

My aim on cruise is to hold IGF1 in the upper end of the normal range. 4iu would push it well into super-physiological territory, and my testosterone along with it.

Whenever I am fucking around with peptides and compounds that move hormone levels, lipids or liver/kidney enzymes, every one of my labs gets checked monthly.

And my diet is solid. I have let it slide a little lately, but I am getting it back under control.

I've been running 4iu for the past month. My IGF went from 130 up to 330. The hgh came from this site.

 

[Calm Logic]

Tbagger said:

Omxxl said:

Tbagger said:

Last year I dropped a little over 100lbs, and this year the aim is to get shredded. Right now I am sitting at 205lbs and roughly 17% bodyfat. TRT began about 2 months ago and I am on 150mg/wk today. Next month, when the shipment lands, I switch from Tesa/Ipa over to HGH. I saw my doc today for bloodwork, we got talking about my goals and optimisation, and he ended up writing me a script for a 6 week cycle of 10mg Anavar. So the plan as it stands: a 6 week run of 6mg/wk Reta (that is my maintenance dose), 250mg/wk test-c, 4iu/day HGH and 10mg/day Anavar. After that I go back to my usual cruise of 150mg test, possibly keeping 1-2iu HGH in. This would be my first foray into AAS, so I was wondering whether you guys had opinions? I am 42m and my labs are pretty spot on. I thought about asking in MESO, but they are ruthless over there - they would basically tell me I am burning money on a weak cycle, push me to raise everything, and tell me to throw tren in lol.

Friend, your approach is a really interesting one, and I think you will see plenty of improvement.

The part I cannot follow is dropping your HGH down to 1-2 units; I would hold it where it is. What I certainly would not do is open at 4 units straight away. Personally, once I passed 3 units I got carpal tunnel pain, swelling and blood sugar spikes.

My suggestion: if you can, get your blood sugar and IGF-1 measured first, then step the dose up by 1 unit a month until you find the ceiling where side effects appear - then come back down. If nothing goes wrong at that level, I would sit there for at least 6 months.

The other thing that matters is diet - adding Anavar will not meaningfully cut your calorie intake. In fact, for real body recomposition I would hold calories at normal, or alternate blocks of a slight surplus with blocks of a slight deficit.

My aim on cruise is to hold IGF1 in the upper end of the normal range. 4iu would push it well into super-physiological territory, and my testosterone along with it.

Whenever I am fucking around with peptides and compounds that move hormone levels, lipids or liver/kidney enzymes, every one of my labs gets checked monthly.

And my diet is solid. I have let it slide a little lately, but I am getting it back under control.

Should you end up posting on Meso, handing over your lab values helps - screenshots are the usual way. I imagine they take BP as 120/80 or better unless you say otherwise.

Health-wise, the great irony of AAS use is that it is almost exclusively a male pursuit, and men as a group already age roughly a decade faster than women on the cardiovascular side:

Why women may have better heart health than men earlier in life



New research indicates that men develop cardiovascular disease seven years earlier than women, suggesting that men may require “more intensive screening and detection” as they age.

www.medicalnewstoday.com

Divergence in risk begins as early as 35 years of age. "Early intervention and risk factor control give you the best chance of shifting your long-term trajectory."

Click to expand...

 

[Tbagger]

I'm not trying to persuade anyone, myself least of all, that AAS usage is totally safe or that the whole world should be blasting and cruising like crazy. But I'm a grown ass man who did his own risk assessment and concluded that a very tame cycle of a mild anabolic was worth exploring. Labs, monitoring and medical supervision are all part of it. The only route I see to calling this cycle reckless is being flatly against all AAS usage. Which would be somewhat ironic, given the group we're in is dedicated to injecting sketchy Chinese research compounds of varying degrees of legality. lol

 

[Calm Logic]

Tbagger said:

I'm not trying to persuade anyone, myself least of all, that AAS usage is totally safe or that the whole world should be blasting and cruising like crazy. But I'm a grown ass man who did his own risk assessment and concluded that a very tame cycle of a mild anabolic was worth exploring. Labs, monitoring and medical supervision are all part of it. The only route I see to calling this cycle reckless is being flatly against all AAS usage. Which would be somewhat ironic, given the group we're in is dedicated to injecting sketchy Chinese research compounds of varying degrees of legality. lol

You asked for opinions. These are them.

What you left out were your lab results, or anything else genuinely objective showing your body is somewhat prepared for insult. Even on plain TRT, LDL belongs below 100. A1C below 5.7:

If you are going beyond TRT, the Meso crowd put LDL below 70 and A1C at or under 5.4 (?):

https://thinksteroids.com/community/threads/cost-effective-bloodwork-source.134433218/post-3660067

Get your LDL below 70, your hdl above 60 and nuke your triglycerides.

Click to expand...

https://thinksteroids.com/community/threads/when-to-add-in-ezetimibe.134430519/post-3518433

In a few years it's likely treatment standards will be updated to aggressively get LDL below 70 starting at age 25.

Click to expand...

https://www.thinksteroids.com/community/threads/feel-like-a-neutered-dog-at-26.134435377/post-3705506

LDL below 70, HDL above 60. Don't eat saturated fats. If you can't get it there naturally, use a statin.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

A few guys at Meso get their LDL under 30 by stacking a statin with Repatha and Zetia.

 

[Omxxl]

No need for us to argue amongst ourselves - differing opinions are perfectly valid, and it matters to know which of them you find useful.

I'm aware that certain things I do are not healthy, and that is fine by me. Everyone does so many harmful things that mine hardly register.

When I first joined this forum (Meso and other Spanish-speaking boards are my usual haunts), the sheer quantity of peptides people were taking amazed me, hahaha. These days it seems normal to me.

 

[Tbagger]

My labs are spot on - I already said so. I took that to mean all my lab work is done and everything came back optimal, or at the very least inside the normal range. Elsewhere I even mentioned running labs every month, which ought to demonstrate I'm fairly meticulous about tracking everything. It did not occur to me that every single marker needed walking through, receipts included lol

 

[Calm Logic]

At minimum, get some avocados - more of them - into you to help the HDL that is only heading down.

The single best thing a newbie can do is read more than they believe is necessary, because you don't know what you don't know. Case in point: only after plenty of reading at Meso do you grasp how different the views there are, proactive statins being one (tricky on oral steroids because of the liver).

And doctors themselves may test less often than would be ideal, all the more so when they are not told everything you are running.

Outside of bodybuilding competition, whatever you would think about cycling is arguably better run as a cruise (TRT being the model) or skipped entirely. If a bigger boost is what you want, more test is the best answer, or something along the lines of HCG - better than dropping in more natural orals, mast, primo, etc.

Put differently, cruising beats cycling for holding on to both gains and health. Where the dialed-in guys cruise on test alone, plenty of newbies get pulled toward orals, cycles and stacks (not to mention vendor pricelists) - even at 200 to 350 mg/week, with EOD subq dosing looking safer thanks to steadier levels, or with test-u.

The other newbie error I have already touched on is treating normal lab results as sufficient harm reduction for steroid use (leaving aside TRT for normal or high-normal testosterone). Then there are the other blood tests worth having, Lp(a) among them, which hints at genetic risk. Better still is a CT calcium score, particularly with a real history of obesity - mild obesity for a decade counts. (A different CT, CCTA, would be the gold standard, as it picks up soft plaque as well.)

Omxxl said:

No need for us to argue amongst ourselves - differing opinions are perfectly valid, and it matters to know which of them you find useful.

I'm aware that certain things I do are not healthy, and that is fine by me. Everyone does so many harmful things that mine hardly register.

When I first joined this forum (Meso and other Spanish-speaking boards are my usual haunts), the sheer quantity of peptides people were taking amazed me, hahaha. These days it seems normal to me.

The other irony is that prescribing HGH off-label is very illegal, yet a provider can hand out Anavar and harsher orals for just about anything. None of it makes sense, but that is how the law sits here - even though heavy Anavar use, and especially Anadrol (which was discontinued), can leave blood-filled cysts on the liver. That is one more argument for imaging alongside labs whenever cycles are repeated.

 

[slick1]

Tbagger said:

I'm not trying to persuade anyone, myself least of all, that AAS usage is totally safe or that the whole world should be blasting and cruising like crazy. But I'm a grown ass man who did his own risk assessment and concluded that a very tame cycle of a mild anabolic was worth exploring. Labs, monitoring and medical supervision are all part of it. The only route I see to calling this cycle reckless is being flatly against all AAS usage. Which would be somewhat ironic, given the group we're in is dedicated to injecting sketchy Chinese research compounds of varying degrees of legality. lol

100% this. Spot on.

 

[aquis]

Tbagger said:

Omxxl said:

Tbagger said:

Last year I dropped a little over 100lbs, and this year the aim is to get shredded. Right now I am sitting at 205lbs and roughly 17% bodyfat. TRT began about 2 months ago and I am on 150mg/wk today. Next month, when the shipment lands, I switch from Tesa/Ipa over to HGH. I saw my doc today for bloodwork, we got talking about my goals and optimisation, and he ended up writing me a script for a 6 week cycle of 10mg Anavar. So the plan as it stands: a 6 week run of 6mg/wk Reta (that is my maintenance dose), 250mg/wk test-c, 4iu/day HGH and 10mg/day Anavar. After that I go back to my usual cruise of 150mg test, possibly keeping 1-2iu HGH in. This would be my first foray into AAS, so I was wondering whether you guys had opinions? I am 42m and my labs are pretty spot on. I thought about asking in MESO, but they are ruthless over there - they would basically tell me I am burning money on a weak cycle, push me to raise everything, and tell me to throw tren in lol.

Friend, your approach is a really interesting one, and I think you will see plenty of improvement.

The part I cannot follow is dropping your HGH down to 1-2 units; I would hold it where it is. What I certainly would not do is open at 4 units straight away. Personally, once I passed 3 units I got carpal tunnel pain, swelling and blood sugar spikes.

My suggestion: if you can, get your blood sugar and IGF-1 measured first, then step the dose up by 1 unit a month until you find the ceiling where side effects appear - then come back down. If nothing goes wrong at that level, I would sit there for at least 6 months.

The other thing that matters is diet - adding Anavar will not meaningfully cut your calorie intake. In fact, for real body recomposition I would hold calories at normal, or alternate blocks of a slight surplus with blocks of a slight deficit.

My aim on cruise is to hold IGF1 in the upper end of the normal range. 4iu would push it well into super-physiological territory, and my testosterone along with it.

Whenever I am fucking around with peptides and compounds that move hormone levels, lipids or liver/kidney enzymes, every one of my labs gets checked monthly.

And my diet is solid. I have let it slide a little lately, but I am getting it back under control.

Just sharing what happened to me after I added HGH.

A few years on TRT now (130mg weekly, split into 2 doses), 10 months on Reta (4mg maintenance these days), and HGH added recently. It seems I'm what they call an HGH super responder.

Nightly HGH at 3IU took my IGF-1 from 136 to 445, and my Z-score from 0.0 to 2.9. Beginning at 1IU, I stepped up every 3 weeks to 3IU and drew labs at week 9. The numbers genuinely surprised me, and the sides were only very minimal.

Right now I'm back down to 2IU nightly of HGH. More labs in 2 weeks.

For recovery between sessions HGH has been excellent. Unlike most people I have not gained much on the sleep front, though the HGH payoff tends to show up over the long term.