ANDROSTENDIONE
AndrostenedioneBe Sure To See Why Show-Tech TM Is The Best Choice For Alternative Steroid Supplements Ever! 
The latest market buzz word is androstenedione, a direct hormone precursor of testosterone. I've written before how hormone formation and use is under exquisite control of multiple enzymes, hormones, eicosanoids, and other body chemicals.(3) So the ads and articles intimating that androstenedione will automatically boost testosterone are either naive or lying through their teeth. If all you had to do was take one or other precursor of testosterone, then I have the perfect supplement for you. It is practically odorless and tasteless, not destroyed by digestion, readily absorbed into the bloodstream, the source of your testosterone, and can be bought for pennies at your corner grocery. It is of course cholesterol, the raw material for all your steroid hormones. I see a lot of fat folk who eat enough cholesterol to stuff a mattress. But it has no effect on their testosterone or muscle, because multiple body controls prevent it. To see whether androstenedione might have an effect, let's take a peek at a few of the main controls. As Figure 1 shows, conversion of cholesterol into the intermediate hormone pregnenolone requires adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), produced by your pituitary gland. If ACTH production declines, the conversion is inhibited and all your steroid hormones decline. 
High ACTH doesn't necessarily boost your steroid hormones, however. You do get a bundle of pregnenolone, which then produces a bundle of progesterone. The progesterone then has to be shared between production of androgens and estrogens, and production of glucocorticoids and mineralcorticoids, your stress reaction and housekeeping steroids.(4) The main glucocorticoid is cortisol. Dubbed "the stress hormone," cortisol is essential for appropriate bodily fight or flight reactions to danger. It's only in our warped society, where social controls conspire to keep you impotent and immobile while on the physiological boil, that cortisol becomes a problem. Under such circumstances, it is highly catabolic. That's one reason pregnenolone is no good for athletes. Unless you're a hockey player, and free to use up your cortisol by beating the bejesus out of anyone in your way, supplements of pregnenolone could easily raise cortisol levels to catabolize a lot of muscle. This catabolism only happens, however, if you have normal supplies of the gatekeeper enzymes, one of which, 21-hydroxylase, is shown in Figure 1. These enzymes are essential for all glucocorticoid and mineralcorticoid production. I've shown 21-hydroxylase, because it is the most common inherited disorder of steroid hormone synthesis, and provides a great example of the complexity of the hormone cascade. Low levels of 21-hydroxylase, inhibit progesterone conversion to cortisol and corticosterone. The body frantically signals the brain to make more ACTH to boost steroid production, so it can look after salt and water balance, and multiple other housekeeping functions. Progesterone goes through the roof, but it still can't convert for lack of the enzyme. So it all flows to make androstenedione and other androgens (male hormones). Bingo! The afflicted child shows high androgen levels, sexual precocity, virilization, and, in girls, growth of male genitalia. Beats me why supplement hustlers haven't brought out a 21-hydroxylase inhibitor as a muscle booster. There's quite a few chemicals that can do it. If you see one on the market after this article, however, avoid it like the plague. Folk with an inherited 21-hydroxylase deficiency suffer all sorts of other nastiness. Approaching Testosterone As Figure 1 shows, when steroid production gets to androstenedione, it can go two ways. Either it makes testosterone or the potent estrogen estrone. (There's lots of other possibilities but I'm keeping it simple.) Which way your androstenedione goes depends on multiple controls. If your gatekeeper, luteinizing hormone is low, for example, testosterone production is low also. You can take androstenedione until it flows out your ears, but conversion to testosterone occurs only to the tune of the gatekeeper. Worse, androstenedione itself is highly androgenic.(5) I've met some guys who don't seem to mind trading their head hair for a remote chance of half-an-inch on the biceps. But the added threats of acne back and gorilla butt give pause to even the vainest. Androstenedione was first synthesized in 1935.(6) In 1936, world expert on steroid hormones, Dr. Charles Kochakian, was the first to show that androstenedione produced both androgenic and anabolic effects. But the anabolic effects were significant only in castrated dogs, and even then were much weaker than effects of testosterone.(7) Like dozens of other androgens, androstenedione was consigned to research limbo. It was briefly revived in 1962, when in a crude experiment, Mahesh and Greenblatt gave normal women either 100 mg of DHEA or 100 mg of androstenedione. The doses were arbitrary, and hopelessly mismatched for both bioavailability and known biological activity, but nevertheless both hormones increased testosterone levels. The proportionately higher dose of androstenedione, caused about twice the rise found with DHEA, and increased the women's testosterone to six times above normal. Sounds great, until you see from the data that the testosterone increase was transient, lasting only a couple of hours or so, with a peak level of only a few minutes.(8) Also, the study made no measurements of effects on strength or other performance. Nevertheless, East German steroid doctors picked up these scant data in the '70s, and began developing androstenedione as an adjunct to testosterone-based anabolic steroids. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Dr. Werner Franke obtained State Plan 14-25, the East German steroid "bible," that detailed the steroid programs of over 200 elite East German athletes. Androstenedione featured as a nasal spray formulation, used as a final performance booster just before competition. By the time any of the athletes were drug tested, their testosterone levels would likely have fallen to within the range allowed by the testosterone/epitestosterone ratio test. Some East German athletes, and American athletes who got hold of the sprays, have since commented that their main effects were a thundering sinus headache-and a real bad mood. Remember how a lot of the East German Olympians had such sweet dispositions? Oral Androstenedione Androstenedione may have affects on athletes when taken by nose, but I wouldn't recommend snorting it, or any other hormone. In any case the only supplement I know on the American market is Androstene-50 which comes as a 50 mg capsule. There are no studies of this supplement.
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