A coach flew across the world this week to ask me questions for 50 minutes. He tried to make the trip last year and couldn’t. We had met once before at an expo, a few minutes in a crowd, and it wasn’t enough, so this year he got on a plane just for the conversation.
Where he coaches, a kid trains for 2 months and the gym trainer hands him steroids with a guarantee attached: your muscles will come, your strength will come. Doctors who wouldn’t say the word peptide a few years ago now recommend BPC-157 and TB-500 for joints and gut. Cities that had no anti-aging clinics are full of them. His complaint was that with all that demand, the actual scientific knowledge is the one thing he cannot find on Google, because most of what’s out there was written from the perspective the pharmaceutical industry set up.
His questions were the same ones I get every day. So here are my answers.
Two extremes, and where I live
Some pharmaceutical drugs are amazing and they work. That has to be said first, because the other extreme is just as wrong: the people who believe the body heals itself and you need nothing but nature. Nature does heal. The body does repair itself. Both camps are holding half the picture.
In the middle is where you take compounds, pharmaceutical or supplement, that trigger your own body to heal itself and go beyond baseline. Like I told him: for every biological problem there’s a chemical solution. A drug that profits its maker at a 500x markup is not automatically that solution, and neither is doing nothing. A holistic clinic might use a pharmaceutical, Chinese medicine, and lifestyle change in the same patient and get the best result. Same idea here. Start from the goal, then pick the tools.
What I’d run if I could start over
If I could go back in time, I would not have started with steroids. I would have run a SARM stack first: AC-262 or RAD-140, plus Top T, plus Cardarine GW-501516, plus MK-677, plus Slin pills.
That stack gets results in the neighborhood of a first steroid cycle, and instead of paying for them with health side effects you collect health benefits while you build. A realistic outcome is around 10 lbs of muscle gained and 10 lbs of fat lost, a full recomposition. If you later decide you want to stand on a bodybuilding stage, steroids are still there. They didn’t go anywhere.
Cover the liver either way. TUDCA is the powerful one. NAC works through a different pathway, it’s a strong antioxidant with anti-aging value, and there’s no reason not to take it, but TUDCA carries the load. Split the dose rather than stacking it: 1 capsule morning, 1 at night beats 3 at once, and you can run it twice a day for the rest of your life without coming off.
Insulin before everything
People say insulin is the most anabolic hormone, more anabolic than steroids. True. The problem is the machinery it runs on. We ate carbohydrates in quantities our bodies weren’t designed for, and the machinery broke. So the first job of Slin pills is repair: get insulin working properly again, which is really just returning the body to its natural state.
The downstream math is why I tell everybody to take them. Blood sugar and inflammation drive most of the diseases people actually die from: diabetes, heart disease, cancer. Lower the glucose sitting toxic in the blood, push more carbohydrate into muscle, and you need less insulin, which means less desensitization to insulin, which means the whole cycle turns the right direction. Day to day you either gain a little fat or lose a little fat, and the difference compounds. A person quietly losing instead of quietly gaining ends the year with maybe 7 lbs less fat and 1 lb more muscle, without a single dramatic intervention.
Dosage is the only real variable. A bodybuilder eating piles of carbs needs more than a stay-at-home wife, and she still benefits. It also breaks the carbohydrate addiction loop, where people have to keep eating carbs just to feel normal. Eat less, feel more satisfied, burn fat for fuel.
How long? Forever. Taking Slin pills for 3 months and stopping is like eating your vegetables for 3 months and then not for the next 10 years. Just eat your vegetables.
The drug that was approved 50% broken
Now jump back a few decades, because the enclomiphene story is really a story about how drugs get approved.
The original Clomid is 2 isomers in 1 pill: enclomiphene and zuclomiphene. The enclomiphene is what works. The zuclomiphene carries the side effects. So why approve a drug that is 50% benefits and 50% side effects? Money. Patent the combination, skip the work of isolating the half that works.
Strip the zuclomiphene out and you get enclomiphene on its own, which is why the modern dose is half the old one: 25 mg, or even 12.5 mg. If you’re not on steroids and just want your natural testosterone higher, 12.5 mg is plenty. If you’re on testosterone like I am, the more your natural production is suppressed, the more enclomiphene it takes, so 25 mg.
It’s classed as a selective estrogen receptor modulator, but it is not 100% selective, so build in breaks: 2 months on and 2 weeks off, or 3 months on and 1 month off.
Protection starts on day one
Here’s the part I’ve been arguing longer than almost anyone. Everybody used to say PCT belongs after the cycle. Don’t touch it during. I was the first one saying online to start it during the cycle, and the coach sitting across from me had come to the same conclusion with his clients: the side effects don’t start when the cycle ends, they start with the first injection. And a lot of people still believe the compounds somehow leave the blood if you just do PCT afterward. They don’t.
Suppression is a math equation: the dose of the steroid multiplied by how suppressive that steroid is. Trenbolone suppresses hard at low doses. Testosterone takes higher doses to shut you down. Run that math on your own cycle and you know what you’re dealing with.
Take a moderate example: 125 mg of testosterone twice a week for 2 months. Natural production might not shut down all the way. And it doesn’t need to stay at full speed, because you’re injecting testosterone. What you want is for some production to continue so the hardware never turns off. Add 25 mg of enclomiphene and Top T from day 1 alongside those 250 mg a week and you prevent complete shutdown. Maybe natural production drops from 100 to 30. That’s fine. 30 keeps the machinery alive. On a cycle like that, you may not need PCT at all. Just continue the enclomiphene, Top T, and Slin pills.
2 limits on this. Enclomiphene can hold the line against testosterone up to around 300 mg a week. Against trenbolone and deca it is not powerful enough, and nothing oral is. For those cycles the answer is HMG. And if the testicles have already shrunk and atrophied, you’re past prevention and into high-dose HCG territory.
Top T earns its spot in the day-1 stack for a reason people miss: when testosterone production shuts down, other hormones the body makes shut down with it. Top T carries precursors like pregnenolone and DHEA that keep the rest of the hormonal system fed, and you notice it mentally. You feel better on it than off it.
HCG and HMG, the hardware maintenance drugs
The usual objection to HCG during a cycle goes: you’re shut down, you won’t produce testosterone, so why bother. But we’re not trying to produce testosterone. We’re trying to keep the testicles functional so they don’t atrophy.
A person lies in a hospital bed for 2 weeks and their muscle is gone, because the body shuts down whatever isn’t being used. Testicles are no different. On trenbolone, deca, or high-dose testosterone they stop working, shrink, and get weak, and then during PCT it takes a month or more just to get them turning again. Keeping them running the whole way through is cheaper than restarting them.
During a cycle, 500 IU twice a week is enough. A 5,000 IU vial lasts 5 weeks at that rate, if it stays good that long. If you skipped prevention and you’re starting PCT with real atrophy, start high, around 2,000 IU, and work down. And yes, enclomiphene and HCG work together fine.
HMG is the upgrade. Your testicles respond to 2 signals, luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone. HCG hits only the LH receptors. HMG hits both, so it maintains testosterone production and sperm production, the whole organ from every angle. The catch is cost and hassle: it comes in 75 IU vials, you use the whole vial per injection, 3 injections a week, and it ends up 3 to 5 times the price of HCG, and it’s slower to kick in, so you have to start it earlier. It is the best. Most people should still keep it simple and take the fewer injections.
Estrogen is a body-fat question
Enclomiphene blocks estrogen receptors, and HCG nudges testosterone up, so estrogen in the bloodstream can climb while you feel nothing. Blocking the receptor hides estrogen from the tissue and leaves the blood level untouched, so personally I like a little exemestane or anastrozole on top, to bring the actual blood estrogen down.
The dose is set by 2 things: how much aromatizing compound you’re taking, and how much body fat you carry, because fat cells are what convert testosterone to estrogen. A lean guy on 300 mg of testosterone probably needs nothing. A fat guy on the same 300 mg does. At 1,000 mg a week you might need 0.5 mg of anastrozole daily. At 400 mg, lean, maybe 0.5 mg twice a week. In between, 1 mg every 5 days or 0.5 mg every other day. Trenbolone and deca don’t convert to estrogen at all, so they don’t enter this math.
Hair, DHT, and the choice nobody escapes
I want very high libido, and high DHT gives it to me, and high DHT takes my hair. It’s a constant battle and a constant choice. There is no setting where you keep both at maximum. The goal is DHT in the normal range, libido mostly intact, hair loss as slow as possible, and you live with the compromise.
What actually spikes DHT into the scalp-saturating range is not a naturally raised testosterone level. It’s the big weekly injection. Take a large single dose and the body says “too much,” converting the excess to estrogen and DHT in a surge. Which is also why the classic doctor protocol, 1 injection every 2 weeks, is the worst thing on offer: a huge spike, then a trough, and the patient collects the side effects of both ends. That protocol is a big part of why testosterone has a bad name. People got side effects they never needed to have, because the protocol was wrong. 125 mg twice a week holds levels steady and stays convenient.
For blocking DHT, finasteride at 1 mg twice a week is enough. Doctors prescribe 1 to 5 mg per day, DHT crashes, and people feel terrible, libido first. Dutasteride is simply too powerful for this job. A hair-transplant doctor the coach visited told him 90% of surgeons put patients on daily finasteride for 6 to 12 months after a transplant. He breaks it into twice-weekly doses instead, gets the protection, and his patients keep their libido.
No pharmaceutical company told him to do that, which is exactly why most doctors never will. The prescribing book most of them are chained to was written by the industry, and deviating from it can cost a license, so they defend it, and they have egos, so they end up believing it. Test one sometime: show a doctor data that contradicts the book and watch the brain short-circuit back to the book. It is changing. The evidence-based approach that recently took over is a real improvement, except the evidence is mostly industry-funded studies, so the same hands still steer, just one step removed.
The route I like better than systemic blockers is topical: topical finasteride, RU-58841, or pyrilutamide, blocking DHT at the scalp and leaving the rest of the body alone. Minoxidil is fine too, but know what it is: blood flow, not DHT. The topical androgen blockers should be as common as minoxidil, and they aren’t, because the industry hasn’t figured out how to profit from them yet. There’s also saw palmetto, the herbal DHT blocker, which is in Enhanced Labs Organ Health; if you’re taking that, you don’t need finasteride on top.
Which compounds cost hair: Winstrol causes the most hair loss I’ve ever seen, at any dose. Masteron and Primobolan do it at high doses. Trenbolone is dose-dependent, so a small dose is survivable. Testosterone enanthate is gentler than its reputation, partly because the small estrogen rise that comes with it seems to protect hair a little.
The question he asked for himself
He’s past 50 and wants to maintain: muscle, energy, no unwanted side effects. What I told him applies to every man in that spot.
Month 1, no testosterone. A SARM, Top T, and 12.5 mg of enclomiphene. See how you feel. More energy, more drive, muscles feel better. There’s a real chance that’s enough, and it matters that you find out first, because once you add testosterone it’s kind of hard to go back. That cost doesn’t disappear with clever protocol design. Know you’re paying it.
If you do add it: 125 mg twice a week, 250 mg total, which lands most men at roughly 250% of their natural level. In your first 6 months I don’t think you’d see any benefit going over 400 mg. Start high early and you desensitize yourself to it, and then where do you go? I keep my own dose on the lower side for exactly that reason: I can stay on all the time, and whenever I want to push a hard phase, the headroom is still there.
Want a SARM on top later? RAD-140 with MK-677 is a good combination. And MK-677 without Slin pills is a mistake; that pairing is a must.
What the GLP-1 drugs actually are
Retatrutide and tirzepatide are everywhere now, so he asked. Understand what they are: appetite suppressors, not fat burners. If people simply fasted they’d get the same result. But hunger is uncomfortable, and food is social. People eat what their family cooked, they eat what the restaurant serves, and in his food culture there’s butter in everything, so “just eat less” loses to real life. I understand the appetite suppressant.
For some people it’s a miracle. And a lot of my friends on retatrutide and tirzepatide lost a lot of muscle, because they weren’t hungry, didn’t eat, and muscle needs food. Both of those are true at once, and the drug doesn’t decide which one you get; your protein intake does. The full solution, 6 low-fat chicken-and-rice meals a day like a bodybuilder plus the supplements, works and almost nobody will do it.
For long-term fat loss I’d rather build the loss on the growth hormone axis. Slow, but it works, and you keep the muscle.
Growth hormone, and the empty-stomach myth
Some peptides do 1 small thing. HGH does 10 things, each a little bit: a little muscle, a little fat loss, a little better skin, hair, recovery, sleep. That’s why it’s the best value compound, for a normal person as much as for a bodybuilder. For straight anti-aging, 2 IU daily.
Morning or night? Morning on an empty stomach leans fat loss. Night leans sleep quality. The difference is not huge either way; I prefer night. The empty-stomach rule everybody repeats is really an insulin rule in disguise. Growth hormone itself works fine with high insulin. The releasing peptides, ipamorelin, tesamorelin, CJC-1295, are what release less growth hormone when insulin is high, and separately, high insulin with poor sensitivity makes any growth hormone worse at building muscle. So the fix isn’t scheduling your life around an empty stomach. The fix is keeping insulin low, which the Slin pills already do. Everyone using growth hormone or a GH peptide should be on them; blood sugar climbs on GH, and that’s the counter.
Side-effect watch is simple: water. A little water inside the muscle is good, more strength, more recovery. Take too much for too long and the water migrates outside the muscle: softer look, pressure up, blood pressure up. That’s your signal to cut the dose, not quit.
If injectable GH is out of reach, CJC-1295 with DAC is the easiest peptide route: long-acting, 1 to 2 injections a week. Paired with Slin pills it probably gives the most fat loss of any peptide approach.
The sandwich problem
I started teaching this because I watched my own friends take more and more steroids while their results stopped going up. Dose climbing, physique flat, and their answer was always another dose.
Their androgen receptors were getting 10 out of 10 stimulation. Meanwhile their growth hormone pathway sat at nothing, their insulin pathway at nothing, inflammation unmanaged. It’s a sandwich: you’re out of bread, and you keep buying meat. No amount of meat makes another sandwich. Muscle growth runs on multiple pathways at once, which is why a stack of moderate doses across androgen, GH, insulin, and inflammation is both healthier and more effective than a heroic dose down one pathway.
The industry has no interest in you understanding that, because a patient who understands pathways argues with the prescription pad. Take this drug. Take this drug. Take this drug. That’s the business model, and it’s simpler when you don’t ask questions.
Before he left, the coach joined my community and took my team’s contact. The standing deal: when his clients are debating something, whether tesamorelin really is the best GH peptide, whether HCG belongs mid-cycle, he sends the debate in and it becomes the next article. This one was his. The next one comes from whatever you’re arguing about.
Be enhanced.
Tony