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The mechanism of action for steroid hormones (like the anabolic steroids we’re talking about, though the same is true of any steroid hormone including cortisol, estrogen, aldosterone, etc.) is pretty straightforward. They’re lipid-soluble, so they can diffuse directly into a cell (rather than needing to bind to a receptor on the surface of the cell like peptide hormones – like insulin and IGF-1), bind to their particular steroid receptor, and go to the nucleus of the cell so they can influence gene transcription. Those transcribed genes determine what proteins are produced, and those proteins affect the structure and function of that cell.
The steroids we’re talking about are mostly derivatives of testosterone (or similar hormones like DHT, though some like Deca-Durabolin are derivatives of progesterone), and have the same mechanism of action. They diffuse into the cell, bind to a receptor, influence gene transcription, and ultimately influence the proteins the cell produces. Different steroid hormones cause cells to produce different proteins, but in skeletal muscle, testosterone and its derivatives primarily increase the production of the actin and myosin that are the major proteins that make you strong and jacked.
Backing up a step, though, before these steroids can make their way into the muscle to have an effect, they have to actually travel in the blood to the muscle.
So the first issue is getting those steroids into your blood. Routes of administration that don’t involve digestion tend to be the safest for your liver, including injections and transdermal administration (like Androgel). Oral steroids have to be modified so your liver can’t immediately excrete them – things you swallow are absorbed, and they then must pass through your liver before they can make it to general circulation. Your liver isn’t particularly keen to pass high doses of steroid hormones directly to general circulation, so it will break them down into non-bioactive metabolites unless they’re modified to resist this process. Because of this, your liver tends to have to work quite a bit harder to handle orals than injectables, so orals tend to be more damaging to your liver. There are orals that aren’t very hepatotoxic (damaging to your liver), and there are injectables that are quite hepatotoxic, but since this post isn’t meant to be a how-to guide for steroid use, recognize I’m painting in broad strokes here.
Now that the steroids are in your blood (either by direct injection, or because they survived their first pass through the liver), they need to make it to your muscles.
Most testosterone in your body is bound to proteins in your blood, most notably albumin and sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG). If you get your testosterone levels checked, the lab should report total testosterone and free testosterone. The free testosterone is the stuff that’s most available to diffuse into your cells and affect the body.
This is a key point and is the main reason why steroids don’t seem to have much effect until they’re taken in supraphysiological doses – presenting your body with a concentration it wouldn’t experience in normal circumstances. When you don’t have any major endocrine problems and your testosterone levels are within the normal physiological range, your body will produce more or less binding proteins to make sure you have the right amount of free testosterone – not too little, and not too much.
Your body can’t just jack up albumin production because it plays a critical role in keeping fluid concentrations stable between your cells and the extracellular fluid, and while SHBG levels increase when you introduce high levels of some exogenous steroid hormones into the body (including estrogen, which is a major reason many women experience loss of sex drive when they go on birth control – increased SHBG binds more of their precious, tiny amounts of testosterone that are so important for sex drive), testosterone actually decreases SHBG levels slightly for reasons I admittedly don’t quite understand.
This is the main reason why over-the-counter “testosterone boosters” don’t work for building mass and strength if you have normal testosterone levels, and steroids work really, really well. Even if your test booster increases your testosterone by 40% like it claims, you’re still relying on your testes to produce it, and they simply won’t pump out enough to push you to supraphysiological concentrations to outrun the effects of the binding proteins. You could have 40% more testosterone but the same free testosterone.
So, this was a long way of explaining why steroids “work.” You put enough of a hormone into the body that the body’s normal regulatory mechanisms can’t quite cope, so you wind up with more free androgens to make it to your muscles and make you jacked.
This is quite a bit more dry physiology than I like going into, but I think it’s important to cover because a lot of people are ignorant of it, and it can help provide a basic backdrop of understanding for discussions about steroids.
Of course, an article basically saying “steroids make you strong, and here’s the physiology behind why steroids work,” really wouldn’t be saying much that’s relevant to you. So now it’s time to actually delve into the fun stuff.
Steroids work, in part, because you expect them to work.
Let’s take a look at two studies examining the placebo effect’s impact on “steroid-induced” strength gains.
In the first (Ariel, 1974), researchers told 15 trained athletes they could get their hands on some free, legal steroids. The subjects were already relatively strong at the start of the study – with squat and bench press maxes around 300 pounds, and military press maxes a shade under 200 pounds.
They trained for 7 weeks with the promise that the people who made the best strength gains (to give them an incentive to train hard and make as much progress as possible) in those 7 weeks would get free, legal steroids. So the athletes trained for 7 weeks, and put a combined total of ~22 pounds on their bench, military press, seated press, and squat.
Then, 6 of the participants were selected at random to take part in the “steroid” trial. They were told they were being given 10mg/day of Dianabol, when really they were taking placebo pills.
They trained for another 4 weeks, thinking they were on drugs.
In just 4 weeks, they put a combined total of ~100 pounds on those same four lifts. 100 pounds instead of 22, in 4 weeks instead of 7. Simply because they THOUGHT they were on steroids.
Full Article: How Much More Muscle Can You Build With Steroids? • Strengtheory
The steroids we’re talking about are mostly derivatives of testosterone (or similar hormones like DHT, though some like Deca-Durabolin are derivatives of progesterone), and have the same mechanism of action. They diffuse into the cell, bind to a receptor, influence gene transcription, and ultimately influence the proteins the cell produces. Different steroid hormones cause cells to produce different proteins, but in skeletal muscle, testosterone and its derivatives primarily increase the production of the actin and myosin that are the major proteins that make you strong and jacked.
Backing up a step, though, before these steroids can make their way into the muscle to have an effect, they have to actually travel in the blood to the muscle.
So the first issue is getting those steroids into your blood. Routes of administration that don’t involve digestion tend to be the safest for your liver, including injections and transdermal administration (like Androgel). Oral steroids have to be modified so your liver can’t immediately excrete them – things you swallow are absorbed, and they then must pass through your liver before they can make it to general circulation. Your liver isn’t particularly keen to pass high doses of steroid hormones directly to general circulation, so it will break them down into non-bioactive metabolites unless they’re modified to resist this process. Because of this, your liver tends to have to work quite a bit harder to handle orals than injectables, so orals tend to be more damaging to your liver. There are orals that aren’t very hepatotoxic (damaging to your liver), and there are injectables that are quite hepatotoxic, but since this post isn’t meant to be a how-to guide for steroid use, recognize I’m painting in broad strokes here.
Now that the steroids are in your blood (either by direct injection, or because they survived their first pass through the liver), they need to make it to your muscles.
Most testosterone in your body is bound to proteins in your blood, most notably albumin and sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG). If you get your testosterone levels checked, the lab should report total testosterone and free testosterone. The free testosterone is the stuff that’s most available to diffuse into your cells and affect the body.
This is a key point and is the main reason why steroids don’t seem to have much effect until they’re taken in supraphysiological doses – presenting your body with a concentration it wouldn’t experience in normal circumstances. When you don’t have any major endocrine problems and your testosterone levels are within the normal physiological range, your body will produce more or less binding proteins to make sure you have the right amount of free testosterone – not too little, and not too much.
Your body can’t just jack up albumin production because it plays a critical role in keeping fluid concentrations stable between your cells and the extracellular fluid, and while SHBG levels increase when you introduce high levels of some exogenous steroid hormones into the body (including estrogen, which is a major reason many women experience loss of sex drive when they go on birth control – increased SHBG binds more of their precious, tiny amounts of testosterone that are so important for sex drive), testosterone actually decreases SHBG levels slightly for reasons I admittedly don’t quite understand.
This is the main reason why over-the-counter “testosterone boosters” don’t work for building mass and strength if you have normal testosterone levels, and steroids work really, really well. Even if your test booster increases your testosterone by 40% like it claims, you’re still relying on your testes to produce it, and they simply won’t pump out enough to push you to supraphysiological concentrations to outrun the effects of the binding proteins. You could have 40% more testosterone but the same free testosterone.
So, this was a long way of explaining why steroids “work.” You put enough of a hormone into the body that the body’s normal regulatory mechanisms can’t quite cope, so you wind up with more free androgens to make it to your muscles and make you jacked.
This is quite a bit more dry physiology than I like going into, but I think it’s important to cover because a lot of people are ignorant of it, and it can help provide a basic backdrop of understanding for discussions about steroids.
Of course, an article basically saying “steroids make you strong, and here’s the physiology behind why steroids work,” really wouldn’t be saying much that’s relevant to you. So now it’s time to actually delve into the fun stuff.
Steroids work, in part, because you expect them to work.
Let’s take a look at two studies examining the placebo effect’s impact on “steroid-induced” strength gains.
In the first (Ariel, 1974), researchers told 15 trained athletes they could get their hands on some free, legal steroids. The subjects were already relatively strong at the start of the study – with squat and bench press maxes around 300 pounds, and military press maxes a shade under 200 pounds.
They trained for 7 weeks with the promise that the people who made the best strength gains (to give them an incentive to train hard and make as much progress as possible) in those 7 weeks would get free, legal steroids. So the athletes trained for 7 weeks, and put a combined total of ~22 pounds on their bench, military press, seated press, and squat.
Then, 6 of the participants were selected at random to take part in the “steroid” trial. They were told they were being given 10mg/day of Dianabol, when really they were taking placebo pills.
They trained for another 4 weeks, thinking they were on drugs.
In just 4 weeks, they put a combined total of ~100 pounds on those same four lifts. 100 pounds instead of 22, in 4 weeks instead of 7. Simply because they THOUGHT they were on steroids.
Full Article: How Much More Muscle Can You Build With Steroids? • Strengtheory