Steroid.com NOVEMBER 21, 2007 When I first started my career, I was only interested in which anabolic steroids did what, and how they work. I was usually forced to be creative in my research, and try to fill in blanks that the medical/scientific community had left out. I wasn’t interested in why they seemed to not be interested in answering the same questions about anabolic steroids that I was. I’ll get back to this point shortly, but first I want to examine a few studies that the medical/scientific community has recently seen fit to conduct and publish the results of. On November 12th of this year the “Endocrine Journal” published findings from a very broad study examining men of varying ages who have type-II diabetes. The study found that men with type-II diabetes also had low testosterone levels. Diabetes is a major problem in the western world, due primarily to diet. Just to briefly review diabetes in general, it’s characterized by insulin resistance, and is responsible for a slew of adverse effects. It’s sugar’s naughty offspring, all grown up. So what is insulin resistance? It is a reduced ability to respond to insulin but it is the primary factor in the development of type II diabetes. The real kicker here is that type-II diabetes is largely a western disease – a disease of affluence. We give ourselves this problem by eating the wrong kinds of food and not staying physically active enough. The causes of insulin resistance are somewhat genetic, but also can be a result of diet, obesity, and lack of exercise. In fact, adipose tissue (fat) is the number one correlative factor in insulin resistance. And being insulin resistant can lead to a host of other scary sounding words, none of which you want to have to look up after a doctor’s visit: hyperglycemia, hypertension, dyslipidemia, increased thrombotic risk, and even erectile dysfunction. Even if you don’t know much about the other stuff, that last thing that I mentioned should ring a bell, as there’s been a virtual media explosion of remedies for it advertised everywhere, even in the most unlikely of places (This editorial brought to you by Pfizer, the makers of Viagra). To give you an idea how bad it is to be insulin resistant, you have a similar chance to develop coronary disease from that as you do from smoking. The first study I mentioned was done in Japan, and found that men with type-II diabetes also typically have low testosterone…but which one caused the other? Well, a Massachusetts Male Aging study strongly suggests that low testosterone levels (from whatever cause) make people much more prone to developing these insulin resistance issues – which we already know causes tons of serious health issues. Now, after tons of data has finally been collected, someone in the medical community has actually done a study where they gave testosterone to men with diabetes! Hello? Seems like an obvious answer to me. Testosterone has been known to improve insulin sensitivity for years, yet only now has the scientific and medical community stepped up and done the appropriate studies to show that it has potential to treat diabetes? In fact, not only does testosterone show potential to treat diabetes, it also shows potential to actually prevent it also! But the problem is that doctors (at least in America and most of the western world) are hesitant to perform studies on anabolic steroids. This could be because there’s not as much profit in them when compared with other drugs…why fix a problem cheaply and effectively when you can come up with a new and obscure drug, patent it, and make billions? In Turkey, effects on insulin resistance (in men who actually needed testosterone therapy) were tested, and they used 250mgs of Sustanon (a very nice, very long acting testosterone product) every third week. Not surprisingly, the study conducted in Turkey revealed that insulin sensitivity improved with the administration of testosterone. I suspect that 200-250mgs of testosterone every week would produce even better results than the every third week protocol that was used in the study. But, due to the political climate regarding steroids a study like that isn’t going to be done any time soon. And now I understand why the studies I had wished existed in the beginning of my career weren’t ever done. And that’s too bad, because people are suffering some severe health problems that could be prevented (or even cured) by testosterone therapy.
