Low dose of testosterone plus a couple of oxandrolone tabs just as effective as a megadose of testosterone
If you get men to train for 20 weeks and inject them with 600 mg testosterone enanthate, they’ll gain 8 kg extra fat free mass, according to some studies. But it’s possible to make the same gains with less, doctors at the University of California discovered. You can achieve almost the same results with a light course of oxandrolone and testosterone enanthate, and you only have to take them for 8 weeks.
In 1999 the researchers published the results of a trial in the prestigious JAMA. It was a reaction to studies in which researchers had given HIV-infected men heavy doses, such as 600 mg nandrolone decanoate per week. The HIV subjects also did weight training. The researchers don’t think high doses are necessary. So they decided to do a trial using 22 HIV patients, giving some 20 mg oxandrolone daily, and all a weekly 100 mg injection of testosterone enanthate. The course lasted 8 weeks.
The men did 1 hour of weight training 3 times a week. Under guidance from a trainer they did 6 basic exercises for the main upper body muscle groups and 3 exercises for the lower body. They used weights that were 80 percent of the weight at which they could just manage 1 rep [1RM].
Eleven of the men were given a weekly injection of 100 mg testosterone enanthate and took a placebo. The other eleven men were given 20 mg oxandrolone each day.
The figure below shows that the oxandrolone group had gained almost 8 kg fat free mass after 8 weeks.
The men in the oxandrolone group also gained strength faster than the other men. The gain in maximal weight for the bench press and the leg press was 10 and 20 kg respectively for the placebo group. For the men in the oxandrolone group the figures were 20 and 30 kg.
The men in the oxandrolone group also lost a few ounces more fat than the men in the placebo group.
So it’s not necessary to do a 20-week course of 600 mg to gain 8 kg fat free mass, the researchers conclude. It’s possible to achieve the same results with lower doses.
But even the mild oxandrolone-testosterone course was not without side effects. In the oxandrolone group, 1 patient had to stop when his liver started acting strangely. Analysis of blood samples also indicated that the addition of oxandrolone to the modest testosterone course reduced the body’s endogenous testosterone production even further. The oxandrolone group’s LH and FSH production also decreased by more the researchers discovered. FSH and LH are hormones that stimulate the testes to produce testosterone.
Some of the men were also taking retro-viral medicines, but these did not influence the effects of the steroids.
"The combination of resistance exercise with a moderately supraphysiologic androgen regimen that included oxandrolone resulted in significantly greater increases in lean tissue and muscle strength than resistance exercise with physiologic testosterone replacement alone in eugonadal HIV-infected men with prior weight loss", the researchers conclude. "The use of protease inhibitor therapy did not affect the lean tissue response".
