What are Esters and why are they Important
By: 3J
3J's Nutrition | Diet and fitness consulting to get you to the next level.
The purpose of this article is to educate those who are new to the anabolic world about steroids, their esters, and their correlation to half-life and peak levels of the compound in your bloodstream. Lets go over some basic terminology before we get into the details.
An ester is simply the oil that the steroid is mixed with. Oil is used because it takes time to break down in your body. When you inject Testosterone Enanthate you are injecting the compound testosterone with an oil called Enanthate. There are many esters you can choose from: Cypionate, Enanthate, and Propionate are usually the most popular ones. When you choose an ester, you are also choosing how quickly the drug enters your system, or the half-life of the drug.
The half-life of the steroid you inject is based on the ester its mixed with. In the world of medication and drugs the half-life is the time it takes the body to reduce the medication by half. Here is an basic breakdown to help you understand.
Bob has just injected 250mg of Testosterone Enanthate into his muscle. There is now a depot of testosterone in the injection site that is being broken down by the body. The half-life of Enanthate is about 10.5 days. In 10.5 days, there will be 125mg of testosterone Enanthate left in the depot site. In 21 days, there will only be half of that (62.5mg) and so on and so forth till the compound has been eliminated from the body. It***8217;s the Enanthate ester that controls the release of drug in the body. It takes a certain amount of time to break through the Enanthate oil and as the body breaks it down it also releases the drug into the system. Here is a list of Esters and their respectable half-life
Formate 1.5 days
Acetate 3 days
Propionate 2 days
Phenylpropionate 4.5 days
Butyrate 6 days
Valerate 7.5 days
Hexanoate 9 days
Caproate 9 days
Isocaproate 9 days
Heptanoate 10.5 days
Enanthate 10.5 days
Octanoate 12 days
Cypionate 12 days
Nonanoate 13.5 days
Decanoate 15 days
Undecanoate 16.5 days
Now, when you start to inject a steroid the golden rule is to run the steroid at about half the half-life of the ester. You want the most steady levels as possible so that you don***8217;t experience side effects of anabolic use like high estrogen and acne. For that reason Cypionate and Enanthate are usually injected every 3.5 days. Propionate and acetate is usually injected every day or some choose to inject every other day, which has been deemed acceptable but not optimal.
So what happens when you start injecting Enanthate every 3.5 days? The drug starts to overlap itself and the actual amount of the drug that***8217;s in your system goes up. As stated before within 10 days of the injection half of the 250mg has been eliminated. But within those 10 days you should have injected about 3 250mg shots. There is a slow but steady rise of the drug in your system that usually started to peak out around the 5 week mark. When injecting a shorter ester like Prop or Ace you will see lower peak values but the drug is entering your system much quicker. This means you peak your dosage in your cycle much quicker and can run shorter cycles.
To give you an idea of how the levels rise, here is a chart of someone injecting 100mg of a compound that has a 7 day half life:
Day 0- 100mg (Injected) / 0mg (Active)
Day 3.5- 100mg (Injected) / 100mg (Active)
Day 7.0- 100mg (Injected) / 150mg (Active)
Day 10.5- 100mg (Injected) / 187.5mg (Active)
Day 14.0- 100mg (Injected) / 212.5mg (Active)
Day 17.5- 100mg (Injected) / 231.5mg (Active)
Day 21.0- 100mg (Injected) / 244mg (Active)
Day 24.5- 100mg (Injected) / 253mg (Active)
Day 28.0- 100mg (Injected) / 259mg (Active)
So remember, Testosterone Enanthate and Testosterone Cypionate are both the same compound, testosterone! The only difference is in the ester!! Also, the ester holds weight. When injecting 250mg of Testosterone Enanthate you are actually only putting in 175mg of testosterone in your system. The Enanthate takes up 75mg of the whole weight! The shorter the ester, the less weight it will take up in the total mass of the compound.
