May 12, 2001
Issue # 46

              CALCULATING BLOOD LEVELS

                               OF STEROIDS
                                   by Roy Harper

                                       
How many of you out there sit down and calculate what your steroid levels are going to be during a cycle? Not too many do. In fact lots of people use the old diamond cycles, or pyramid cycles, etc. What the hell is this? Grade four geometry class? Some of these 'cycles' make little sense when you actually chart the data. Well let's go through the basics of how to time your dosages and how to use various loading techniques. Then I'll introduce a way so you can chart your blood levels of drugs. 

Let's begin everything with a simple example. Take for instance a diamond Testosterone Propionate cycle, with injections every 3.5 days. The first and second injection starts at 125mg, the third at 250 mg continued until the eighth and ninth injection when the dosage comes down to 125mg. That comes to an average of about 500mg per week. Now some believe you have to work your way up and then work your back down. I'll give you two reasons why this is false (Note: this is for AAS only, T3 and some other drugs do need to be tapered). Number one, suppression happens from the smallest to the highest dosages, 125mg Test is no different than 2000mg. Number two, if you believe in this theory have you ever charted this cycle out? Let me show you and you can compare the following two graphs.  

 

 

The diamond cycle is as described above. The straight cycle is the same as the diamond except it starts and ends at 250mg not 125mg. Notice how both cycles taper up and taper down. In fact by eliminating dosage tapering you spend less time building up. Furthermore there is only about a three-day difference until both cycles return to less than 10mg. So if you want to taper, don't taper, it will happen anyway, why waste valuable time and money.  

Now let's look at how to time your intake of drugs. Take for instance the same straight Testosterone Propionate cycle mentioned above. Now instead of injecting it every three and a half days you inject every four days. This has an interesting effect, look at the chart.  

 

Notice that instead of gradually increasing you blood levels of the test prop, you're doing the old two steps forward and one step back. Why does this happen? Well Testosterone Propionate has a half-life of three and a half days. Since with the first cycle the injections occur every three and a half days you're not fighting with yourself to maintain proper blood levels of the drug. While on the other hand while extending the cycle you will cause a more erratic increase. This means that you're literally going to have good days and bad days. The key here is to time you're intake with the half-life of the drug. This will invariably keep steady levels in your system. Below is a chart of various drugs and their approximate half-lives:  

 

For all you sust lovers out there note that the following esters and amounts are used:  

30mg Propionate  

55mg Phenylpropionate  

65mg Caproate  

100mg Decanoate  

 

Testonon uses the following amounts:  

30mg Propionate  

55mg Phenylpropionate  

65mg Isocaproate  

100mg Enanthate  

 

Now all of this sounds fine and dandy, but here is an even better cycle plan. It uses front-loading to create, what I call a Devil's Tower cycle. If you're not familiar with front loading, it's the process of loading up on a drug to quickly increase blood levels of that drug. Once again look at the straight Testosterone Propionate cycle. Now with only an extra 250mg in your first injection look at the dramatic difference it makes.  

 

This is by far the most efficient cycle so far. You will quickly get in and quickly get out. Now this technique works for just about everything. If you time your intake of drugs following their half-lives, simply double the amount for your first day. There you have it, an easy technique to maintain blood levels of various drugs. But that's not all! Taking the Devil's tower method, you could also use 100mg Testosterone Suspension to speed up the front-loading process. Look at the following graph:  

 

With the use of a shorter acting Testosterone, you're able to increase blood levels. In fact you can have more control when using various esters of certain drugs. This allows you to customize you're blood levels.  

Now let's say that you're going to use Sustanon 250 at 1 gram per week. Because it has four different esters it gets quite complicated to control blood levels. You would have to settle for weekly injections. Now what happens when you chart this is that there is a very slow build up and decay. Now if you wanted to create a better more efficient cycle you'd need to include shorter acting esters at the beginning and end. Personally I hate sust, because it's too complicated to create a good cycle. Now since it is one of the most popular Testosterone blends, this is how I'd do it. First I would start my sust at anywhere from 125mg to 250 mg for the first couple of injections. There is no need to front-load it since I'd use other drugs for this. Next I'd throw in 750mg of Testosterone Propionate for the first injection then use 500mg every three days and a half days. After the first two injections I'd increase the sust and slowly decrease the prop until sufficient test levels have been achieved. Now after a short while I'd cease the sust and start Testosterone Suspension to finish the cycle. All of this will give better results than sust alone. It gives a pseudo Devil's tower, but is not perfect.  

Now let's get to the interesting part. How to easily calculate blood levels of most any drug. First take a look at the formula used. The first is D-(D)(1/2)^((T-DT)/H). This calculates blood levels before the half-life. To calculate the half-life and after, the following formula is used (D)(1/2)^((T-DT)/H). The variables used are as follows:  

D - Dosage in milligrams  

T - The day you want to know the blood levels for  

DT - The day the drug was taken  

H - The Half life in days  

 

For more precision, DT and H could be multiplied by 24, which would give you hourly levels instead of daily levels. T would become hours instead of days. Here is how you'd use them; first let's look at the day after a 200mg injection of Testosterone Propionate.  

200 - (200)(1/2)^((2-1)/3.5)  

= 200 - (200)(1/2)^1/3.5  

= 200 - (200)(0.820)  

= 200 - 164  

= 36  

 

Now let's look at the fifth day after the injection.  

(200)(1/2)^((5-1)/3.5)  

= (200)(1/2)^4/3.5  

= (200)(0.453)  

= 90.6  

 

Multiples of these formula can be used to give you summaries of multiple injections. Once you have the summaries, you can chart the data. Sounds fun, doesn't it? Well for your benefit I included an excel sheet that automatically calculates multiple injections and charts them. If you play around with variables you begin to understand how to create more efficient cycles. Click Here To Download. Now no more of this diamond crap!