Couple of thoughts and questions.
When is your blood work in relation to your test shot? Is it three days after, five days? That makes a difference. If your doctor is worth his salt then the bloods should be done no sooner than three days post injection, but one thing I’ve learned is that the doctors who prescribe this stuff don’t necessarily understand what they’re doing as well as we’d hope.
And to elaborate a little on the primo answer (and I appreciate you trying to gain insight; you should never blindly follow what I or anyone else here says) I’ll say a few things that I know to be true. Primo doesn’t build at the same scale that testosterone or nandrolone are capable of. It has a lot to do with nitrogen retention, increases protein synthesis, etc. I’ll use some made up numbers here to illustrate the larger point.
Nandrolone capabilities
Nitrogen retention: 9/10
Protein synthesis: 7/10
Testosterone capabilities
Nitrogen retention: 7/10
Protein synthesis: 7/10
Methenolone capabilities
Nitrogen retention: 4/10
Protein synthesis: 5/10
Again, these are all made up, but they reflect the importance of a compound’s attributes relative to other available options.
So you look at what a particular drug does, then you compare it to what else is out there, and you have to determine what you want and importantly don’t want, in terms of benefits and side effects.
Nandrolone comes with a host of potential downsides, but it’s an amazing mass builder. If you knew that you’d get zero side effects from it then you’d have no reason not to use it for every cycle/blast. But since it comes with a heavy potential downside you adjust your risk parameters and decide that it’s not for you. So you look to the more mild drugs, which usually means that their attributes—both positive and negative—are diminished.
Now let’s do some more made up math. Let’s pretend that 100mg of nandrolone = 3 units of nitrogen retention. On the same (made up) scale, 100mg of methenolone = 1 unit. It stands to reason that you’d need to use 3x the amount of methenolone in order to get the same effect as a compatible dose of nandrolone. “But using 400mg of primo for eight weeks will still get me gains” you say. But here’s what you’re missing: these additional units of nitrogen retention (as well as protein synthesis) don’t effect muscle tissue linearly. Going from 0 to 4 units looks good, but it’s not as big of a change as you think. You need to be at that higher level of protein synthesis, nitrogen retention, et al for a while because muscle growth is a slow process. Now you can speed up the process by flooding your body with chemicals and getting those conditions necessary up to obscene levels (nandrolone is good at this, so is testosterone), but even then time is the biggest factor. A six week blast of NPP @ 400mg/w can yield results, but lengthen that out a little more to eight weeks and you add more without taking on much additional risk.
Everything in the world of steroids is risk/return. You calculate performance ex ante and then plot out the return. It has to have an alpha of a certain value above the risk-free return. What that alpha is must be determined by each individual. That’s where your own personal tolerance for risk comes in.