Hi everyone! I’m on week four of a 500mg test a week cycle. I did a lot of reading before starting my cycle, but there seemed to be a lot of different opinions on Arimidex dosage.
In the beginning I was taking .5 mg eod (as suggested in various posts), but I started to get hot flashes and tingling/itchy sensation in the skin once in a while. I figured it was due to the adex so I stopped it. These side affects disappeared, but I felt my nipples were always pretty hard. Not puffy per se, but super visible no matter what I wear.
So I got back to adex at 0.25mg twice a week. I don’t feel the hot flashes, but serious lethargy started kicking in. Even pre-workouts don’t get me hyped up like they used to. Could this be due to low E levels? Should I reduce adex to .25mg once a week or just use Nolva instead?
This isn’t suggested by anyone on here anymore. The AI preaching was phased out by our resident con artist/falsified endocrinology Physiolojik a while ago… though he made a good point. I highly doubt estrogen has anything to do with your predicament. Etiocholanolone is a metabolite of test, stimulates leukocytosis etc (hence why at the end of test cycles sometimes you’ll notice the guy has an elevated WBC count). The excess immunostimulation can make some feel slightly run down (The test flu).
Regardless, drop the AI, don’t even use nolva on cycle if you don’t need it… It’s about using the least amount of drugs possible. Some will say “polypharmacy is fine, I’m on a ton of gear/ancillaries and it works for me”… doesn’t mean they’re minimising the amount of harm induced… doesn’t mean it’s optimal etc.
Stay away from an AI unless you absolutely need it, tamoxifen isn’t free of risk either.
Thanks for the replies guys! Actually the more I’ve been reading into it, the more it seems like it’s the “test flu” (which I had never heard of before). It would explain the lethargy, night sweats and lack of motivation. I’ve been feeling slightly sick for over a week (it feels more like a hangover than sickness).
I’ll try to reduce the test a bit to see if it helps!
Most guys here are running 0mg of anastrozole when using 500mg of Testosterone. The few that do are running .25mg twice a week (.5mg/week). You are running 1.75mg/week. I would bet quite a bit of money you crashed your estrogen. It feels just like the flu except the flu goes away faster. Even if you stopped the AI completely you’re still going to feel like crap for a while. It’s not an overnight thing.
I don’t need an AI on 750 mg of test p/w and 40 mg daily dbol… and I honestly am not the minority, most people don’t need an AI and half of the people that use one would be better off without
Hot flushes were the worst (when on 7mg adex weekly)… the cold sweats, the facial flushing… the environment around me would somehow feel as if it were 120 degrees… the associated increase in heart rate
They didn’t go away afterwards either, it took over a year for my E2 to rise above undetectable concentrations. Thank god I don’t get them anymore
I’m not science wiz like unreal, however I would imagine his E2 would be even slower to climb back up if he’s still taking a low dose of AI, instead of dropping it entirely.
Yeah, looking back and comparing to now, I think it was indeed an E2 crash.
I stopped the aridimex completely (from 7 days ago), I’m feeling great again. The one thing that changed is that in the beginning of my cycle was having crazy spontaneous erections (I’m 40 yrs old!). Now I don’t anymore, sex drive has been about the same as before the cycle. Hope it comes back, I miss feeling like a teenager again
If it’s your first cycle (or even 2nd or 3rd cycle) you don’t need more than 250mg of Test. per week.
I’ll save my breath as the other members will attack me anyway. You won’t gain more muscle running 500mg, compared to 250mg. Unless you are already carrying muscle above your genetic limit. Will you gain more weight and look better w/the higher dose (if you eat and train correctly), perhaps, yes. But, it will be water and glycogen retention. Not more actual muscle. Again, your body can only create so much muscle within a certain time frame. You get the same benefit with the lower test. dosage and don’t have to worry about the AI (usually).
Funny you say that cos that was my kinda my original plan. 250 test e every five days. But the more I read, the more it seemed like “you gotta make the best of your first cycle, you should go at least 400mg a week!”. So I upped my dosage cos I didn’t want to miss “your first cycle will be your best cycle, don’t waste it!”
I increased it around the 3rd week, so I didn’t have enough experience with 250 a week to compare. (I’ve been training for 25 years already, so I pretty much reached my genetic limit several years ago)
If you want to say someone should run a lower dose as a first cycle for whatever reason I could understand that but they will gain a lot more muscle on 500mg than they would on 250mg in a 12 week period. On 250mg you’ll be wondering if it’s working on week 9. Yes you’ll gain some muscle but not as much as on 500mg. My TRT the first several months was 220mg/week. I worked out and didn’t look like I just did 500mg after 12 weeks. On the contrary, I’ve done 500mg when I didn’t know anything about steroids or even much about working out and gained quite a bit of muscle. Why anyone would want to do a testosterone cycle and not at least look like they did it when it’s over is beyond me. That said 200mg/week over the course of years is great.
@mnben87 just did a 350mg/week first cycle. Maybe he can comment on lower dose expectations vs reality.
I did 325 mg/wk. I will up it for sure next cycle. Now I don’t have regrets about getting my feet wet before diving in. I am on TRT, so shutdown is not a concern. Maybe I could have gotten more out of it if I had low T before hand, but going from 150 to 325 just didn’t give me the results I was looking for. A few things were not optimal for this cycle. I was peaking for a PL meet, so volume was fairly low, I got the flu a week out from my meet, so I basically lost the weight I had put on, and being on TRT I don’t think the bang from the test was there.
I basically had no sides though. A couple pimples was it.
If I was cycling I would not run 250 mg/wk. I just don’t see the reward being worth the risk. With what I know now, I would run 500 or 600 mg a week.
Even with the flu the week before I still set PRs on my lifts. 507 on the squat, 353 on bench (lots left in the tank here), and 523 on deadlift (only a meet PR on deadlift as I had done 565 in training, but dropped 563 right before getting the down command).
