I’m familiar with the product. Now, while
everything I say about it is the same scientific opinion I’d have in any case, regardless of having any personal bias in the matter, it’s only fair for you to know that I do have personal bias: Androsol is designed by me (and also Brock), and the individual who is responsible for the spray you mention simply ripped off Androsol. I know for a fact that this individual was planning on coming out
with a gel, but on learning (from confidential information not yet publicly available) about the composition of Androsol, he turned around and decided to make his product the same kind as ours. I really did not appreciate that abuse of trust, nor the false claims he made publicly that he did not receive this information. So I have a bias. Still, as I said, I’d have the same opinion on the scientific questions regardless.
The differences in the products are that
the other spray uses IPM which Androsol does not, and also, it uses
a different and very much less-appropriate sprayer.
With regard to the IPM: This individual had asked me, if I were
going to make a transdermal prohormone
product (this was before I came up with
the idea for Androsol) how would I do it? Because he was working on a gel
and wanted to come out with that, and knew I was an expert in transdermal
delivery which he was not.
And I recommended IPM as a penetration
enhancer. A penetration enhancer allows
more compound to go through each square
inch of skin but doesn’t necessarily improve efficiency, and if used
in amounts enough to be effective as a penetration enhancer, doesn’t
allow regular application to large areas of skin, because of being irritating
or damaging at those concentrations, and so therefore can
actually reduce ability to deliver a large amount of product. This product
however uses an amount of IPM that is suitable only for “moisturizing”
the skin, not penetration enhancement, and hasn’t been shown to cause
penetration enhancement anyway. So, not actually being a penetration
enhancer at that concentration, it can be applied to a large area and isn’t
irritating. At higher concentrations,
applied to a small area, IPM can be
an effective penetration enhancer however.
So it could be appropriate for a gel
intended to be put on a small area, which
is what he and I had in mind when the
question was asked.
So, he had all the other
information on Androsol and copied it
exactly (even to the number of grams of
4-AD per bottle!) and assumed I’d have
used IPM in Androsol, based on my previous
confidential advice. He stated publicly,
after Androsol was released, that he
was surprised that I didn’t use it.
But, difference is, I have the formal education
in transdermal delivery and the scientific
knowledge to know that IPM is not appropriate for this class
of product for reasons I have discussed
at length in the past. You don’t get a higher percentage of 4-AD delivered, you don’t get
more total 4-AD delivered, but you do get
a situation where you don’t get the tight
bonded film you do with Androsol because
the IPM interferes with this, and the product
rubs off or washes off much more easily
and is more readily lost. He made the wrong
guess on what I was going to do, and made the
wrong choice in his attempt to copy Androsol.
The other difference is that this company used
a sprayer different than Androsol, which
was supposedly more convenient, but which
applies the product in sprays which are way
too large to achieve a thin even film on
the body. They have acknowledged this publicly
and said that they will switch to an Androsol
style sprayer: however, not until they have
used up the big stock of less-good sprayers
they have now.
Very simply, it’s an attempted copy that just
did not get it right.