My usefulness to the media seems to ebb and flow. I go months without so much as a friend request on Face Book then all of a sudden I have producers from three or four acronym news agencies sending me e-mails looking for a quote, or a lead, or whatever (I’m going to refer to the various news agencies that talk to me as “acronym” rather than spell out the network initials. I tend to think that the less I hear from them the further off the radar screens we’re falling and maybe if enough time goes by no one will really care again if healthy adult male athletes use steroids.
And, every time I get the feeling that little blip is going to disappear some fucking moron does something true to character. Then all of a sudden I get three e-mails, with acronyms in their return addys, asking me about that douche bag virgin-murder in Santa Barbara and if it’s true that “creatine” is a code word for “steroids” in the online communities.
These kinds of occurrences, while disappointing, are still none the less indicative of just how much the steroid issue is languid in stagnation. Nothing really changes, does it? “Steroids are bad so lets prove it” is the mantra of any news agency worth its salt. The seedier the news organization the more relentless and exaggerated the plot. Its getting to the point where I think I’m just going to change my e-mail address because this is getting very boring.
My faith was somewhat stimulated by the end of a conversation I had recently with a producer for a sports channel. He asked me the most basic of questions, really. Nothing sensationalistic and actually rather bland. He asked me what I thought would be a promising new compound/therapy/drug/whatever that might currently be in development that will take the place of traditional PEDs such as steroids.
As luck would have it, just as I was waiting out the question and getting ready to launch into my next-generation peptides or the Chinese gene doping schpeal from which I use to give them talking points, an email came through. Of course I opened it – you think I don’t multi task? – it was from a guy asking me if tamoxifen will reverse his gyno. Then, rather than go into the peptides or the Chinese gene doping schpeal – because I got derailed thinking about what a great tool tamoxifen is because it can selectively modulate (adjust) estrogen receptor activity – it was then that I had that “ah-ha” moment.
Photo provided by www.sarmssearch.com
Photo provided by www.sarmssearch.com
The most efficient treatments are always those that don’t “insult” surrounding tissues, or at least not to any great extent. The more specific, or selective, the treatment, the greater the chance of the desired effect. Many traditional cancer treatments, even more modern chemo therapies that “target” specific cancer cells, demolish the immune system in the process. More often than not the patient dies from the treatment and not the tumor. It’s like the weed killer killing the weeds along with the rest of the lawn.
In some time, the foregoing will be considered ancient medicine, such as the holes found poked in 1,000 year-old Peruvian skulls – the perimeters of the holes in the skulls show advance stages of healing, indicating that 1,000 years ago they were drilling holes in people’s heads in an attempt to “cure” something. One-thousand years from now, the remnants of chemo therapy will look just as barbaric in light of specialized technologies that can isolate and eliminate a brain tumor without even so much as taking off your hat. One-thousand years ahead of them, no one will even get brain tumors anymore due to something like a nano-bot vaccine injected into the amniotic fluid during the end of the first trimester that weeds through the genome of the fetus and programs out the possibility of developing specific types of cancer cells – or any other known viruses, infections and diseases – throughout its entire life, which could conceivably be very long. Selectivity at its finest.
“Selectivity” is the real difference between modern and ancient medicine. The more modern medicine gets, the more we will see selectivity be enhanced until medicine is a matter of identifying a problem then dispatching a specialized therapy designed to selectively hone in on just the specific cells that need modulating, and not bother anything else. Scientifically, we are at that level now. The capability does exist.
A drug that can either block or stimulate the same nuclear hormone receptor under different conditions is called a selective receptor modulator. If it can block or stimulate a receptor in a tissue selective manner, it may be able to mimic the beneficial effects in one tissue and, at the same time, minimize the unwanted effects of the natural or synthetic steroidal hormones in other tissues.
Given the state of affairs in the scientific community today, it is totally possible to, if not step above then certainly step along side, the typical courses of steroids and androgens. Technology exists today to, to some extent, introduce a means to selectively target and modulate androgen receptor cells to phase out the undesirable side effects typically associated with exogenous hormones and enhance the desirable effects.

Selective Androgen Receptor Modulators (SARMs)


SARM’s could offer the athlete the benefits of traditional androgens such as testosterone – increased muscle mass, increased strength, fat loss, etc. – while offering a much lower tendency to produce the unwanted side effects that are common with androgen use.
If you are able to stimulate a receptor in a tissue selective manner, e.g., muscle, it is possible to mimic the beneficial effects of androgen activation in muscles, and at the same time, minimize the unwanted effects of the natural or synthetic steroidal hormones in other tissues.
It is this specificity that makes these receptor modulators able to selectively cause muscle growth, while reducing or eliminating unwanted secondary side effects.
SARM’s offer the potential for harnessing the benefits of anabolic supplementation while at the same time minimizing the undesirable side effects. They also have the potential advantages of oral dosing, which is very limited when it comes to androgens.
Although still at an early stage of development, the potential for SARM’s is very high, because SARM’s offer high oral bioavailability without insult to the liver as with oral androgens and even some prohormones. SARM’s are anabolic even at low doses with high potential for increased strength, muscle mass, lowering body fat, endurance and recovery.
While the jury is still out on SARM’s as far as full blown admission into the bodybuilder’s arsenal of strength and mass gaining tools, they are still legal and do offer promise based on quite a bit of published research. I suggest investigating these compounds and giving them a try. There is certainly enough science to support their use today.