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A long duration of treatment is absolutely necessary to get a proper restoration of function. These PCT protocols involve a month-long HCG are laughable and they're not meant to be truly efficacious.
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Hello friends, welcome to the second episode in a four-episode series on how to restore testosterone and fertility after the use of anabolic androgenic steroids. This is for educational purposes only and I am NOT a medical doctor. I want you to be aware that there is a detailed, more detailed blog post down below, not too detailed, oh, just more detailed and useful with citations that I highly recommend you guys to read in addition to this video.
In this video and in the next video, we will be talking about tools that are used to to repair, to repair dysfunction in the HPG axis and to restore to testosterone predicted production and the testicles and to restore the ability to mature and differentiate sperm cells in the testicles. Now, before I talk about the tools, I'd like to briefly review what we discussed in the last episode. Yesterday, what you remember is that the brain has two parts that are relevant to the production of testosterone and different maturity and differentiation of sperm cells in the testes. That is the hypothalamus and the pituitary. The hypothalamus produces something called gonadotropin-releasing hormone, which in turn signals to the pituitary to produce luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone. That is LH and FSH. LH signals to the leydig cells in the testes to produce testosterone in the testes, thereby LH increases testosterone in the testes and begins the cycle of spermatogenesis. FSH, on the other hand, signals to the Sertoli cells in the testes to mature and differentiate these new sperm cells being created.
Now, the tools that are used in this episode directly relate to simulating the effects of LH and FSH in the body. What that means is, instead of going into the brain to try to repair the production from the pituitary, we're stimulating the biological functions of LH and FSH in the body such that the testes can respond to those signals. So, specifically, the first tool that we'll talk about is human chorionic gonadotropin, that is HCG. HCG is a biomarker found in, I mean, it as a biomarker, it is used to predict pregnancy in women. It's found in the urine of pregnant women and originally has a formica as a pharmaceutical tool, it was used, it was developed from the urine of pregnant females. Later, recombinant versions were created that thankfully show equal efficaciousness as the natural derived product.
Now, what HCG does is, structurally, it's very similar to both LH and FSH. However, the small changes in its structure from LH and FSH allow it to be, first of all, to have a longer half-life than LH. It has a 36-hour half-life as compared to a 30-minute half-life. And second of all, and quite importantly, it has greater affinity for the LH receptor than even LH does. So, what happens is, when HCG is injected into the body subcutaneously as a man, it simulates the effect of LH, thereby signaling to the testes to begin intratesticular testosterone production, and this begins the stages of sperm development.
Now, human menopausal gonadotropin, which is also called HMG, is also, it's derived from postmenopausal women. Originally, it was derived directly from them. Then recombinant versions were created that seemed to be effective equally, although there are less studies on this. And what HM, what HMG is, is basically, it, first of all, it has a large, the majority of it is sort of useless urinary proteins that are not effective for what we're trying to do. But a small part of it has FSH, LH, and HCG. It was mainly used for that portion of it that had FSH, trying to signal to the body to replace the signal from the pituitary that involves FSH to signal to the testes to mature and differentiate the sperm that have been created.
Now, what happened was, lately, in the last 10 to 15 years, there were developments that led to what's called recombinant FSH, which goes directly to the subject that we really want to deal with. While HMG has a little bit of FSH in it, recombinant FSH is entirely produced of FSH. I mean, it's entirely composed of that, which is a little odd because similar doses of both are used, but not in clinical literature. Nonetheless, FSH is basically the thing that we're really trying to get to. Now, there are no studies that compare FSH efficaciousness to HMG. However, there are studies that analyze the efficaciousness of recombinant FSH itself, and it seems very effective at the tasks that we want to accomplish.
Now, I will let you guys know something. HCG administered alone will stimulate intratesticular testosterone production, which we call ITT, and that will lead to sperm being created in the testes. So, HCG can yield not only testicular production of testosterone but also fertility on its own. In fact, it sometimes does this in some studies up to 70% of the people. However, FSH, recombinant FSH, which is the superior version of HMG, cannot do this on its own. Additionally, HCG's effect on fertility is definitely enhanced when it's combined with FSH. So, what we can tell from this is that if you can only pick one, pick HCG. But if you can pick two, you definitely pick two, and you definitely pick recombinant FSH, which is called rFSH. So, that's sort of the lowdown on what HMG and HCG are.
Now, in terms of dosing from clinical studies, what I can tell you guys is that HCG has been used in quite different amounts, from as low as, you know, for for testosterone replacement therapy, has been used at 500 IU two to three times a week. And which value is very interesting for testosterone replacement therapy, it's shown that this dose can maintain all the health parameters of semen. However, I really speculate that this would not be true if somebody was using stronger androgens or higher doses of androgens. But still, it's something to keep in mind. If you are using anabolic androgenic steroids, it's always better to continue to use your HCG. You know, when I was much younger, we didn't know if using too much HCG for too long may actually, it somehow caused a permanent reduction in your LH receptor sensitivity or something like that. So, we were very cautious about using HCG throughout our very long cycles. However, I very much regret this and I would not like you to make the same mistake. So, I wanted to make this note here. It seems to save the semen across all parameters, very interesting. Again, higher doses of androgens or stronger androgens may not, it may not be as efficacious for this purpose. But nonetheless, various doses of HCG have been used for this purpose from recovering from androgenic and anabolic androgenic steroids doses from 1,000 to 5,000 units twice or two to three times a week have been used. So, that the total maximum amount is 15,000 that I found in the clinical literature. There are studies in which clinicians have used one dose a week of 10,000 units. However, I really don't think that this is ideal given the half-life of HCG, which is 36 hours and not, you know, I don't know why, to be honest, I believe that this was done mistakenly by undereducated physicians. But the majority of them used two to three times a week dosing schedule. The same dosing schedule is used for HMG. However, the units used are between 75 units to 400 units. And a similar dose, I'm talking about, sorry, FSH, but a similar dose was used for HMG as well. So, you can look at these things as working together. If you can only prefer one, of course, that's for educational purposes only. But if you can only prefer one, you prefer HCG. And if you can get both, you prefer HCG and rFSH, recombinant FSH. If you can't get recombinant FSH, then you may want to use HMG. Not me. Why don't you definitely want to use it? If you, if you can keep in mind, though, that HMG is quite difficult to get your hands on. And HCG and HMG are both very expensive when gotten from a pharmaceutical company, you know, through a prescription from a doctor. And not only are they expensive, but they are not covered by insurance. Generally, generally speaking, insurance will not cover any fertility issues. So, you may have to spend thousands and thousands of dollars to get the effects needed. And why they would be so expensive, also, it's not just because the products are expensive, but although I haven't discussed it here and I'll discuss it in the fourth episode in more detail, a long duration of treatment is absolutely necessary to get a proper restoration of function. These PCT protocols involve a month-long HCG are laughable and they're not meant to be truly efficacious.
Now, what you find in the world of AAS is that most people who use AAS for a significant amount of time basically stay on AAS for the rest of their life. It is very rare that you find somebody that used AAS for like over a year in a row or two years that completely goes off it. And because of this reason, there is not that much known from empirical practice from within the community about what it really takes to recover your testosterone production and your fertility long term. So, this is why I tell you to be aware of those short PCT cycles of two weeks to one month thinking that that will really restore you. What that will do is get the gonads to start producing testosterone, which is great because involved, you have something called the use it or lose it theory, which is you need that stuff to work. The longer it doesn't work, the worse position you're going to get in. However, don't think that one month means that you can just stay off testosterone replacement therapy or anabolic androgenic steroids and be recovered. No, if you really want to recover, you will be using six months or more of a protocol. So, anyway, we'll talk about the protocols in detail in the fourth episode. I thank you guys for watching this video. Please check out the blog post below and look forward to another episode tomorrow, which will be on terms and anti-aromatase inhibitors. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next time.
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