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when we think about enhancing testosterone there are several avenues that can be followed, and if we combine the right supps we can achieve synergistic effects. I believe that continued use of a combination of supplements that would increase natural testosterone production, supplement it with a exogenous testosterone precursor, and prevent its conversion into estrogens will result in a gradually rising testosterone level, increasing some given amount with each consecutive daily use. ok, most people have probably picked supps with that basic idea in mind, and there are supps that are based on that idea - make more, and keep it once you've got it.

what really strikes me as being important is the TIMING of this supplementation, and its relationship to the blueprint. if one begins taking supps on the first day of Feast, ok, good, your T levels will rise, and they'll keep getting a little higher each day. by the time you finish Feast you'll probably have fairly respectable levels if using the above strategy of make it and keep it. here's the alternative that I propose:

start taking a synergistic T-boosting combination at a given point before beginning Famine, say, 2 weeks prior to, and then continue taking this combination during Famine. this violates Rob's no-supps-during-famine rule but here's my reasoning. even if you have highly elevated T levels during Famine, it shouldn't prevent muscle breakdown; once your body is depleted of its amino acid reserves it will be forced to start breaking down muscle. so although you have a potentially very anabolic level of testosterone in your system, your body is unable to use it in an anabolic manner. I do not have a degree in medicine or nutrition so this is pure bro science but I think it's a valid conclusion. maybe if you were popping d-bol and shooting test you'd be able to avoid some breakdown but I can't imagine doing Famine and somehow avoiding muscle breakdown just because my T levels are high. everyone who's done the third famine workout will agree, I think.

for these purposes one would probably want to pursue a diet that is high in fats in order to provide adequate material for testosterone production, together with avoiding fruit consumption (due to potential boosting of serum albumin levels) during both the pre-Famine stage and Famine itself.

my thoughts on supps to use...

1) supplements that increase the body's ability to create its own testosterone through various means - a prime example would be Eurycoma longfolia / Longjack extract; you could augment that with l-Dopa, Bulbine natalensis, Fadogia agrestis and Suma.
2) supps that supply an exogenous precursor - of course this is transdermal DHEA! and if you can think of anything else say something!
2) supps that cause the body to create more precursor hormones that then create testosterone. here we are talking about high-saponin tribulus extract, creating leutinizing hormone; high-saponin-content Fenugreek extract.
3) supps that prevent free testosterone from converting into an estrogen or being rendered useless by SHBG - nettle extract is a great SHBG inhibitor, and Urtica diotica both inhibits SHBG and binds to aromatase. I believe that Longjack has some effect in this category, reducing the amount of testosterone that is converted to estrogens. 7-methoxyflavone is another AI that's available cheaply.

thoughts?

interesting thoughts, nigh70wl...you have obviously put a lot of thought into that...

I am currently running KA for the first 4 weeks of feast, and I started using AN starting in week 3 so I would have some overlap...

I also take Nettle Extract, just started taking Holy Basil extract(drops cortisol levels, which competes with testosterone, effectively boosting testosterone), and an often overlooked one is simple Vitamin D, which is not actually a vitamin, but a hormone! It has been shown in numerous studies, the higher the vitamin D level, the higher the testosterone...

something else which might be of interest would be D-Aspartic Acid(DAA), which boosts LH, which in turn boosts T...

This is quite an interesting theory, and I applaud the thought that went into this!

I'm still opposed to boosting test during Famine, for reasons specified in 2.0 (i.e. we are looking to create an "alarm" state and yes, that includes slightly depressing hormone levels - for the HUGE re-bound seen during Feast).

However, it did get my gears turning. If the objective is to mitigate any real muscle loss during Famine (very little is real, btw), a testosterone mimetic may be of benefit during this time.

Here, I'd consider iicarian. If you'll recall, iicarin mimics testosterone yet it doesn't boost it like a quality Trib, Lonjax extract would. Thus, you may achieve your objective of maintaining more muscle tissue during Famine, without jeopardizing the BIG rebound in test, when true test boosters are introduced during Feast.

This was an EXCELLENT piece of analytical work, nigh70wl.

Thank you, for your contribution here!

maintaining muscle tissue during Famine is a goal and effect that I hadn't even considered... but now that you mention it, it needs investigation! if one could experience the rapid weight gain that occurs during/after the beginning of the refeed, without having lost the usual 5lbs. of muscle, that would be pretty awesome.

my idea here is that if you wait until the beginning of Feast to begin building up your testosterone levels, you won't benefit from the increased anabolism that maximum test levels impart until several weeks into Feast. but if you were to start building those levels up 2 weeks before beginning Famine, and during Famine continued boosting test while suppressing its conversion / being rendered useless, you'd find yourself at the beginning of Feast with a highly anabolic level of testosterone in your body. then of course you'd want to maintain your use of test-boosters.

I'm thinking of it as the difference in anabolism between a person who has been injecting long-ester testosterone for a length of time, who THEN begins lifting weights - the results that person would see would pile on a lot quicker than the results that the person who starts lifting and then starts using testosterone would see.

matter, I picked up a couple of bottles of vitamin D yesterday as per your recommendation. I'm also adding holy basil extract and DAA to my to-buy list for when I try this

nigh7Owl, I understand what you’re getting at, but I think Rob is pointing you in the right direction with “opposed to boosting test during Famine, for reasons specified in 2.0” (but imo, mimetics would not be appropriate intervention…)
The principle being applied is, instead of ‘preserve and maintain and prevent any fade’, it is long term better to go ahead and actually cycle the T, etc. levels.
I personally get best overall results across multiple cycles with this issue by doing focused ‘preserve and maintain’ work with the matrix of hormones in Cruise. Wrote about this a while back in an article called Alternative Cruise . Maybe Rob could send/attach you a copy. hth

All the best.

BrainSquirt wrote:nigh7Owl, I understand what you’re getting at, but I think Rob is pointing you in the right direction with “opposed to boosting test during Famine, for reasons specified in 2.0” (but imo, mimetics would not be appropriate intervention…)
The principle being applied is, instead of ‘preserve and maintain and prevent any fade’, it is long term better to go ahead and actually cycle the T, etc. levels.
I personally get best overall results across multiple cycles with this issue by doing focused ‘preserve and maintain’ work with the matrix of hormones in Cruise. Wrote about this a while back in an article called Alternative Cruise . Maybe Rob could send/attach you a copy. hth

All the best.

Indeed!

nigh70wl, please PM me your email addy. Brain, I/we'd like you to know EVERYONE gets a copy of "alternative cruise". It's that good.

While I applaud experimentation/theorizing like this, let's remember both Famine and Cruise were more of less left "untouched" in 3.0 for a very, very good reason;

They WORK, and work well for virtually everyone...

BrainSquirt wrote:The principle being applied is, instead of ‘preserve and maintain and prevent any fade’, it is long term better to go ahead and actually cycle the T, etc. levels.

long term, I absolutely agree. however I am proposing a pattern of testosterone boosting and supplementation for a period of, say, five or six weeks. my point is that we've got such dramatic muscle growth and weight gain in the first two weeks of Feast, but our T levels don't mimic that. instead of beginning Feast with high T levels we're beginning it with, as Rob said, slightly depressed levels, which then return to normal after we start refeeding, and then, if you're using T-boosters, your T levels will follow a pattern of linear increase. so it ends up that you have high T levels not at the beginning of Feast, when (I theorize) it'd do you the most good, but at the end, when the initial burst of weight gain has slowed down.

I read through your alternative cruise document and it's definitely good stuff. I like the holistic point of view that you take on the matter and after having read it I intend to get back into some vinyasa yoga 2x a week during my upcoming Cruise. however I do not think that any of this has much bearing on my point of interest here, which is that of testosterone anabolism at the beginning of Feast.

I'll put it this way, and it's not a rhetorical question, please answer it if you can... what harm could heightened testosterone levels potentially do to the Famine process, and by what mechanism?

If I understand you correctly, you’re looking to come into feast with elevated T levels instead of just finishing with high T, right?
My answer - “heightened testosterone levels potentially do to the Famine process” during one (or occasional) BP cycle should do no harm.
Give it a try and let us know . Unless you have other issues involved, I will be surprised if you get significantly better overall results than you would with the concerted rebound provided by the BP protocol.

I'll also stand by the principle espoused in Alt Cruise article of 'keeping optimal t levels free' vs 'boosting per se' - in all phases of any protocol.
This may be a little off topic, but I must say it for the whole audience. Long term and in general, athletes who suck down T boosters 'day in and out' etc. are setting themselves up for some unbalanced and disappointing decades later in life.

All the best

yup you've got it, that's what I'm looking at. it seems to me that the rate of Feast muscle growth starts out very high and then decreases in a more or less linear fashion. so I would like to hit Feast with all cylinders firing on high-test (hah ...) so as to have the T side of the anabolic state as optimal as possible as quickly as possible.

as far as your point of maintaining T levels rather than boosting them during Cruise, I couldn't agree more. IMO especially if one is using transdermal DHEA - I haven't heard anybody comment on it having endo DHEA suppressive effects but I personally don't want to take any chances, and I think most BPers probably feel the same way. the old bod has just been through a whirlwind of BP growth and supp use, gotta give it a chance to rest and recuperate.

I'm wavering on whether I should try this or not. I'm genetically prone to hairloss - I'm 23 and already have a receding hairline - and I think that increased T levels will result in increased T conversion to DHT and thus accelerate my hair loss. does anybody here have this issue and have any comments on it by any chance?

nigh70wl wrote:yup you've got it, that's what I'm looking at. it seems to me that the rate of Feast muscle growth starts out very high and then decreases in a more or less linear fashion. so I would like to hit Feast with all cylinders firing on high-test (hah ...) so as to have the T side of the anabolic state as optimal as possible as quickly as possible.

as far as your point of maintaining T levels rather than boosting them during Cruise, I couldn't agree more. IMO especially if one is using transdermal DHEA - I haven't heard anybody comment on it having endo DHEA suppressive effects but I personally don't want to take any chances, and I think most BPers probably feel the same way. the old bod has just been through a whirlwind of BP growth and supp use, gotta give it a chance to rest and recuperate.

I'm wavering on whether I should try this or not. I'm genetically prone to hairloss - I'm 23 and already have a receding hairline - and I think that increased T levels will result in increased T conversion to DHT and thus accelerate my hair loss. does anybody here have this issue and have any comments on it by any chance?

Best to play it conservative, but I haven't heard a single report yet.

Even in those prone...

BrainSquirt wrote:nigh7Owl, I understand what you’re getting at, but I think Rob is pointing you in the right direction with “opposed to boosting test during Famine, for reasons specified in 2.0” (but imo, mimetics would not be appropriate intervention…)
The principle being applied is, instead of ‘preserve and maintain and prevent any fade’, it is long term better to go ahead and actually cycle the T, etc. levels.
I personally get best overall results across multiple cycles with this issue by doing focused ‘preserve and maintain’ work with the matrix of hormones in Cruise. Wrote about this a while back in an article called Alternative Cruise . Maybe Rob could send/attach you a copy. hth

All the best.

How do I obtain a copy of the article 'Alternative Cruise' referenced in the quotation from Brainsquirt? If it is a standalone document, I am sure I did not receive it with my BluePrint materials. If it is embedded somewhere within, then I've missed it...

renman01 wrote:

BrainSquirt wrote:nigh7Owl, I understand what you’re getting at, but I think Rob is pointing you in the right direction with “opposed to boosting test during Famine, for reasons specified in 2.0” (but imo, mimetics would not be appropriate intervention…)
The principle being applied is, instead of ‘preserve and maintain and prevent any fade’, it is long term better to go ahead and actually cycle the T, etc. levels.
I personally get best overall results across multiple cycles with this issue by doing focused ‘preserve and maintain’ work with the matrix of hormones in Cruise. Wrote about this a while back in an article called Alternative Cruise . Maybe Rob could send/attach you a copy. hth

All the best.

How do I obtain a copy of the article 'Alternative Cruise' referenced in the quotation from Brainsquirt? If it is a standalone document, I am sure I did not receive it with my BluePrint materials. If it is embedded somewhere within, then I've missed it...

Brain's treatise "Alternative Cruise" is part of the "other" 3.0's distributed after answering a few questions... It's a FANTASTIC contribution (much like Buffer's), and he did it out of the goodness of his heart.

Therefore, check your PM's...

renman01 wrote:

BrainSquirt wrote:nigh7Owl, I understand what you’re getting at, but I think Rob is pointing you in the right direction with “opposed to boosting test during Famine, for reasons specified in 2.0” (but imo, mimetics would not be appropriate intervention…)
The principle being applied is, instead of ‘preserve and maintain and prevent any fade’, it is long term better to go ahead and actually cycle the T, etc. levels.
I personally get best overall results across multiple cycles with this issue by doing focused ‘preserve and maintain’ work with the matrix of hormones in Cruise. Wrote about this a while back in an article called Alternative Cruise . Maybe Rob could send/attach you a copy. hth

All the best.

How do I obtain a copy of the article 'Alternative Cruise' referenced in the quotation from Brainsquirt? If it is a standalone document, I am sure I did not receive it with my BluePrint materials. If it is embedded somewhere within, then I've missed it...

Brain's treatise "Alternative Cruise" is part of the "other" 3.0's distributed after answering a few questions... It's a FANTASTIC contribution (much like Buffer's), and he did it out of the goodness of his heart.

Therefore, check your PM's...