74 replies to this topic

[platypus]

Do you strength-train?

I do from time to time, and working out improves my motivation, but I always wind up reaching that warning pain that leads to injury if not heeded. Unfortunately, being fat and sedentary for 25 years has left me weak. My T levels are also at the bottom of the "acceptible" range for my age group (31), and T is scheduled, so it won't be easy to get a prescription for it. I also lack the motivation to work out these days.

What kind of pain are you talking about? Since fat contains aromatase and converts testosterone to estrogen you might benefit from testosterone-boosters that inhibit this conversion.

[Hebbeh]

http://www.ergo-log....-treatment.html

http://www.ergo-log....31-stopped.html

Edited by Hebbeh, 16 June 2013 - 03:45 PM.

[Erebus]

http://www.ergo-log....-treatment.html

http://www.ergo-log....31-stopped.html

"Ergo log" is a truly great and informative blog, but they tend to be rather credulous, and they have a tenuous grasp of how the pharmaceutical industry works. Given the recent clinical trials, and given what we currently know of myostatin inhibiton, the only thing that can be said with certainty is that we don't know enough. There's certainly no clear indication that the pros outweigh the cons... and when the 'cons' involve the cardiovascular system, pharma companies get (justifiably) spooked. There's essentially no chance of getting a myostatin-blocking biological treatment into the clinic any time soon, and I wouldn't be surprised if the 'halted' project is, in reality, already 'cancelled'.

Follistatin has quite a few endocrine functions which go far beyond just inhibiting myostatin. I wouldn't mess with it lightly. Androgens build muscle just fine, can improve energy & sense of well-being, and have been used (more or less) safely for decades and decades.


As an aside, this sentence made me laugh out loud:
"...And why [doesn't Acceleron] declare war on the web-shop owners who happily ignore Acceleron's patents and sell ACE-031 for prices that no ordinary pharmaceuticals company can compete with."
Ummmm.... could it be because they're selling people bunk product? ACE-031 is an extremely complicated 'biological'. Not the sort of thing you'd normally see on the research chemical black market.

[pleb]

I also found quite a lot on there of interest, and agree that enough is not known , but there was enough for me to give it a try,
and yes androgens build muscle just fine if you can spend time in the gym and have enough muscles to start with to enable you to lift weights, and want to spend that amount of time, not everyone wants to take up weight lifting as a hobby,

the kids this was trailed on were 4 to 10 years old and don't have the muscle,for almost anything most die because of that at an average lifespan of 20 years,, also there are other conditions that may preclude you from doing weight training,
it has been cancelled as you mention , but just a few months ago they announced that it would be restarting as the side effects were not considered serious, so why the sudden stop, why did shire spend 45 million dollars to collaborate with Acceleron on this 3 years ago,

some from the peptide companies who are only sellers may be bunk but that's not the reason its so cheap its because it is made in China, compare HGH from Elli Lilly or Pfizer and the good stuff from China, there are good companies from China who are more than capable of producing this stuff, although there are also so many smaller companies that finding the good ones can prove difficult,
why is the difference so great, the Chinese stuff is 1/20th the cost, compare insulin made by Elli lilly and the price of that with their own HGH which is made in the same way and costs a similar amount to produce,,

ACE may be a complicated Biological, but modern peptide synthasis machines are programmed to produce stuff far more complicated than ACE

Edited by pleb, 17 June 2013 - 10:35 AM.

[YOLF]

I saw a video of a BB on youtube claiming to have been a test subject in part of a small group of 5 BBs.

[YOLF]

Do you strength-train?

I do from time to time, and working out improves my motivation, but I always wind up reaching that warning pain that leads to injury if not heeded. Unfortunately, being fat and sedentary for 25 years has left me weak. My T levels are also at the bottom of the "acceptible" range for my age group (31), and T is scheduled, so it won't be easy to get a prescription for it. I also lack the motivation to work out these days.

What kind of pain are you talking about? Since fat contains aromatase and converts testosterone to estrogen you might benefit from testosterone-boosters that inhibit this conversion.

I've looked into aromatase inhibitors, I'm not seeing any that look safe... I'd feel safer just using T to correct my physiology and pack a few extra pounds of muscle on for obesity prevention. I see a better outlook in this too... safer and more well protected by muscle mass from becoming fat again.

The pain is difficult to describe, but it happens near my max and isn't muscle tearing stuff, that I like feeling, this is definitely a warning pain of some kind, it feels similar to the "after pain" of bumping into something very rigid or maybe cavity pain, but somewhere in the general location of my upper arms and shoulders.

[Erebus]

I also found quite a lot on there of interest, and agree that enough is not known , but there was enough for me to give it a try,
and yes androgens build muscle just fine if you can spend time in the gym and have enough muscles to start with to enable you to lift weights, and want to spend that amount of time, not everyone wants to take up weight lifting as a hobby,

the kids this was trailed on were 4 to 10 years old and don't have the muscle,for almost anything most die because of that at an average lifespan of 20 years,, also there are other conditions that may preclude you from doing weight training,
it has been cancelled as you mention , but just a few months ago they announced that it would be restarting as the side effects were not considered serious, so why the sudden stop, why did shire spend 45 million dollars to collaborate with Acceleron on this 3 years ago,

some from the peptide companies who are only sellers may be bunk but that's not the reason its so cheap its because it is made in China, compare HGH from Elli Lilly or Pfizer and the good stuff from China, there are good companies from China who are more than capable of producing this stuff, although there are also so many smaller companies that finding the good ones can prove difficult,
why is the difference so great, the Chinese stuff is 1/20th the cost, compare insulin made by Elli lilly and the price of that with their own HGH which is made in the same way and costs a similar amount to produce,,

ACE may be a complicated Biological, but modern peptide synthasis machines are programmed to produce stuff far more complicated than ACE

Source on the 'restart' of ACE-031 clinical trials? If anything, I just did a quick search, and it looks like the product is indeed cancelled outright. At least with respect to the treatment of Duchenne MD. http://quest.mda.org...als-duchenne-md

With regards to your comment "why spend 45 million dollars?': Pharma companies routinely lose millions of dollars. For one poignant example: Many hundreds of millions have been wasted in PPAR research and drug development. The situation there was largely the same; the fundamental biology of the PPARs was not well-understood, and unexpected side-effects (& missed endpoints) became a real problem. Now the only PPAR drug left on the market (excluding fenofibrate, which has a number of off-targets,) is pioglitazone... and it's not exactly a blockbuster drug. Every other modern PPAR therapeutic has failed.
...Similarly, the biology of myostatin/follistatin is simply not well understood, not by a long shot. So developing myostatin-blockers for clinical use was a real gamble... and it looks like it didn't pay off. You don't throw good money after bad.

(Another example of a large loss: GSK bought Sirtris for $720 million a while back. Sirtris has come up with nothing for GSK, and they've recently had to shut it down. You can pretty much mark that entire purchase down as a loss. Ouch.)

Where production is concerned: You simply can't compare ACE-031 to HGH or Insulin. There are staggering differences where 'economies of scale' and process chemistry are concerned.
I live in China & work closely with several pharmaceutical and chemical companies. There's basically zero chance that small online-only 'research chem' companies in the USA or Europe are actually getting there hands on legitimate and pure ACE-031. If you don't believe me, I'd suggest that you send a small sample to a qualified lab for testing. (Or, as a good first step, just ask your supplier for analytical results beyond a simple .doc COA.)

Edited by Erebus, 17 June 2013 - 04:04 PM.

[platypus]

What kind of pain are you talking about? Since fat contains aromatase and converts testosterone to estrogen you might benefit from testosterone-boosters that inhibit this conversion.

I've looked into aromatase inhibitors, I'm not seeing any that look safe... I'd feel safer just using T to correct my physiology and pack a few extra pounds of muscle on for obesity prevention. I see a better outlook in this too... safer and more well protected by muscle mass from becoming fat again.

Certainly straight T would be better, but the boosters are still something you might want to consider, especially if your estrogen is elevated. The boosters are OTC supplements but they should still work to some degree.

The pain is difficult to describe, but it happens near my max and isn't muscle tearing stuff, that I like feeling, this is definitely a warning pain of some kind, it feels similar to the "after pain" of bumping into something very rigid or maybe cavity pain, but somewhere in the general location of my upper arms and shoulders.

Sounds like pain that you should not try pushing through. Still, keep training regularly and your performance will go up. I remember that dips used to be quite painful for me in a nasty way in the beginning but after a few weeks I never encountered that kind of pain again.

[pleb]

the restart was mentioned a couple of times but like a lot of the stuff i read i don't save it, which is a bad habit i admit, but the link you gave also mentions after saying it is cancelled that they do intend starting ace 031 trails again,
shire bought in after the rat trails before the human trails,

no i didn't compare ACE with HGH and insulin i compared HGH and insulin, as with any industry once the machinery is amortised against tax the costs to produce become almost equal as it is produced in batches,

ACE is a different item but as mentioned any of the computer controlled automatic synthesis machines widely used are programmed for any peptide up to the maximum the machine can handle it may take a few different processes and transferring between the machines but its still not complicated for peptide companies if you search there are many companies out there who will make almost any peptide going as long as they have details, any patent has to give that so all that's required is to look up the patent,,


i would be interested in why you say that there is zero chance to get the proper ACE 031, what makes it so special,

yes i did know about Sirtis its more than likely they were mislead about the item being researched,

[Erebus]

the restart was mentioned a couple of times but like a lot of the stuff i read i don't save it, which is a bad habit i admit, but the link you gave also mentions after saying it is cancelled that they do intend starting ace 031 trails again,
shire bought in after the rat trails before the human trails,

no i didn't compare ACE with HGH and insulin i compared HGH and insulin, as with any industry once the machinery is amortised against tax the costs to produce become almost equal as it is produced in batches,

ACE is a different item but as mentioned any of the computer controlled automatic synthesis machines widely used are programmed for any peptide up to the maximum the machine can handle it may take a few different processes and transferring between the machines but its still not complicated for peptide companies if you search there are many companies out there who will make almost any peptide going as long as they have details, any patent has to give that so all that's required is to look up the patent,,


i would be interested in why you say that there is zero chance to get the proper ACE 031, what makes it so special,

yes i did know about Sirtis its more than likely they were mislead about the item being researched,

The link I posted contained an article from 2011, with an update from last month. The update is the important part, and it says clearly that all work on ACE-031 has been halted.
Here's Acceleron's own press-release: http://www.acceleron...ion-on-ace-031/

And you make it seem so easy. Pop in a chemical soup, press a few buttons on a machine, et voila! -- Ace-031!
...It's never that simple. The synthesis of something as complicated as ACE-031, especially on very small scales & without a well-defined process, is impractical and difficult in the extreme. Most of these Chinese peptide vendors, moreover, are unscrupulous in the extreme. And most of their American and European re-sellers have no idea how to test a compound as complicated as ACE-031. (To say nothing of stability concerns, especially in transit.) So the situation is... well... to say that the odds are strongly against ACE-031 being on the research-chem market is putting it mildly.

It's true that peptides can be downright easy for large pharma companies to synthesize en masse. But let's not forget that they have spent years, and millions of dollars, designing processes for every single one of their biological drugs. You can't expect a cut-rate Chinese outfit to just take info from a patent & ship you ACE-031 within a couple of months, for a few hundreds or thousands of dollars. Nope.

If you have a sample that you want to test, I could point you in the right direction. Otherwise, caveat emptor would be my advice.

[pleb]

thanks for the offer re the testing :>)

i'm sure that whatever company that buys million dollar machines would employ competent people to run them and program them and biochemists whether that's in china or any other country,

and i also don't know how long a peptide chain ACE is, how much folding is needed to make the molecule
but i do know the largest producer of HGH is Chinese and that the owner, (probably with rich Chinese backers) who set it up, worked for ELLi lilly before he returned home,
,

yes the post i had seen is from earlier it was part of the first link you sent, i had seen the date as the 2nd of May this year but the article was lower down and cover the sequence of events leading up to the closure of the trails completely and was from last year,

[pleb]

This is a quote from Se Jin Lee professor of biochemistry at John Hopkins University, he's the guy who discovered myostatin a few years ago, the amount mentioned would be cost of the peptide synthesiser,
admittedly i think this is MYO 029 which wasn't very successfull on people with MDM

Dr. Se-Jin Lee and Myostatin Gene Therapy

Dr. Lee has created a gene therapy technique that introduces a potent myostatin inhibitor into the muscle using a non-viral vector (RSET from Invitrogen). Two injections can increase muscle mass in mice up to 60%. This type of muscle growth occurs without training. Dr. Lee feels that this technology could easily be applied to humans (bodybuilders). He feels a small lab or individual could exploit this technology for athletes and bodybuilders for as little as $20,000 to $50,000.

You can get enormous growth. Any small lab out there, even an individual who knows what they’re doing, could do this. The technology is relatively straightforward.

admittedly this is (i think) MYO 029 which didnt work very well at least on kids with MDM

Edited by pleb, 17 June 2013 - 06:58 PM.

[pleb]

sorry that should read DMD

[YOLF]

What kind of pain are you talking about? Since fat contains aromatase and converts testosterone to estrogen you might benefit from testosterone-boosters that inhibit this conversion.

I've looked into aromatase inhibitors, I'm not seeing any that look safe... I'd feel safer just using T to correct my physiology and pack a few extra pounds of muscle on for obesity prevention. I see a better outlook in this too... safer and more well protected by muscle mass from becoming fat again.

Certainly straight T would be better, but the boosters are still something you might want to consider, especially if your estrogen is elevated. The boosters are OTC supplements but they should still work to some degree.

The pain is difficult to describe, but it happens near my max and isn't muscle tearing stuff, that I like feeling, this is definitely a warning pain of some kind, it feels similar to the "after pain" of bumping into something very rigid or maybe cavity pain, but somewhere in the general location of my upper arms and shoulders.

Sounds like pain that you should not try pushing through. Still, keep training regularly and your performance will go up. I remember that dips used to be quite painful for me in a nasty way in the beginning but after a few weeks I never encountered that kind of pain again.

Any way to achieve a pathway to T without aromatase inhibitors? I'd like to maximize the benefit of my T boosters. I use a variety of simple supplements when I work out that are supposed to boost T production significantly (OO = +38%, 5g ginger root = +238%, and onion juice = +318% just eating enough onions to get a decent amount of juice though, otherwise I wouldn't need cryonics, I could wake the dead with my "aroma") but don't seem to have noticed a change in physiology, maybe the muscles I have are a little stronger than normal, but I don't think I've packed on more muscle or I'm thinking it's placebo... If I could get the T boosting stuff I do to work out the way it did in the studies, that would be even better than taking T as the percentage increase would be something along the lines of an order higher than what the bio-identical creams would give me. The above stuff can also give me enough energy and awareness not to need or get much sleep or to compensate for lack of sleep at times. I take 5mg of DHEA when I work out too.

[YOLF]

thanks for the offer re the testing :>)

i'm sure that whatever company that buys million dollar machines would employ competent people to run them and program them and biochemists whether that's in china or any other country,

and i also don't know how long a peptide chain ACE is, how much folding is needed to make the molecule
but i do know the largest producer of HGH is Chinese and that the owner, (probably with rich Chinese backers) who set it up, worked for ELLi lilly before he returned home,
,

yes the post i had seen is from earlier it was part of the first link you sent, i had seen the date as the 2nd of May this year but the article was lower down and cover the sequence of events leading up to the closure of the trails completely and was from last year,

Something I'd love to do as a LongeCity project is get a used mass selective detector, ms/gc, or hplc. They run about $500 and are generally well taken care of and just require routine maintenance (they're usually covered by subscription service contracts) The maintenance instructions look pretty easy and are freely available for HP and Agilent brands (I love HP for that particular consistancy in their product lineup), though it would probably take a 4-8 hours to do when needed. Parts for old stuff is cheap, and old stuff still detects alot of stuff that could be useful for community science. With something like this we could do our own specimen and substance tests (a good number of them) and we would stick to testing urine and saliva to avoid the really bad contagions, and maybe a few other things. We could also do audits on questionable supplements or offer free urine testing to members to track supplement benefits. Test kits can be purchased cheaply in alot of cases, most of the cost seems to be labor and equipment overhead. We'd be doing it on a volunteer basis with an older machine, so that means cheap for what we can do. I'd also be interested in getting a used scanning electron microscope. Lots of possibilities with one of those.

[platypus]

Certainly straight T would be better, but the boosters are still something you might want to consider, especially if your estrogen is elevated. The boosters are OTC supplements but they should still work to some degree.

Any way to achieve a pathway to T without aromatase inhibitors? I'd like to maximize the benefit of my T boosters. I use a variety of simple supplements when I work out that are supposed to boost T production significantly (OO = +38%, 5g ginger root = +238%, and onion juice = +318% just eating enough onions to get a decent amount of juice though, otherwise I wouldn't need cryonics, I could wake the dead with my "aroma") but don't seem to have noticed a change in physiology, maybe the muscles I have are a little stronger than normal, but I don't think I've packed on more muscle or I'm thinking it's placebo... If I could get the T boosting stuff I do to work out the way it did in the studies, that would be even better than taking T as the percentage increase would be something along the lines of an order higher than what the bio-identical creams would give me. The above stuff can also give me enough energy and awareness not to need or get much sleep or to compensate for lack of sleep at times. I take 5mg of DHEA when I work out too.

I'm not an expert in hormones by any stretch of the word but my understanding is that you'll need aromatase inhibitors with T therapy as well, otherwise you'll also spike estrogens. For T-boosters I'd recommend that you go on bodybuilding-forums and read user reviews on available commercial products and purchase one of them.

[YOLF]

Is there a cause to having increased aromatase? can I divert estrogen or blunt its receptors?

Is there a cause to having increased aromatase? can I divert estrogen or blunt its receptors?

[zorba990]

Is there a cause to having increased aromatase? can I divert estrogen or blunt its receptors?

Is there a cause to having increased aromatase? can I divert estrogen or blunt its receptors?

You would probably be better off exploring this on the bodybuilding forums as they
have numerous posts on cycling androgens, pre-post-during cycle supplements, etc.
But, IMO it has very little to do with health or life extension (not that there is anything wrong with that).

:-)

[zorba990]

Follistatin content in early human milk (colostrum?). http://lib.bioinfo.pl/paper:12519018

[YOLF]

So we produce follistatin when we lactate? Do men have more follistatin than women? Is follistatin production independant of sex hormones? If I were to induce lactation in myself (male) would I benefit from the increased production? Women burn 300 calories/day breast feeding, could a man expect similar?

[Logic]

Extract of Heteropterys aphrodisiaca strengthens tendons
http://www.ergo-log....hrodisiaca.html

[PWAIN]

Wonder if this is something that could be made? group buy would be nice...

[YOLF]

I think someone was saying it would be hard to synthesize. Though I imagine it is available from the original pharma company even if not directly. The medium size chem companies have to be pretty good at what they do and likely specialize in something or are part of a coop that allows them to share ownership of some very expensive stuff.

[zorba990]

Look like myo hmp is the latest in this genre. Safety profiles of these things seem unknown though.
However since follistatin has suppressing effects on LH maybe Myo Hmp would be safer for short term use
http://www.ironmagaz...bitors-myo-hmp/

"We have recently witnessed the immergence of several, effective myostatin regulating drugs, with the most recent of these being Myostatin-HMP. This product works by binding to free myostatin within the bloodstream and target tissues, effectively is prohibiting it from exerting its effects within muscle tissue. When myostatin levels are lowered, the walls come down (figuratively speaking), allowing for the accumulation of muscle protein at an exaggerated rate through both enhanced protein synthesis, as well as an increase in the rate of muscle cell differentiation."

[pleiotropic]

 

 

 

For what it's worth, mice have something like 50 times as much myostatin as humans, such that this is probably going to be one of those things that works better in mice than people.

you haven't seen the videos of kids born with a myostatin deficiency, have you?

 

I've heard tell. But that's not really the question; what we want to know is if in a normal human, you can suppress myostatin with oral follistatin to the point that you get more muscle growth. The mice had a follistatin transgene, so they were getting a lot of follistatin. It's usually a pretty good bet that something will work better in mice than people; I hope that's not the case, but the odds are not spectacular.

 

There's a product out there claiming to do this but no real proof it works (myo-t12).
I wonder if there are any negative side effects of elevating Follistatin?

Here's a study using primates:
http://www.ncbi.nlm....les/PMC2852878/

 

 

Human study has been done now:

 

The effects of a myostatin inhibitor on lean body mass, strength, and power in resistance trained males

 

http://www.jissn.com/content/11/S1/P42

 

This is just a poster presentation.  I assume the full study is forthcoming?

[niner]

Human study has been done now:

 

The effects of a myostatin inhibitor on lean body mass, strength, and power in resistance trained males

 

http://www.jissn.com/content/11/S1/P42

 

This is just a poster presentation.  I assume the full study is forthcoming?

 

As a matter of fact, today I got a package on my doorstep containing 600 grams of the very stuff they trialed in that study.  It came up in the BioViva thread a few days back, and I got curious about it, and started looking into it.  Supplement Warehouse had it for a really good price; I think it was around $44 for 300g.  There were a lot of rave reviews at BB sites and Amazon, along with a non-trivial number of people saying it did nothing for them.  So I'm gonna run the experiment.   Myo-X, Myo T12, and Fortetropin are the various names for this material. 

[zorba990]

Human study has been done now:
The effects of a myostatin inhibitor on lean body mass, strength, and power in resistance trained males

http://www.jissn.com/content/11/S1/P42

This is just a poster presentation. I assume the full study is forthcoming?

As a matter of fact, today I got a package on my doorstep containing 600 grams of the very stuff they trialed in that study. It came up in the BioViva thread a few days back, and I got curious about it, and started looking into it. Supplement Warehouse had it for a really good price; I think it was around $44 for 300g. There were a lot of rave reviews at BB sites and Amazon, along with a non-trivial number of people saying it did nothing for them. So I'm gonna run the experiment. Myo-X, Myo T12, and Fortetropin are the various names for this material.

Curious about this too, as well as:
https://teamtlr.com/...-inhibitor.html

[mmats]

 

Human study has been done now:

 

The effects of a myostatin inhibitor on lean body mass, strength, and power in resistance trained males

 

http://www.jissn.com/content/11/S1/P42

 

This is just a poster presentation.  I assume the full study is forthcoming?

 

As a matter of fact, today I got a package on my doorstep containing 600 grams of the very stuff they trialed in that study.  It came up in the BioViva thread a few days back, and I got curious about it, and started looking into it.  Supplement Warehouse had it for a really good price; I think it was around $44 for 300g.  There were a lot of rave reviews at BB sites and Amazon, along with a non-trivial number of people saying it did nothing for them.  So I'm gonna run the experiment.   Myo-X, Myo T12, and Fortetropin are the various names for this material. 

 

 

Hey any update on the experiment?

[niner]

Through sheer coincidence, I'm eating some as I type.  (Tastes like vanilla cake crumbs.)  This experiment is perfect for a placebo response, because knowing that I'm taking something that should give me an edge, I'm probably working harder.  That said, I feel stronger and am lifting more weight.  It hasn't been long enough for anything really conclusive, though.  I'm taking ten grams a day, so what I have should last a couple months.  If I can get back to where I was before a couple injuries kept me out of the gym for the better part of a year, then I'll be very happy.

[mmats]

Through sheer coincidence, I'm eating some as I type.  (Tastes like vanilla cake crumbs.)  This experiment is perfect for a placebo response, because knowing that I'm taking something that should give me an edge, I'm probably working harder.  That said, I feel stronger and am lifting more weight.  It hasn't been long enough for anything really conclusive, though.  I'm taking ten grams a day, so what I have should last a couple months.  If I can get back to where I was before a couple injuries kept me out of the gym for the better part of a year, then I'll be very happy.

 

Sounds good so far. The true test will come in a couple months when you decide whether to purchase more or not