Recently, the term prohormones has been increasingly heard. What are prohormones and how are they used? Effects of prohormones and their features. When people start discussing sports supplements, the terms "pro-anabolic", "prohormone" and "steroids" can often be heard. It must be said that they all mean the same thing and refer to the same product. Prohormones are precursors or building blocks. Once in the human body, these substances are converted into testosterone. Let's take a look at what prohormones are and in more detail.
Most of the prohormones are inactive and have weak anabolic properties. From this we can conclude that prohormones can produce the entire effect only after conversion into the male hormone, which is their active form. Theoretically, thanks to prohormones, it is possible to raise testosterone levels, chemical conversion negatively affects the effectiveness of drugs. It is this feature of prohormones that limits the effectiveness. According to recent studies, only 10 to 15 percent of prohormones can be converted to male hormone. Of course, this is a very small fraction of the actual dosage.
The most common precursors in the human body are androstenedione, dehydroepianrosterone and norandrostenedione. All of these drugs are natural and can be purchased without a prescription. They are not prohibited drugs, unlike anabolic drugs. Prohormones are completely legal, but at the same time, they are ineffective in comparison with traditional steroids. They act as a legal and safe alternative to AAS.
Effects of prohormones
According to the theory, if prohormones are used as an additive to the athlete's nutritional program, then this should lead to an increase in the content of the male hormone in the body, an increase in the anabolic background and, accordingly, accelerate the growth of muscle tissue. To understand how effective prohormones are in practice, two questions should be answered.
- Can prohormones raise testosterone levels? Thanks to the latest clinical trials, it can be said that androstenedione is actually capable of doing this at a dosage of 300 milligrams. However, to our great regret, this drug is not capable of producing a similar effect for every person. More often than not, the level of the male hormone simply rises to the normal or physiological peak of a young healthy adult male.
- Will such a slight increase in testosterone levels increase strength and accelerate muscle mass growth? Simply put, it has been scientifically proven that prohormones are able to raise the level of the male hormone, but whether this will have a positive effect on weight gain. And here we will be disappointed. None of the experiments could reveal any significant increase in strength and mass when using prohormones.
However, it should be noted that although such an unpleasant result was obtained, it must be remembered that it is far from immediately possible to prove anything by scientific methods. Suffice it to recall that it took scientists more than fifty years to prove the ability of AAS to accelerate the growth of muscle mass.
A lot of research will still be required to be able to say with confidence about the presence or absence of a positive effect of prohormones on the athlete's body. In the meantime, we can assume that due to the increase in the anabolic background caused by prohormones, athletes who use them receive some advantage.
Side effects of prohormones
Although prohormones are legal drugs, they still have some disadvantages. All this was established in clinical trials, which makes the information reliable. During the experiment, the subjects consumed 300 milligrams of androstenedione for 12 weeks. In general, there were no abnormalities in health, however, scientists noticed that in some cases, the side effects from the use of prohormones may coincide with those that occur when using anabolic drugs.
The chemical reactions by which androstenedione is converted into a male hormone are very complex and the main problem is that this substance can be converted not only into testosterone, but also estrogens. In turn, an increase in the level of female sex hormones in the male body can lead to the development of gynecomastia or, more simply, to an increase in the mammary glands. In turn, an increase in testosterone levels negatively affects the body of women, causing masculinization. It is also possible to close the growth window in children.
However, not everything is as bad as it might seem. Side effects when taking prohormones are much less pronounced in comparison with anabolic drugs. They are also completely safe for the liver and do not affect the synthesis of follicle-stimulating and luteinizing hormones. As a result of all studies on the effects of pro-anabolic steroids, scientists have found that when they are used for no more than three months by healthy adult men, side effects are excluded.
Are prohormones considered steroids?
Some of the legal anabolic drugs began to appear on the market just a few years ago. Now they can be freely purchased in many countries and almost all of them are steroid precursors. There are also substances that cause certain doubts. They contain secret ingredients obtained from plant materials, as well as certain insects.
As is often the case, not all supplement manufacturers are honest and try to cheat consumers. A couple of years ago in the United States, a group of scientists decided to conduct a study of 10 drugs from different manufacturers. As a result, a discrepancy between the true composition and the declared one was revealed, or there were no prohormones in their preparations at all. There were six such brands.
Three manufacturers made preparations with a composition that fully corresponded to the declared one, and in one only traces of prohormones were found. It should also be noted that some manufacturers give their product names that are very reminiscent of conventional AAS. If the composition of such products really included such substances as boldenone, testosterone, stanozol and others, then such products would be recognized as illegal and included in the list of controlled substances. Be very careful when purchasing pro-anabolic steroids. That's all that I wanted to tell, answering the question - what are prohormones?
Check out an overview of one of the prohormones in this video:
