Our test - Xenoandrogens: how effective are they?

Aim of the study: The xenoandrogens emerged only recently and gained significant popularity among bodybuilders.

Their proponents claim that xenoandrogens are substances very similar to anabolic steroids in their effects but much less harmful to human health.

Such claims can be often heard from various producers of sports supplements but they are rarely based on anything more than wishful thinking or (more often) dishonest advertising.

Because the biological properties and specific way of action of xenoandrogens are still poorly understood we decided to test the commercially available substances by ourselves.

Methods and products used: Of the 12 available xenoandrogens we have chosen a combination of 2: Tren-enant 150 and Danabol. As their names suggest, they are meant to be legal alternatives to Trenboloneenanthate and Dianabol (methandienone) produced by MegaGear Ltd.

Dosage: Tren-enant 150 injected in the muscle once a week, Danabol 3 tablets daily (1/1/1).

The muscle mass measurement by the IN BODY 230 certified device (producer BIOSPACE) took place every Wednesday morning with control measurement 1 hour later.

Volunteers:Our volunteers were 48 males between 19 and 43 years of age. 8 of them had previous experience with use of anabolic steroids. We divided the volunteers into two groups: xenoandrogen group (X group) and control group (C group). The 24 volunteers in C group were given placebo. Our small test was double-blind, meaning that neither the volunteers nor our colleagues taking the measurements didn’t know who is using placebo and who is using xenoandrogens.

The average weight of our volunteers was 83.2 kg.

Duration of the study:Our test lasted for 12 weeks, which is the time recommended by the producer of commercially available xenoandrogens. All volunteers finished the test.

Training, diet and additional supplementation:Both groups of volunteers were on high-protein diet (about 1.5 g of protein per 1 kg of own body weight per day) and subject to heavy-resistance training 3 times a week during whole duration of the test.

The training consisted mostly of 3 exercises: barbell squats, dumbbell pres and v-bar pulldowns.

No other supplements were allowed two weeks before the study and during the study.

Results:

Average lean muscle mass growth for the whole group:

1. Week: 0 kg
2. Week: 0.1 kg
3. Week: 0.2 kg
4. Week: 0.3 kg
5. Week: 0.4 kg
6. Week: 0.4 kg
7. Week: 0.5 kg
8. Week: 0.6 kg
9. Week: 0.6 kg
10. Week: 0.6 kg
11. Week: 0.6 kg
12. Week: 0.6 kg

The average total lean muscle mass gained during the 12 weeks trial was thus 4.9 kg. The increases in muscle mass grew gradually from none in the first week to 0.6 kg in the last five weeks.

Side effects:

Fivevolunteers reported no side effects, two of them complained of acne and one of mild stomach ache. The side effects vanished within two weeks after xenoandrogen use. It must be stressed that complete medical exams before and after xenoandrogen use have not been part of this limited test. Therefore it is not possible to rule out additional complications resulting from the use of such products.

It is also important to bear in mind that only two out of twelve commercially available xenoandrogens have been tested.

On the other hand, considering the limited scope of our mini-trial, we cannot rule out the possibility that the reported side-effects have been caused by other factors.

Conclusion:

The muscle growth caused by xenoandrogens seems to be significant and is clearly higher than that of a control group.

The mucle mass increases during the first 7 weeks were not significant and were similar to increases gained with high-protein diet and resistance exercise only.

According to our estimate, lean body mass increase caused by a combination of xenoandrogens, high protein diet and heavy resistance exercise will produce results between 1/3 and ¼ smaller than combination of AAS (anabolic androgenic steroids), high protein diet and heavy resistance exercise. While it would be interesting to compare the effects of xenoandrogens to those of AAS, for ethical and legal reasons we didn’t work with an AAS group and we can only use anecdotal evidence when comparing the two groups of substances.

Interestingly, some people seem to respond poorly to stimulation by xenoandrogens. In our case, several volunteers reported much smaller lean muscle mass growth than the rest of the group (their muscle mass growth was in fact comparable to the control group).

Almost all of the volunteers with little muscle mass increases in our group claimed to have previous experience with AAS use. Therefore we can speculate that AAS use may de-sensitize the AR receptors in some people to such extent that they are less responsive to xenoandrogen therapy (but this is really only speculation and our working theory which requires further validation by additional trials).