The term “selective androgen receptor modulator” (also known as “SARM”) refers to a category of medication that shares chemical similarities with anabolic steroids.
Steroids are well known for their ability to stimulate muscular growth; nevertheless, they also generate a wide variety of other physiological changes in the body, the most majority of which are either undesirable or detrimental. Difficult problems, such as unusually rapid hair growth, acne, loss of testicles, and testicular atrophy. Steroids, in their most basic form, “carpet bomb” your body with powerful hormones, and while your muscles are one potential “target,” there are many more.
SARMs are not like other drugs. SARMs do not touch a large variety of organs in your body; rather, they interact selectively with only a handful of different tissues, mostly your muscles and bones. This results in a more potent anabolic effect.
In any case, that is the concept.
SARMs supplements may appear to be the holy grail of muscle-building, but the reality is that they are mainly unregulated and have not been studied on humans. Because of this, it is impossible to make an accurate prediction regarding the adverse effects that SARMs may cause or how they may affect your health in the long run.
In addition, the makers of SARMs are not subject to much regulation from the government, thus they are free to make virtually any claims they like about their products.
You are going to learn the following things by reading this article:
The question of whether or not SARMs are safe to use
The most typical adverse reactions to SARMs
The various forms that SARMs can take.
How closely SARMs are related to steroids, in addition to other information.
Just what are these SARMs?
SARMs are a type of therapeutic medicine that are chemically similar to anabolic steroids, but they were initially discovered when scientists were working on treatments for prostate cancer. SARMs have the potential to be used in the treatment of a wide range of medical conditions.
Since then, SARMs have been investigated for their use as treatments for
Hypogonadism (diminished activity of the testes or ovaries) (diminished activity of the testes or ovaries)
Osteopenia and osteoporosis
Alzheimer’s disease
Benign prostatic enlargement
urinary incontinence that is brought on by stress
Sarcopenia (muscle and strength loss due to age) (muscle and strength loss due to aging)
The disease is known as muscular dystrophy.
Cachexia (weakness and withering of the body due to severe chronic disease) (weakness and wasting of the body due to severe chronic illness)
The capacity of SARMs to help build muscle and increase performance is the primary focus of most of the buzz around these compounds, despite the fact that they may have various applications in medicine.
Supplement sellers claim that selective androgen receptor modulators (SARMs) are able to simulate the advantageous effects of testosterone on muscle and bone tissue, while having a negligible impact on the body’s other cells and, by extension, the endocrine system as a whole.
To put it another way, SARMs can send signals to your muscle cells that tell them to develop without causing the same kind of noise, mess, or collateral damage as anabolic steroids do.
In a nutshell, this is achieved by the following two mechanisms by SARMs:
They do not have an attraction for other tissues, such as the prostate, liver, or brain, but they have a particular predilection for others, such as muscle and bone.
They don’t easily disintegrate into compounds that lead to undesirable side effects because of how stable they are.
This second aspect is pretty important to keep in mind.
One of the most important characteristics of SARMs is that they do not readily convert into an enzyme known as 5-a reductase. This enzyme is responsible for converting testosterone into DHT, which is a driver of many of the negative consequences that are associated with steroid use.
SARMs do not react with the enzyme aromatase, which is responsible for the transformation of testosterone into oestrogen.
Last but not least, due to the fact that SARMs are not as potent as traditional anabolic steroids, they do not inhibit the body’s natural testosterone production to the same extent, which makes it much simpler to recover from their effects.
SARMs are typically taken by bodybuilders for one of these two reasons:
In order to “get their feet wet” with anabolic drug use before engaging in traditional drug cycles.
to improve the efficacy of steroid cycles without increasing the severity of associated negative effects or the risk to one’s health.
SARMs are believed by many bodybuilders to be especially useful for cutting because they assist keep lean mass without appearing to increase water retention. This is one of the reasons why SARMs are popular among bodybuilders.
How effective are these medications, exactly?
Well, studies have shown that the muscle-building potency of SARMs isn’t quite on par with that of conventional anabolic steroids, but they are undeniably more effective than anything natural that you could consume (like creatine).
They are especially common among sportsmen because to the fact that they are more difficult to detect through drug tests (although this is changing as regulatory agencies improve their testing methods).
The Side Effects of SARMs
SARMs have just been available for a couple of decades, and sadly, they haven’t been examined in people very well.
We simply do not know enough about how they operate and the potential adverse consequences that they may have over the long run, which is a very valid reason to be concerned.
In addition, because no SARMs have been cleared for use in recreational settings, technically speaking, any and all SARMs that are marketed online are considered to be goods of the black market. Because of this, they are exempt from any kind of governmental inspection, and the quality control is frequently subpar or nonexistent. When it comes to SARMs, shenanigans such as incorrect labelling, contamination, and others are par for the course.
Is it safe to take SARMs?
However, this is what we can say with reasonable assurance about what we do know.
SARMs inhibit your native testosterone production.
Many different kinds of SARMs make the claim that they do not inhibit your body’s natural synthesis of testosterone, which is one of the most compelling arguments in their favour.
This is not the truth. They most definitely do.
For instance, in one study that was carried out by researchers at the request of GTx, Inc., a drug maker that specialises in the production of SARMs, male subjects who took 3 mg of the SARM ostarine per day for a period of 86 days experienced a drop of 23% in their levels of free androgen and a drop of 43% in their levels of total testosterone.
Since GTx, Inc. manufactures and sells SARMs, the company had no motivation to manipulate the results to make them appear to be more harmful than they actually were. If anything, they were pushed to do the reverse, which was to underreport the bad side effects of SARMs (there is no evidence that this was actually done, but you get the point).
In a separate trial involving the SARM ligandrol, researchers from Boston University found that the drug produced results that were comparable to the ones described above. After only three weeks of taking 1 milligramme of ligandrol per day, the total testosterone levels of 76 males ranging in age from 21 to 50 dropped by a staggering 55% after they had been taking the drug. Unsettlingly, it took five weeks for their natural testosterone production to return to normal after being suppressed.
In point of fact, SARMs are currently being investigation for their potential use as a male contraceptive. This is due to the fact that they diminish your levels of luteinizing hormone and follicle-stimulating hormone, which in turn reduces your sperm count and testosterone levels.
When you take into account the fundamental physiology at play, none of this should come as a surprise:
When androgens are introduced into the body, the body recognises the surge in hormone levels and reacts by decreasing its own synthesis of hormones that are very similar to the androgens. In other words, your body is intelligent; if you are obtaining a sufficient amount of hormones from medications, your body will not waste resources producing its own hormones because it already has enough.
The more SARMs you take, the greater the likelihood that you will have adverse effects.
SARMs do not lack any potential adverse effects; nevertheless, when taken in low doses, these effects are typically quite mild.
However, bodybuilders do not typically take tiny dosages of steroids, which is one of the primary reasons why they frequently experience a number of the negative consequences that are commonly linked with steroid usage, such as acne and hair loss.
This is also relevant to the suppression of testosterone, which you have recently acquired knowledge of. Your body’s natural production of anabolic hormones will decrease proportionately to the amount of exogenous (originating from outside an organism) anabolic proteins you put into it, regardless of whether those hormones come from SARMs or just plain old testosterone.
And according to a study that was carried out by researchers at the University of Copenhagen, it is likely that this decrease in your body’s natural production of testosterone may continue for years after you have stopped taking steroids (or SARMs).
