Articles

Cabergoline is a drug most often medically prescribed for its ability to inhibit prolactin secretion via its action as a dopamine agonist. Used in the treatment of such diseases as Parkinson's disease (1), acromegaly (2), restless leg syndrome (3), Cushing?s syndrome (4), hyperprolactinemia (5), among others, the drug has been adopted by bodybuilders and strength athletes as a means to combat prolactin related side effects caused by certain anabolic steroids. For this purpose cabergoline is extremely effective while presenting little risk in terms of serious side effects to the health of the user when used for this purpose.

Steroid users should be concerned about excessive prolactin levels because of the side effects associated with them. Prolactin is a naturally occurring hormone primarily produced by the lactotrophs located in the pituitary gland, with a minority amount of the hormone being produced by other tissues/cells of the body. Prolactin plays a major role in lactation in most mammals including humans. It both stimulates milk production as well as inducing lobuloalveolar growth of the mammary gland. Obviously both of these side effects would be of great concern to bodybuilders and strength athletes from both a health and cosmetic standpoint. Decreased sex drive, sperm production and sexual function may also be related to elevated levels of this hormone (6, 7). In fact even in men with regular healthy levels of prolactin cabergoline can help to temporarily reduce the amount of the hormone that is secreted which leads to such advantages as an increase sex drive, improvement in sexual function (quality of erection) as well as reducing the refractory period for users (the amount of time between erections) (8).

Increased T/E ratio in men

When testosterone levels are normal, and a man is experiencing signs of andropause, the hormonal culprit is usually estrogen (and chemicals that mimic the actions of estrogen), the female hormone. Both men and women have specific amounts of estrogen in their bodies. Young men may have a ratio of testosterone to estrogen of 50:1. The ratio drops to 20:1 or even as low as 8:1 with normal aging.

When estrogen levels in a man increase, the actions of testosterone are reduced. Even worse. While estrogens in women protect them from heart disease and osteoporosis, the effects are the opposite for men. Too much estrogen will actually increase the risk of heart attacks in men.

Unfortunately, this is exactly the set of problems that we are currently facing. A combina­tion of our lifestyle and dietary choices, stress, use of anabolic androgenic steroids, medications and/or alcohol coupled with the pervasive amounts of estrogenic pollutants found in plastics and our water supply are the reasons why estradiol levels are climbing in men. In fact, we now see men with estrogen levels higher than that of many women.  As estrogen rises in men, testosterone drop and mammary gland tissue begins to grow (creating male breasts). This problem is so common that male breast reduction is now the fastest growing surgery in America!

Unrealized Potential: Before Quadzilla, There was Jeff King!

It was still the era of Frank Zane, where the beauty if symmetry dominated over competitors possessing beastly mass. To those that felt uninspired by the beach-bodies in vogue, Casey Viator, Tim Belknap and Tom Platz were exalted as unredeemed heroes ¾ always placing well but forced to look on as the likes of Dickerson, Makkawy and Bannout pranced off with the big checks. It was almost as if the meek truly had inherited the Earth.

The connoisseurs of mass felt that nothing could be more inspirational than photos of Bertil grunting out inclines with 180-pound dumbbells or Plants tensing his ponderous thighs between sets. We thrilled to tales of the Barbarian Brothers; throwing Olympic plates like Frisbees, kicking each other in the face for last rep motivation. Although this type of hardcore attitude was downplayed so that "the sport could reach a wider audience," we were just waiting for another big man to reclaim the Olympia crown and, in so doing, bring our doctrines back into prominence.

The History of Synthetic Testosterone

Testosterone has long been banned in sports as a performance-enhancing drug. This use may soon be accepted in medicine alongside other legitimate hormonal therapies (by John M. Hoberman and Charles E. Yesalis )

On June 1, 1889, Charles Edouard Brown-Sequard, a prominent French physiologist, announced at the Societe de Biologie in Paris that he had devised a rejuvenating therapy for the body and mind. The 72-year-old professor reported that he had drastically reversed his own decline by injecting himself with a liquid extract derived from the testicles of dogs and guinea pigs. These injections, he told his audience, had increased his physical strength and intellectual energy, relieved his constipation and even lengthened the arc of his urine.

Almost all experts, including some of Brown-Sequard's contemporaries, have agreed that these positive effects were induced by the power of suggestion, despite Brown-Sequard's claims to the contrary. Yet he was correct in proposing that the functions of the testicles might be enhanced or restored by replacing the substances they produce. His achievement was thus to make the idea of the "internal secretion," initially proposed by another well-known French physiologist, Claude Bernard, in 1855, the basis of an organotherapeutic "replacement" technique. Brown-Sequard's insight that internal secretions could act as physiological regulators (named hormones in 1905) makes him one of the founders of modern endocrinology. So began an era of increasingly sophisticated hormonal treatments that led to the synthesis in 1935 of testosterone, the primary male hormone produced by the testicles.

Let’s face it. At around 40 we all start to see signs of aging. It can’t be denied any longer at that point. You aren’t ready to be old. Some of us have been athletes all of our lives and are not ready to be fat and happy sitting in a sports bar watching ball on a wide screen. You want to keep going. So you seek a reason why you feel sub-par. Finally after seeing about a dozen doctors you run into one that tests some endocrine values and low and behold you find that your testosterone has tanked. You are told a normal 30 year old athletic male might test at 700 ng/dL and you are something like 220 ng/dL. Not only that but your IGF-1, a marker for GH release is in the bottom of normal range. So the doc asks have you used and anabolic steroids in the past? Have you had a blow to the head? Are you exposed to any toxins at your job etc etc. Oh shit!! Your manhood is diminishing. No wonder you look at young women like they are all your daughter and the wife just seems to nag at you without even speaking. You’re turning into an old man. You want to chase pkids out of your yard and keep their football. The doc says there is a number of treatments and he rattles off a bunch of antidepressants, a few vitamins, Cialis and then mumbles something like testosterone injections and crèmes and your ears perk up. Hell no you say to yourself. I’m not growing old just yet, at least not while there are androgens that come in little bottles.