Accutane Anabolic Steroid

Accutane Anabolic Steroid
Trade Name: Accutane
Chemical Name: Isotretinoin
Type: Anti-Acne Medication

Accutane is the brand name for the drug isotretinoin which is an oral drug often used to treat severe acne. It’s an extremely potent drug that is often a last resort for people who have been unable to find success with other treatments such as antibiotics.

Here’s how it works:
Vitamin A is a very important vitamin when it comes to skin care. It helps the skin release oil from the oil glands and it also aids in skin renewal. Accutane is a form of vitamin A, which is why it works for treating acne. Treatment for four to five months often clears up even severe acne. In fact, Accutane actually cures acne in about half of the people who use it so that they don’t need to use other acne treatments in the future.

The good news about Accutane is that it has been used by millions of people so medical professionals have been able to study the drug and determine how to use it safely and successfully. The bad news is that if it isn’t used correctly there can be serious side effects.

Accutane can cause severe birth defects. If a pregnant women takes even one dose she risks causing major birth defects on the baby’s eyes, ears, face, skull, heart or brain. This means that any women who potentially could become pregnancy must take careful precautions to the point of agreeing to use two specific forms of birth control at all times. Any woman who has not had a total hysterectomy or who has not been in menopause for at least a year is considered to potentially be able to become pregnant and needs to take special precautions.

Other side effects:
 Accutane include sensitivity to sunlight and a tendency to burn, epression, sleep problems, aggression, weakness, changes in vision or hearing, digestive changes such as loss of appetite, dark urine or jaundice and flu-like symptoms.

Accutane is not legal with out a prescription. It needs to be specifically prescribed through the iPLEDGE program to be considered legit. This program requires written consent to use birth control and also requires women to have negative pregnancy tests 30 days before starting the drug and before getting each prescription filled. They are also required by the program to take pregnancy tests for a length of time after finishing the final dose of the drug as well. Note, Accutane is NOT anabolic steroids, and should not be considered in the same drug category. It's an anti-acne medication.

Clenbuterol Steroid

Clenbuterol Steroid

Clenbuterol Chemical Name: Clenbuterol Hydrochloride

Drug Class: Lipolytic (fat burner)

Clenbuterol (often called just “Clen”) is used by athletes and bodybuilders for it’s ability as a beta-2 agonist. It therefore stimulates your beta-2 receptors, which in turn help you to lose fat by allowing your body to release and burn more stored fat. Clen has been used for literally decades in the foreign veterinary world, for increasing the lean yield of livestock. It is clearly a very effective agent for this purpose, although its long half life and tendency to stay active in the body for long periods of time mean that vets in the United States aren’t able to use it. This is also the reason why (although it’s an asthma medication) it’s not available to asthmatics in the US of A. Albuterol is Clen’s shorter acting cousin, and that’s the FDA’s drug of choice here. But in the world of athletics, Clenbuterol has a much longer history of use.

Specifically, it’s used for fat loss, and since we’re talking about fat loss here, and this purpose is what it’s most often used for by athletes. Briefly stated, Clen is used as a repartitioning agent, and what this means is simply that it will increase your ratio of Fat Free Mass (FFM) to Fat Mass (FM) (1). When you use Clen, besides (of course) noticing some fat loss, you’ll feel your body temperature rise a bit, and your appetite will be slightly repressed. (2)

Anyway, as you may have guessed, because the FDA doesn’t allow Clenbuterol use in asthmatics, and the USDA doesn’t allow it in livestock, there aren’t a lot of human studies to really examine with regards to Clenbuterol. Unfortunately this makes research a bit difficult, as it’s well known that animals have a some important differences in their beta-receptor type and concentrations, but animal studies are still quite
useful here.

Clen is quite anti-catabolic and/or anabolic in almost every (animal) study ever done on it, although this hasn’t been studied or confirmed in human studies (3). Also, a trend we see with Clenbuterol administration in animals is that the doses used are very high- more than anyone I’ve ever heard of actually taking. So, what I’m saying is that if Clenbuterol is anabolic or anti-catabolic in humans, only mild anabolic or anti-catabolic effects can realistically be expected. We can take a look at horses given a human-like dose of clen (slightly
over 1mcg/lb x2 a day) and exercised for nearly human-like times (20mins, 3x a week) showed very significant decreases in %fat (-17.6%) and fat mass (-19.5%). Interestingly, this significantly increased (+4.4%) at week 6 (1). This has been one of the reasons I have never believed in the 2 weeks on and 2 weeks theory of Clenbuterol administration. Why wouldn’t we want to use it for at least 6 weeks, considering the fact that it seems to have some profound effects during later administration. A “second wind” so to speak (get it? “second wind”? it’s an asthma med! Ha! Ok…moving along…).

One of the primary drawbacks of Clen is that after a couple of weeks, it seems to stop working for most people. This is because it can cause a downregulation of pulmonary, cardiac and central nervous system beta-adrenergic receptors(4). This is why it seems to stop burning fat for most people at that point. To counteract this, you can take some Ketotifen, Benadryl, or Periactim every 3rd or 4th week that you remain on clen. These are prescription anti-histimines, so they’ll make you drowsy (take before bedtime).

Also, bear in mind that clen isn’t great for your heart, and can cause some issues there (enlargement of ventricles, etc…) but most studies showing Clen to cause heart problems are with animals, and even though the dosing is almost similar to what humans take (in some studies its within range of what would be double of a large human dose...). Again, it’s important to remember that animals have more beta-2 receptors and they cause certain event chains that humans’ beta-2 receptors may not, due to their relatively high concentrations. Clen causes cardiac hypertrophy to some degree, in some cases and even dose-dependent apoptotic and necrotic myocyte death (5). And since Clen depletes taurine (6) as do most if not all beta-agonists, you may want to supplement your Clen use with some Taurine.

One of the weirdest things about Clenbuterol is that even though it’s an asthma medication, studies have shown reduced exercise (cardiovascular) performance with Clen (7), but some also show that Clen can alleviate exercise induced asthma (8)!

Clen is one of the easiest drugs to find proper dosing for, and I’ve always made the same recommendations as to finding the appropriate dose for you. Basically, start with 20mcgs upon rising. If the side effects (possible anxiety, and shaking or sweating) aren’t too pronounced, then repeat that same dose again later in the day, and then once again in that day (again, if you find you can tolerate the effects). If you start
experiencing intolerable sides, then decrease the does to where it’s tolerable. If not, then start increasing the dose more, very gradually.

Don’t go over 200mcgs, though…and keep your Blood Pressure at (or under) 140/90. If your Blood Pressure goes over that, reduce your dose. If side effects are intolerable, decrease your dose.