and Article Written by Patrick Arnold on the subject. I'd post the source, but dont want to get in trouble.
Prohormones, Conversion Rates and Broscientists
Written by Patrick Arnold
Monday, 22 June 2009 03:28
OK, it’s time to discuss your favorite subject: prohormones!! It’s my favorite subject too, as I
have spent many years studying and manufacturing the stuff, and have made most of my living
selling them. I do wanna move on to other things—but people keep bugging me about
prohormones so I keep discussing them. And I am sure this article won’t be the last one on the
subject
The Folly of Prohormone ‘Conversion Rates’
Ten years ago when I first introduced prohormones to the marketplace, I presented some
research that was meant to illustrate the relative efficiency of a prohormone in converting to an
active hormone in the body. I coined the term ‘conversion rate’ which was supposed to
represent the amount of active hormone formed in the body after a given period of time. The
values for these conversion rates were based on studies done with a series of
hormones—ndrostenedione, DHEA, 5-androstenediol, and 4-androstenediol—which were
incubated in human blood for about an hour.
I wish now that I hadn’t used the conversion rate term in the fashion that I did. Since that time,
the concept of conversion rate, based as heretofore described, has become embedded in the
popular terminology used by bodybuilding science dudes—whom I refer to as ‘broscientists.’
This has led to gross misunderstandings of how prohormones work in the body and about how
to accurately predict the true endpoint potency that a prohormone possesses. These blood
incubation conversion rate numbers represent how much a prohormone converts to an active
hormone, about as well as counting how many cars are on the highway at an exact given time
represents how many cars have ever been on the highway! Hormone metabolism in the body is
a multidimensional system and involves way more things going on than just one thing turning
into another and stopping. Just like how a car can get on the highway, then get off on another
road, then get on again, then get off on another road etc., a prohormone can convert to an
active hormone, then convert back to the prohormone, then convert to the active hormone
again, and then convert to something else. And these dynamics are ongoing.
One of the most well-known of the prohormones is 4-androstenediol and it is often stated that
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Prohormones, Conversion Rates and Broscientists
Written by Patrick Arnold
Monday, 22 June 2009 03:28
it has a conversion rate of 15 percent (the number coming from the aforementioned blood
study). Well then, let me ask you something: what do you think the conversion rate of
testosterone is? Or, to put it another way, how much testosterone do you think you will see in
that blood study, relative to the amount you started with? I ask this question to a lot of guys and
then I tell them the answer is probably not much different than 15 percent. They look at me like I
am nuts. But using the method of this blood incubation, that’s about the number you would get.
You see how this is so misleading?
Examine the chart of hormone metabolism below. This chart is greatly simplified, but it can
effectively illustrate the basics of what happens to steroid hormones after they enter the body.
The arrows between the chemicals represent metabolic transformations, with the single arrows
designating one-way (irreversible) reactions and the double arrows designating equilibrium
(reversible) reactions.
Start by looking at 4-androstenediol (4-AD). Notice that it pretty much has only one direction to
go and that is toward testosterone (research indicates that this is its sole initial metabolic
transformation). Now is that it? Does it just stay as testosterone? Of course not. As you can see
from the chart, this newly-formed testosterone can then go right back to 4-AD—although this
rarely happens. Or this new testosterone can go on to change to androstenedione and then
back again. Alternatively, when it changes to androstenedione, the androstenedione can then
convert irreversibly to estrogens or hydroxylated metabolites. Once it does that, the steroid is
out of the picture and can no longer go back to testosterone.
This is how it works. The steroids are constantly changing in your body to other steroids.
Sometimes they go back and forth or on to other things and then perhaps back again, or
whatever. Sometimes these whatevers may be an irreversible pathway and then they become
part of a new metabolic transformation system. The bottom line is that a prohormone’s efficiency
cannot be measured by looking at how much target hormone is hanging around an hour after it
is added to some blood.
To make a blood incubation test meaningful for our purposes, you would need to keep taking
measurements of the blood levels, beginning as soon as the prohormone is added to the
sample and up until target hormone levels start to fall to insignificance. Then you simply
average the numbers. The more measurements, the more accurate it will be. This will tell us
how much testosterone your body is exposed to over the entire period of time, rather than just
at one single time point (e.g., one hour).
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Prohormones, Conversion Rates and Broscientists
Written by Patrick Arnold
Monday, 22 June 2009 03:28
Of course, it’s still not that simple. When you ingest a prohormone, it only spends a part of its
time in the blood. It spends a substantial portion of its time in the liver and dozens of other
tissues of the body and each of these tissues has its own balance of enzymes, with its own
tendency to transform steroids in one way or another. So this means the numbers from the
blood sample paint an incomplete picture, even if you do take a multitude of samples. You really
need to give the prohormone to living human beings and then take blood samples from them
over the course of the time it takes for the compound to be processed
Anyway, I hope you get my point. And I hope when you hear someone throw around that term
“conversion rate” again you tell them to shut up and read this article. And then they can be just
as confused as you are right now.
How to Make a Hormone
No, the answer to the question I am talking about is not “Don’t pay her.” I am talking about
making active anabolic steroids from readily available prohormones. Actually, this is not
something I would normally write about, but I had writer’s block this month and John Romano
said this sort of thing would be something he would be interested in reading. So I thought I
would delve into it a little. I have to warn you though, unless you have a background in steroid
chemistry, this is not gonna make much sense to you.
As you know, prohormones are metabolic precursors to active hormones, which are converted
through the action of enzymes in your body. But these same prohormones can also be
converted to the active hormones synthetically—that is, by the use of chemicals in a lab. In
particular, diols and diones can be made into their corresponding active hormones by
procedures that are actually remarkably simple.
Diols
The most basic diol is 4-androstenediol. However, it is now illegal. There are still some diols
out there, though. Here is a list containing 4-androstenediol and some other still legal diols.
If you look closely, you will see that all these diols have double bonds in the first ring that are
one carbon atom away from the 3-hydroxyl. The hydroxyl at carbon 17, however, does not have
this feature. We can use this difference to our advantage and perform what is known as an
‘allylic oxidation.’Allylic oxidations can be done using a variety of different chemical reagents;
however, activated manganese dioxide is the most convenient one to use. What this chemical
does is oxidize the hydroxyl at carbon 3 to a ketone, while leaving the 17 beta-hydroxyl
unaffected. This leaves you with the classic ‘3-one-17b-ol’ structure that most active anabolic
steroids possess.
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Prohormones, Conversion Rates and Broscientists
Written by Patrick Arnold
Monday, 22 June 2009 03:28
The procedure is simple. You dissolve the steroid (let’s say 5 grams) in an appropriate organic
solvent (let’s say 250cc of acetone) and then add about six times its weight in activated
manganese dioxide. It is important that you use activated manganese dioxide because regular
manganese dioxide won’t work. The activated manganese dioxide will not dissolve, but rather it
will sink to the bottom. You must then mix the slurry for several hours (say 6-8 hours). After you
are done, you filter off the manganese dioxide, or let it settle out and decant the clear layer. This
clear layer will contain your active steroid in acetone and you can retrieve it either by slowly
evaporating off the acetone, or by adding about five parts water and precipitating the steroid
out. The precipitated steroid can then be filtered off and dried.
Examples of this reaction are the conversion of 4-androstenediol to testosterone, the
conversion of 17a-methyl-1,4-Androstadien-3b,17bdiol to dianabol, and the conversion of
4-chloro-17a-methyl-androsta-1,4-dien-3b-17b-diol to oral Turinabol.
Please don’t forget the fact that as soon as you are done with this chemical procedure, you
have a controlled substance on your hand and you are therefore committing a felony. It is for
this reason that I must remind you now that this is all being presented to you for purely
informational and entertainment purposes.
Next month I will continue the chemical information and entertainment by discussing the
chemical conversion of diones. C’ya!