Excellent News About My Current Health

[rhinochaser48]

If you remember previous posts, I've got Crohn's disease and had been running into some problems with certain anabolics causing flare-ups.

My last cycle ended about 3 months ago. It was the longest cycle I had run to date and I kind of thought it really kicked my ass. I had a couple bad flare-ups during the cycle, ended it, was having random hypoglycemia bouts, felt pretty hammered, got a sinus infection, another flare-up, the flu, another flare-up, another cold of some kind, and it's only now that I really feel great again.

Last Monday I had a lot of blood work done by my gastroenterologist. I had him do unnecessary tests so I could create a benchmark for myself in regards to my condition under those circumstances.

Everything came back normal. In fact, I was very surprised by some of the results because my diet wasn't perfect, I was getting over a cold, was on amoxicillan, had lost a lot of blood the week previous, and was still on low dose nolvadex.

Liver enzymes were totally perfect, triglycerides at 186, HDL 69, LDL 191, and most surprisingly, my hematocrit was a 46%, (which is the highest it's ever been).

I haven't worked out in over 3 weeks because of all the crap I've been dealing with lately. In a sense, all the illness has been kind of a blessing in disguise for my joints and rotator cuffs. They were getting pretty inflamed for awhile.

I'm very pleased. I was nervous for awhile because I had never had a liver panel done before and I thought I was experiencing signs of what might be potential liver problems.

Time to start planning my next cycle.

Thanks to everyone for sharing their knowledge offering good advice.

 

[tattoopierced1]

great to hear your body is functioning better than you thought.... seems you are also in pretty good spirits as well which is never a bad thing.. hope you get over being sick soon so you can hit the weights again.

 

[rhinochaser48]

A few other things worth mentioning:

I've lost a lot of weight since I've been out of the gym and my bodyfat has remained about the same, with maybe an increase of less than 2%, despite a high calorie intake. I could complain about gains lost, but it's not as bad as the scale claims because my muscle shape and density are much nicer now than any other time I've been at this weight. To me, that's pretty interesting, and makes me feel even better about taking time off when I need it.

My diet has been roughly 200g protein, carbs varying from 100g to 300g, and fat pretty high at around 100-160g per day, (about 2-3 tablespoons from olive oil).

Even though I've been out of the gym for awhile, I've still been doing light rotator cuff work with bands. That's easy and takes less than 5 minutes each morning.

Supps have been pretty consistant as well. The ones I've used post-cycle are basically just a multi, extra antioxidants including NAC, about 1.8g of milk thistle per day, about 8g of fish oil per day, and iron + selenium mid-day, and ZMA at bed time.

My thoughts for future cycles can be summed up as simplicity. Training will remain roughly the same, only changing priorities and volume. Diet will dictate the progress I'm looking for. Androgen dosages will be moderate to high for short cycles and conservative for longer cycles. I will be using a minimal number of drugs at any given time, and try to use the right drug for the job. I also will only be using supplements with a focus on health support rather than making up for a poor diet or training.

This is pretty basic stuff, but I think most lose sight of the bigger picture when using drugs as tools for accomplishing goals. It's easy to embrace the mind set of more drugs equals better progress.

Anyways, everybody should be doing blood work to see how they're coping. I feel strongly about that.

Feeling like **** for more than 3 months has been a humbling experience for me. It effected every aspect of my daily life. I've missed a lot of work, struggled financially, and have been pretty miserable in general this entire time. My girlfriend has been supportive, but it's sucked some of the life out of her as well.