Blood pressure?

rombusempire

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What are your blood presures while on cycle?

DId you experience any lethargy?

I am trying to do a mini study here about the use of AAS and lethargy. My hypothesis is that the lethargy is not caused by estrogen, shurtdownm etc, but by hypertension.

Your participation will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
 
mark118

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interesting hypothesis. what is the mechanism behind hypertension causing lethargy?
 

rombusempire

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Basically:

Incr BP (esp due to incr RBC production) -> heart unable to fully compensate for the incr amt of work it has to pump -> circulation and blood gas exchange not as good -> lethargy from decr O2 availability

THink of 'heart failure' and how it causes people to beocme lethargic.

I dont believe estrogen conversion from test to be teh cause of lethargy. If estrogen is teh culprit, then wouldnt women be generally more lethargic than men?

The issue abotu negative feedback causingt lethargy? Men who are on therapeutic doses for testosterone replacement ie, 100mg/wk generally feel quite good. They, too are shutdown.

Out of all 3 of these possibilities, hypertension should firts be investigated...standard medical procedure; examine teh most likley cuases then go on from there.
 
SouthernCharm

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well i think you are onto something however I wanna point out that increased estrogen WILL result in increased water retention, which can play a role in elevating blood pressure. I think there are different causes, truthfully. I think that there's also different hormones in play because at a low dose of TRT it IS still possible to feel lethargic.
 

rombusempire

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Yeah, I know what you mean about the estrogen, although I dont think that the estrogen will cause as much HTN as the anabolics, which are directly responsible for RBC production.

It would be interesting to see some replies here about what people are takng and their BPs. Ie, if taking only non aromatozing compounds and there still is HTN with lethargy then we are a step further.

But, given all this info, I know the lethargy is most likely multifactorial.

Damn only if they legalized AAS, then there woudl be a slew of scientitsts doing this type of research...
 
heckler7

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This may intrest you. I have diabetes, when my blood sugar is high, and I do a blood sample it comes out thick like maple syrup, when its low its real watery. When my blood sugar is high I can feel my heart pumping real hard, not fast, and I feel completely wiped out sometimes I even pass out from exhaustion. Probably around 5X a week I'll expierience this. But yes, to agree with you, your heart can be overworked and you dont even know it, you just feel the effect of being extremely tired.
 
SouthernCharm

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good thread by the way
 

SRS2000

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This is an interesting thought, but my prediction is that hypertension is likely not the cause of lethargy while on cycle. Here's my reasoning:
1) The heart and circulatory systems are already adapted to maintaining blood flow while overcoming great pressure (assuming the person has been strength training for a period of time prior to the cycle). During a heavy straining movement systolic BP can be 400+, which is much higher than any resting high BP while on cycle. Thus resting hypertension would be very unlikely to occlude blood flow to any significant degree.
2) Endurance athletes who blood dope or use EPO would also greatly increase blood viscosity and they don't report lethargy.
3) The body is extremely good at extracting oxygen from the blood. Even during maximal aerobic exercise aVO2 difference doesn't decrease to any significant degree. Thus it seems unlikely that high resting BP would cause any decrease in oxygen extraction at the tissue level.
4) Systolic BP increases during aerobic exercise even while oxygen consumption is going up. It seems reasonable to assume that elevated BP at rest would not compromise oxygen carrying capacity.
5) It takes a near-full occlusion of a vessel to induce oxygen deprivation at rest, so it seems unlikely a slight rise in BP would occlude flow to the point that oxygen deprivation actually occurs.
6) Hemoglobin reaches near 100% oxygen saturation in the lungs even when blood is moving through very quickly (at heart rates approaching 200), so an increase in blood viscosity and/or BP is likely not going to limit oxygen delivery at this step.

With all that said, I don't know what causes the lethary on cycle. My first instinct would be to examine brain chemistry and neurotransmitter levels. Especially since some people report difficulty sleeping while on cycle with certain compounds. Lethargy combined with difficulty sleeping would suggest some sort of brain chemistry issue.
 
RickRock13

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This is a very good thread and subject. However, how would it explain those that constantly monitor BP on cycle and have normal levels, but still report significant lethargy issues. One would have to conclude in that case that BP would not be the cause.
 

rombusempire

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This is an interesting thought, but my prediction is that hypertension is likely not the cause of lethargy while on cycle. Here's my reasoning:
1) The heart and circulatory systems are already adapted to maintaining blood flow while overcoming great pressure (assuming the person has been strength training for a period of time prior to the cycle). During a heavy straining movement systolic BP can be 400+, which is much higher than any resting high BP while on cycle. Thus resting hypertension would be very unlikely to occlude blood flow to any significant degree.
2) Endurance athletes who blood dope or use EPO would also greatly increase blood viscosity and they don't report lethargy.
3) The body is extremely good at extracting oxygen from the blood. Even during maximal aerobic exercise aVO2 difference doesn't decrease to any significant degree. Thus it seems unlikely that high resting BP would cause any decrease in oxygen extraction at the tissue level.
4) Systolic BP increases during aerobic exercise even while oxygen consumption is going up. It seems reasonable to assume that elevated BP at rest would not compromise oxygen carrying capacity.
5) It takes a near-full occlusion of a vessel to induce oxygen deprivation at rest, so it seems unlikely a slight rise in BP would occlude flow to the point that oxygen deprivation actually occurs.
6) Hemoglobin reaches near 100% oxygen saturation in the lungs even when blood is moving through very quickly (at heart rates approaching 200), so an increase in blood viscosity and/or BP is likely not going to limit oxygen delivery at this step.

With all that said, I don't know what causes the lethary on cycle. My first instinct would be to examine brain chemistry and neurotransmitter levels. Especially since some people report difficulty sleeping while on cycle with certain compounds. Lethargy combined with difficulty sleeping would suggest some sort of brain chemistry issue.
VERYgood response! However I have some comments,
1) With incr blood pressure, it isnt the short burst of 400mmHg that will do the trick, it is a chronic high BP that does it. The short burst is compensated simply by the elasticity of the blood vessels.

The heart and cirr systems do compensate yes, but it is the fact that it fails to do so. In fact the compensatory mechanisms actually exacerbate the problem and here is how:

SNS compensation
- tachycardia (incr HR), vasoconstriction
Ventricular remodelling
- incr size of ventricles
Hormonal activation
- RAAS, ADH, ANP

Thesesystems are activated when teh body senses that the heart is unable to pump all of the blood volume. As you can see, thee mechanisms, over time, will actaully make things worse, ie, RAAS activation results in aldosterone whicb retains salt leading to water retention.

So, occlusion isnt really the issue here.

See this excellen wiki article. Easy read, quite complete too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_failure#Symptoms

See the symptoms and pathophysiology.

2) Endurance atheletes using EPO dont experience lethargy. I thought about this too but teh rfact is polycythemia (incr RBC numbers) does very much induce lethargy. I am just not sure whythose endurance atheletes experience it. Perhaps it is because they use it short term ie, right before their competitions?
http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/205039-overview
Look atthat link, so blood doping woudl be considered secondary polycythmeia. Look at the Sx

3) Yes I agree with you about oxygen extraction. I think I said something incorrect up there. What I mea to say is when you have icr BP, you can get heart failure, resulting in the blood not getting circulated, so less fresh O2 avaiable. But the O2 that is avaiable is extracted just fine yeah.

4) See above

5) Again we are not talking about occlusion

6) Againm see 3). Our concern isnt oxygen saturation at the lungs it is the circulation of RBCs
 

SRS2000

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My only question is about the time course of the compensatory mechanisms you mention. It seems that many people report lethargy after a relatively short period of time on cycle. I'm not sure that all the compensatory mechanisms will have had time to happen in that short a period of time, although I can't say that that with 100% certainty as I don't know the time course of all those mechanisms off the top of my head.
I suspect the lethargy is likely multi-factorial so it may be difficult to nail down one primary cause. You also have to account for those who report no increase in BP, yet experience lethargy.
 

rombusempire

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The SNS activation is quick, within a day. The hormonal activation takes about a week or 2 i think but I am not sure about the ventricular hypertrophy.

Good point about no incr BP but still lethargy. I would REALLy like to investigate that too.
 

SRS2000

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I figured the nervous system and hormone adaptations would be relatively quick, while I'm not sure on the ventricular remodeling.
It would be an interesting topic to study, although I'm not sure if you would ever to be able to really do it since no one is likely to approve of subjects taking AAS. If you could get some VO2 data, BP, and maybe some aortic flow measurements with a doppler you would have something to start.
 

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Well you guys are all smarter than me on the subject that's for sure but I've came across some water product that has proven to increase oxygen levels in the blood. It's called perfect empowered water. It's sweet shiz. It's about 2 bucks for a 16 oz bottle and as far as I know you can only buy it from a amway business owner. I drink a couple bottles everyday. Gives a great boost in balance. Their multi vitamin kicks titties too.
 

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