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Prohormones, Conversion Rates and Broscientists
Contributed by Patrick Arnold
Monday, 22 June 2009
OK, its time to discuss your favorite subject: prohormones!! Its 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 wont be the last one on the subject
OK, its time to discuss your favorite subject: prohormones!! Its 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 wont 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;androstenedione, DHEA, 5-androstenediol, and 4-androstenediol; which were incubated in
human blood for about an hour.
I wish now that I hadnt 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 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, thats 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
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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
prohormones 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).
Of course, its 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
; 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 Dont 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 writers 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.
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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.
The procedure is simple. You dissolve the steroid (lets say 5 grams) in an appropriate organic solvent
(lets 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 wont 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 dont 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.
Cya!
