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Rep Power: 7  | Re: IGF Info some more info posted by Grunt76
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Grunt, I am also interested in the amount your recommend shooting post workout?
40mcg is plenty. We have to realize that this is a huge amount compared to what the body naturally produces. Maybe we can ask TheGame46 who is working on his master's degree in endocrinology what the actual amount produced by a normal human, say even with exercise, but it's probably something less than 1mcg.
20mcg each side. 30 each side in the quads. That's plenty. Now, you won't see major, immediate LBM increases, but THAT IS NOT WHAT IGF-1 IS FOR. That's what AAS are for. 40-50mcg total will let you get plenty of hyperplasia, not grow your intestines too much, and save you plenty of $. The newly added muscle cells will take months to grow, but they will, and you will use IGF-1 again because it gets reasonably inexpensive with such a protocol.
Another thing: much of the newer research shows that EOD and even E3D igf-1 treatment is better than ED because ED downregulates the receptors too quick. It takes some time for receptors to be able to come back in full after a megadose of even 20mcg of IGF-1. So you may want to think about switching to EOD lifting and IGF-1 immediately postworkout every workout, or 2on/1off and pin the lagging muscle E3D. These dosing patterns won't give you pounds of immediate muscle, but they will give you hyperplasia, which means continued growth at very decent rates, and the ability to continue treatment for a long while until response diminishes.
And no Coleman guts.
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I was thinking about trying IGF, very interesting info here. Thanks Grunt for posting this info. A couple of other questions that maybe you can answer, if you don't mind. How does IGF interact with insulin, i.e. can it be pinned with insulin post workout? Also, what are your thoughts on taking IGF durring a cycle of HGH?
Great questions. I'll start with some background on the peptides from back before IGF-1 was commonly used. GH was the first peptide to be used in Bodybuilding. We pretty much know what GH does and doesn't do and all that, so I'll skip this part. Then came along insulin. It quickly became apparent that slin on its own doesn't do much for muscle. It does make you fat but not much bigger. With AAS and tons of food, it's better. Later it became extremely clear that Slin & GH was the winner combo, the most synergistic combination around.
What few people realize even today - and it's been what, nearly 20 years of insulin usage in BBing, is that the very reason why slin and GH are synergystic is that when levels of both are high, the liver turns the GH into IGF-1. That's right, when doing slin & GH, you are in fact using these because your body makes more IGF-1 with them. So it isn't the slin OR the GH nor actually the compounding of the effects of each, but rather good old IGF-1. Even the name Insulinlike Growth Factor, has been made such because of the origin of the compound in Insulin and Growth Hormone.
Now, the IGF-1 from slin & GH is not long R3 IGF-1, it's hIGF-1. It's different and possibly the effects are somewhat different than when using Long R3, especially with regards to IGF-1 receptor downregulation, which is likely much lesser with the liver-synthesized IGF-1 than with the Long R3. No studies proving this, it is theory at this point and such a study will possibly never be made, for many good reasons. One reason why receptor downregulation is lesser with hIGF-1 is its half-life, or its very limited ability to run around the body and saturate all receptors everywhere. And here we join up with the EOD and E3D protocols which state that letting the receptors rest is extremely important to continued results. You get the same effect out of slin & gh because of IGFBP3 that mops up the IGF-1 within minutes of synthesis, which makes it impossible to saturate the receptors and lets them rest. Similar effect, completely different way of achieving it.
So slin & gh are synergistic. Then the next question: what about slin & IGF or Gh & IGF? IGF is synergistic with both. MOST of the effects of GH are mediated through IGF-1 but not ALL of them. Among the good effects of GH that IGF-1 does not exert is anabolism to ligaments, for example. This is just an example to show that there is a benefit to using GH & IGF-1 at the same time. There is evidence that ED dosing of LR3 reduces GH release in the body, so it makes plenty of sense to use both at the same time.
Slin & IGF is a different animal. Most of the benefits of insulin come from its ability to increase IGF-1. Unless you are diabetic, your body makes enough insulin. Eat more, it releases more insulin. More carbs? More slin. The limit to the body's ability to release slin isn't easily reached. Even feeding 10,000 cals ED your body can produce the slin to store that. Easily.
Am I stating there is no use in pinning slin & IGF together? No. There is evidence that shows that pinning slin with IGF-1 increases the length of the effects of IGF-1. Especially the hypoglycemic effects, obviously, but this has pretty far-ranging and beneficial implications, among which saturating the lean cells with nutrients and having a low blood sugar level are not the least. Obviously they are both hypoglycemic compounds so carbs have to be adjusted up when adding IGF-1 to slin, or slin reduced. I prefer the second option, although I am at a loss as to the amount of slin you would have to remove for compensation with, say, 40mcg IGF-1.
Personally I have not done this. Both my grandfathers were diabetics, so I'm not playing with slin. Especially that I have a natural tendency to go hypoglycemic easily. IGF-1 though is simply GREAT for me.
What I did do, over 10 years ago, is use an extremely potent GH releaser named GHB and combined that with a few ounces of sugar, the idea being of course a cheap version of GH & Slin. Obviously it worked great over a few months and it did produce hyperplasia, as made very obvious by the muscle size I retained when taking a 2 year layoff from lifting because of a non-training related injury. |