Nandrolone and Tendons. Collagen at all costs
JUNE 18TH, 2020
To be honest, it took me a lot of time to write this because there's a lot of contradicting information as it relates to nandrolone and tendon integrity. I have seen everything from it having positive outcomes for in vitro studies, to deleterious effects on tendons and non-exercise instances, to having exercise act as a resilience buffer when nandrolone was added, or thinking that exercise undid the impacts of nandrolone on the tendons. I'm going to give some overviews on what nandrolone does as an anabolic, but don't look at this post as a guide to nandrolone as a whole. Smarter people than me have already done that and I’ve linked some of my favorite guides for bodybuilders below. Instead, I want this to be tendon-specific, even though I will give a bit of an overview on the compound and its side effects. Without further ado, let's add a little bit of primer before we get into the nitty-gritty (If you have no interest in learning more about the origin of the compound, skip to paragraph 5 for the tendon specificity research).
Nandrolone is one of the favorite compounds of strength athletes everywhere. As far as I can tell, it's the first of the 19-nortestosterone derivatives and has been used since the 50s. It has two commonly used esters, which are nandrolone polyphenylpropionate and nandrolone decanoate. NPP has a half-life of about 3 days, and deca’s is 6-12 days. While this compound is naturally occurring in the human body and is technically endogenous, taking any amount exogenously almost immediately takes you up to superphysiological levels. Some other primer that matters to this compound is that it needs estrogen to work. While some folks use nandrolone only cycles, it's way more impactful when it has estrogen to work off of, which can come from either injecting exogenous estrogen or leveraging it off of a testosterone base. Keep in mind that nandrolone will also increase your Baseline estradiol by about 20%.
This compound exhibits numerous unique and interesting properties, with one of its most notable being an increase in synovial fluid and enhanced joint lubrication. A lot of older athletes love nandrolone for this reason. It won't heal your shoulder or your knees, but it will make them feel better while you use it. It's definitely a compound that can put lipstick on a pig as it relates to working through your injuries. The main reason I was interested in this compound was also its noticeable increase in collagen synthesis. In all of my research of anabolics, I haven't found anything that up-regulates collagen synthesis as much as nandrolone.
This all sounds amazing, right? Why aren't we all pinning Deca? Well, the short answer is 19 Nor derivatives are kind of wacky. They regulate sympathetic Drive which is why a lot of folks that use 19 nors like nandrolone or Trenbolone report increased levels of anxiety or depression. While I haven't experienced either of these in the time that I've tested it, the sympathetic Drive is real. I found my resting heart rate between 7 and 9 beats per minute higher than when I am off of it. Another major issue to be aware of when running this compound is its impact on both estrogen and prolactin. While both hormones are neuroprotective and estrogen is ideal for college and synthesis, elevations in either hormone can lead to gynecomastia or increased breast tissue. The other issue is if either one of these is elevated, you're either playing a guessing game of which one needs to be lowered, potentially crushing the other into the ground during your trial and error, or you'll need frequent blood work, which you should be getting anyway.
Last but not least, nandrolone is an incredibly potent anabolic and an incredible driver for muscle protein synthesis, making it an incredible choice for bodybuilders to put on size, but it is suboptimal in my opinion for climbers who don't necessarily want the muscle without the correlated strength. There is also a noticeable increase in water retention on nandrolone, which can also elevate body weight.
Now that we have the Preamble out of the way, we can hop into the tendon research specifically. Researchers have been looking for quite some time to find Healing agents as an alternative to growth hormone, in which case, nandrolone on paper seems like it could be an obvious winner. I was able to find a Turkish study comparing the two from 2003, found here, going over the effects of recombinant HGH and NPP in healing of ischemic colon anastomosis in rats. While collagen deposition and bursting increased in both the NPP and HGH users, the therapeutic effects were more favorable in the HGH rats. I was unable to find any studies of researchers testing both to see if there was a 1 + 1 = 3 synergy or if they seemed to cancel each other out. Please stick around as I have other articles on GH coming soon (or maybe out by the time you're reading this.
The next study that was really worth considering is the effects of nandrolone decanoate on skeletal muscle and neuromuscular Junction of sedentary and exercise rats. Give you a little bit of a brief overview, they basically gave an unhinged amount of deca (10mg per kg) to rats and let one group be sedentary and one group exercise. One of the four groups didn't exercise, one didn't but took a boatload of deca, one group exercised, and one exercised on deca. You get the picture. In the case of the group that did not exercise and took a boatload of drugs, the tendons looked pretty darn terrible. Actually, the worst of any of the groups involved. They had entirely too much collagen deposition (also in the organs), and it was also disorganized. The best-looking tendons were in the exercise group without drugs, and the exercise group with drugs had better-looking tendons than the drug group without exercise; however, it still had a level of disorganized tendon structure, even though it looked better. I've included the model below.
I plan to consult with more tendon experts going forward, but in my last conversation with a couple of doctors, tendons are strongest when the collagen depositions are lateral. The vertical collagen depositions may contribute to some of the stiffness associated with anabolic abuse. With that said, bodybuilders do use these kinds of unhinged doses, and even with the tendon stiffness, can largely handle the increased loads. They usually get in trouble when the muscle grows too fast for the tendon. The other part that's worth considering is that tendons could still be remodeled after the discontinuation of the drug. Hypothetically, you could use Deca for the increased collagen deposition and then refine the tendon Integrity after coming off the drugs over the next couple of months or years. I don't know if it would be worth doing that, though, when a growth hormone exists where you get the increased collagen synthesis and tendon integrity without the disjointed remodeling.
Just to make all of this perfectly confusing, I also want to include the in vitro study where nandralone was used in an in vitro model to stimulate the growth of connective tissue. Im pasting the results below:
Results: The load, steroid group showed the greatest remodeling and the best organized actin cytoskeleton. Matrix metallo-proteinase-3 levels in the load, steroid group were greater than those of the nonload, nonsteroid group (P <.05). Ultimate stress and ultimate strain in the load, steroid group were greater than those of the nonload, nonsteroid and nonload, steroid groups (P <.05). The strain energy density in the load, steroid group was greater when compared to other groups (P <.05).
Conclusions: Nandrolone decanoate and load acted synergistically to increase matrix remodeling and biomechanical properties of bioartificial tendons.
My takeaway from this is even if the integrity of the tendon is suboptimal to its natural counterpart on paper, it’s still capable of handling superior loads to its nonenhanced tendons. Even if it could be more injury-prone going forward, that aligns with what I see in the bodybuilding community. Even if the tendons are mechanically weaker on paper, they’re still capable of lifting insane loads.
My personal conclusion for this is that nandrolone definitely has a place in enhancing collagen synthesis. I just don't think it's for rock climbers. Due to the water and muscle gain from the compound, especially with a testosterone base, I just think it's too much. If I were a grip athlete in an open Division, though, I would absolutely leverage this. I do think in this context with growth hormone, we could have that 1+1=3 effect for faster tendon growth and overall tendon integrity. That said, I just don't think it's optimal for our sport. Full Source list is below. Think I'm wrong? Shoot me an email at anabolicclimbing@gmail.com, and if I am, I'll post a correction. Cheers and happy sending everyone!
Adam
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