The Newbie Bloodwork Guide
How To Do Your First Cycle The Right Way
You need to know what’s going inside of you before you even think of going on any anabolics.
Get your bloodwork done please, please, please, please, please. I’ve even included a little list of things you should get tested at the bottom of this post.
Bloodwork before your cycle
Take 1 test before your cycle. This is quite simple and serves two purposes.
- You will see if something wrong
You never know if something’s wrong unless you look. Imagine buying a bunch of stuff you want to research only to find out your liver values look off. You might have just dodged a bullet.
2. You want to see where you began
This is extremely important. If you don’t know what your starting values were, how can you truly tell what’s going on during your cycle?
Yes, I know this all sounds like a pain in the ass, but trust me. Treat this as an investment in your health. The guys who are most meticulous about bloodwork are more able to make better decisions over time. Ever notice how no one says YOLO anymore? That’s because those people died.
Bloodwork during the cycle
If you’re really hardcore, then I think you should get blood work during the cycle. You should see what the half-life of your compound is and determine at which point you will have hit peak blood concentration levels. That would be an ideal time to get some blood work.
The reason we want to check our bloodwork at peak levels is that we want to see how our body is handling the stress of all these new things happening in our bodies. If our hormone levels are high but our liver and kidney values are looking good then we’re in a good spot. If something looks catastrophic then you might want to consider backing off on dosages and such.
Post-Cycle Bloodwork
This is also important. This lets you see a few things.
1. What Changed
I would wait a bit after I finish using something before checking my bloodwork. If you check it too close to after you finish then it hasn’t left your system and you’re essentially still on cycle so you’re doing intracycle bloodwork two times. You can do that if you like but if you’re doing this on a budget it might be a waste.
I would wait a week or more depending on what I was using before getting the blood work.
2. How Well Your Body Tolerates Coming Off
Some people experience weird effects when they come off of a compound. You might be one of those people. Let’s say you finish up your cycle and you just feel bad. You might note this in your log so that if you ever do decide to use this compound you can look it up and determine if you can handle feeling bad or not.
The Best Practices For Blood Work
- Get tested while fasted
Your liver works as a filtration system for whatever comes into the body. You want your liver to be as unburdened as possible when you go get your bloodwork done. it will give you a more accurate representation of what’s going on.
2. Stop taking oral steroids
If you’re using oral steroids, I would suggest stopping them for 1 week before you get your blood work. This goes back to the liver again. How can we truly know what’s going on with your liver if you just slammed 50mg of Dbol an hour before getting bloodwork? I would only suggest doing this if you were specifically trying to see what Dbol does to your body.
3. Don’t take any injections for at least 2 days before you get the blood work
If you’re taking injections before you get your bloodwork you might have radically different blood values
4. Don’t go get a blood test if you trained hard 2 days prior
I would wait 3 days out from training hard. So if you train on Sunday, wait at least until Tuesday and possibly Wednesday before getting your bloodwork done.
Suggested tests and optimal range for men:
*Total Testosterone 800–1,000 ng/dl
Free Testosterone 250–300 pg/ml
*Estradiol(E2) 20–30 pg/ml
SHBG 10–30 nmol/l
DHT 60–70 ng/dl
*PSA Under 2.6 ng/mL — (optimal range)
*Hct (Hematocrit): Under 52%
*Liver Values:
AST- should be lower than 45 IU/l
ALT- should be lower than 47 IU/l
GGT- should be lower than 43 IU/l
*Don’t start TRT/hormones/SARMS without at least these tests. The rest are optional but helpful. If PSA or Liver Values are over the suggested limits any hormone treatment should wait for pending normalization of values.
I hope that this helps someone out there. Please let me know what you guys think in the comments below!
