Androstenedione effects - do andro supplements really work?

[mtex]

Many athletes take 'andro' supplements in a bid to boost testosterone production without falling foul of doping tests. But they could be deluding themselves - on all fronts.
The average Joe begins to lose his testosterone - and his muscle mass - at about age 30. At the same age, the average runner also starts to experience a testosterone drop-off. Although his running and associated strength training may preserve his muscle mass, he begins to notice an appreciable increase in muscle soreness and tightness following strenuous workouts - and a decreased ability to recover quickly from hard-edged training sessions and races.

For different reasons, both 'Joe' and the runner might consider taking 'andro' - supplements which contain the allegedly anabolic testosterone precursors androstenediol and/or androstenedione.

The man on the street wants to keep his muscles, lose his flab and preserve his sexual potency. Forget about baldness and an increased risk of prostate cancer - he looks to andro to keep him hard!

The 30-plus runner looks back with longing to the days when four quality workouts per week were not just a possibility but standard practice. He (or she) is down to two quality weekly sessions (during good weeks!) and 10k time is down, too - or rather up! Could andro add a little muscle to legs scarred from years of training? Could it trim recovery time so that those wonderful weeks of long runs, track workouts, hill runs, and tempo efforts could be restored? And might andro even make those delts and traps look a little less scrawny?

Although supplement promoters and US baseball star Mark McGwire might well say yes (but did andro weaken Mark's knee?), where's the scientific evidence? Are androstenedione and androstenediol really 'prohormones' (compounds which boost production of another hormone, in this case testosterone)? Do impartial exercise scientists believe that andro supplements are worth buying?

Real research: the Andro Project
Researchers at East Tennessee State University can probably answer these questions more authoritatively than anyone else in the world right now. They have been working on 'The Andro Project', a study which has carefully explored the physiological ramifications of andro supplementation during training. Naturally, they chose men over 30 for their investigations. Few women are receptive to the idea of testosterone-like compounds coursing through their blood vessels - and indeed one study did find that 100 mg of oral androstenedione significantly increased blood testosterone levels in women (1). Men under 30 already have enough of the stuff to make them dangerous; there's no need to give them more! In a recent Andro-Project exercise, 50 men aged 35-65 took part in a 12-week strengthening programme which involved training three times a week for 75 minutes per session. The subjects began by working at an intensity of 60-70% of 1-RM but gradually moved up to about 80-95%: 1-RM ('one-repetition max') refers to the amount of resistance against which a movement can be completed successfully one - and only one - time.

In each workout 2-3 sets of 3-15 reps of each exercise were completed; the exercises included bench presses, front military seated presses, front lat pull-downs, standing arm curls, cable triceps extensions, leg extensions, leg presses, standing calf raises, abdominal exercises, inclined dumbbell bench presses, hammer-behind-the-neck shoulder presses, low cable rows, lying French presses, machine squats, seated calf raises, lunges, and step-ups. All training days also included five minutes of Swiss-ball stabilising exercises for the abs and low back.



During the 12 weeks of strength training, the men were divided into three groups, each taking a different supplement, as follows (2):

* 17 took androstenediol (200mg per day)
* 15 took androstenedione (200mg per day)
* 18 took inactive tablets (placebo)

So what happened? After one month, total blood-testosterone levels were up by about 16 percent in the androstenedione group, but then the subjects' pituitary glands got wise to what was happening. Those important little masses of tissue at the base of the brain noticed the rise in testosterone and curtailed their release of LH, a pituitary hormone which stimulates testosterone production in the testes. In effect, the pituitary was saying: 'Hey, we've got enough testosterone around here - there's no need to keep pumping it out at such high rates.' As a result, testosterone levels began to fall and had returned to baseline levels by the end of the study, despite continued supplementation with andro.

The men did get stronger as a result of their rigorous strength-training programme, but the 'andro men' had no more power than the poor fellows who had to limp along without testosterone precursors. In other words, andro supplementation did nothing at all to enhance strength! Basically, upper-body strength advanced by about 16% and lower-body strength went up by 29% - in all three groups of men.

Were these men perhaps taking insufficient andro to boost muscle mass in a dramatic way? The dosage used in the study - 200mg per day - is a commonly-recommended intake, and it did increase blood levels of andro by 62-183%, which should have constituted 'adequate testosterone-precursor stimulation'. In a prior study using dosages 50% higher, there was also no observed effect on body composition and strength (3).

It's not that the andro wasn't physiologically active: it did indeed alter physiological activity - but in the wrong direction. Blood concentrations of the key female sex hormones estrone and estradiol rose by 47-92% for the andro-users over the course of the 12-week study! In effect, instead of emphasising their male characteristics, they were feminising themselves. And, incidentally, there is no scientific support whatsoever for the theory that the 'stacking formulas' popularly used by weightlifters and bodybuilders help to arrest this female sex hormone upswing. Worse still, blood-fat profiles headed south as a result of andro use. The 'cardiac lipid risk profiles' of the men in the placebo group improved by 12% during the study, while those of the andro subjects declined by 5-11%. This was primarily because placebo subjects increased - and andro subjects reduced - their levels of HDL-cholesterol (the protective or 'good' cholesterol where heart disease is concerned).

Andro-users could have tested positive for steroid use
But hold on - the story gets even worse! In more recent research carried out by Don Catlin and his colleagues at the University of California in Los Angeles, 24 men who took andro for just seven days ended up with the steroid marker 19-norandrostenedione in their urine, which could have caused them to 'test positive' for steroid use. Andro itself does not normally produce 19-norandrostenedione, so the highly-respected researchers realised that the supplements must have been contaminated. In fact, they found that each andro capsule they analysed contained 19-androstenedione. In addition, when they tested nine different commercial brands of andro, they found that five didn't actually contain the amount of andro claimed on the label (this is called fraud!), while one actually contained testosterone (4).

The moral of this story is beware! Many competitive endurance and power athletes are currently taking andro, since there is no specific test to detect usage of andro per se. However, as Catlin's new research demonstrates, if you take andro you are very likely to test positive for steroid use because the commercial andro preparations are not pure.

So what's the bottom line? There is no scientific support for andro supplementation, either in normal life or an athletic setting. Indeed, far from building muscle, andro supplementation may even be associated with increased muscle breakdown (5). Andro intake is associated with significant and premature increases in heart disease risk factors. It may also increase the risks of gynecomastia (excessive breast development) and breast, prostate, and pancreatic cancer in males. The sale of andro supplements is currently a multi-million-dollar business. Logic tells us that this business is of benefit to the seller, not the buyer!

Owen Anderson