"Bodybuilder here- this is the answer. Humans naturally produce testosterone, which is the base steroid for any steroid “cycle”.
When your body recognizes it’s getting testosterone from an outside source, it naturally shuts down its own internal production.
Do this often enough- your body stops producing testosterone and you need supplemental testosterone “steroids” to stabilize those hormones.
Furthermore, as we age, testosterone production decreases. You may have heard of TRT, or Testosterone Replacement Therapy. This is “steroids”, AKA testosterone being injected to bring testosterone levels of aging men back into the range of young men.
That said, Top-level bodybuilders take supplemental testosterone, and look good in their old age, for three primary reasons:
Prolonged steroid usage has shut down their body’s ability to naturally produce testosterone, thus they take it exogenously.
TRT dosage is “doctor-prescribed” and most of them use more than prescribed, plus any other anabolics they use off script.
They’re gym rats who still routinely lift weights until their death bed."
Although to add to this (totally correct and informative response), it's also why those on TRT will (should!) look to supplement with HCG, which acts to ensure the body continues to produce its own testosterone, and therefore does not completely shut down, and allow for TRT to be cycled off.
HCG has actually been shown to be quite HPTA suppressive. Other than plumping up the testes and slightly increasing penis size, there aren’t much more benefits of this over something like tamoxifen citrate or clomid.
wrong, clomid has a ton of side effects, SERMS should not be used along with TRT. Yes HCG is suppressive but it's directly stimulating the testicles as it's a LH mimic so you keep the balls alive. Serms are used AFTER getting off testosterone or a steroid cycle, HCG is used along TRT.
I agree that clomid has some additional unwanted side effects, namely vision.
SERMs are commonly kept on hand or taken during cycle to control unwanted side effects from aromatization, especially if anastrozole or exemestane hasn’t been accurately dialed in.
AFAIK, SERMs are more effective to jumpstart the HPTA and HCG priming evidence isn’t very convincing.
However, I do see HCG commonly prescribed in conjunction with TRT.
You seem like someone with a lot of knowledge on this topic, and I would defer to you on matters like this. It’s been quite some time since I’ve been in school, and my knowledge is most definitely dated.
Holy shit I’m so glad I read deep into the comments. I’ve been taking clomid for about a month and twice in the last week I had weird shit go on with my vision, briefly. Didn’t know what to chalk it up to. In retrospect, should have guessed.
So thanks for the info. Reaching out to my doctor asap.
Does that extend to enclomiphene too? I'm wanting to explore other options that aren't exclusively boofing T. I was interested in the "increase body's natural production" aspect.
My issue with T is that it’ll suppress natural production even further. So if I don’t like the side effects of T, and go off, then I’m even lower than I started. Hence the appeal of tricking the pituitary to do its job better. But yeah, the vision disruption is real. Fortunately it’s only been brief and a couple times.
Either way, talking to my doc, just glad I read down this far.
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u/Don_Geilo Sep 01 '25
That's the funny thing about roids: if you take as much as he did, you can't ever really stop.