How do testosterone injections affect muscle growth?
Testosterone is commonly called the male hormone. Among its many functions, it’s involved in the regulation of muscle mass. Testosterone levels naturally differ between people. However, such individual differences have little impact on muscle mass, as long as testosterone is in a healthy range.
Testosterone can be injected, which is known as ‘taking steroids’. This results in testosterone levels that are much higher than what can be naturally produced (called: a supraphysiologic dose). How effective are steroids for building muscle mass?
This study investigated the effect of injections of supraphysiologic dosages of testosterone on muscle gains with or without training. For 10 weeks, participants received weekly injections of 600 mg of testosterone or placebo. Muscle mass was assessed by underwater weighing, and muscle size by MRI.
As expected, the testosterone injections further increased muscle mass gains when combined with resistance training. However, testosterone injections also increased muscle mass in subjects who did not perform any training. In fact, testosterone injections without training were at least as effective as resistance training (without injections). The same patterns were observed for muscle strength gains. This clearly highlights that supraphysiological doses of testosterone are very potent at building muscle mass and strength.
It should be noted that the authors state explicitly that their results are in no way a justification for the use of anabolic steroids, which can have serious side effects.
Go to the next infographic in the hormone series:
Testosterone injections increase organ size?
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