I don't really understand. Clearly the muscles work to <i>some</i> extent, so isn't making more a lot better than doing nothing?<p>> It’d be like if you had a construction project, and you found out that all of the wooden beams you were receiving from a supplier were rotten. Would you order more beams from that same supplier to fix the problem?<p>If my other option is shrugging and doing nothing and being sad as the house falls apart, then <i>obviously yes I do</i>. Quadruple up all the beams.
A different question. As someone who had to recover from Achilles tear and had to rebuild an atrophied calf muscle.<p>Why don’t we just give anabolic steroids to people if their muscles atrophied after wearing a cast?
I go further and wonder why don't we do that (steroids, growth hormones, sarms, everything) in advance as people reach certain age (and their natural secretion of the hormones falls below certain level). I feel inspired by Dr. Life and feel like starting taking hormones (from the black market, European doctors will never prescribe this officially) as I reach 50-60.<p>AFAIK the growth hormone even rejuvenates the thymus, the immune system (and may prevent cancer this way, if not over-used) and is the only way to trigger regeneration of joints.
Actually steroids are used to treat people with muscular dystrophy: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anabolic_steroid#Medical" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anabolic_steroid#Medical</a><p>But they have a lot of side effects:
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anabolic_steroid#Adverse_effects" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anabolic_steroid#Adverse_effec...</a><p>Therefor scientists started to investigate different substances like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_androgen_receptor_modulator" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_androgen_receptor_mo...</a><p>But these might still have severe side effects (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligandrol#Adverse_health_effects" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligandrol#Adverse_health_effec...</a>)
A cure for muscular dystrophy for humans already exists. Only problem is, it costs a whopping $2 million USD.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-novartis-genetherapy/novartis-2-million-gene-therapy-for-rare-disorder-is-worlds-most-expensive-drug-idUSKCN1SU1ZP" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/article/us-novartis-genetherapy/nova...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/05/24/725404168/at-2-125-million-new-gene-therapy-is-the-most-expensive-drug-ever" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/05/24/7254041...</a>
Interesting close-to-the-end note related to much of the medical research (on mice) that gets posted to HN: “The end result, in retrospect, was predictable: they successfully cured muscular dystrophy in mice, but not in humans.”
One problem is, it would have to be permanent, once the steroids are stopped, the extra muscle will mostly fade away and the natural testosterone production will be inhibited, this is the worst effect, the people end up with a lower testosterone production than before.
But it's true, so long enough calories are given, they would gain some muscle, even without training at all.
An alternative might be hgh , but that comes with other issues.
Last but not least, all steroids are not equal, they're all testosterone derivates, the tablets are very toxic to the liver, and some derivates come with some more side effects than plain testosterone.
Science tried to develop a mild steroid with great anabolic effects , but all of them are not powerful without adequate androgenic properties. The androgenic properties is what makes a steroid strong and....causes most side effects and hormonal imbalances post going off.
To this day, testosterone seems to be the choice of medicine and by no means it's a weak drug, it simply upsets the body bit less as it's the same thing that the body produces.
There might be more points on why not give it to these patients, but that's the steroid side of things.
I read one of the linked articles in the article, the one that said men who take steroids and don’t exercise gain more muscle mass than men who don’t take steroids but do exercise. I should admit that I’m personally biased against the conclusion but I find the results interesting. I had a few nitpicks however:<p>1. I question how optimal the training stimulus was. They said it was controlled and they worked out 3 times a week and for the squat/bench press they started out at 4 sets of 6 reps varying between 70/80/90 % initial one rep max and then increased weights after 5 weeks and increased the number of sets to 5. I think it’s obvious that more exercise would result in more muscle mass gain up to a certain point and I think the amount of volume they’re doing is really suboptimal even for a more average weight lifter. I didn’t see them go into more detail about the workout routine which would’ve been nice.<p>2. With such a minimal routine, muscle mass gain is going to be limited to the areas that are being exercised. Taking steroids is going to increase all muscle mass throughout the body. The placebo + exercise group had a slightly higher increase in strength, very slight, but still higher than the steroid + no exercise group. If they wanted, a weight lifter could change the routine to maximize overall muscle mass gain. Presumably they weren’t really hitting some muscle groups (shoulders, hamstrings, calves, back, core). They weren’t doing deadlifts. So it makes sense that the steroid + no exercise group had higher muscle mass gain because they were experiencing a full body stimulus whereas the exercise + placebo were not (even if they were I question how optimal the routine was since as far as I could tell they didn’t release detailed workout routine).<p>3. This is even more nitpicky, but there is going to be a limited ceiling with no external stimulus (exercise). In the long run the steroid + no-ex group will plateau whereas the placebo + ex group will be able to increase muscle for much longer.<p>So I guess I disagree with the conclusion “men who take steroids but don’t exercise gain more muscle mass than no steroids + exercise” despite the results supporting it.
On the other hand an MPC inhibitor like RCGD423 should reactivate the muscle stem cells [1].<p>For a similar reason an oral TZD (which are selective MPCi) should also help.<p>[1] <a href="https://hscnews.usc.edu/small-molecule-could-make-a-big-difference-for-arthritis-patients" rel="nofollow">https://hscnews.usc.edu/small-molecule-could-make-a-big-diff...</a>
This article says weightlifting can add skeletal muscle cells to make it hypertrophied. Wrong. Hypertrophy occurs by making existing muscle cells bigger. No skeletal muscle cells creation can exist, except in very few precise contexts.<p>Also, studies show that weightlifting actually fight or even prevent sarcopenia.
Same for steroids.<p>(sarcopenia = muscular distrophy)<p>Obviously the author just doesn't like sports........
Well if you're speaking from an incentive point of view. The incentive of society is to keep men as docile as possible. Testosterone is not the best hormone to achieve this effect. On the other hand estrogen is quite freely given if you want to go the other way.
Giving testosterone to people dying from dystrophy would open the discussion of steroids and it would counter the narrative that steroids are the worst drugs in existence, designed to kill you the moment you take a miligram.