In a study evaluating dose-response to a moderate and high Anadrol dosage, muscle and strength gains from 50 mg per day and 100 mg per day were compared.
By now you’ve probably heard me outline the “less is more” concept when it comes to steroid use.
On one side of the spectrum, the clinical data does show that the more steroids you use, the more muscle you will gain over the span of a cycle.
However, the same studies also reveal a dose-dependent decline in muscle growth response relative to increased drug load.
Basically, more works better, but there are diminishing returns the higher your dosages go, and how much muscle you net over the span of your life bodybuilding will likely differ based on how aggressively you approach your mass building phases.
50 mg Vs. 100 mg Anadrol Study Results
In the following study, we can see changes in body weight, lean body mass (what we mainly care about), and fat loss in response to a moderate and high Anadrol dosage (50 mg vs. 100 mg) [R].
The placebo group didn’t gain any lean body mass, nor did they lose any body fat.
The 50 mg Anadrol treated group gained 3.3 kilograms of lean body mass and lost 2.6 kg of fat.
The 100 mg Anadrol treated group gained 4.2 kilograms of lean body mass and lost 2.5 kg of fat.
Looking at lean body mass, we can see that when comparing the two dosage groups, the 100 mg group only gained 0.9 kg lean body mass more than the 50 mg group.
This is after three-month exposure to twice the amount of drug.
If we compare biomarkers between the two groups, we can see that the effect 100 mg of Anadrol had on ALT and AST levels was far more deleterious than the 50 mg group.
Alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) are commonly used biomarkers for assessing liver damage.
| Placebo | 50 mg/day | 100 mg/day | PValue | |
| ALT, U/l | 0 ± 2 | 21 ± 15 | 72 ± 67 | 0.001 |
| AST, U/l | 1 ± 2 | 14 ± 6 | 38 ± 29 | <0.0001 |
Doubling the Anadrol dosage only yielded an additional 27% of muscle growth, but resulted in a 3.4x higher spike in ALT and a 2.7x higher spike in AST levels.
Those are just biomarkers in the blood too and aren’t indicative of what deleterious impact doubling the dosage may have had on ventricular hypertrophy, or other commonly overlooked factors that should be used to evaluate cardiovascular health.
More Is Better, Until It’s Not
Yes, higher dosages will yield more muscle growth in the short-term.
This is established.
However, in the grand scheme of things, is it worth it to pursue that additional 20-30% of progress you can get out of a cycle by doubling your dosages?
Not only will you experience diminishing returns the higher your dosage climbs, but subjecting your body to a substantially greater toxic burden will ultimately shorten your bodybuilding career.
“The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long.”
– Lao Tzu
Cranking oxidative stress through the roof with higher dosages to yield fractional returns will just bring you towards a state of deteriorated health quicker, and will likely prevent you from even being healthy enough to pursue off-season cycles down the line that you would have otherwise been able to leverage to gain more muscle had you not pushed things so aggressively in your earlier years.
At some point, you are going to reach a stage where you have to choose between your health and bodybuilding, and your lifestyle practices will start to shift more in favor of longevity (if you’re smart).
Pushing your body unnecessarily with high dosages just gets you to that point faster.
With that being said, how do you define what a “high dose” is and what a “safe dose” is?
There are no safe dosages when you’re using anabolic steroids, but what you can do is take the hordes of clinical data and anecdotal reports we have available and form a health conscious approach to bodybuilding based on them.
Knowing where the point of diminishing returns lies with each drug and what kind of risk that drug load carries is something that needs to be seriously evaluated by all bodybuilders, and the information we have available should be considered when designing your protocols relative to your personal goals.
Perhaps short-term you may not gain as much muscle as quickly as you could otherwise, but at the end of the day, less is more when you think about the long-term objective.
The long-term objective is netting as much muscle gain as possible while staying healthy enough to continue bodybuilding.
Be mindful of the potential for an overall greater amount of long-term muscle accrual with a relative lack of side effects when designing your protocols.
What Is The Ideal Anadrol Dosage?
Obviously, this is up for interpretation, but I just want to present this data to you, and you can take from that what you will.
This study is just another example of why the less is more approach should be strongly considered.
The dosage isn’t low by any means, so let’s not confuse “less is more” with low vs. high dosages.
50 mg per day of Anadrol is 350 mg per week of anabolics, which is not a low dosage.
Hell, you might not need more than 25 mg per day for your personal goals, especially if it is being stacked on top of a Testosterone base.
What the ideal dosage will be for you will depend on your goals and your personal state of health, but for the vast majority of users, it is very unlikely that it will ever be justified for you to use more than 50 mg of Anadrol per day.
In the context of this study in particular, you would need to seriously ask yourself if doubling your dose of a hepatotoxic, lipid-crushing, erythropoietin spiking drug for three months straight is worth an additional 0.9 kilogram gain in lean body mass when you could otherwise deploy a more calculated and patient approach that would probably net you more muscle growth long-term.