Bodybuilders are some seriously creative beasts. Any time modern medicine delivers a new compound to help improve the quality of life for mankind, bodybuilders will immediately work overtime to find ways to utilize the drug in hopes of shedding body fat, adding muscle, or improving the body’s functions in some way or another.
Throughout history, most anabolic steroids began as solutions to underweight farm animals or cancer patients suffering from muscle-wasting ailments. It was only through the creative and often very risky) behavior of bodybuilders that these compounds were tested and discovered to be very useful by bodybuilders.
Many people around the world suffer from weight problems attributed to faulty thyroid function. There are a group of drugs used to elevate the T3 and T4 levels of the thyroid. These bump the metabolism in patients when reduced caloric intake and exercise are not enough to bring the patient’s weight to a healthy level. Thyroid manipulation is a last resort, but one that has helped many overweight people find a healthier and more comfortable body weight.
Bodybuilders, of course, also use thyroid manipulation drugs to help lower body fat levels by increasing the metabolic performance of the body. Most of the time, this is a harmless effort, as the thyroid is an organ which recovers remarkably quickly, even from the excesses of bodybuilding drug supplementation. Supplementing with Cytomel, Tricana, T3 and T4 is most popular among bodybuilders, but recently the drug called Synthroid has seen greater use for the same purposes.
Synthroid costs about double what you would pay for the more common and readily available Cytomel. It is often required in higher doses (up to 250 or 300 mg per day) compared with Cytomel, which is equally effective at 100 mg per day or so. Synthroid is less effective when the user is dieting, particularly when using the low-carbohydrate Ketogenic style of dieting.
You should always have blood work done when using any thyroid altering drugs to monitor the function of the thyroid and basal body temperature. Overuse of Synthroid or any thyroid drug can lead to the minor chance of permanent thyroid damage. Check your blood panels with your doctor as well as with experts in your field who may be able to interpret the finds (in conjunction with your drug use) better than your physician can.
If you are an amateur bodybuilder competing in a local show, or just a gym rat looking to diet down to see how lean you can become, you probably don’t have much business utilizing drugs which will bump the metabolism by altering hormone production by the thyroid. If you are a more advanced bodybuilder who has run a few cycles, and are well aware of the risks inherent with thyroid manipulation, then you may want to try a common compound such as Cytomel. If you have experience with thyroid hormones and you don’t have access to the cheaper and more effective Cytomel, then Synthroid may be a viable option for those last few weeks of dieting when you just need a metabolic bump
