What Happens After Taking Steroids For 30 Days?

What would happen if I took steroids for 30 days? I'm a lifetime natty. But nowadays it seems like so many athletes, actors, and even social media influencers are hopping on the Juice. It got me thinking, how serious are the side effects? What does that first 30 days on juice feel like? And how much progress could it make? I wanted to speak to people with firsthand experience. The conversations I had were not only eye opening, but they led me to a decision I never thought I would make. First reached out to a veteran to show me the ropes. Jaws. Jaws is one of the world's top bodybuilders, finishing in the top 25 as a Mr. Olympia competitor.

Grab the wrist. Yeah.

And as he coached me through one of his posing routines, it was easy to see why. He's one of the best in the world. Does your mom know you're taking steroids?

She's called me on a man. I've never admitted it.

Really?

No.

So she doesn't know it?

No, she doesn't know. Like, she's never gotten me to admit it. I'm like, no, mom. Everything's natural, just creatine.

Jaws won his first competition as a natural back in 2014. But once he started competing on stage against enhanced bodybuilders, the decision to take steroids was essentially a must if he wanted to keep advancing. First day you had it in your hands and you're about to inject yourself. Walk me through, like, what was going through you. Nurse.

I didn't even want to poke myself, to be honest, because I, I, I was like, my hand, I have my. The needle was in, man. I'm like, it was on my glute right here. So I was like, I was, like, shaking. So I didn't want to poke my butt with a quivering hand. So I actually asked my girlfriend at the time to do it for me.

While today Jaws takes a variety of PDS for competitions, he started out with the hormone. Most new users start with testosterone. It's a natural hormone that the body already produces. But injecting yourself with more than your body could ever produce naturally can lead to some pretty insane results. One study took 43 men and divided them into two groups. Each week. The guys were given either 600 milligrams of testosterone or a placebo. But they were also split up into a group that didn't work out and a group that did. 10 weeks later. The guys who were taking testosterone had levels that were three to six times higher than normal. But you probably expected that. What's crazy is they found that just taking testosterone without exercising was still extremely effective for building muscle. Muscle. In fact, it was so effective that the testosterone with no exercise group built more muscle than the group that was exercising while taking the placebo. So for Jaws, who had already been training naturally for eight years with several bodybuilding wins under his belt, I was curious to know how it affected him from day one. Did you work out that day?

I think I did, yeah.

Yeah.

And I was just like in my head I'm thinking like, I'm already feeling stronger, definitely emphysemo. I felt like, I don't know, I just want a Super Saiyan now. It's like I'm on a mission, like I'm, I'm going after it.

Funny enough, it wasn't just Jaws who felt an immediate difference. I also spoke to Clement, a 26 year old ex steroid user who had a similar experience.

I thought I was the biggest dude in the world. Like the next day I swear I was very motivated all the time. I became definitely the typical masculine person. I became very masculine, made decisions super quick. I was always on the go. My brain was firing 24 7.

I definitely felt a difference in energy, like more vitality, like more like I'm ready, like, you know, type of thing. That's why I was so excited to the gym all the time.

Yeah.

Constantly thinking about progression and they're getting stronger and getting bigger.

See, testosterone doesn't just affect your muscles. Creating such a big hormonal imbalance in your body can impact your mood, energy levels, confidence, libido, even your appetite.

I was eating more like where right away I was so hungry all the damn time. Like whether I was waking up right in the morning or hit it, like going to work after work, I want to eat 24 7. Like not, not going to lie. And I indulged a lot of food. The crazy thing is I wasn't gaining too, too much too. At the same time, you're just burning.

Through everything you eat. Like I would have a cheat meal every day and then maintain six pack abs so I would actually look better having cheat meals.

At this point I'm thinking more energy, more motivation and looking better. After cheat meals, where can I stand up? And this was even before they told me how was helping them in the gym.

Strength wise, I think it was like two and a half weeks. In three weeks I started noticing some strength increases. And then as we progressed into the cycle, that's when were like, yeah, I just threw weights that I didn't know I could throw. I would show up to the gym and I was like, what, shoulder pressing like 60, 65, 70 pounds before I was show up one day. Never even tried. I was like, let's just do 100, 110. Let's just do it. Let's just do it.

Once the fourth week hit, all of a sudden it went just like, like I hit like nos. My strength just skyrocketed. Like, I started to like, jump in my numbers with my lifts. I was like jumping up, leaping up in my numbers and progressive overload way quicker than I was before.

Now, as for actual muscle growth, I looked into it and according natural lifters can gain anywhere from 20 to 40 pounds of muscle in their lifetime. But for guys on gear, it goes up to a whopping 45 to 120 pounds. Now, personally, I've gained a total of around 30 pounds of muscle ever since I started working out. And the muscle building process has only gotten slower. I'm lucky if I can gain even just a couple of pounds of muscle in a single year. But how would this change if I hopped on the juice?

I would say, like, if you are enhanced, you can probably put on around like 10 to 20 pounds of tissue in your first year.

Oh, really? Yeah. I gotta say, after posing next to Jaws in the mirror and thinking about the possibility of being able to gain 10 to 20 pounds of muscle in a single year, it's tempting. But if I was about to throw away my natty card for life, there was just one more question I needed Jaws to answer. How is the size of your testes changed?

Well, I mean, if you Google search it, it's pretty. It's, it's out there. Like, everyone knows your testy shrinks.

Your penis does not go, okay, penis.

Penis stays the same. So don't they have the wrong idea? Like, you know, the, the penis doesn't shrink. If anything, it looks bigger because. A little smaller. Yeah, the sensitive shrinking, it is very noticeable. It's like almost like it goes to.

Like so like this and then.

And there's like peanuts.

Really?

Yeah, small.

As for why this happens, when you take an exogenous hormone like testosterone, your body essentially thinks, hey, I don't need to produce this anymore. You're telling your brain that it's already getting what it needs from this external source. And for guys, since testosterone is primarily produced in the testes, well, they sort of just shrivel up because they're no longer needed. But this can create bigger complications.

And then all of a sudden, you hop off that test and it's like that Production. No matter what you do, no matter what kind of compounds you take to bring back the production of it, no matter how well you are optimizing your sleep, your stress, it doesn't change. And that's when you know you're kind of bound to taking trt.

And for Jaws, this led to some complications I didn't notice.

ED issues. So like erectile dysfunction? Yeah, yeah. Getting a little personal again. But yeah, it was like, it was hard for me to get it up, to be honest. And then it took some time to like get my hormones back to normal levels.

Yeah, this is where I started to get worried for one. I didn't like the idea of being dependent on testosterone and injecting myself with the needle for the rest of my life. And as I found out from Clement, not every change that comes from taking testosterone is positive.

I'm the gym buddy, bumped into me and I completely flipped the switch. I was just like, watch where you're going, man, like out loud. And I didn't realize that when it came out of my mouth, but it was a very aggressive tone.

At this point, my decision wasn't looking nearly as clear cut as it used to. But what about all the actors and social media influencers on Juice? Surely not everyone who takes steroids runs into these problems, right? Especially if they're just using them for a short period of time. Well, I wanted to learn more about the risks from an expert. Luckily for me, there was no better person than steroids coach and educator John Jewett of J3 University.

So a lot of guys are worried about short term side effects. When you're young, right, you're going to worry about your hair or testicular shrinkage or acne. But the true dangers that I would be worried about, and that should always be in the back of your mind of the long term effects of steroid use, which are absolutely very much pertinent, even in short term use.

Talking to John, he explained that while many people make the mistakes of taking the wrong types of steroids or the wrong dosages, even if you're careful to do everything right, there's still a chance you won't see the results you're hoping for.

I've had guys that, man, they take a little bit and they get every single side effect. And then you have other guys that are using a bunch of steroids and they barely see any health deleterious effects. Genetics determines everything. It's why I'm not Michael Jordan in playing basketball. Right. There was a interesting study injecting 500 milligrams of testosterone in these different subjects and some of the guys have testosterone levels that would triple while other guys didn't rise up that much at all. It's purely down to how they metabolize the drugs differently.

And the reality is if you end up having a bad reaction to steroids, the side effects can become life threatening.

I was on vacation one time and for the first time I felt like my chest area was hurting. That was my first scare because obviously Dr. Google says when you search online and a chest pain out of nowhere, you're probably gonna die. I literally popped my iPhone up just to show some light on my chest and I could see my heart pumping out of my chest.

We see a lot of early deaths from, are from heart. I've had some close like pro bodybuilding friends that have passed away and indirectly related right. Heart, heart failure issues very young and probably a degree of being naive of what they were doing. And that led to like, yeah, early deaths like in 20s and early 30s and it's, it can't happen.

The most scary thing was what I think the doctor called the ticardia. So which was my, my heartbeat was not regular. Yeah, I had to get a lot of ECG exams, I had a lot of, get a lot of like ultrasounds as well, chest X rays to make sure everything's looking good. The most thing we're scared of was an enlarged heart.

Sure. What all these steroids do, their main thing is that androgen binds to an androgen receptor. And what does that androgen receptor do? It builds muscle or prevents muscle breakdown. But you don't just have androgen receptors in the muscle. You have them on the heart, you have them on kidneys, you have them in the brain. So they influence all these other tissues as well.

Just because your favorite influencer is using it and he looks okay, doesn't mean that you're going to have the same experience as he does. And who knows what he's also going through privately behind the closed doors.

And for guys like Jaws, this wasn't just about looking good on the beach. Bodybuilding is his passion. And in his world, the line between a winning physique and long term health issues is incredibly thin.

Honestly, when you want something man, you're just willing to do whatever risk it takes, right? Yeah, but I don't want to do it for too long. That's the thing I recommend no one actually ever touch bds. I personally as a bodybuilder, I don't recommend people touch it unless there's a reason for it.

If you're not planning to compete that extra bit of muscle, I just really don't see that being worth that extra risk. Having that extra five pounds of muscle. No one cares, you know, no one cares about that.

The natty has to put away more, way more work. Which is why I respect people who stay natural for the rest of like for their whole lives. And it's a lot like harder and more discipline and willpower to stay as a natural than if you're enhanced trying to build muscle.

So after talking with jaws, John and Clement, am I going to take the jump and start using steroids? No. For starters, my Filipino mom, who's also a doctor, she'd kill me. But I've also decided I would love to keep learning more about this topic. So I reached out to one of JAWS clients who's just about to start taking steroids. And he's agreed to let me follow his journey for the next 90 days. And I want to see if I can personally coach a natural lifter to keep up with the progress of someone taking juice. Now, we'll have more to share from this experiment in about three months, but in the meantime, if you want to discover the smartest way to build muscle as a natural, then give this video. Watch next, where I interview seven of the world's smartest muscle building experts. But for those of you who need more guidance and want a proven, easy to follow program that takes care of all, all the guesswork for you, head over to builtwithscience.com to find the best approach for you and your body. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you next time.