Have any of you thought about how Hollywood stars manage to look beyond their years in terms of physical shape or appearance? Usually, when I ask people this question I get platitudes like - they have a lot of money, for which they buy the services of doctors, beauticians, trainers. Yes, it's true, they have a lot of money, but this is a very superficial view, I am interested in details, schemes, systems 🙂
As someone who has loved movies since my youth, I have witnessed the aging of many Hollywood stars. And some of them amaze me in terms of physical form in the frame. Let's find out how they manage to do it, leaving aside all the modern computer special effects and other tricks.
Steroids are the first thing that comes to mind for the average person. Yes, it's true, in the 90's action movies with S. Stallone, Van Damme, etc. were very popular. Stallone, Van Damme, etc. in which many actors were chemically enhanced, as they say, up to their eyeballs. 😂
In my opinion, the cult of muscle was "brought" to Hollywood by Arnold Schwarzenegger. With him, the first steroid use schemes began to appear. What is interesting, at that time it was absolutely legal. It is reliably known that Arnie used methandrostenolone (slang name for methane) and primobolan (or methenolone). Methandrostenolone is one of the oldest (60's) oral anabolic steroids, which is used to this day in the bodybuilders' circle.
Other actors were not as blatant as Arnie, for example, S. Stallone probably also sat on such a scheme, but the common people needed to show the typical plot of the American dream in the movie Rocky - if you plow, you will get everything. 😂
This steroid movement lasted for a long time, until the actors began to realize the side effects. On the one hand it added masculinity to the image in the movie, but on the other hand it led to psychological and physical dependence.
For example, on anabolic steroids the body stops producing its own testosterone, testicles (testicles) atrophy occurs, prostate also increases. The number of spermatozoa decreases, they become defective. The man becomes almost sterile. Balding, possibly covered with acne.
When steroids are canceled, muscle mass decreases due to the "departure" of water from the muscles, prolactin increases, mood deteriorates and libido disappears (because there is no test already), etc. All this requires intelligent specialists and proper post-course therapy to restore the functions of testicles, pituitary gland, liver, etc.
In general the movie-masculinity industry required new technology 🙂 One that would allow for muscle building, without backlash, without the aforementioned side effects.
In the late '90s, attention turned to growth hormone. You may have heard that it makes you grow 🙂 In fact, its role in the body is fundamental and complex, and not all medics and scientists understand it today. Perhaps I will write a publication about it sometime.
So, actors have switched to growth hormone. You can google the media headlines about Stallone not being allowed into Australia because of a suitcase full of vials of this hormone. 🙂 Sly didn't know at the time that the Ozzies had imposed new laws on steroids and growth hormone was now illegal, so he had to pay a hefty fine for importing it, And we learned that Sly prefers Chinese Jintropin.🙂
Later it turned out that growth hormone is not an ideal remedy either - it grows muscles poorly by itself, so it needs to be combined with other remedies, it also increases blood glucose and, if used in high doses, leads to diabetes and hypothyroidism. But, these side effects are already easier to manage than from steroids, moreover, I even wrote a publication (pre-print) about my approach in this case 🧐
The practice of using this hormone took hold not only in Hollywood, but also in sports.
A little later, thanks to scientists (Chinese😁) began to appear peptides that mimic the growth hormone molecule(HGH Frag). And also peptides that increase the secretion of growth hormone by the pituitary gland (e.g. CJC-1295, GHRP-6) became popular.
What happened next? Somewhere around 2008, scientists who are often paradoxically far removed from masculinity but realized that there are people with muscular dystrophies that require similar remedies in treatment got savvy 🙂
They've done experiments with substances that can selectively activate androgen receptors. The idea is to activate these receptors only in the muscles, not in the prostate, follicles, etc. In this way you can get the muscle growth effect of steroids, but exclude prostate growth, baldness and so on.
The era of SARMs (selective androgen receptor modulators) has arrived. A number of substances were synthesized (Ostarine, Ligandrol, YK-11, etc.), of which Ostarine (Enobosarm, Ostarin, MK-2866) has sort of successfully reached clinical trials.
Indeed, Ostarine increases muscle mass, endurance, mood, etc. almost without causing the side effects of traditional steroids. However, I have data on the use of this drug by athletes (high doses), and I can say that it changes the lipid profile, which can still cause cardiovascular problems in some individuals.....
As far as I know, SARMs can only be bought on the black market. However, this does not prevent athletes from being regularly caught in doping controls with these drugs. Actors, however, have no doping control, and according to some insiders, at the moment, the "gold standard" for muscle building is SARMs + growth hormone.
Maybe thanks to this combination you see muscles on 72-year-old grandpa Stalone in Rambo 5. 😉
