so a few months ago derek on his popular youtube channel more plates more dates released a video
where he outlined his reasoning as to why he was starting to take a semi-novel class of
ectosteroids known as terkestrone then a couple of months after he released this video and launched
a product by the same name andrew huberman one of the leading figures in the space of men's health
also mentioned it when he was on the joe rogan experience and ever since that podcast
was released ectosteroids have been exploding in popularity like i have never seen before
now with a health trend like this there usually is some level of truth behind the claims that
are being made followed by a ton of hype that is surrounding these legitimate health claims
and so essentially what i want to do in this video is walk through all the most relevant research on
ectosteroids so that we can essentially parse through and decide what is fact and what's fiction
and so without further ado let's go ahead and dive right in
now ectosteroids are a class of phytochemicals that are used by plants to defend themselves
against insects however from what little research we currently have they also appear
to be biologically active in animals and probably humans as well now there
is currently over 400 identified ectosteroids but the most relevant class of vectosteroids
seem to be beta-ectosterone 20 hydroxyectazone and terkestron the latter appearing to be the
most anabolic now there does appear to be some slight differences in how these ectosteroids are
processed and metabolized within the body however they do appear to be minor and so for the sake of
our conversation today we're going to kind of lump all of the research together and kind of just look
at it as one now i've been doing research and personal experimentation with ectosteroids for
the past several months now and let me just go ahead and say this the research is an absolute
mess a ton of the research is in russian currently and this prevents you from essentially accessing
all of the dosing protocols and the experimental design and the research that's in english a lot
of it is behind various research paywalls which similarly prevents you from accessing all of the
dosing and experimental designs as well and so because of this it is extremely difficult to
draw any definitive conclusions at this moment however there is some relevant research that i
want to dive into and so let's go ahead and dive into it now the first category of research that
we're going to be looking at today is in vitro research and this is essentially research that
is exclusively performed in cell cultures essentially inside of a petri dish but the
first paper that we're going to look at today is this one where the researchers concluded that and
i quote in c2 c12 murine myotubes and human primary myotubes phytoectosteroids increased
protein synthesis by up to 20 percent now myotubes are one of the foundational structures of muscle
tissue and in this study in particular they found that ectosteroids increased muscle protein
synthesis and muscle growth in particular by up to 20 which is pretty promising now in this study
as well the researchers concluded that in this study we show that in a mouse skeletal muscle
cell line c2c12 12-hydroxyectazone a common phytoectosteroid in both insects and plants
elicited a rapid elevation in intracellular calcium followed by sustained akt activation and
increased protein synthesis and in this study the researchers later on in this paper noted a very
similar increase in muscle protein synthesis by up to 16 percent which again is super promising now
one of the important things to note here is that almost all of the in vitro research at this point
that has been performed shows uh very consistent increases in muscle protein synthesis as well as
muscle growth which suggests that if ectosteroids do get to relevant tissues including muscle tissue
that there is some type of reliable growth that it ensues now this is all extremely promising but the
the most relevant question that we have to ask here is do we see the same results in
living models and so the first uh study that i want to go to to dive into this question
is this one where the researchers concluded that and i quote according to our results 20
hydroxyectazone may provide an alternative for substitution of anabolic androgenic steroids and
therapeutic treatment against muscle atrophy now again this is super promising however it is worth
noting that the dosage and magnitude of effect was not listed in the abstract so it's extremely
difficult to draw any definitive conclusions here now the most common reference study in
regards to the animal research on ectosteroids and more specifically tercastrone is this one
where the researchers concluded that and i quote the above data indicate that phytoectosteroids
are of interest as potential agents capable of stimulating protein synthesis in the organism
without violating the endocrine system functioning the most active phytoactive steroids may present
an alternative to steranoballs now in this study in particular the researchers noted that there was
roughly a 60 increase in muscle protein synthesis and growth when compared to control groups which
is pretty astounding and what's more is that they used a human equivalent dose of roughly
65 milligrams which demonstrates that there may be some level of anabolic activity with
even lower doses of ectosteroids which again is extremely promising however the ultimate
question here is do we see the same effects in humans and so in order to answer this
question let's go ahead and dive into some of the clinical research now in this study
the researchers concluded that and i quote our results indicate that ectosteroid supplementation
does not affect body composition or training adaptations nor do they influence the anabolic
slash catabolic hormone status or general markers of catabolism in resistance trained males and so
in this study the researchers actually found a big ol nothing burger and to be quite frank the
the ectosteroid group actually did worse in some parameters than the control group most notably in
lean body mass now one of the more obvious questions to ask here is well what was the dosage
that was used in this study and this is where things kind of get a little weird early on in
the paper the researchers note that 200 milligrams of ectoseruid was used in the experimental design
however later on they mentioned that they used only 30 milligrams with really no
explanation as to why there's this discrepancy however it is worth noting that you would
think that you would still see some type of level of effect at this dosage however there just really
isn't any effect in this study whatsoever and this is really the first study that indicates that
ectosteroids may not be as promising as we previously thought now the only other clinical
trial that we have is this one right here that somewhat contradicts the findings of the first
clinical trial and the researchers here concluded that and i quote this project demonstrates the
performance enhancing effects of ectosterone in humans thus our results strongly suggest
including ectosterone in class s1 anabolic agents however i'm really not sure that this conclusion
is actually warranted and here's why there is another massive discrepancy in the dosage
protocol early on the study it's pointed out that the subjects in this study are taking roughly 200
to 800 milligrams of ectosteroid but later on in the study it's revealed that there's only
six milligrams per capsule equating to roughly only 12 milligrams to 48 milligrams
per day in the test subjects and the reason this is important is that it makes this study extremely
comparable to the previous clinical trial that showed no result and so at this point you see
completely divergent effects within the clinical research with really no explanation as to why this
is happening however with all things considered i do think there are three primary conclusions that
we can draw from the research at this point and the first one is that ectosteroids do
seem to be extremely potent anabolic agents in rodents the second conclusion that we can draw
is that the current clinical research seems to indicate that they are nowhere near as potent in
humans at similar doses but still may be effective and the third conclusion that we can draw is that
it is entirely possible that higher doses would be more promising in humans now with this being
established let's go ahead and jump into some of the possible mechanisms of action that may be at
play here and to be quite frank the mechanisms of action appear to be somewhat novel and are getting
a ton of attention in the scientific community currently and the mechanism here appears to be
the stimulation of a very specific subset of estrogen receptors now before we move on
here i do think it would be important for us to kind of get a general grasp of of what estrogen
signaling looks like in the body and so in men specifically estrogen is typically produced by
the conversion of testosterone into estrogen by the enzyme aromatase and once this conversion
happens this estrogen is then free to kind of flow throughout the rest of the body and bind to
estrogen receptors and essentially carry out its biological effects now one of the more important
things to note here is that there are two very specific subsets of estrogen receptors estrogen
receptor alpha and estrogen receptor beta now estrogen receptor alpha is typically
present in breast tissue as well as bone tissue where when they are activated in these tissues
estrogen promotes the growth of these tissues now the alpha subset of receptors is also present in
the testicles and the hypothalamus where when they are activated they actually suppress
the production of testosterone as well and so when these receptors in men are activated it promotes
the growth of breast tissue and bone tissue as well as suppressing uh the production of
testosterone now these receptors are also present in other tissues as well however this is kind of
what is most relevant for our discussion today now the beta subset of estrogen receptors is present
primarily in the cardiovascular system as well as bone joints and ligaments where they promote
the health of these tissues when activated now one of the more important things to note here
is that when the beta subset of receptors is activated it actually suppresses the activity
of the alpha subset which means when the beta subset is activated it promotes the the health
and growth of the cardiovascular system as well as bones ligaments and joints which is good but it
also suppresses the negative effects of the alpha subset which is also good so the long story short
here is that if you are a man you want to promote the stimulation of the beta subset of receptors
while avoiding the stimulation of the alpha subset of receptors now the good news here is
that ectosteroids seem to preferentially bind to the beta subset of receptors as opposed to
the alpha subset of receptors which means that theoretically if ectosteroids do get to relevant
tissues within the body and are able to activate the beta subset of receptors it's going to one
improve muscle growth improve joint health as well as heart health while at the same time suppressing
the growth of breast tissue and the suppression of testosterone as well which are all good things and
because of this ectosteroids with at least within the context of the research is typically looked at
as a health promoting compound now with all of this being said i do think there are some very
specific instances where ectosteroid use may be most promising and this would be in a group of
people that are taking any type of anti-estrogenic compound and these could include things like
pharmaceutical serums or aromatase inhibitors but it could also include things like tonkat ali and
nicotine which coincidentally also have extremely potent anti-estrogenic effects now the reason
that ectosteroid use may be most applicable in these specific instances is that these compounds
typically kind of suppress estrogen signaling in a universal fashion which means that they
one suppress alpha stimulation which is good but they also seem to suppress beta stimulation which
isn't necessarily that good and so by adding ectosteroids into the diet you can essentially
restore beta receptor stimulation without restoring alpha stimulation which essentially
means that you could theoretically restore positive estrogen signaling without restoring
negative estrogen signaling now this is all still theoretical at this point but
nonetheless it does seem to be a fairly promising mechanism of action now with everything considered
i do think it is safe to consider ectosteroids a promising experimental compound as well as just
a general health promoting compound and what's more is that they also seem to be fairly non-toxic
at pretty much any dose now if you are looking for a quality supplement i would highly recommend
going over to gorilla mine derrick over at more plates more dates has created a fantastic
formulation in order to increase bioavailability within the body however he tends to be sold
out on his tercastrone and ectosteroid supplements and so if you can't find them there
there are a ton of other supplement companies that are out there now that are getting into this
um into this realm and so it shouldn't be too difficult to find a quality supplement online and
if you are new to this conversation of natural hormone optimization or you haven't got your
testosterone tested yet i would highly recommend it it's a great starting point
for most guys to just simply get quantitative data into their hands on where their hormones
are at so they can implement a proper strategy to optimize their personal hormone profile and so if
you guys are interested in this there is a link down in the description for a at-home blood test
that you guys can use to test your hormones so but other than that guys i think that is it for this
video if you guys are interested in any of the free guides that i've got on my website feel
free to follow the link that's in the description down below if you have any questions or comments
concerning this i would be highly interested to hear you guys's results um any of you guys that
are using this currently but other than that guys i think i will see you guys next time