I don't understand what up and down regulation really mean to be honest. Is it like having to take more or less drugs to have the same effect?
If thats the case than maybe it could be an explanation why someone would experience sides they haven't before. Like becoming more sensitive to a drugs androgenic/estrogenic side effects.
no, as i said upregulation just means your cells birth more receptor sites, which means the upperlimit for how many androgens will cause effects will increase. like, this is a very crude and simplistic analogy as it that misses some crucial details but androgen receptors are very complex and i'm lazy:
so imagine you have a bunch of rectangular slots open on a wooden board, lets say you have 10 rectangular spaces. now, you have 15 rectangular pegs (testosterone), 10 circular pegs (estrogen) and 5 square pegs (an anti-androgen like spironolactone). now, you only have 10 spaces total, while you have 30 total pegs, only 10 of those can get onto the board and then cause gene expression and changes to the dna of the muscle cell. obviously, the estrogen cannot fit into the space at all, so those will be ignored, but that leaves 20 pegs left. now, for sake of simplicity, testosterone will have a higher binding affinity than the anti-androgen (when in reality it is completely reversed), but since in this example test has a higher binding affinity, 8 testosterone pegs out of the 15 testosterone pegs bind to the rectangular slots, 2 anti-androgens bind to the remaining 2 open slots (but poorly and do not activate the receptor) on the wooden board. you have 8 spaces expressing gene transcription, 2 of those are inactive. when your androgen receptors upregulate, your cells birth more total androgen receptor sites, or pegs in this example. so let's say you now have 15 total rectangular slots open after upregulation, while still having the same amount of hormones, and as a result you now have 11 testosterone pegs attaching to the board, out of the 15 total testosterone and then you have 4 anti-androgens binding to the remaining 4 open spaces. the result is more testosterone can be put to use and cause greater anabolism and hypertrophy.
now, again, i just want to say this was a very simplistic analogy because first of all you won't realistically max out your androgen receptor sites until you hit about 3 grams of gear a week (which is why 3grams is usually the number people stop at with high dosages). also, secondly, and very importantly, not all steroids express their effects through androgen receptor sites, as many, many orals have poor binding affinity and cause physiological changes and gene expression through other pathways. example, anavar is known for reducing stomach fat exceptionally well, and it does this by being an anti-glucocorticoid, which suppresses the effects of cortisol, cortisol being something that increases body fat specifically stomach fat, and also anavar increase thyroid hormone uptake in cells. the combination of the two causes a greater reduction in stomach fat, compared to other steroids, like tren, which is also a potent anti-glucocorticord.
note on tren: tren is also a strong anti-glucocorticord, through this effect it lowers protein degradation (muscle protein catabolism), while increasing nutrient partitioning as well as being an antagonist to the mineral-corticoid receptor site, which lowers sodium uptake and causes the drying effect (also increases likelihood of cramping) and most importantly tren is a potent thermogenic through the means of stimulating prostaglandin production (these things just cause bodyfat loss, essentially and are the things responsible for tren cough). all these things combined is why tren is the absolute king of cutting hormones and recomping hormones. it's also an extremely good bulking hormone because it increases myoblast proliferation (satellite stem cells that latch onto damaged muscle fibers and cause them to hypertrophy) which is the mode of action hgh causes as well to push people beyond aas limits (though hgh does other things too so it's not as though tren will be a replacement)
