Is anyone here familiar with Bill Roberts and his writings about this topic?
The whole article is pretty interesting, although a bit long. If any of you are familiar with this article let me know what you thought about it. If no one has read this if you'd like I'll post up the whole thing, just to reiterate, it is extremely long.
In short he claims this:
• There is no scientific evidence whatsoever that AR downregulation occurs in human muscle, or in any tissue, in response to above normal (supraphysiological) levels of AAS.
• Where AR downregulation in response to AAS has been seen in cell culture, these results do not apply because the downregulation is either not relative to normal androgen levels but to zero androgen, or estrogen may have been the causative factor, or assay methods inaccurate for this purpose were used, or often a combination of these problems make the results inapplicable to the issue of supraphysiological use of androgens by athletes.
• AR upregulation in response to supraphysiological levels of androgen in cell culture has repeatedly been observed in experiments using accurate assay methods and devoid of the above problems.
• AR downregulation in response to AAS does not agree with real world results obtained by bodybuilders, whereas upregulation does agree with real world results. (A neutral position, where levels in human muscle might be thought not to change in response to high levels of androgen, is not disproven however.)
• The "theoretical" arguments advanced by proponents of AR downregulation are invariably without merit.
