Methyl-1-Testosterone, or simply M1T, is a designer steroid (sometimes mistakenly called a prohormone), that was very popular during the height of the prohormone craze that struck the dietary supplement market. It has been claimed to be the most potent prosteroid ever sold and additionally one of the most liver-toxic. But a recently published study gives us good reason to think that it’s actually one of the more mild anabolics sold on the supplement market.
In fact, even if we look at some of the older research on M1T, and note how this steroid actually compares to testosterone, we find that it’s only 25% as anabolic and 50% as androgenic (Counsell RE, Klimstra PD, Colton FB 1962 Anabolic agents: derivatives of 5a-androst-1-ene. J Org Chem 27:248 –253). And in the classic reference book, Androgens and Anabolic Agents by Vida, it shows a range of 200 to 50-200% as anabolic as testosterone 14-30% as androgenic. How in the world this stuff got the reputation of being highly potent is beyond my comprehension. Nowhere in any of the literature is this stuff really shown to be that anabolic.
In this most recent study, researchers examined the anabolic and androgenic activities of M1T after oral (po) and sc (subcutaneous) administration in orchidectomized rats who received either 0.03, 0.3, or 2mgs/kg of M1T for 12 days either orally or subcutaneously, after which their prostate and musculus levator ani (m.lev.ani) were analyzed to determine the anabolic and androgenic activity. This is a fairly standard way to measure anabolic steroids for their anabolic potential…essentially, the end weight of the levator ani muscle is used to determine how anabolic a substance is, and the end weight of the prostate is used to figure out how androgenic it is. (Yes, they kill the rats at the end of the study – that’s how they’re able to measure these muscles.)
What we see in terms of dosing with M1T, and I’m going to focus on the oral administration here (*because that’s how people actually use it), we see that the lowest dose (.03mgs/kg) causes an increase in the weight of the levator ani muscle that’s slightly greater than a dose 10x higher (.3mgs/kg), while the highest dose (.2mgs/kg) ultimately stimulated the most growth. That’s kind of weird, as most anabolic steroids follow a dose response curve that’s linear. So that’s an unexpected twist, but it’s not all bad because it tells us that maybe we can get decent results from the lower end of the spectrum.
But in terms of its androgenic properties, there’s a also couple of unexpected twists. The first thing that jumps out at me is the fact that the group that got the largest injectable dose experienced a disproportionately large increase in the size of their seminal vesicles and prostate.
The researchers also noted that M1T had very little observed effect on the end-weight of the liver, but a considerable effect on tyrosine aminotransferase (TAT), which is typical of methylated steroids (i.e. steroids that have been altered to survive oral ingestion). Predictably, TAT wasn’t nearly as effected through subcutaneous administration, but that’s because it avoids first-pass metabolism through the liver.
So let’s be honest here – the stuff is certainly going to have an adverse effect on the liver, and it’s not really that anabolic, at least according to the published research. However, the researchers note that this is a potent anabolic, and liken it’s potency to 19-norandrostenedione, 1-testosterone, THG, and desoxymethyltestosterone. Since they start the article by telling us about the studies that demonstrate its relatively low anabolic and androgenic rating, this is odd, but they do show a pretty dramatic increase in the medial levator ani muscle (m. levi ani in the chart above), for many of the does, albeit without a correspondingly substantive increase in bodyweight. Honestly, I’d give this stuff a pass, unless I were considering its use stacked with something else.
