Something that gets asked very often, what is better for TRT? And then people ask testosterone enantate versus stipionate, sustenone versus stipionate, nibido versus enantate. So those four, testosterone enantate, stipionate, sustenone and nibido, I guess those are the four most common ones used.
Which one is better? The advantages and the drawbacks of each? Enlighten us, Gil. So for starters, not everyone has the luxury of choosing their ester.
Some people live in a particular part of the world that maybe only has one or two various options, and they really don't have the luxury of saying I'd like one over the other. So just keep that in mind when speaking in, you know, blanket terms. But from a purely scientific standpoint, you really have to understand what an ester is.
It's nothing more than a molecule that is attached to the original compound, which your body then has to cleave off and part of the metabolism process. And this will determine the rate at which molecule is broken down and is released into systemic search or weight may take more work or require more work by the liver to actually metabolize. And therefore it may take longer for it to be released. So think of this as a time capsule. Some time capsules are released in a matter of hours or days.
Some may take a week or two or three. And some in the case of like an abito may take, you know, significantly longer than that. So some guys on abito. They only do an injection every 60 or 90 days.
And that is because it is a long half-life of an ester. The problem with the, you know, infrequent dosing is that you're essentially foregoing a lot of the benefits that allow you to more closely control not only the hormone distribution and the steady state and how quickly you achieve it, but also some of the side effects that we often look to mitigate and some of the metabolites and some of the other hormonal or binding protein. levels that tend to fluctuate while on therapy. So I am a fan of a mighty, you know, moderately mediocre half-life, like a Cipinid, for example, which is about seven to eight days for most people.
And this allows you to not only frequent it, you know, anywhere from once in a rare scenario, when there's a time and place for it once a week, to twice a week, to three times to every other day, to even microdosing every day. This allows you much greater control and a relatively short period of having to change a protocol made way if there is an issue or if you want to try something different for a particular reason. You have to consider that with most medications, five half lives is what it takes to achieve a steady state, assuming you make no changes to frequency or dose.
Five half lives of a week-long half-life medication is 35 days. Five half lives of something like Nebido realistically can be a full year. So going on a protocol that would require changes and tweaks as we move is... beneficial to go with something that's moderate to short rather than something that's very lengthy. Now, if you go down to something like a propionate or an anthate, which, you know, very short to moderate, you run the risk of, again, not being able to dial in properly because, you know, if you don't inject every day, for example, and you skip a day, you're throwing everything off.
So I like to kind of use that middle ground right in the middle. Like sippionate happens to be like the sweet spot. Not to mention it's very readily available in the United States and in most countries around the world. So with the exception of the few outliers that really don't have access to much of the esters available, I personally tend to favor Cipionate.
And that is the ester form that we utilize with thousands of our patients at our clinics. So that is, for that reason, the one that I tend to choose the most. Here in Europe and most countries, people only have Sustenum or Enantate.
Yeah, we did a whole video on sustenone, and I believe it was with Jordan, Dr. Grant, and we went over why we dislike this. This is a blend of four different esters. And again, the time release varies from person to person. Some people don't respond well to a very rapid release, which is the propionate that's in it. Some people don't respond well to the on the silonate or the decanoate ester.
I'm not a fan of blends. Blends really leave you again in a guessing game. I like to put my finger on one thing at a time, be able to dial it in, tweak it, make the necessary adjustments on the fly and not have to worry about it. So sustenance, we have all standalone video.
I do know again, that in some countries, as I mentioned initially, you're going to be limited to what is accessible to you and your provider. But again, we're trying to kind of keep it to less political and more scientific. And from a scientific standpoint, I'm only concerned with half lives, not necessarily the politics of pharmaceuticals and, and, and the medical boards. Okay