And all too common fallacy within the health and wellness space is the assumption of dosages for drugs/peptides/supplements andresearch chemicals in general.
But they fail to explore the thinking that actually lead to these so called "'defined dosages” in the first place.
Here’s how it tends to play out.
X amount of users have been using X mg so now X mg is now the established dose.
That’s usually how the paradigm starts, but who came to that endpoint/conclusion?
Does another drug which is similar in size/structure have the same starting dose?
Have they scaled animal dosing to match that human dose?
Have they heard it from a friend? Trialled with themselves and others?
No it looks more like a game of copy and paste.
Person A publishes 500 µg. as standard.
Person B copies it.
Person C copies B.
Person D sees 100 people using 500 µg and concludes that 500 µg is now the standard.
This is why you need LARGE scale trials to see what the closer truth dosages really are, and to avoid the cookie cutter protocols that are often handed out by clinics.
Or if anything you may use your own reasoning to come to reach your own conclusion. And if in doubt, then start low and titrate up.
See the thing is when you dose according to what you’ve heard from other people.
You’re adopting the FAFO framework. (Fuck around and find out)
Here’s 3 tips you can actually use when dosing any kind of drug.
Toxicology
When you dose any drug, you’re navigating between two critical thresholds:
Minimum Effective Concentration aka MEC) – the lowest level at which the drug produces the desired effect you’re looking for.
AKA - Ask your monkey brain — what benefits am I looking to achieve with this drug or peptide?
Minimum Toxic Concentration (MTC) – the level at which harmful effects begin to see.
Ask your monkey brain —— what side effects would I like to avoid.
The space between these is the therapeutic window (or therapeutic index). Good dosing protocols keep plasma concentrations inside this window which are high enough to work, but low enough so that you avoid toxicity.
Let’s call this balance (yin-yang dosing)= low enough so you cant hurt yourself but high enough that you can still see a benefit.
When you defer from these heuristics it leads to FAFO framework as spoken about earlier.
Half-life + pharmacodynamics?
Half life (T1/2) is the time of the plasma concentration of the drug to half or fall by 50% during the dosing window.
For example a drug with a half-life of 12/48 hours can be dosed daily, which helps us inform the decisions of how we are going to dose it/keep in our rotation.
Caffeine for example has a short half life but it can be cleared from your system in 6/12 hours but its effects/its pharmacodynamic effects that it has on the body can remain for longer.
(Like why your unable to sleep at night)
Pharmacogentics
This means that your genetic phenotype can alter how your process/metabolize drugs.
Which leads to 4 different phenotypes.
Poor metabolizer = a standard dose of a drug may cause toxicity or more side effects (or benefits) depending on how you frame it.
Intermeditate metabolizer = may need moderate dose adjustment or a careful titration
Normal metabolizer = standard dosing protocol tends to be effective, easy to adjust to.
Ultrafast metabolizer, standard doses are ineffective, and a dose increase or an alternative drug may be needed, depending on how it’s metabolized and which genetics are playing a role.
Thats all for me on my daily rant, if you enjoy posts like this and want to learn more, then be sure to make requests (if your a paid sub on the newsletter)
Thanks for reading
Oran/Biohacker.