Experiments with transdermal hormones
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@metabolicmilk said in Experiments with transdermal hormones:
Hi @brightside
I actually tried this last night. It was possible in a solution of 80%DMSO. 20% Ethanol. Dissolved perfectly fine. I believe one drop from my bottle is 0.05ml. The amount of liquid was exactly 100ml.
Do you not absorb ethanol to the point of toxicity when it's mixed with DMSO ?
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The amount of ethanol is very small. In this solution per application it will be only 0.05ml. ( 5 drops and ethanol is 20% of the solution ). I think even with DMSO potentiating effects it is negligible. I certainly don’t feel anything. The ethanol is there to clean the application area. I think the danger of potentially absorbing unwanted things due to the presence of DMSO is more of a risk than 0.05ml of ethanol. Haidut I believed used to use this ratio in his DMSO products and he is a much smarter man than me so if it’s good for him it’s good for me
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I wonder what SFA esters Haidut uses? And where you'd even go to buy such things. Haven't seen that on Amazon.
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I emailed them a year ago. I don't think this information is proprietary, since they shared it freely, but if anything I'll remove the image.
The actually effective fatty acids in their mixture are are the shorter chain ones (namely C8, C10, and C12). Those fats are incredibly smelly, and you would know about them in your product instantly. This means that they are in such low quantities that it's basically meaningless (or that their ratio is heavily skewed towards C14, and C16).
For example, when I used lauric acid, even in low <5% amounts, I can smell it on my skin for hours. Out of the medium chain fatty acids, LA is by far the best smelling (smells kind of chemically, not horrible but not good either), so if there would be any meaningful amount of C8 or C10, you would smell like you were rolling around with goats and sweat.
Basically, the SFA esters don't add much to the product, and in my opinion they might as well just use MCT oil.
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@brightside Interesting. So MCT oil would be a viable co-solvent along with ethanol? I only ask because I've never used it. Tocopherol has been an excellent lipid-based compound and I haven't had the need to venture out much further than that. It also mixes with more volatile solvents like ethanol without an issue too. I've noticed a mixture of ethanol & tocopherol to be particularly useful in getting DHT it solvent quite easily, which I've always noticed can be tricky as it's slightly more temperamental than normal T base.
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@Mulloch94 I was actually thinking of making a transdermal/sublingual dht solution with ethanol and vitamin e. Probably dissolving the dht powder in ethanol first and then adding the tocopherols. I honestly think dht + tocopherols might be the new meta. Progest-e for males basically. Have you experimented with something like that?
Progest-e also has coconut triglycerides so these might be somewhat important to improving the absorption, and then theres also the sfa esters like ipm and ipp haidut uses that may help, but i think hormones in vit e are better absorbed in thin cell membranes such as gums in general, while the sfa esters would enhance absorption on regular skin. -
@pannacottas Yes. I've tried DHT dissolved in pure tocopherol for oral usage. I've also used mixtures of ethanol + tocopherol + PG for topical use. I've even dissolved it in a mix of ethanol + tocopherol + progest-e. That might be my least favorite, as progesterone with DHT is too sedating for me.
It's possible, but I would assume the coconut triglycerides added to Progest-e are mostly there to make the product more pourable. As I've got a bottle of pure vitamin E, no added oils or anything. That shit is THICK. Very hard to work with if it's not warmed up first. I notice Progest-E is thinner and easier to pour.
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@Mulloch94 How did you like just dht in E orally vs the topical with ethanol?
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@pannacottas It's okay, I think the duration of action is much shorter though. I got hot and thermogenic for like 2 hours and it basically subsided. But that's to be expected. You also can't exactly dissolve as much in pure tocopherol as you can a mixture of ethanol and tocopherol. But you don't really need to either. If you're going to take it orally in vitamin E you can feel the effects in as little as 15mgs. Whereas if you're going to do it topically with ethanol I wouldn't waste my time with anything under 50mgs.
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I'm going to put an end to the dozens of messages I receive in my inbox on this forum : yes, ethanol + MCT oil + IPM has the best convenience and absorption profile of all transdermal methods, no DMSO is not ideal.
I use DMSO solutions when I want to elicit deep transcriptional changes, such as anchoring a long lasting androgenic state by megadosing DHT in DMSO for a few days. -
@Santosh What would be the significance of adding Isopropyl Myristate to the ethanol + MCT mixture?
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Seems like Salvo from Iron Legion is a good delivery system as well, but it's expensive. 25 dollars for a measly 30ml bottle is quite high by comparison of getting grain alcohol from my local liquor store.
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@Mulloch94 said in Experiments with transdermal hormones:
@Santosh What would be the significance of adding Isopropyl Myristate to the ethanol + MCT mixture?
Quite significant.
Just type ethanol + IPM on pubmed -
@Mulloch94 said in Experiments with transdermal hormones:
Seems like Salvo from Iron Legion is a good delivery system as well, but it's expensive. 25 dollars for a measly 30ml bottle is quite high by comparison of getting grain alcohol from my local liquor store.
There is no comparison, salvo is mostly benzyl alcohol, grain alcohol is ethanol.
Try rubbing large quantities of benzyl alcohol on your skin : headaches, blurred vision, constipation.Not only is salvo expensive, it's also a terrible health choice.
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@Santosh Thanks, yeah I didn't know IPM was that useful as a co-solvent. Apparently it's stronger than ethanol, and when mixed in a 2:1 ratio with ethanol enhances the capability, at least with Cialis.
@Santosh said in Experiments with transdermal hormones:
Not only is salvo expensive, it's also a terrible health choice.
I already knew about benzyl alcohol's toxicity issue, but I wanted to see how I'd react nonetheless. Yeah not good. My skin was sensitive to it for one thing, but I also generally did not feel good when using their anti-estrogen product Virtus. Not sure if it lowered my estrogen too much or was related to the other ingredients, or both.
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@Santosh What ratios of Ethanol : MCT : IPM are you using? Do you think this gives a longer lasting effect than DMSO which is very short-lived for me?
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@metabolicmilk said in Experiments with transdermal hormones:
@Santosh What ratios of Ethanol : MCT : IPM are you using? Do you think this gives a longer lasting effect than DMSO which is very short-lived for me?
80% ethanol
15% MCT
5% IPM -
@Santosh said in Experiments with transdermal hormones:
I'm going to put an end to the dozens of messages I receive in my inbox on this forum : yes, ethanol + MCT oil + IPM has the best convenience and absorption profile of all transdermal methods, no DMSO is not ideal.
I use DMSO solutions when I want to elicit deep transcriptional changes, such as anchoring a long lasting androgenic state by megadosing DHT in DMSO for a few days.
???
Now it's the "best convenience and absorption profile of all transdermal methods"?
Why do you always talk with such pride? If you really wanted to put an end to the questions (or just be helpful) you would make a post about it, put it on your profile, or something of that sort.
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@Mulloch94 said in Experiments with transdermal hormones:
@Santosh Thanks, yeah I didn't know IPM was that useful as a co-solvent. Apparently it's stronger than ethanol, and when mixed in a 2:1 ratio with ethanol enhances the capability, at least with Cialis.
@Santosh said in Experiments with transdermal hormones:
Not only is salvo expensive, it's also a terrible health choice.
I already knew about benzyl alcohol's toxicity issue, but I wanted to see how I'd react nonetheless. Yeah not good. My skin was sensitive to it for one thing, but I also generally did not feel good when using their anti-estrogen product Virtus. Not sure if it lowered my estrogen too much or was related to the other ingredients, or both.
It's really not. The numbers for T's absorption come mostly from studies using AndroGel, something that has ethanol + IPM + carbomer. Those numbers are 9-14% absorbed hormone. IPM boosts the flux quite substantially, up to 11x in some study, but that just means you absorb the hormone faster, not necessarily more. ( you do end up absorbing more, especially since the IPM helps the Test stay dissolved on the skin, but, again, thats boosting it up to only a measly 9-14%.. )
I'm not saying IPM is a bad penetration enhancer, but just stating the facts, since Santosh likes to make up BS to make himself seem like the pioneer he really craves to be.
Also, this is just me being picky, but IPM is not a co-solvent (in the case of T), but a penetration enhancer. You can't dissolve a meaningful amount of hormone in IPM, and it doesn't increase the solvent capacity of mixtures either. (But to be fair, it seems to with Cialis, as mentioned in the study above).
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@Mulloch94 said in Experiments with transdermal hormones:
@brightside Interesting. So MCT oil would be a viable co-solvent along with ethanol? I only ask because I've never used it. Tocopherol has been an excellent lipid-based compound and I haven't had the need to venture out much further than that. It also mixes with more volatile solvents like ethanol without an issue too. I've noticed a mixture of ethanol & tocopherol to be particularly useful in getting DHT it solvent quite easily, which I've always noticed can be tricky as it's slightly more temperamental than normal T base.
I personally don't see a reason to use it.
In order to boost penetration of fat soluble actives, you need to disrupt the lipid matrix. (unless relying on other mechanisms like denaturation of keratin proteins like DMSO) Fats like MCT and olive oil do do this, but only because they are a lipid that's not as structured as your lipid matrix. Pretty much any fat is less structured than your lipid matrix.
But, if you look at the stratum corneum lipid matrix, you can see that triglycerides are kind of massive in relation to everything else.
Why would you use more stable molecules, like MCT or other triglycerides instead of opting for smaller, more volatile and more disruptive lipids? (surfactants too) Simply switching from triglycerides to fatty acids drives up absorption dramatically, especially if the fatty acid is short or unsaturated.
Actually, I have yet to see a single study that says MCT oil is effective at increasing transdermal penetration of hormones.
Not only that, but MCT does not hold any hormone. MCT also sucks at mixing with ethanol. I did an experiment a year ago with a three dishes containing ethanol, ethanol+MCT, and ethanol+stearyl alcohol. The ethanol+MCT one crashed a few hours in (I was testing evaporation speed, so they were uncovered). I started out with roughly 80% Ethanol, 20% MCT, so that means the point at which it crashed was probably like 30% MCT, and 70% Ethanol? Something like that, but I never experimented to confirm.
To summarize, MCT isn't that miscible with ethanol, it's not a penetration enhancer, and it doesn't even hold any hormone. So then, why use it?
Moisturization is the only use I see.
Sorry for my little rant lol
It's interesting about the vitamin E. I wrongfully discounted it in the beginning, but clearly you and others are having good experiences with it. I'm kind of put off of the idea of using tocopherols since they are so thick. What kind of tocopherols are you using?
I'm asking because I'm concerned about the policosanols that are in the TocoVit type stuff. Since they're very long acids, they would probably add a structuring effect to the lipid matrix - something I don't want. Also, I'm curious if Vitamin E's effect comes from not necessarily by disruption, but by enhancing solubility of the hormone, like you mention.
Hmm, what do you think about this?
