Birth of a Steroid

[Weissmuller]

The Birth of a Steroid

Everyone knows how important our good buddy testosterone is in acquiring our ultimate physiques and some even introduce a little extra. Here I’ll give you an idea on how our own test(and other steroids) fine their way into our blood. Can’t promise it’ll help you put on 20 lbs but at least your gain some trivial knowledge that you can throw around to show others your knowledge.

Steroids are really nothing more than the product of a manufacturing process. There are two major sites of this process in the human body, the sex organs(gonads and placenta) and the adrenal glands. Various other tissues can also synthesize these hormones but not to a significant degree.

As in all manufacturing processes raw materials are needed. For steroids the material is cholesterol. While cholesterol can be created in the human body from acetate the major source is through our mouths, or dietary. About 80% of the cholesterol used in steroid synthesis comes from the dietary pathway and is sent through as LDL or low density lipoproteins. This transport mechanism is necessary since the fatty cholesterol will not dissolve in water, the fluid of blood, and being bound to a protein changes its solubility rules.

Once the cholesterol finds its way to the manufacturing site it is stored as an esterfied form, bound to a fatty acid. To mobilize the cholesterol from the reserve it must be hydrolyzed into free cholesterol. The enzyme sterol ester hyrdrolase performs this freeing action. In the other direction ACAT esterifies free cholesterol into the reserve. Hormones such as LH, FSH, and ACTH which stimulate steroid creation influence these two enzymes in a manner to promote free cholesterol.

The free cholesterol is now ready for processing. But again this fat soluble compound must traverse a watery environment, this time the inside of a cell. For this move it joins another carrier protein known as SCP-2. Cholesterol now enters the cell and is handed of to yet another carrier protein know as StAR which takes it deep into the inner mitochondrial membrane of the cell and cholesterol is now ready for its first of a series of enzyme catalyzed reactions.

There are several enzymes used in steroid creation and if you’ve done some serious research into PHs you might be familiar with some of them. The majority of the enzymes involved belong to a family of enzymes known as cytochrome P450 oxygenase. Several other enzymes involved in steroid making are 3â-HSD, 3á-HSD, 17â-HSD, 5á-reductase, and 5,4-isomerase all of which are important to us in their use to yield androgens and estrogens.

The overall concentration of these many enzymes determine what we get. Various tissues contain different enzymes and in different concentrations. For example the glomerulosa zone of the adrenal cortex lacks the enzyme P450c17 and this prevents it from creating cortisol or sex steroids. While the leydig cells of the testes are more geared towards androgen production pumping out test and other androgens. Of the various end results these procedures yield they can be grouped into two structural groups. The C-19s(19 carbons) including androgens and estrogens and the C-21s including progestins, glucorticoids, and mineralocorticoids.

Well now I hope given some idea to where your test comes from (at least the test you produce naturally). Like I said above not much useful info here, and I wish I could give some insight on how to improve the test levels, but then of course we’d still need look into the binding of steroids to carriers and their stimulation of receptors. So for now enjoy the info for its trivial value.