Bodybuilding and HCG:
Human Chorionic Gonadotropin is a hormone that both women and men need in order to maintain a healthy body. Men require it for properly functioning testes, while women need it for healthy ovaries and pregnancy.
It mimics the luteinising hormone, or LH, a hormone that enhances the production of the male sex hormone (testosterone) in the testes or the female sex hormone (estrogen) in the ovaries. However, the hCG has several other functions that LH lacks and that help support a healthy pregnancy
Since certain medical conditions, as well as abusing anabolic steroids can cause a low testosterone level, hCG has been developed into an injectable drug that restores the testes’ normal functioning. hCG injections can be administered to both men suffering from hypogoinadism and to male bodybuilders during or after an anabolic steroids cycle.
This is administered via injection either subcutaneously or intramuscularly; there is no performance difference between the two, just a matter of personal preference.
Drug types
According to its production method, HCG can be classified as pharmaceutical and recombinant DNA and comes in a freeze dried powder. It typically comes in vials of 5000 IU.
Dosing
Traditionally, hCG was dosed at 5000 IU per injection. However, in recent years, providers have begun breaking this down into much lower doses, of 1000 IU or even 500 IU, but administer them more frequently; for example, 250-500 IU 3 times per week, or 100-250 IU per day. That’s because frequent injections of lower doses provide greater stimulation of testosterone production than the much bigger doses. Moreover, administering the hormone several times per week makes sense because its half-life is short, about 36 hours.