If you’ve ever considered using chemicals to boost your bodybuilding then you will have thought about anabolic steroids. Hopefully, you’ll also not have gone through with it.

What you should be doing is thinking about SARMs. These are much safer form of chemical that can boost muscle growth, hardness, strength and endurance, and cut fat.

SARMs can do this without the damaging side effects that can hurt you for the long term, which is unfortunately what happens with anabolic steroids for reasons I will explain.

So I’m going to do here is quickly talk you through the benefits of SARMs, the side effects, and how they compared anabolic steroids (and prohormones) so you can see why they are safer, and which ones could be best for helping you to achieve the Body goals you have.

How Steroids Work & The Dangers They Have

Anabolic steroids are dangerous. It doesn’t matter how this is dressed up, how much people talk about bodybuilders who last for decades using the, they increase your risk of getting a serious illness considerably.

Anabolic steroids target androgen receptors in the body, telling them to grow faster than they can naturally. They basically mimic testosterone.

However, they are not discerning. Anabolic steroids target all androgen receptors in the body, including especially worryingly, the prostate.

They also increase cardiovascular stress and potential for long-term cardiovascular damage. That’s why people who use them can suffer heart attacks and other cardiovascular problems after a decade or so.

So you will get into trouble quickly, but repeated use of anabolic steroids can have short-term side effects which can be damaging, things like aggression, shrunken testicles, hair loss, and other bad androgenic effects, and also a set of long-term effects which only now we starting to see in older people who use them in the previous two or three decades.

Prohormones Are Almost As Bad As Anabolic Steroids

A more modern version of anabolic steroids are called prohormones. These work as a precursor the hormones that will bulk you up.

That means they are metabolized in the body into the anabolic hormone (or an artificial one that mimics a hormone like testosterone), and then they get to work.

So they aren’t as potent as anabolic steroids, they again have the problem around cardiovascular and potential cancer damage in long-term, and the fact that they hit all the androgen receptors and don’t target muscle and bone tissue androgen receptors specifically.

Why SARMs Are Better For Your Health Than Steroids

Anabolic steroids are bad for you, real bad. Prohormones aren’t a lot better, although they are mostly a little milder in the effects they have.

Steroids basically target the androgen receptors in the body. They tell those receptors to grow, by mimicking the messages that testosterone sends. However, they hit every androgen receptor in the body, including places like the prostate where you just don’t want this happening.

The side effects can be horrendous, male pattern baldness, enlarged prostate, shrunken testicles, rage, depression, long-term cardiovascular health deterioration, heart problems, and potential cancer-causing cell growth.

However, SARMs are different because of the way they work.

There are basically two types of SARMs, androgenic, and non-androgenic SARMs.

Androgenic SARMs work in the same way as anabolic steroids by telling androgen receptors to grow harder and bigger muscle tissue. However, they do in a targeted way.

Androgenic SARMs only interact with androgen receptors in muscle and bone tissue. They don’t interact with androgen receptors anywhere else in the body. So they avoid the side effects and problems that you get with steroids. Grow bigger muscles, harden them up, get more energy, burn more fat, but without the androgenic side effects.

You can also get non-androgenic SARMs. These are things like Cardarine, Stenabolic, YK-11, and MK-677.  And you can also protect your body with post cycle therapy supplements, you can read more about them here. They have different mechanisms of action the body, and therefore don’t interact with the androgen receptors directly at all, meaning you don’t get those androgenic side effects.

Understand How To Stack Androgenic And Non-Androgenic SARMs

So all round, anabolic steroids are far worse to use than SARMs. However, the trick to using SARMs is to Stack androgenic and non-androgenic SARMs together for the best benefits.

For energy, you can stack and androgenic SARM Ligandrol, with something like Cardarine. That will give you significant increases in energy output, build and harden muscle, and improve your endurance.

Or you can just go for a full androgenic SARMs that, something like Testolone and S-23 from maximum gains. Stack that with something like MK-677 or YK-11 and it can be as good as an anabolic steroid as long as you work hard.

For cutting, something like Ostarine stacked with Cardarine works well. Even in a significant calorie deficit for a few weeks you will protect your previous gains, burn more energy, and continue to build your strength.

You’ll Achieve Far More With SARMs Without Risking Your Health

All round, you can achieve far more with SARMs than you can with anabolic steroids, without risking your health.

Sure, the gains will be is incredible in the short term, but in the long term, working hard, with superb diet and exercise, stacking the SARMs to bulk, then cut, you can achieve the look of anabolic steroids, and in fact more, using SARMs.

It’s little known that a lot of guys using anabolic steroid use Andarine after a cycle of steroids because it creates hard and dry toned muscles. So even the guys using the steroids are turning to SARMs to finish off the look.

My advice is to forget about anabolic steroids, and stay away from the new breed of prohormones out there that some people are claiming to be legal. They aren’t, and they can be damaging for the long term.

However, SARMs do not have the androgenic side effects, and half of the SARMs out there aren’t even androgenic in the nature anyway.

By intelligently stacking SARMs that are both androgenic and non-androgenic together, you can minimize androgenic side effects like testosterone drop, and still get maximum gains, cut more fat, and build your strength and endurance dramatically.

Harper Harrison

Harper Harrison is a reporter for The Hear UP. Harper got an internship at the NPR and worked as a reporter and producer. harper has also worked as a reporter for the Medium. Harper covers health and science for The Hear UP.