@calxshreds's TRT supplement claims need fact-checking

What did @calxshreds actually say?

This creator ran through eight common TRT and anabolic cycle side effects, including high blood pressure, acne, liver stress, kidney strain, hair loss, thick blood, lipid changes, and mental health issues, and offered a compound-heavy fix for each one. The advice ranged from genuinely reasonable lifestyle tweaks to recommending prescription medications, experimental compounds like RU58841, and injectable glutathione stacks, all without a medical disclaimer in sight. The creator also name-dropped GLP-1 receptor agonists without saying the name, told viewers to take telmisartan and metformin, and suggested methylene blue for both blood viscosity and mood. The through-line is that every side effect has a pharmaceutical or supplement workaround, which is a framing that should give anyone pause.

Does the science back this up?

Some of it, yes. A lot of it, not well. The creator is working in a space where the evidence base is genuinely thin, because most of the interventions they recommend have never been formally studied in the context of supraphysiologic androgen use. The few that have real data behind them, like telmisartan for blood pressure and finasteride for DHT-driven hair loss, are legitimate. But the evidence for others, like "injectable glutathione" as an antioxidant therapy or methylene blue for blood viscosity, is either preliminary, misapplied, or frankly cherry-picked. Telmisartan does have modest LDL-lowering data, but the 2011 ONTARGET subgroup analyses found the effect was primarily in obese hypertensive patients, and generalizing that to otherwise-healthy people using anabolics is a stretch. Berberine has reasonable glucose-disposal data in type 2 diabetic populations (Yin et al., 2008, Metabolism), but again, extrapolating that to anabolic-cycle insulin management is not the same thing.

What did they get wrong (or right)?

Credit where it is due: swapping cotton for silk sheets to reduce acne-triggering bacterial load is low-risk and has dermatological logic behind it. Recommending finasteride or dutasteride for DHT conversion during testosterone use is standard harm-reduction advice. Telling people not to use oral androgens if liver enzymes are elevated is correct. Encouraging frequent pinning to stabilize hormone levels is also a widely accepted TRT practice.

But here is where it falls apart. Recommending RU58841, an experimental androgen receptor antagonist that was abandoned in clinical trials and has never been approved anywhere, as a casual topical add-on is not appropriate for a TikTok. The safety profile in humans is essentially unknown. The creator also says "10 to 20 milligrams of Cialis daily" for blood pressure, which conflates tadalafil's modest vasodilatory effect with actual antihypertensive therapy. Tadalafil is not a first-line or even second-line treatment for hypertension. Presenting it that way is misleading. The claim that TUDCA and injectable glutathione will protect a liver that is under anabolic stress is also overstated. TUDCA has some hepatoprotective data (Vang et al., 2014, Hepatology), but injectable glutathione as a practical clinical intervention for steroid-induced enzyme elevation has almost no peer-reviewed support.

What should you actually know?

If you are on TRT prescribed by a physician and your blood pressure, lipids, kidney function, or liver enzymes are moving in the wrong direction, the correct first step is telling that physician, not building a supplement stack from a TikTok video. Several of the compounds discussed here, including telmisartan, metformin, finasteride, and dutasteride, are prescription medications in most countries. Recommending them without a consult is not harm reduction. It is unsupervised polypharmacy. RU58841 in particular has no regulatory approval anywhere and no long-term human safety data. The mental health section is the most responsible part of the video, where the creator correctly notes that high androgen loads can drive mania and recommends reducing dose and pinning frequency. That part is grounded. The rest of the video, however, frames serious physiological warning signs as engineering problems to be optimized around rather than signals to reduce or stop use, and that framing is where the real risk lives.