Are SARMs Safe?

SARMs get a bad reputation around the internet for being unsafe due to the sheer number of fake products being mislabeled as SARMs. This was proven by a study by Dr. Shalendar Bhasin, a research program director of a major Northeast hospital.[1] In this journal, he analyzed 44 products labeled as SARMs that he purchased online from random sources. He found that half the products did not contain a single milligram of any actual SARM ingredient. The other half that did have some SARM in the bottle did not include the specific one advertised on the label or were underdosed. This poses a massive problem for this industry since the people selling these products never genuinely know what they are selling to their customers in the first place. This is the problem in an industry that attracts shady criminals who only care about making a quick buck and neglect basic quality control out of incompetence, greed, or laziness.


Selling prohormones as SARMs:

There was a time in the United States when you could go online with a credit card, legally purchase prohormones, and have them shipped to your door. This led to many side effects by customers unaware of how dangerous these products could be. Teenagers who thought, since it was something legal online, that it would be safe for them to use were ending up with liver problems, gynecomastia, reproductive dysfunction, and aggression issues.

The federal government finally had enough of angry parents wanting to know why these toxic drugs making their children sick were so easily available online, so they finally stepped in and took them off the market.[2]

Companies were sitting on millions of dollars worth of prohormones, so some fought back over losing money. Those who dared to defy the feds ended up being sued, arrested and put out of business. Companies decided instead of fighting the Feds, they would be better off just trying to lay low and outsmart them. So they took all those prohormones and started selling them as SARMs and other supplements. This is known as ‘spiking’, a huge problem in the supplement industry since the FDA does not have the human resources to police the industry thoroughly. It is estimated that only 2% of all supplements are even tested, so the majority of supplements being sold today will never be tested at all.[3]

Now you see why certain users of what they think are SARMs report dangerous side effects. They aren’t taking SARMs at all; these are taking prohormones!


Selling other compounds as SARMs:

Another common scam from dishonest SARM companies is spiking their products with other compounds such as DNP and Clenbuterol.

2,4-Dinitriophenol (DNP) is a dangerous compound used in explosives manufacturing as a pesticide and herbicide. It has weight loss effects but is very risky to use. The reason it is so hazardous is if you take too much of it, then it will cook you from the inside out, and they won’t be able to get your body temperature down since it has such a long half-life.[4]

DNP has been found to be spiked in cutting SARMs like GW or SR-9009.

Another problem is spiking with Clenbuterol. Clen is a drug used to help with asthma. When you use it at high dosages, it can work as a fat-loss agent and stimulant, although it is a miserable drug to use because of the high side effects, including stroke. Much like DNP, Clen is popularly used to spike SARMs due to it being such a cheap drug.

In both cases, this mislabelling of SARMs can lead to stroke or death, further giving SARMs a bad reputation.

Liver Toxicity from SARMs:

Bloodwork never lies, and I have seen many bloodwork panels from different people over the years, plus my bloodwork when using SARMs. I can now safely conclude that SARMs do not cause liver toxicity when used solo at reasonable dosages. The only time you will see some liver toxicity is when you stack many SARMs together and/or when you use very high dosages. This is because any foreign substance can affect the liver, as it has to break down and process blood, which means more work for it, hence more strain.

Those who do end up with severe liver side effects, such as jaundice, are victims of using prohormones instead. Actual SARMs do not cause such a severe condition to occur, and you are welcome to test this out by using them and getting blood work done.

That said, there are some liver effects from SARMs, and it is recommended you use N2Guard while on it just as you would on any PED cycle.

I was able to find one case of a young man who had liver issues on RAD-140.[5]

A couple of problems, though, with this. First, he was running a very high PED dosage of RAD at 15mgs per day for 5 weeks. We do not know for sure if his product was spiked or not, but let’s say it wasn’t. The report also showed that he was also taking aspirin, Tylenol, and caffeine. We know that these drugs alone can cause liver stress. What we can learn from this story is to not use PEDs when you are abusing your liver with other drugs.

Cancer with SARMs

Cancer with SARMs has been pushed quite a bit as a scare tactic to prevent people from using them. The main culprit was a very flawed study that was done on rats who were given GW.[6]

The problem with this study is that it was not realistic for the real-world use of GW. First off, they ran the drug for 2 years straight in a rat, which is like if a human were to run GW their entire life. Also, the dosages were extremely high, 20-30X what a regular dose should be. It is fair to assume that if you were to take any drug at that dosage and for that long, you could develop health complications.

There are also competing studies that showed GW helped inhibit tumors and inhibited cancer cells. In fact, this is one of the benefits they noticed during drug trials.[7]

Other studies showed that animals benefited from GW in that it protected against obesity, helped prevent type 2 diabetes, and also helped with cholesterol levels.[8]

Real-world SARMs safety

We have 15 years of SARM use under our belts in the fitness community, and there have been many success stories of these compounds’ benefits. I strongly recommend you buy SARMs from a legitimate source so you know that you are using the real stuff, get your bloodwork done, and use these products correctly at no more than 12-16 weeks maximum. If you follow that, you will be able to safely use them to your advantage.