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10/30/08
Transdermal carriers are compounds that aid the delivery of drugs through the skin when other routes of administration aren’t possible. These carriers cross the blood barrier almost immediately and make absorption of the drugs (usually narcotics, NSAIDs and steroidal compounds) almost immediate. They are often used by pharmaceutical companies and compounding pharmacists.
The barriers of the skin are important to understand before looking at transdermal carriers because it will aid in understanding why these compounds work and how to best utilize them. The skin is composed of three major components: the epidermis, the dermis and the underlying sub-dermal tissue. The epidermis, which provides the strongest protection against drug absorption, is composed of five different layers: stratum corneum, stratum lucidum, stratum granulosum, stratum spinosum and stratum basale. When looking at all five of these layers, the stratum corneum is the most impermeable. It’s like a brick wall. So this is what all transdermal carriers must shoot for - the ability to permeate/ penetrate this layer.
Both Plogel and DMSO do this, but Plogel is superior to DMSO because it was designed to be a human transdermal carrier and addresses the five layers of the epidermis. DMSO was discovered to be a transdermal carrier by accident and was actually a chemical used in another chemical process. It is labeled “not for use in humans” and is often only used in veterinary applications because it is not strictly a benign transdermal carrier, but a transdermal carrier that also contains other ancillary abilities and properties. Both, however, come in gel form, so that’s why people think of them interchangeably as benign transdermal carriers, when in fact, they are not equal.
In bodybuilding, though most drugs are injected or taken orally, there is cause to use transdermal carriers to administer AAS, and other compounds, because of the form they take. Many will crush Finaplix pellets and use a transdermal gel carrier to
deliver the goods. Or, they’ll crush thyroid compounds and apply to various areas of the body to increase fat burning in that area.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and when you are administering anabolic steroids - which are illegal to use - you take what you can get. The two main carriers that many bodybuilders use are PLOGEL and DMSO.
Let’s look at each:
PLOGEL: Plogel is Pluronic Lecithin Organogel. It is the only choice of legitimate medicine and pharmacy to deliver NSAIDs, narcotics and other compounds through the skin. It is non-irritating and absorbs quickly. It is also odorless. It is best used with drugs of molecular weights of less than 400. So, using it with something like Finaplix pellets, where the binders and fillers are often huge in molecular weight, is not ideal.
Plogel is a two phase system that consists of an oil phase and a water phase. It consists of four things: isopropyl palmitate (an emollient with good spreading ability) and soy lecithin (a complex mixture of phospholipids and other materials that emulsify, disperse and stabilize, H2O, and Pluronic F137 which is a long-chain polymer that is solid at room temperature (which makes it able to be drawn into a syringe for accurate dose measurement when it is cold).
Plogel applications are often associated with Finajet (Trenbolone) in the world of bodybuilding. When using Plogel to apply Fina, you can obtain good results with as little as 20mg/ day if you are stacking with a testosterone. If using Fina, via Plogel, only, then 80-120mg/ day in two or three applications is best. Keep in mind that there is an actual protocol for mixing Finaplix pellets with Plogel and will not be covered here. It requires some careful mixing and a few syringes, and isn’t as easy as crushing pellets and administering them with gel. The pellets must be dissolved in a process overnight and the actual Trenbolone spearated into a clear top layer and bottom suspension layer. More on that in another installment, another time…
DMSO:
Again, DMSO is a gel, but it is nothing like Plogel as a transdermal carrier. It was an accidental discovery, rather than a deliberate laboratory creation. It is a less stable transdermal carrier, but works nonetheless. It is technically not considered a human-safe compound, but only because pharmaceutical companies didn’t create it and it was a chemical compound (a gel with a chemical in it, rather than a benign gel created solely for the purpose of being an carrying compound) created for another industry. The FDA has never approved it for human use. It is, however, used a great deal in the veterinary industry.
Applying Transdermal Carriers
Transdermal carriers, such as Plogel and DMSO are best on a clean hairless part of the body. Many will choose the inside of the forearms or upper chest. Many choose these areas also because they have the least amount of fat beneath. Plogel will provide sustains release of the drug, whereas DMSO will provide an “all at once” dosing, and will ultimately waste some of the compound. You get one shot with DMSO.
