Follistatin is a naturally made protein. Your body makes it and uses it to mainly boost your muscle growth and fertility.
Increasing follistatin is the surefire way to put on muscle mass quickly, burning a significant amount of stored body fat on the way. It can also improve your sexual and reproductive health.
Follistatin can be increased naturally through specific nutrients in the diet, or with the help of supplements for greater benefits.
Follistatin for a time was a closely-guarded secret in the professional muscle-building community. Although the science on follistatin is still considered relatively new, specifically because of still relatively limited human research that has been conducted, from what we know so far either through research or user experience, supplemental follistatin can lead to muscle growth increase of up to 200%, enhanced fertility in both women and men, and significant decrease in body fat.
Your body is a natural follistatin factory that produces limited amount of it. It’s naturally activated when you workout, with one of its primary roles being to get your musculature stronger. Scientists have observed that conscious control of follistatin levels by an individual, either naturally or through a supplement – can lead to much faster visual changes in one’s physique, especially if person is a regular gym goer.
The rest of this article will go into further details about this remarkable protein, explaining how it works, how to increase its levels, and what the best supplements for doing so are.
How Follistatin boosts muscle gain
I’m sure you’ve seen a picture of a Belgian Blue bull. These bovines are an enormous mountain of muscle. They are known for gaining muscle mass and burning fat storage at an surreal rate, all thanks to a genetic mutation that suppresses a catabolic protein known as myostatin. All mammals have myostatin, including humans, and it has the same effect on your body as it does on the body of a Belgian Blue – which means that it interferes with and slows down muscle growth. When levels of myostatin are high, your muscles cannot regenerate and rebuild themselves after they’ve been broken down by exercise. Basically they can’t grow. (find study) But humans are not Belgian Blue bulls and they do not come with that kind of genetic mutation.
Only by suppressing myostatin can your muscles grow in an explosive manner. It is after myostatin suppression that you’ll see an increase in both strength and muscle size. (study)
This is exactly where follistatin reigns. It basically mimics the state that Belgian Blue bulls are genetically blessed with – it blocks myostatin, in turn making your muscles grow with greater speed.
Follistatin also renders activins ineffective – activins are compounds that can have a severe negative effect on our metabolism, slowing it down, and our reproductive system. By blocking these compounds with follistatin, you also, like stated before, enhance fat burning and increase your fertility.
In a study conducted in 2014, healthy people were supplemented with follistatin or placebo for the duration of eight weeks, coupled with a weight-lifting program. The results of the study showed that in follistatin group, the compound suppressed myostatin by 44%, which not doubled but tripled muscle growth in the subjects.
Another interesting study found that injecting a follistatin-boosting compound epicatechin, increased strength in people after only one week.
There aren’t many studies conducted on follistatin in humans because it has come to prominence just recently, although there is a good amount of research done on animals.
Studies done on rodents showed that when administered to mice it both increased their muscle gain and decreased fat deposits, even when diet that was fed to them contained a surplus of calories that should have lead to fat gain. The same thing was noted when follistatin was administered to monkeys.
It’s important to say that taking supplemental follistatin will not make you overly muscular like Belgian Blue bulls, since myostatin will continue its production once follistatin wears off. But when used in a specific way, together with a proper workout and nutrition programs, follistatin supplementation is a simple recipe for supercharged muscle gain.
How to increase follistatin naturally
First you can increase your follistatin levels is with strength training, which comes as a no surprise. One downside with this is that follistatin increase isn’t all that great.
Second way of increasing follistatin levels is by consuming more epicatechins – powerful antioxidants found in cocoa powder, greet tea, blackberries and raspberries. The best source of epicatechins is a high quality cocoa powder.
And the third way to increase follistatin naturally is by eating fertilized egg yolks. I know it sounds gross. But you don’t have to eat raw fertilized eggs. Yolked® is clinically proven and NSF – certified supplement that contains fertilized-egg extract rich in follistatin. It’s clinically studied and its effectiveness proven.
Injectable Follistatin
This is without doubt the most efficient way to increase your follistatin levels and reach desired results. Of course, having to inject it is considered quite a downside.
You can find clean and safe pharmaceutical grade follistatin in powdered form online. However, since there are many forms of powdered follistatin that play different roles in our body. The type that you have to look for, that directly targets the muscle tissue is Follistatin 315.
Make sure you inject it correctly. Reconstitute powdered follistatin with bacteriostatic water and inject it into the very muscle you want to grow. Guides on how to properly and safely inject yourself can be found online. In case injecting yourself is something that makes you nerves, you can ask a doctor, a nurse or another person who has had muscle injection training.
When it comes to dosage that has to be injected, there is no official dose. However, based on research and results from people who have used it for this purpose, 100 to 300 micrograms is a range that’s considered good.
Follistatin is one of the newer and still experimental supplements used in biohacking one’s body for the purpose of muscle growth. It’s the field where it shows the biggest potential. You have to understand that experimenting with injectible supplements is always at your own risk. You are advised to always consult with your doctor or the person knowledgeable in the field of medicine, to make sure you know what you’re doing.
You should always biohack your body with utmost responsibility.
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