Due to SARMs being relatively new additions to the world of fitness and bodybuilding, questions about their safety when it comes to any possible side effects are quite legitimate.
Although new, SARMs have been in widespread use among members of bodybuilding community for over a decade now, which allowed us first-hand to find out more about their side effects and if they are harmful to our health the same way steroids are, if not used properly and with appropriate knowledge.
We will approach safety questions from two sides here – do SARMs affect your hormonal profiles and your natural testosterone, and do they affect any other part of your system and organs in any negative way?
When it comes to their effect on your natural testosterone and your endocrine system in general, yes, SARMs do affect both in certain ways. When they first appeared and when there was not enough user knowledge and research available to the general bodybuilding public, SARMs were considered a safe alternative to steroids because it was believed that they do not lower your natural testosterone or disrupt your hormonal profiles at all. Today we know that that’s not the case and that SARMs do have an impact on your hormones, although not as heavily as steroids do.
Although working with your androgenic receptors, all SARMs impact your natural testosterone levels. While some of them affect it just a little, some suppress it quite heavily. Of all of them, Ostarine (MK-2866) appears to be the safest, meaning that its suppression of natural testosterone is quite mild.
Being one of the most-researched SARMs, Ostarine is also known to not negatively affect other aspects of your health, if used as recommended.
Other SARMs, much powerful in nature, are known to suppress natural testosterone heavily, and being newer and less researched, the full spectrum of their possible negative effects isn’t known.
So when asked what is the safest SARM, Ostarine would be my answer.