Can someone explain why testosterone esters have to "kick in" ?

I'm not understanding what snipping the ester chain has to do with the testosterone binding to the androgen receptor, and having its effect.

Seems to me like it could do this all over the body immediately, as soon as its out of the muscle you shot it in.

Can someone give me a chemical/microbiological explanation of why testosterone prop/enth/cyp/whatever has to "kick in" ?

there is an individual threshold level of hormoe plasma concentration where the user feels its effects; this is often described as the "kick in" point.
in reality its a smooth process. lets look at the enanthate ester: after injection, blood levels rise steadily for 24h and then decrease for ~14 days to reach basal levels again. the time between peak and 1/2 peak is ~5 days, also called the half life.
if you follow a popular administration regime and inject an enanthate every lets say 5 days, the second peak is higher than the first peak (somewhat 50% higher), the third peak is higher than the 2nd and so on until stability is reached from somewhere around the 4th injection. together with side effects of the hormones (estrogen formation, satellite cell fusion, increased nitrogen retention and a lot of still unknown effects), the point where the user feels a difference in the gym can take 3 to 4 weeks, some report up to 5 weeks.
the "kick in" point can be reached faster with frontloading though.

Whew....

Glad someone gave a more techincal explanation.

My thought was that (like any other medication), there's a "saturation" that needs to happen first. Even stuff taken I.V. takes time to work through the whole body and reach an equilibrium. I.M. injections take time to absorb and get all over....then to start having the desired effects.

Peyomp said:

I'm not understanding what snipping the ester chain has to do with the testosterone binding to the androgen receptor, and having its effect.

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esterase, found in the body, removes the ester at a certain rate, which forms the basis for that ester's half life.

once the ester is removed, the body can use the newly released testosterone

someone please correct me if i am wrong

Well, I'm not most sciency, technical guy in world but I know this: Blood levels of testosterone will quadruple within minutes of administration. And if you have 4000 mgs of T in your bloodstream, you are one anabolic motherfucker. I've also felt a difference (increased strength and libido) within a few days. Weight increase within a week. So I never bought into this "4 weeks to kick in" nonsense.

I believe it just takes some people 4 weeks to SEE a difference, but even that shouldn't be the case if you train ard and eat enough.

I agree to Nelson.
My cycle has suspension in it and only 7days and holly shit what a differance pure test is compared to others that are 70% test and 30% Ester, aprox.

Slider

im with nelson. I always see results the first week with no orals. Shit if I had to wait that long it would not be worth doing a 10 week cycle. of course now I do 6 months so it does not really matter

In laymans terms the ester acts simular to a time release vitamin pill. When you inject your test levels do increase fairly steady. The ester must be broken down before the test is free to work in the system. Faster acting esters like prop break down much quicker, where as enth will break down and release the free test at a much slower rate. The reason people call it a kick in point is that it takes time to build up to higher free test /blood consentration in the body and that is the point were you start to feel the most effects of the test in your system. If you frontload you will reach the kick in point (test/blood level Consentration of noticalbe effect) quicker because while the break down rate remains the same there is more estered test being broken down at the same time.

Nelson Montana said:

Blood levels of testosterone will quadruple within minutes of administration.

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Endogenous or exogenous test levels? You'd think it's an arithmetic progression, not a geometric one, so if you have 1g of serum test and add 500mg of exogenous test you have 1.5g total, not 4g total. And I don't see how that 500mg would quadruple in vivo either.

What did I miss?

When it comes to total T, the exogenous essentially becomes endogeneous once it's in you. One mg of exogenous T will raise total T (around) 2 ngs. Let's presume your natural endo T is 400 ngs. If you took a hit of 200 mgs of T that will raise will raise it another 400 ngs equating to a total of 800ngs. Thta's only double, I know. (Math has never been my best subject) But there are other factors. For one thing, the immediate hit causes a much bogger spike. A blood test taken one hour after administration might show a total T closer to 2000. Once you piss a few times, it comes down and settles in the aformentioned range for a few days until it slowly dissapates.
Considering the half lfe, once you take a second shot just a week later (And these are super-low dosages) your total T will still be way above that of mortal men.

Does that clear anything up or did I just make it more confused?