Oxandrolone dosage and evidence

What is Oxandrolone?

How does Oxandrolone work?

Oxandrolone is a man-made steroid built from DHT, a strong form of testosterone. It has a small chemical change that lets it survive the liver and work as a pill. That same change is what makes this group of steroid pills hard on the liver. It attaches to the testosterone receptor, which tells muscle to build protein and hold on to protein. The body cannot turn it into estrogen. That is why people say it causes less water retention and less breast growth than testosterone. But that is not all good. In men, estrogen helps bones, mood and sex drive, so a steroid that cannot become estrogen takes those away.

What have studies in people found about Oxandrolone?

A strong set of results in people with a serious disease, followed for years, measuring bones and growth. Nothing like it exists for healthy adults.

• 119 badly burned children took oxandrolone or a dummy pill for up to two years, and were followed for five years.
• Bone strength across the whole body and the lower spine got better, and so did how fast they grew.
• Fewer treated children ended up with bones weak enough to count as brittle bone disease. That is about real fracture risk, not just a blood test.
• Two years of treatment worked better than one, so more treatment gave more benefit.
• No side effects were blamed on the long course in those children. That matters in children watched for years.
• It was once approved in the US for regaining weight after serious illness or injury. So the medical use is not a grey-market story.

What this does not tell you: All of this is in people whose bodies were breaking down from severe illness, mostly children. A healthy adult's body works differently, and nobody has studied it this way. The good safety record comes from children watched closely in hospital. It does not carry over to people using higher doses on their own. It is still a steroid pill of the type that is hard on the liver and cholesterol. A hospital watching burned children is well placed to catch that. A person on their own is not.

What do people who took Oxandrolone report?

This is what real people say happened to them, good and bad. Nobody measured it. A report cannot tell a real effect from the lift people get just from expecting it to work, from a diet or training change made at the same time, or from what was really in the vial. We still put it near the top. It is the next best thing to a study in people: what happens when real people use it, including what goes wrong.

• Doses described run about 15 to 25 mg a day for four to twelve weeks, with some describing lower amounts split through the day. Early reports are of strength, less soreness after training and elevated mood within days to a couple of weeks.
• The consistent finding in the self-logs that include bloodwork is what happens to HDL. One detailed log describes it roughly halving within weeks with the cholesterol ratio worsening accordingly, and the same collapse is described by others across a wide range of doses. Adding other compounds is described as not fixing it.
• Used without testosterone, the body's own testosterone is described as shutting down fast and completely. Testosterone and estrogen both fall sharply in the logs, and symptoms people put down to low estrogen, such as joint cracking, are described after less than a week at the higher end of the doses above. Insomnia, loss of sexual function and elevated liver enzymes appear in the same accounts, and posters note the liver findings sit awkwardly with the claim that this compound is handled differently from other orals.
• Disappointment is common and specific. People describe expecting belly fat loss and visible veins and getting neither, and the group consensus that forms in these threads is that nothing happens without the diet doing the work.
• A kidney scare thread shows the community's own attribution problem well: a falling eGFR and rising creatinine were attributed by responders to muscle mass, creatine use, dehydration and a non fasted test rather than to the compound, a different marker was suggested, and the retest came back normal. Causation is contested in almost every problem thread here.
• Stopping is described as harder than expected by some, with mood and energy said to stay low for a couple of months afterwards despite stable testosterone replacement. Whether that is dependence or simply an unoptimised baseline is openly argued in the thread.
• Sourcing is discussed as a prescription and compounding question rather than a grey market one, with cost and the history of price increases raised as the practical obstacle.

Sources: Oxandrolone threads on ExcelMale, including self-logs with bloodwork, found by site-restricted search and through the site's tag index, read directly, September 2026. Nothing above is attributed to any specific post and no post is reproduced.

The state of the research

The evidence, in charts

The studies we cite

• Study in people2016
  Five-year outcomes after long-term oxandrolone administration in severely burned children: a randomized clinical trial

  Oxandrolone left badly burned children with stronger bones five years later. 119 children with burns over 30 percent of their body got the drug twice a day for up to two years, or a dummy pill. Treated children had stronger bones across the whole body and lower spine, and grew taller faster early on. Fewer had bones weak enough to raise fracture risk. Two years of treatment beat one. No harm was blamed on the long course.

  Randomised, up to 24 months of oxandrolone in severely burned children with five-year follow-up. Significant improvement in whole-body bone mineral content, lumbar spine bone mineral content and density, and height velocity, with treated children showing significantly greater height velocity throughout the first two years post-burn. Fewer treated children had bone density z-scores below minus 2.0, indicating reduced future fracture risk. Two years of treatment produced significantly greater gains than twelve months. No adverse effects were attributed to long-term administration in this cohort.

  PMID 26506070 Shock