All compounds

LGD-4033

Also sold as ligandrol, VK5211, anabolicum, LGD4033. Selective androgen receptor modulator (SARM).

Works as advertised, real trade-offs (2 of 5)

LGD-4033 has real phase-1 human data showing it builds lean mass, and the same data shows it suppresses your own testosterone — the trade-off is genuine, measured, and exactly the one people believe they are avoiding.

What it is

LGD-4033, usually sold as ligandrol, is a selective androgen receptor modulator originally developed by Ligand Pharmaceuticals and later licensed to Viking Therapeutics, who took it forward as VK5211 for recovery after hip fracture — a real clinical problem where losing muscle in the weeks after surgery predicts whether an older person walks again.⁶

It reached early human trials and did not become an approved medicine.

Among the SARMs, LGD-4033 occupies a middle position that is worth understanding rather than blurring. Ostarine has the most human evidence and the weakest effect. RAD-140 has the strongest effect and essentially no human evidence for the use people put it to. LGD-4033 has real early-phase human data, a stronger effect than ostarine, and correspondingly stronger suppression.

That gradient is the point of having separate pages. These are not interchangeable, and the differences between them are the most useful thing anyone can tell you.

What it actually does

LGD-4033 binds and activates the androgen receptor with a strong preference for muscle and bone.

What it does in practice is add lean mass, reliably and reasonably quickly, with less of the acne, hair loss and prostate effect that come with anabolic steroids. It is noticeably stronger than ostarine. Users describe it as the point on the SARM ladder where the effect becomes obvious rather than subtle.

The appeal is the same as for every SARM: the muscle without shutting yourself down and without injections. As with ostarine, that promise is partly kept and partly not, and the part that is not is measurable.

What the evidence actually shows

On building muscle: yes, and there is human data. LGD-4033 went into early-phase human trials, and those trials found increases in lean body mass. That is a stronger evidence base than RAD-140 has and a weaker one than a licensed drug requires. Systematic reviews of randomised SARM trials include it.

On suppression: measured, dose-dependent, and unambiguous. The same trials that showed lean-mass gains showed suppression of total testosterone, and of the hormones upstream that drive its production. Suppression increased with the amount taken.

This is the finding to sit with, because it is the exact opposite of the reason most people choose a SARM. The marketing proposition is “anabolic effect without suppression.” The human trial data on LGD-4033 says: anabolic effect, and suppression, proportional to how much you take. In the trials, levels recovered after stopping — over a period of weeks — which is genuinely reassuring, with the caveat that trial participants took it for a defined short period under supervision, which is not how it is used in practice.

On liver injury: there are published case reports, including one in a healthy young man that required medical care, and a more recent case examining the same problem. These are individual reports rather than a rate, and most people taking LGD-4033 do not develop liver injury. It happens, it is not predictable, and it is severe when it does.

On what you are actually buying: a study analysed a black-market product sold as LGD-4033, and the wider analysis of SARM products bought online found that roughly half did not contain the SARM on the label. LGD-4033 has also been a repeated cause of positive doping tests in athletes who took contaminated supplements and had no idea it was in them.

What nobody knows: longer-term use. The trials were short. There is no data on someone taking it repeatedly over years, and no data on whether suppression always recovers after that pattern.

The risk profile

Works as advertised, real trade-offs (2 of 5) — It does the thing people take it for, and it costs something specific and known.

What going wrong looks like from the inside

The failure mode here is the same shape as ostarine’s, arriving harder and sooner.

You will not feel the suppression while it is happening. LGD-4033 is occupying the receptor, so the thing your body would normally use to tell you your own production has stopped is masked. You feel strong and you are training well. The signal is not merely absent — it is actively covered.

What arrives after stopping is the part people are unprepared for: fatigue that sleep does not fix, mood that has gone flat rather than sad, libido gone, and a sense that training has stopped doing anything. It typically shows up a couple of weeks after the last dose, exactly when someone has concluded the compound was fine because nothing bad happened while taking it.

That gap between cause and effect is what drives the pattern that actually damages people. Feeling that way, the obvious response is to run another cycle, and it works — for as long as it lasts. Somebody who repeats that a few times has spent a couple of years suppressed, and recovery from that is not the same proposition as recovery from one short course.

The liver injury is the abrupt one. In the published cases the pattern is consistent: fatigue out of proportion to anything, then itching without any rash, then dark urine, then yellowing of the eyes. If you get that sequence, particularly the itching and the dark urine together, stop and get a liver panel that week. It usually resolves after stopping and it does not reliably resolve if you continue.

Interactions and combinations

Not a central nervous system depressant, so the fatal-combination risk that dominates the phenibut and tianeptine pages does not apply.

The interaction to take seriously is anything else that loads the liver — alcohol, regular paracetamol/acetaminophen, oral anabolic steroids, and the other SARMs it is nearly always stacked with. When a stack of four compounds produces liver injury, nobody can identify which one was responsible, and that includes the people treating you.

LGD-4033 is very commonly stacked with cardarine, which is not a SARM and carries an entirely different and more serious long-term concern.

It is prohibited in all tested sport, is detectable long after the last use, and has caused sanctions for athletes who never knowingly took it.

If you’re already using it

There is no withdrawal. Stopping is stopping.

Get bloods. Testosterone, LH and FSH, plus a liver panel — ideally with a baseline before starting, and again several weeks after stopping. This is the only way to distinguish normal recovery from suppression that has stalled, and that distinction determines whether you need treatment.

Watch for the liver sequence and treat it as urgent rather than as something to keep an eye on.

Do not treat post-cycle low mood with another cycle. That is the mechanism that turns a short experiment into years of it. If you are still flat and low-libido more than a few weeks after stopping, that is a medical problem with a medical answer.

Do not buy post-cycle-therapy drugs from the same source. Those are prescription medicines with real risks of their own, and they are coming from the supply chain that got half its SARM labelling wrong.

Tell your doctor by name and mechanism — “LGD-4033, a selective androgen receptor modulator, an unapproved drug that acts on the androgen receptor.” It does not appear on routine drug screens.

This page has not yet been reviewed by a clinician. It was written from the published literature and every claim is cited, but no named medical professional has checked it. We say so here rather than let a missing byline read as an implicit one.

Last reviewed 7 September 2026. Found something wrong? Corrections are published, not silently edited.