I’m on testosterone and I’ve heard that it may. Is there any truth to this?
Not an expert by any means but testosterone is anabolic so it’s going to, by definition, be a constructive hormone, rather than a destructive one. My guess is that it will be tissue sparing, but not fat sparing so autophagy processes will slow down in non-fat cells.Unless you’re looking for autophagy for tumor destruction or the like , I’ve got to imagine the benefit of the TRT outweighs any loss in autophagy.
Edit: being “on a cycle” is different than being on TRT by the way, you should be careful about your health.
Broscience take: don’t worry about TRT with regards to autophagy. Some scientists did a study about how exogenous testosterone can affect downstream targets of mTOR in rats: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23470307/
tl;dr those scientists pumped rat muscle full of test and it activated some targets of mTOR which are involved with muscle growth. But the effect was ended when mTOR got down-regulated. So maybe for a few minutes autophagy could be slightly reduced after shooting test? It would be immeasurable though unless you’re taking illegal bodybuilder amounts. As long as you keep fasting (and more importantly exercising for AMPK activation) the autophagy will go right back up.