I won't say that I do everything right when I'm on a gear cycle, (nor when I'm off for that matter) but where most guys miss the boat around here, (even some veterans it seems) is when they have bloog work done, they don't pay the extra $$ to have their GGT included with the "SMAC-25" blood tests. This is a pet peeve of mine. Almost everyone here who posts their blood results only gets the AST, and ALT done for the liver values, but those readings don't tell the whole story about what's going on with your liver, and it's also my understanding that both the ALT and AST readings can be well above the normal range due to many reasons, some of them not even related to liver function.
But the GGT test is a more direct test of liver damage and if your GGT is out of the normal range, that's a sure sign that you're in some trouble concerning your liver. I'll repeat what I just posted in another thread last week by saying this: Just because your medical insurance usually wont pay for the GGT test to be included with the SMAC25 and therefore your doctor won't call out for it, doesn't mean that you should be cheap and not go ahead and pay for the GGT yourself, (that's what I do). In the same sense that having bloods done merely twice per year merely because that's all your insurance will pay for means that you should settle for that and tell yourself that you're watching your health closely enough while using gear.
If you run gear, you need to get bloods done at the very least every three months, (and for heavy duty liver-stressing compounds like S-drol, A-drol, Halo, Tren, etc., bloods being done every six weeks isn't a bad idea) and you need to have the GGT done, because if it's high, you need to get off ALL the gear you're on IMMEDIATELY and hope and pray that you haven't done permanent damage to your liver!!! In that case, go clean for a couple months, and have the GGT done again before you even think of getting on gear again, and it probably would be a good idea in that case that you bring your test results which show your high GGT levels to your doctor ASAP. Even if you choose not to admit your gear use to him.
I was a moderator on a BBing board for one year back in 2002 until the owner allegedly got into a fatal car wreck and the board went belly-up. On that board we had a physician who was a board member and a BBer himself. He told us that he ALWAYS included the GGT along with the SMAC-25 tests for himself and for his gear using BBer patients because ALT and AST just don't tell the whole story on your liver, and they both can be high at times without actual liver damage. The GGT is a more specific test for liver function. You've ALL been warned.