I responded in PM. Did you read my sticky? If not, see top of the women's forum, "Women & Drugs". Answers a lot of the usual questions.
Var takes 10-14 days to really get "established". Couldn't tell you anything guaranteed about how long or how much, but my own suspicions are that a lot of the annoying sides related to steroid use occur when the compound is establishing itself or after you stopped using it - for var - takes 2 weeks to get "established" and 3 weeks to clear (ref: detection time). While the body is trying to accommodate the sudden flux of steroids and the body's response to it, things tend to get nutty - acne, water retention, mood swings, etc. (This is a very broad and general comment, not specific to var. See my sticky for specifics.) That said, I think you need to go into a cycle understanding that sides can happen and which and to what degree is your own personal chemistry experiment. If you don't have the constitution to deal with it, then you have no business playing w/ steroids. No guarantees. Further - these are the types of things that happen when you play w/ your natural hormone levels as they are the foundation of most everything about us (moods, physical reactions, etc.) Usually when the compound stabilizes and the body has come to a sort of point of balance w/ the presence of the steroid at a constant level, those transient effects tend to stabilize as well.
I would suggest she relax about it and give it a week. You can also fiddle w/ the dosage if you want. Particularly if she is trying to build some muscle right now - eat to build for one. And frankly, water contributes to a good environment for muscle building. I would also tell her to get off the scale and not worry about quantifying water weight to go nuts about. It's part of the cost of playing w/ your hormone profile. Also understand that this is a cycle - it is changes over time - a "cycle", a "phase" - so the day-to-day stuff is part of what you commit to in order to get to your end result. Esp for women if they envision this particular ripped, muscular look, but then freak out because they are gaining weight - well that's the cost of it. There are no miracle routes to your end goal. You have to pass thru the body changes to get there. If you've ever done a massive bulker off season and felt like an absolute piece of shit beached whale, then you can appreciate it in order to get to the end goal of some signficant muscle increase on a particular schedule.
The achy joints I'm sort of wondering about however.... that is usually a side of winstrol or other higher androgenic compounds that have "anti-estrogenic" properties. That sort of conflicts w/ the water retention thing. Is she on GH at all? Anything else? Couldn't say what's going on there then. Make sure getting good hydration and has good quality EFAs in the supplement stack.
