Personal question for you mate! One of the biggest symptoms I’ve had is low sensitivity and zero libido (eunuch levels). ED is obviously an issue due to this.
Are you still able to have sex at least once a day with your current situation or do you loose it mid-way?
Estrogen is working. Water retention is expected. Stay away from the AI. It will only cause more problems. Sounds like you just made changes and you aren’t practicing patience.
I hope that thyroid med is being taken in am and another 8 hours later.
So you think you have high e2. You want to take an ai and lower your dose at the same time?
I found something very interesting, related to (potentially) us both here…
Check out this study: The association between subclinical hypothyroidism and erectile dysfunction - PMC
This talks about subclinical hypothyroidism and ED/libido issues. Out of all the data, this quote is of particular interest:
The IIEF-5 scores in ED patients with SCH were significantly lower than the controls with euthyroidism (P<0.05) as shown in Table-IV. There were no significant differences in serum levels of FT3, E2 and TT between ED patients with SCH and the controls with euthyroidism (all P>0.05, Table-IV), while the serum concentrations of TSH and PRL were significantly higher, and FT4 was significantly decreased in ED males with SCH than euthyroidism controls (all P<0.05, Table-IV).
This is exactly me, and here is the real interesting thing - everyone that I have spoken to (and had lab data sent to me) has had higher ft4 than me (and your previous lab work). The key is to get ft4 into the 15-19 range, that was what I was prior and had no issues.
Because NDT contains more T3 than T4 (typically), sometimes the T4 levels lag behind and more may be required to get into the optimal range.
Here’s one I’ve read through a few times relating TSH & Prolactin to either DE or PE depending on the levels.
High TSH, High Prolactin → DE
Low TSH, Low Prolactin → PE
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1365-2605.2010.01059.x
My erections are pretty reliable during sex. Some circumstances, like after heavy drinking, create issues losing erections. I think my high estrogen was just the result of a lot of alcohol over the weekend + not sleeping much at all (my buddy came out to visit). Alcohol increases aromatase activity and I feel like I’m on enough testosterone to where an acute lifestyle change like that for a weekend might create issues. I’m going to resume my higher dose instead of maintaining the lower dose, as I had 0 issues before that weekend.
I would try upping your proviron dose and splitting am/pm to see if that helps. I was taking 75mg 1AM, 1Preworkout, 1PM when I saw the best results on it. Mine was UGL so could have been underdosed, but I think 50mg is worth a try before you give up on it. If any sides arise after raising your dose then I’d say just drop it.
I followed through with that (AI+lowering dose) and didn’t have any major issues, but you make a great point. I’m resuming all the doses where they were at (232mg weekly + no ai). I was doing good on this dose and it was wrong to change it. I mention a possible cause for the random E2 suspicion in the post above (basically trashed my body for a weekend binge with a buddy I haven’t seen in a while).
Are you mixing up T3 and T4? My NDT has way more T4 than T3 (Nature-Throid) and I thought T3 was the active hormone… meaning you would want higher fT3 and fT4 is less important? I’ll read this article and might need to edit this post.
Something I want to add:
When I cycled SARMs (or whatever the hell I was sold), I 100% experienced hyperthyroid symptoms, especially towards the beginning of the cycle. Libido was through the roof, energy was through the roof, I had a huge appetite, lots of vivid dreams, and I barely needed sleep to function. I really think I may have been sold T3 instead of SARMs.
@enackers as of right now, I split my dose 2grains in AM and .5 grains some hours later, I let the tabs dissolve under my tongue. This has been working to give me solid energy throughout the entire day, sometimes it is even difficult to sleep at night.
One thing I’ve been considering is cortisol. I’ve never tested it, and I’ve read about some symptoms online. While feeling shitty/low libido is kinda a symptom of every type of hormonal imbalance in this TRT game, there were a few that stood out.
My face gets extremely flush during exercise. I breath properly during my workouts, so I doubt it’s a lack of oxygen.
I drink a fuck load of water, because I’m thirsty all the time. I’m talking maybe 2-3 gallons a day. 1 full gallon during workout and at least another gallon outside of workout. And I pee a ton.
I gain/lose weight rapidly in my face. I gauge this based on my jaw line and cheek bones, but some days they are much tighter and some days they are more bloated. Haven’t noticed a cause for this.
I do have a lot of stressful things in my life. Won’t go into details of my personal life, but I’ve dealt with pretty big-picture, scary shit that’s bigger than just work or school stress. Oddly, I don’t really feel stressed and feel pretty calm about it, just kinda throws me off a bit to think about it.
Are there any red flags I should look for regarding cortisol? Any indicators? For a while, I took phosphatydilercine (that’s not how you spell it) with my 200mg caffeine pre workout and my erectile function seemed pretty good. Nothing huge in libido department.
That’s the red-herring, T4 (free specifically) is active and the body has receptors for it. So much focus is put on ft3 and rt3, but missing the point of having higher ft4 being beneficial for your health.
T4 is very important in males, which you will see in the article. It mentions that the ft3 and various other parameters are all identical with the exception of ft4, which is causing the ED/libido issues because it’s lower. You will also see that prolactin (and estrogen) is elevated in lower ft4 patients. Once this is fixed, erections return to normal and I can only assume libido does as well.
In another thread, I commented about the same thing and me and @dextermorgan exchanged thyroid labs. He has a high libido (as stated in his previous posts) and no ED issues. He is on a high dosage of TRT, but seeing good results. Our labs match up pretty much identically with the exception of Free T4, which (when converted) on his is around 15.3 which is the level needed as per stated in all journels/articles for normal thyroid function in people. When I was fully functioning, my level was around 15.9.
When I converted mine it was around 8-9, which is wayyyy too low and would be considered acute subclinical hypothyroidism since my Free T3 is in range.
You can see the thread here: Varicocele Influence on Testosterone - #38 by dextermorgan
Have you had a 4x a salvia cortisol test done? Get that done with DHEA (which is typically tested at the same time) and see what is going on.
T3 puts more pressure on cortisol requirements and testosterone increases iodine re-uptake.
Check out this article, which has a good diagram showing the adrenal pathway:
This is news to me! My fT4 came back at 1.0ng/dL .8-1.7. Toward the bottom end of the range, and this was from a test in which I’d already taking 1 grain of NDT a few hours earlier in the day. I’m going to learn more about this.
So that would be 12.8720pmol/L. The optimal range is around 15-17 based on the research and data I have seen. Check out this chart for example:
If you convert that ft4, it works out at 16pmol/l roughly (though obviously some variance occurs).
These studies are good:
You sure about that? I’ve always read the opposite. Ie we only have t3 receptors and have never found t4 receptors.
That’s a red herring in my opinion, check out these articles:
The first link doesn’t have the word t4 in the entire article, so I don’t see the relevance on that one (unless I missed another word for t4). Second one I’m still reading.
@ncsugrad2002
I didn’t read the articles but maybe they listed T4 as Thyroxine
Possibly
If it’s working for you cool. I needed 2 and 2. I just hated waking up feeling sick and tired. Good !