6 Months of TRT Fail

What about HCG? I was administered that and on T nation I see people are taking it subcutaneously, but I was taking it intramuscularly. I was taking to avoid losing sperm count which seems to have happened anyways because my wife and I have been trying to conceive for the past 5 months with no effect.

Tried to Add FSH?

Im sorry can you provide information on this? Ive never heard of it being used.

This really is a excellent question, TRT is a bit of a debacle in western medicine, doctors are taught high levels of exogenous T ā€œcausesā€ prostate cancer and heart attacks, so if you were taught this going through medical school, would you want to specialize in this area of medicine?

So there are doctors in western medicine that specializes in replacing testosterone, you just have to play the doctor lottery because someone that specializes in TRT must be highly intelligent to see through poor quality clinical studies like Dr. Abraham Morgentaler who was able to prove TRT doesn’t ā€œcauseā€ prostate cancer or cardiovascular events in otherwise healthy men with no other health problems, there are those with existing health problems that are susceptible to clotting and/or heart attacks.

As far as TRT, everyone has their own needs, I have low SHBG and need very frequent dosing to feel stable, twice weekly causes fluctuations or swings in levels and while trough levels are on high end of the ranges, it’s like my body ignores the testosterone and it feels like I have low testosterone.

I thrive at 7mg daily and am a hyper-responder to TRT, not that I get high levels with less, I get the full effect at only 400 ng/dL. TT is bound to the protein SHBG, you want to test FT levels or you can use your TT and SHBG score to calculate FT levels using the Tru-T calculator. The ranges are 16-31 pg/mL.

Also take note that everytime you change something about your protocol whether it be injection frequency or dosage increase/decrease, it will take your body 6 weeks to stabilize, 8 weeks adapt while some take longer, (longer length AR gene CAG repeat numbers). This can become a long process if you make it out to be and could be at this for a long time before you start feeling good again.

1 Like

Google it I don’t know enough except my doc gives both hcg and fsh for fertility .

HCG is an LH analog, LH/HCG stimulates the testicles which then produce testosterone, FSH is responsible for spermatogenesis and both are more or less suppressed (.2) on TRT, but not enough to make all men infertile. Some not all will see their testicles pulled up close to the body, testilces should decrease in size by about 25-30% in most cases, some more.

HCG can help greatly with allowing the testicles to drop fully, but the consequences could be estrogen management issues as HCG increases intratesticular estrogen on top of the estrogen via testosterone to estrogen conversion process that takes place in the aromatase enzymes found in fatty tissue (visceral belly fat).

1 Like

Unless you are going to be one of the few that inject daily, you need a higher dose as those levels are low for two days post injection.

Stop this, few guys on TRT need it.

Did you suffer any concussions while serving?

1 Like

There are a few problems here that I didn’t see mentioned. First, your draw for labs should not be 2 days post injection, that’s a false high number. It should be day of injection before the injection 0 at nadir. You never had the test numbers that the labs showed, not for more than a day. Also, what dose of HCG and when? I saw .25, but that can’t be right. It should be in IU’s, at least 250 IU per shot, every other day at most. You also should absolutely not be taking HCG before you Test dose is dialed in. That is very bad practice. One new thing at a time, period. And ditch the anastrozole, it is very, very unlikely that you would need it. They absolutely should not have given you that right away either, and certainly not WITH the shot. 12 hours later would make more sense.

3 Likes

Well I was knocked out 4 times while serving in various ways. They are not very cool stories. As far as calling them concussions Im not sure as there was never any treatment for any of them. Why do you ask?

It’s a great way to suffer pituitary damage and have low T, among other things.

3 Likes

So is TRT the answer for pituitary damage? I mean not to fix it, bit to cope with it? I have assumed it was a possibility that possibly my testes are producing T, but my brain not receiving the signal, or whatever. Sorry I cant speak on that more, but I have suspected it.

They don’t really know how to fix a pituitary, so yes.

1 Like

Yeah they always advised to do lab 48 hours after injection. Their line of thinking was that they wanted to see the peak number, but I think your way is much more logical when comparing the two methods.

And yes I meant 250 IU. The .25 was the anastrozole dose. And they added that after I had been complaining about no symptomatic relief and again, they thought that this would ā€œallow me to hold on to the T for longer.ā€ This is what they explained and it was only 1 shot/week. I was also concerned about fertility issues and they said this would help also. It obviously didnt work or atleast not to that extent.

How would you know if pituitary is damaged? Ive had about 5 MRI’s and nothing pituitary has shown up? Is the pituitary even seen on MRI?

The guys who fire those rocket launched weapons suffer from (brain damage) low pituitary hormones, growth hormone as well.

2 Likes

I was a Combat Engineer (1371) and dealt with explosives almost exclusively during my 4 years as well as rocket launchers such as At4, SMAW and LAW which are all held close to the head.

Well there you go, more than likely these explosions caused damage. I would test IGF-1 at the very least. The military is working on insulated helmets to protect soldiers.

1 Like

Potentially you could run Clomid or Nolvadex and see if the pituitary starts cranking out LH at high volume. If not, it would point towards a pituitary issue. Imaginf really only shows tumours/growths, or that it is partially or fully missing.

2 Likes

Sounds like those symtoms are all low t and you were having alcohol to cope. Suppress .

1 Like

Yeah for sure. Thanks for the support.

1 Like