What do you mean by crashing? Nebido doesn’t HAVE to be taken in huge injections. It’s a single ester, so you can break up injections sizes and take more frequent injections. That smooths out the ride so to speak. Keep in mind, it is a long ester and takes a long time to build up to a stable level in your system.
Well I’m on through NHS in UK and they aren’t very flexible, I’m going to ask if I can inject from home but not sure if I’ll be allowed and also haven’t got a protocol in place yet.
Ideally if I manage to get Nebido every 4 weeks and able to inject at home I would do 1ml a week 250mg a week.
Stabilizing on Nebido takes a long time because of the long ester, Nedibo is to be avoided and doesn’t work for everyone.
This is why you are crashing, you have very low SHBG and don’t bind much testosterone and what isn’t used by your body is excreted through the kidneys quickly. You need to switch to a single ester and inject daily or I think you’ll always be fighting to keep levels elevated long enough to benefit from TRT.
You seem to be excreting, metabolizing testosterone at a quick rate for having such low levels.
Really appreciate your help and advice.
Unfortunately I’m on through NHS in UK so cant inject everyday, not even sure I can inject at home but if I can I will do 1ml a week and see if my Doc lets me get medication every 4 weeks.
You can seek a private doctor who is more up to date on modern TRT protocols instead of choosing a doctor operating in the dark with fewer options. I’ve seen doctors in the UK prescribe sustanon and enanthate, I think your particular doctor is living under a rock and isn’t aware there are other options available to him.
SHBG is not something you manipulate easily, you would have to starve yourself over years to see an increase in SHBG, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
SHBG is mostly genetic, this is not something you can change.
So I got my latest labs in from my GP, I’m 8 weeks into Nebido and already had 3 injections.
I started having fantastic sex drive, no I have absolutely no sexual desire or drive.
Serum T - 26.5 nmol/l
FSH - <0.1 U/L
LH - 0.3 U/L
Serum Progesterone - <0.7 nmol/l
Serum Oestradiol - 201 pmol/L
My Oestradiol is high it seems?
They didn’t even measure SHBG or Free T.
I’m going to have to go down tomorrow and have a chat.
Can anyone shed any light on this for me?
Why do I feel empty and absolutely no sexual feelings at all?
Do I need an AI?
I don’t understand where to go from here as the NHS seem completely clueless.
For me it took about a month for my natural production to cease. So for the first month I was injecting on top of natural levels. After the first month and natural production stops you are just relying on what you are injecting. Maybe you need a higher dose? Maybe it hasn’t been enough time to feel good yet? Why not do more frequent injections? Without free T it’s hard to know.
No I don’t think you need an AI. My estrogen is more than double the top of the range which would put me around 350 on your ranges. I think more frequent injections would help you tremendously. Once you do that and have been on it for a month or so you can get labs (the correct ones) and look at changing your dose up or down.
Then we are left guessing as to the levels of testosterone that is bioavailable, you can’t dial-in your TRT protocol on TT alone. Your estrogen levels are another major component to sexual desire and drive. Some guys are sensitive to estrogen, these guys should be using a shorter half life ester and inject very frequently.
You are lost without testing the FT and estrogen. Your SHBG levels are critical and is very necessary. The NHS is still in the stone ages with regard to TRT and treatment protocols. The NHS needs to retire Nebido as a treatment for hypogonadal men.
You’ll fair better with Balance My Hormones or The Men’s Health Clinic.
If you can’t get on Testosterone Cypionate or Enanthate (which would be ideal) then you can make the best out of Nebido by doing more frequent injections.
You can only get so much advice from people but reading the wealth of info here will get you knowledgeable enough to know what’s going on and how to be proactive.
There aren’t many on HCG monotherapy that feel great. Adding HCG to Nebido likely won’t help either. You don’t want to add a variable until you have the first variable where you want it.
When were these labs done? Like how long from the last shot?
You really need to get on some sort of steady protocol or you don’t have much chance of feeling better. A lot of us really had to be picky about injecting the same amount on the same schedule for 6-8 weeks before we finally felt better.
My estradiol did the same thing when I started, it went from under 10 to 73. I had swollen ankles for a few weeks then it went away and hasn’t been an issue since. High E2 isn’t the devil it used to be thought of, AS LONG AS you have enough T to balance it out.
The low SHBG is working against you and increasing the amount of free hormones. You will need very frequent dosing to minimize sides effects. TRT very likely decreased your SHBG close to zero.
You will not need a lot of testosterone to feel normal, 12-14 nmol/L at the most and you will need daily dosing to achieve these levels and maintain them throughout the week without allowing levels to climb too high or too low.
Every new protocol you attempt will cause hormones to be in flux for 6 weeks, you might even see temporary edema during these first couple of weeks.
I have TRT through the NHS and my doctor suggested 10 weekly injections, as I had done some research on how best to stabilise my test levels I asked if there was a more frequent injection option telling him my concerns about having a constant test level. He said I could use Sustanon if I was happy to inject at home. I started this and have since had my levels checked twice. The first time they were still a bit low so I went back to him and mentioned I felt a dip in the last 4 days before my next dose so he kept the dosage the same but 10 days in between. I have just had my last results, all is within the normal range and my test is at 13, still a bit low so will make another appointment to see him. I think I have been lucky with my surgery and this doctor as he does listen. Hope this helps in some way because I was really miserable until I got diagnosed, 5 was my test level.