90 Day Bloodwork. Having Issues. Opinions Please?

Pharma / TRT Testosterone Replacement
1

Been on TRT for almost 90 days now. Maybe about 7.5/8 weeks. So still a beginner. Overall, it’s been great. Getting energy back, it’s easy to get back in the gym and get back into shape, etc….

Just got my “90 day” labs back, and I’ve already shared this with another group, but I wanted to see if I could get some opinions from some experienced guys.

I inject twice a week, every 3.5 days. 80 mg per shot, so 160/wk. Right now I do intramuscular, switching between my quads.

I was prescribed arimadex, but I haven’t touched it. I was reading not to use it unless I need it.

Based on these results and some opinions I’ve gotten already, I think I need to start using it.

I’m having ED issues. Not all the time, it’s kind of intermittent, but my wife is noticing. Based on this, it looks like maybe E2 could be a culprit??

The opinions I’ve received are that E2 is too high, about double what it should be, and my test should be higher at 160/wk after almost 3 months. I don’t know about my SHBG levels.

Someone said to maybe do a quarter tablet twice a week of the AI?

They also said to start injecting into the cheeks and shoulders as well. Apparently this makes a big difference. I thought as long as it was going into a large muscle….

Anyway, could I possibly get some more opinions? Again, I’m fairly new to this, I’m still figuring out my body’s reaction and how to fine tune my chemistry, so any opinions would be helpful. Thank you!!

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2

You might have to play around with the injection frequency to dial in as far as libido and erectile quality as these two parameters can be finicky.

Also some guys find injecting smaller more frequent doses lowers E2 and can get away with a lower dose while still getting comparable levels two other protocols that needed more test.

When in relation to your injections are you getting labs drawn?

You should be getting labs drawn at trough or right before your injections.

As far as injecting, as long as you’re going into muscle, that’s all that matters.

3

Try day after your shot, good place to start

4

I took this blood draw right before an injection.

Twice a week seems to work well for me, as far as how I feel. It’s just the ED issue. I can try and do 3x a week if need be.

The test levels are interesting, as I guess the consensus is they should be higher. Maybe using the AI will also help in that front as well.

Is there anything that says I can’t use the arimadex intermittently? Like 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off, something like that? I’m just afraid of using it long term without a break.

Someone else had said SHBG could be lower, and to supplement with some Boron.

Learning how to fine tune everything for your own body is kinda complicated lol.

5

Your SHBG is already on the low end, actually it’s at the very bottom. Whoever told you to take boron to lower an SHBG of 19.8 should not be dishing out advice!

I’m not seeing reference ranges for Free T, so it’s not easy to critic. If I were you I would want my Total T at least in the mid 600’s.

Fine tuning E2 when using AI’s is not easy, often the AI takes things too far in one direction. I tried 0.050 anastrazole and let me tell you a 10th of that caused joint pain.

This is why I recommend altering the protocol first.

6

Yes, given your dose, those would be expected to be higher.

I woud consider increasing testosterone.

There are some who use it on an as needed for symptoms basis.

You do not want it lower.

7

Thank you for clearing this up! My appt with my physician isn’t until the 29th, soonest I could get in, but I’m the meantime, I’ll try cycling injection sites a bit and see if that might play a part, and I’ll quarter my arimadex tablet and take .25mg after an injection. A day after?

8

As a sense check, could you please provide some more information on the type and concentration of your testosterone as it’s written in the bottle (mg/ml) and the amount you are injecting (ml)?

Worth sanity checking you are dosing correctly with those TT numbers.

9

Yeah of course. My bottles are 200mg/ml, and I do 0.4 ml twice a week.

I’m also thinking… I went SubQ for the first few weeks, and I started getting a really nasty reaction at the injection site. I did SubQ on either side of my belly button, basically. Extremely, extremely itchy and red and raised. Is it possible that for the first few weeks, it just wasn’t absorbing?

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10

Was worth a check. Quite odd to have such a TT number with 160mg/week. I guess everyone is different. Interesting case.

Some explanations each varying in probability-

-Error in blood test

-You are a low responder(but where does the test go?? I would want to investigate this)

-Your testosterone is actually less than the marked concentration (poor quality control?change to different brand? Change to enanthate?)

I suppose upping your dose and taking the AI would be a reasonable next step. 200mg test and 1mg Anastrozole per week split in two doses?

11

That’s all a possibility.

Is it possible that too much test is being aromatized and that’s why the levels aren’t higher? I’m not 100% clear how that works.

I’m also still thinking that maybe switching from SuBQ to IM a few weeks in might have something to do with it?

Could be a bad blood test, sure. I know that the test sat there for an extra day before getting tested. It was properly wrapped and bagged, but maybe something degraded?

Number of things could be the culprit, I guess, yeah.

12

The Aromatisation could somewhat explain it but to be honest your e2 isn’t that high.

If it were me I’d be tempted to request enanthate, not because it’s better than cypionate but because you will get a different product ruling out the chance of dodgy test. Tbh though pharma grade test surely has very stringent QC

13

Another blood test would rule out the error too.

The way I see it youve got two practical options-

  1. Accept your a low responder and up the dose + AI.

  2. Dig a bit deeper to determine why you’re a low responder

14

So, I decided to try and dose EOD to see if that would help some of those numbers smooth out.

How does one dose EOD? Since the protocol is 160 mg/wk, splitting that I’m half was easy, obviously. The math for EOD seems a bit tricky unless I’m just overthinking it. One week I’d be dosing 3 times, the next I’d be dosing 4?

15

Yep. The way I do it is take your weekly dose times 2, divide by 7. That’s your dose per injection