I’ve been on TRT since September of 2019. The first year was amazing utilizing a brand from Walgreens. I lost 40+ pounds, grew a beard, lipids and blood sugar and pressure became perfect, I was a new man.
I switched to CVS after a move and something happened, and has been happening, the past 1.5 years. I re-gained 40 pounds, have chronic headaches, new body rashes, and a constantly swollen face. I don’t think I’ve been “horny” in over a year and a half. In addition, I had blood and mucous in my GI tract and my calprotectin levels (GI inflammation) were 1790 on a scale of 50-120. I’ve also somehow gained new allergies to things like dust mites and dog dander (never did an official allergen test until last year).
I’ve been to the doctor’s more times in the past 1.5 years than I have in the previous ten combined seeking answers.
I basically stopped taking testosterone 1.5 weeks ago as my body kept telling me to stop taking it, injections became harder and harder to do. Like my gut was telling me this was hurting me, not helping me like in the first year.
Since literally just ~12-14 days off injection, my headaches are gone, my swollen face is gone, I feel less puffy, my GI bleeding has reduced drastically, and I’m not “allergic” to the bedding I thought I once was.
I could have sworn both brands were cottonseed oil, benzyl alcohol, and benzyl benzoate.
Could the hormones have “changed” my immune system, or am I now in a systemic immune response because I’m allergic to something? The thing is, there’s never any inflammation at the site of injection.
This isn’t compounding, this is pharmaceutical endocrinologist prescribed TRT. It went from a purple vial from Wallgreens of Peligro I think to Westward red vial from CVS. It started when I was “skinnier” with a red rash on face and neck.
Over a year later I’m fat again and getting these crazy spots on my back. I went from a thinned out face to a puffy as hell face with shit in my eyes, big ass dark circles, horrible sleep and brain fog.
I think you’re misunderstanding me. Your TRT is prescribed, got it. It is compounded at the pharmacy, then given to you. Even 100% legal compounding pharmacies can give out subpar products, which is why a lot of TRT Clinics are very picky about where they will allow their prescriptions to be filled at.
As far as the weight gain, dark circles under the eyes and poor sleep, I think this could be explained by increased stressors after your move. Your new TRT compound didn’t make you gain weight, at least nothing on this scale… this was likely caused by a lifestyle change and/or burden of stress (which are entirely understandable and to be expected after moving).
You were probably always allergic to dust mites and dog dander, but without prior testing you wouldn’t have known.
This isn’t your first rodeo having issues with TRT either…
You describe what sounds like 12 months or so of TRT working and you feeling great, but in the last 2 years you’ve seemed to have near constant problems with your TRT… I’m curious if you actually felt great on TRT for a long period or not. This type of back-and-forth comes off more as a hypochondriac doing what hypochondriacs do - not judging.
Have you ever kept track of your TRT, blood tests, mood/low T symptoms? this is often recommended so you can effectively self-diagnose correlations between symptoms and dosage. Missed an injection and felt like shit the same week? probably related.
As for your rash, I believe this is an allergic reaction to something. If you got it right as your pharmacy changed, I’d say this is suspect to be your cause - otherwise I’d look at what you’ve changed recently that could have caused this and attempt ruling things out one-by-one.
You make valid points, 100% I’ve become a hypochondriac, but you can tell when something in your body feels off. For people with chronic illnesses (not even sure if I have one) things feel off a lot, and then you become obsessed with why, and when a doctor can’t solve it off a few basic tests like CBC and a thyroid profile, they just call you a hypochondriac and say it’s all in your head.
But…it’s not. I felt like a completely different person the first year of TRT and felt amazing, and said holy shit if this is what “normal” feels like I’d have had an entirely different life if I felt like that.
This obviously takes into account COVID happening and gyms closing, so I stopped exercising for a chunk of time and my diet went with it. But…I truly was not allergic to those things prior, grew up with dogs and been around dogs forever and never had issues. My face has also never been this swollen, and my blood pressure at one point was like 226/119 when I was having horrible headaches.
I’ve posted a bunch on here because my endocrinologist shrugged his shoulders and I didn’t know wtf was happening. Based on reddit/google searches I wouldn’t be the first person to be allergic to a testosterone preparation, just not sure if that’s the issue.
I hope you understand this is textbook hypochondria… you acknowledge that you’ve got these tendencies which is incredibly important, but I think you’re missing the forest for the trees. Hypochondriac’s truly believe they have something wrong with them, they feel it and know it, despite tests that could prove otherwise. What I’m getting at is you probably shouldn’t trust this feeling:
At any rate, you could be allergic to test injections, but it is very rare and I don’t believe there are many - if any - cases of latent allergic reactions to this.
The blood pressure is concerning, but if this is the worst it’s ever been and it’s nothing like that now - I wouldn’t go as far as to say it is related.
Have you started putting effort towards these yet?
Well I’ve had symptoms since I was 14 of hypogonadism, hyperhidrosis, and something being off. I’ve had dark circles under my eyes since beginning of puberty, when I didn’t finish it. I was diagnosed with a subtype of the rare disease Kallmann syndrome, hypogonadotropic hypogonadism. A dysfunction of the pituitary or hypothalamus, which probably explained my constant sweating growing up as a kid and thermal dysregulation, on top of hypogonadism. I had no facial hair AT ALL until I was 33 and started TRT. I never had sex or got laid until 33 when I finally grew a beard, got fit, got a girlfriend, and felt good in my own body. I basically felt like a boy until TRT.
So, a little bit of that hypochondria is probably because…yeah something was wrong. My T levels are 170 ng/dL at age 26 when I was not overweight.
The craziest thing is my brain fog made me feel actually retarded. That’s slowly going away in just 10 days. I felt like my brain was literally inflamed and it made me dumb.
A lot of guys with low-T have something that is lowering the testosterone, which declines due to accumulated medical conditions and not age as previously thought. So by treating the low-T you’re going around something and our bodies are smart and you can only fool it for so long.
The one thing that has held me back on TRT was my diabetes, by treating it and eating smart I have made great progress. The diabetes without question cause my T to drop.
You need to find out what caused your T to decline and treat it.
That’s been my goal all along, but my endo, PCP, and urologist said nothing glaring stands out and there’s nothing more they can do. Thyroid was checked, adrenals, pituitary, IGF-1, ferritin, that’s it. There is nothing more they can test for they said.
But yes, why do I still have hyperhidrosis? My aunt has Raynauds and ulcers and fungal infections. I wonder if it’s ol Lupus.
Endo ordered cotton seed immunoglobin test, drew blood yesterday. I’ve skipped my dose for 2 weeks now, blood pressure even after coffee/nicotine tab was 127/77 at 3pm at the docs office, so it’s come down a long way. I felt like I dropped 5 pounds in water, GI bleeding stopped completely from daily, and I sleep better and sleep apnea gasps have gone down.
Still not sure what the root cause is but, testosterone was doing something, either the carrier directly causing inflammation, or water retention causing my throat to close more often at night. Will post results of Cottonseed allergy.
Not allergic to the carrier so idk wtf was happening. I lowered my dose to like 40-80mg a week and my hematocrit and swelling and water retention somehow went up.
