I’m 22 years old, i’ve suffered from borderline low testosterone for years, even when I was around 17 my levels were low for my age. I recently did a testosterone cycle followed by a proper PCT and I felt extremely better, felt awake, my depression and anxiety went away completely, I felt the best i’ve ever felt in years.
I’ve done a blood test recently after being a few months off cycle and my levels are back to how they were, slightly higher but still low for my age.
So my issue here is I wanna hop on test for life as it improved my entire quality of life and makes me feel much better but i’ve read alot about infertility issues and I do want to have kids in the future, thats the only thing pushing me back. Is there anything I can do to prevent this? Should I take HCG for life too while on TRT doses?
Ignoring the whole you’re young and it’s a lifelong commitment issue…
You can have sperm frozen beforehand and you can also use HCG to help with fertility. @johann77 has posted some studies showing the likelihood of being sterile due to TRT and how often that reversed when TRT is stopped. If you search through his recent posts you should find it
His post:
Not saying that you should stay away from TRT, but you should get the proper information. Make sure to read the two articles below.
Key message:
Exogenous testosterone was investigated as a male contraceptive agent, and it was found to result in azoospermia in approximately 75% of men after only 6 months of use.
An analysis of 30 published clinical trials reported the probability of recovery to 20 million sperm/ml at 6, 12 and 24 months were 67%, 90% and 100%, respectively. These studies were however performed in a controlled setting for a clinical trial, with a limited duration of TRT. In actual practice, recovery may not be as pronounced.
These two studies found an azoospermia rate of 64% to 75% in 6 months with testosterone enanthate [6,7]. A sperm concentration of 3 million/mL was used as a threshold for effective
suppression of spermatogenesis in this study [14,15]. In a Chinese study of a monthly intramuscular TU injection, an azoospermia rate of 93% to 98% was achieved after 6 months with 1 million/mL as the criteria for effective suppression [25,26]
Read the chapter about testosterone as a contraceptive
@johann77 I read it, but maybe I did not say it correctly.
Is there a single registered case when a man could NOT restore fertility lost as a result of TRT, of course with all necessary things like HCG, FSH and whatever…
We all know that if we take testosterone without HCG we become infertile, but what is the chance we are not able to restore fertility if we attempt to?
If you use T plus hCG than you will be fine, nothing to worry about.
But there are examples of persistent testicular failure and infertility due to long term T use out there.
The literature suggests that if you are low in T before starting TRT already, then use only high dose T for years thats what sets you up for problems.
The last article is an interesting one. It provides the probability of reaching a meaningful number of sperm following cessation of TRT and initiation of hCG therapy. The longer T was taken and the older the subjects were, the lower the probability was to reach 5 mil total mobile sperm.
But again the hCG when on TRT is a wonderful preventiv measure.
@johann77 The thing is I’m not sure whether I will be able to handle HCG. If it makes me feel like crap like many men I will not use it, because this makes TRT pointless. At the end I want to feel better.
But for sure after my first 6-8 weeks of dialing I will try to incorporate HCG