I really don’t know. Lots of different things happened all at the same time so who knows and each of them could cause those issues. Telling myself it’s the UGL T makes me not think about it as much. Since getting back on compounded T it’s been much better.
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Nothing earth shattering here.
What led me to TRT was a long-standing suspicion that I’ve been on the low side to begin with. It’s always been extremely hard to add muscle regardless of diet. I’d get a little bit stronger but it would be my waist that would grow. Several years ago I was battling ED a bit and my doc at the time thought it was my T2DB. I haven’t had any other complications, so that seemed a bit strange to me. After a few months it seemed to fade and I was OK for a couple of years. Then it came back. My A1C has been good to great all along so I wasn’t prepared to accept that as a reason and asked for the test. Sure enough I was well below the bottom of the normal range. Libido is a complicated thing and depends on more than just testosterone. I think I had “lost” my libido because sex be came too complicated / too much work. Skipping the nitty gritty, I could…sometimes…manage to hit solid wood for a narrow window of time and match that with my wife’s arousal. Too many times I “missed” and either I went off early or went limp while trying to get it in. Got in my head. Sex wasn’t fun.
Eager to give myself the best results, I started digging around and found this place. Lot of good people here as well as a lot of physiological outliers that don’t respond to things the same way as most do. I started at 100mg of Cyp a week. From the start, I went to daily with insulin syringes. Didn’t really notice much for a few weeks…then one day out of nowhere I had a surprise boner while driving home from work and for a few days I couldn’t get enough of the wife. Then, disappointingly it faded again for a few weeks. Then it came back to a somewhat lesser extent for a week or two. Then faded again. That was when I started messing around with my protocol in ways that most here will tell you not to do. I’m not going to suggest it either, just commenting on what I did. When I worked myself up to 200mg/week I didn’t like where I was…was even getting hot flashes at night. Settled at 140 which seemed fine and was easy to dose (.1ml / 20mg day) and got going on the cialis to help “bridge the gap” and found quickly that a small dose was all I needed. Been 3-4 months since I’ve had any ED / PE issues. Not having to worry about whether I’ll have trouble getting it up or busting early from the effort of getting it up has lifted a giant weight off of me. At the moment I’m experimenting with 200/wk split every 3.5 days. I “think” I feel a little better but it could be nothing. But in recent months there’s been weeks I did 15 or 20 a day…100mg once a week…and now 100 twice a week and I’d really be hard pressed to find a difference in the way I feel at any of those. I’d probably give 200 once a week a shot if it weren’t for the fact that I hate using insulin pins that full and I really don’t feel the need to jab myself with a larger needle. (shrug)
As to the libido issue…I guess in my case the libido issue came down to low T feeding performance problems, the performance problems led to performance anxiety, and the performance anxiety killed the libido.
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As others have stated here, if hormones aren’t balanced, Cialis doesn’t work (not sure if Viagra or levitra would be any better). I struggled with low T and ED symptoms for years. Dr refused to put me on TRT but willingly wrote scripts for ED meds. But one of the drawbacks for me was the price of ED meds not covered (there are other threads about online generics, so i won’t go into that here). But even though Cialis (20mg) on demand worked for me most times I still didn’t like being reliant on it and i still had other persistent low T issues (brain fog, poor memory, little to no libido, lousy sleep, weight issues, etc).
I switched doctors and she agreed that i should be on TRT as she put it “your hormones are a disaster”. I was super excited and optimistic; thinking that TRT was going to by the panacea i was searching for. I was wrong. TRT has marginally improved my sleep, but has not alleviated any of my other symptoms, but to make matters worse, it made Cialis which had been a crutch that worked for a couple years, ineffective. I sometimes took up to 40mg at a time and nothing happened. Not only could i not perform with a partner, i couldn’t even get/stay hard enough to masturbate. After a few weeks and hormones stabilized, Cialis started working again. I’m not sure the mechanism of what causes it to stop working but during transition periods it has for me a couple times.
I’m coming up to a year on TRT now and have tried a couple different protocols from 50mg/wk, 100mg/wk, 210mg/wk and 140mg/wk. Other than some blurred vision at 210mg/wk i could feel a difference between any of the protocols; and none have been able to relieve the dependence on Cialis. When i started TRT, I read that morning wood was a good indicator of the effectiveness of your protocol. I have not experienced that phenomena in years, so not sure how accurate that statement is; i also don’t appear to be dialed in so, it could be.
any way the point of this long rambling post is, if you are hoping that TRT would replace ED meds (as I was) that may not be the case. And as for the OP, i am looking into daily 5mg, now that 20mg on demand seems to be working again, but i have never tried it in the past.
I’ve been in the same boat for a while. I’m 2 years in and have adjusted my dose (waiting 6 weeks between any new change) I seem to get dialed in for a while and have wonderful erections but it never lasts. I seem to yo yo over the year. I’m on daily cialis and as of this year I also started Trimix injections as needed which work 100% of the time. I’m a lot better than a year ago and what made me better is splitting dosages up (I do EOD) and injecting subq. I’m however still having issues but less than I was. What I think I’ve been doing wrong is every 2-3 to 4 months or so i see my estrogen is moving up so I use an AI. I also use HCG EOD on alternate days. I’m now ditching the HCG. My estrogen never climbs too high so I’m also ditching the AI
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I did the same. Just plain old t.
I do take daily cialis which I don’t think I really need. But I take it for it’s benefits in general
The AI put me on a horrible rollercoaster
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What dose are you on rite now if you don’t mind me asking and how often do you pin?
All of this just explained exactly how I feel and I am going through the exact same thing like I said even with 20mg of cialis I am still extremely struggling. Sometimes my brain is looking at sex as a chore now and no longer something I use to desire like how I use to before. I feel like is not fair to me or my girl to have to deal with this because I have days where I can get it hard enough to go for a little while but with in a ceartin amount of time it goes soft and sometimes we don’t even finish. Or other days I can’t even get it hard enough to even begin. It’s almost like my body just is not thriving it. Because before I could just look at a girl and get a hard rock errection.
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Right now, 75mg E3D, for a total of 150mg a week. But not sure i’m liking it.
I may go down to something like 35mg or 40mg twice a week.
Ok this explains exactly what I’m going through and I have no idea how to over come this for the past 3 years. When will happen is I will start certain protocols and they will work well for at least a good three to four weeks striaght. I mean that have been literally times where I felt like my old self again and it’s the best feeling in the world but after a couple of weeks go by everything gets snatched from me and I can not get it back unless I change the protocol and it sucks because this whole process of switching protocols takes time for you body to get adjusted and in the mean time I’m back to not being able to have sex again.
So you said you started messing around with your protocol in ways that most people would tell you not to. What does this mean so I can see if that may work for me as well??
So do you feel like your not dialed in yet??
Out of all of these prtocols which one are you on at the moment??
Also are you only using testosterone or do you take HCG as well??
See that the thing I thought about ditching the HCG. But I heard plenty of times HCG helps with libido if you get it dialed in correctly. But when you taking two meds that can manipulate your estrogen it’s hoard for tell which one is messing with it the most. Idk that why I asked a guy on another thread how he came to the conclusion about what ex at dose of HCG he wanted to take and he stayed with it and only changed his testosterone which I think I may do. Plus I think HCG has a lot of other benefits as well
I think the best advice I’ve been given is get the T dialed in first. Once you feel good and your blood looks good then add in the HCG … I’ve never done this. I’ve always had a huge mix of supplements and pills and shots. I’m not on a roller coaster but I’m on a slow yo yo. HCG does improve my libido by peoples reports but I can’t be sure it’s not that the HCG is just pushing my estrogen or testosterone higher where if I just increased my t dosage then I would have gotten the same effect.
Don’t take HCG until you need to be fertile. Here’s 16 mins worth of HCG knowledge. Even the anabolic doc says 98% of men can’t take it long term because it causes issues.
I have seen the ewst devices used for this on sale. I think it’s cheaper to buy them than to pay for to go into a clinic.
Where can you get it from
Non-recombinant HCG is also a vector for prion disease. The greater total volume of injected HCG, the greater an individual’s risk is.
To be honest I’m not sure I am or “need to be” ‘dialed in’…For now simply the fact that my T is in normal (or at the moment…frankly…supranormal) range is enough. I’m currently doing 100mg every 3.5 days. I have been…anything but strict in sticking to a given protocol though. That takes a bit of explaining on its own.
I had planned to stick with daily dosing, but I’d get busy and the hassle of waiting to pull a shot through the 30g needle was a pain in the ass. So I’d miss a day…or two…here and there. So I figured I’d deliberately start going for every 3.5 days. But then the dose was 3.5x as large and thus took (at least) 3.5x as long to pull. So that would slip too. So there were some weeks I took a 100mg shot intending to take another 3.5 days later…and it would end up being 6-7 days later. Because it hadn’t seemed to bother me, I didn’t care all that much. So recently I figured I’d try doing the backfilled syringe in advance process a try. I’m about 3 weeks into that and it’s been great. I can pull 3x1ml vials into a 3ml syringe and make 6x100mg doses in about the same amount of time (perhaps less) it took me to pull a single 100mg dose.
Some people around here don’t feel good unless they find the right protocol and stick to it for 6 weeks plus. If that’s what it takes for them, so be it. I guess I’m lucky in that I’ve rarely been on the same protocol for 3 weeks straight, let alone 6, yet I’m doing great in most respects. I’m hoping to see some better composition changes when I get back to the weights. Been nursing an overuse injury unrelated to TRT/weights.
I’m a bit concerned that my resting heart rate has jumped up. Could be a bunch of things…I have a very unusual work related stresser right now…plus I know my HGB is at the top of the range now so HCT probably is too. My blood pressure has ticked up a bit though still not to the point where I need meds for that.
Now…they say cialis “can be” effective for up to 36 hours. What I know is recently I had gone for a week without taking any (knew I wasn’t getting any action with what’s going on in our lives.) One day I took ~ 10mg (“half” a pill, snapped by hand) on the chance we were doin’ it. We didn’t. The next day and night (~20 and ~ 32+ hours later) I wasn’t expecting sex but one thing led to another and even though I didn’t have time to take a C before either event, everything went great both times. Dialed in? Confidence/calmness/placebo effect from several months of success? leftover from pill the day before? I dunno…just know things are working for me for now and I’m happy about it…and as I’ve said before I wish everyone was having this kind of response. For ME the fix seems to have been “get T numbers up from the way-below-normal range…take a bit of Cialis when needed and stop worrying/being a cyberchondriac about the details”.
Never touched HCG or any aromatase inhibitors.
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For me even a tiny dose Cialis I can feel a difference for a good 48 hours
i talked to the pharmacist that i get my T from if he had a cheaper alternative to Cialis. He compounded me some 20mg troches. I think i got 36 for ~$180, but they work great. I do need a script, but that’s fine. Not as cheap as some have reported for generic tadalafil tabs, but i trust this guy and tried one troche on thursday and performed like a rockstar for the next 3 days. Kind of the success i was hoping from TRT alone, but if i need TRT and a little kicker, then I’ll take it.
Same. I can’t take the stuff. The extra hardness is nice but the lack of sensitivity from being so hard isn’t