I’ll address the points @equel made. Let’s see what we got.
There’s a large amount of studies showing the late onset of TRT benefits. There’s the review from 2011 which @blshaw posted. (Shout out to @anon18050987):
The onset of the first benefits starts at 3-4 weeks with general quality of life improvements while all other (and especially sexual health benefits) kick in (a lot) later, anywhere from 3-52 weeks.
The St Louis University Androgen Deficiency in Aging Male (ADAM) is a screening tool for hypogonadism in older males. An improvement was noted after 1 month of testosterone treatment (38). The Aging Males’ Symptom (AMS) questionnaire is a 17-item scale assessing health-related quality of life and symptoms in aging men (e.g. somato-vegetative, psychological, and sexual symptoms) (73). Improvements on scores on the AMS have been noted after 1 month (38), 6 weeks (40) to 3 months on treatment with parenteral testosterone undecanoate (35) or after 9 months on testosterone gel (74) continuing over a total of 18 months (74).
The point is valid but not correct.
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The vast majority of controlled studies don’t use varying dose protocols during their conduction. Meaning these effects are largely seen while keeping dose constant.
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Reaching an equilibrium in the variance of blood levels through same amount and time injections leads to an adjustment of neurotransmitters influenced by sex hormones. An interpretation before nearly reaching this state is nearly impossible.
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Yes, if blood levels have stabilized on the first protocol and you increase dose by a small amount, reaching steady-state will not take as long. There’s a good probability that after protocol change the benefits could manifest on the earlier side of the time frames given. That would speak for small increments in dose.
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Increasing dose on one day and feeling direct effects stems from the increase in dopamine and noradrenaline as well as direct mood effects of sex hormones stimulating receptors that are adapted to a certain level of sex hormones. The effect vanishes after not even a day. You should have mentioned this while citing studies that report direct effects.
See for example:
Sleep reduction is one effect caused by an increase in excitatory neurotransmitters.
- When first starting out positive effects might manifest themselves only after several months on TRT. The first regimen should therefore be held onto at least for 3 months in my opinion. There’s no way to know if the dose is that which is required if one does not give it the time to act. After the initial TRT protocol experiment, changes in TRT dose should be gradual and protocol should only be changed after 3-4 weeks every time.
There’s good evidence to validly argue that dose changes to a TRT regimen should be made only after a few weeks at the earliest. The first dosing regimen should be moderate and kept for at least 3 months to see how many symptoms one is able to resolute with it.
@hankthetank89 while we are here anyways, I wanted to show you this from the same authors as the review above:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41366-019-0517-7
It pertains to what we discussed in the thread earlier today. Maybe you get yourself to enjoy the read.