Maybe never. Depends on you and what you do. If you do a PCT then a few weeks probably. If you do nothing, “Normal” is probably going to be around 6 weeks. Just regular restart earlier than that, but it depends. Some guys are months.
Agreed. Get this fixed.
You need to test
TSH
FT3
FT4
If your insurance is covering it (they should), then also get
rT3
TG and TPO antibodies
Also agree with this. 4-6 weeks for shutdown, but can take longer to really start feeling like hell.
So I know I am shut down, it’s why I started trt. How much will it recover if I am completely shut down, and how will that affect being covered by insurance? It’s confusing me a bit.
By shut down, I meant that exogenous testosterone will shut down any natural production you had before. If you are under-dosed, whatever natural production you had before will be gone in about 4-6 weeks, and the external testosterone might not be enough to replace it. During the first 4 weeks or so, any natural production you have will stack to some degree with the exogenous stuff, giving you a spike in levels.
I think I replied a little too soon on that, since it seems like you already shut everything down on 45mg/week, the upped it to 90mg. If it were me, I would increase my dose until calculated free testosterone was in the mid to upper level of the range.
I am really intrigued by this. Usually you would expect SHBG to be low, or low range with high TSH.
I would highly suggest you get this figured out before going crazy with testosterone protocols.
You started because you were low, not shut down. You are now shut down, as evidenced by your LH and FSH numbers. Your body is no longer trying to produce, which is what shut down is. That usually happens around 4-6 weeks on TRT. It means that you are totally on exogynous testosterone, which is lower than when your body was actually still producing some of it’s own. Thus, guys that crash at this point or get sides need to look at a dosage modification, usually upward slightly to compensate for the loss of natural production.
Separately, your most recent TSH is high. That can also happen initially on TRT. If it is iniated by going on TRT, it will go back down after a few months (As mine did and plenty of other people’s). It doesn’t hurt to get thyroid labs run, and to know what they were pre-TRT for comparison.
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Do you know the mechanism for why that would be? I was on thyroid meds when I started TRT so didn’t see anything unusual with my labs. I’ve always suspected Testosterone and thyroid hormones had a correlation, but haven’t looked into it that much.
Nope. But my TSH doubled initially and then went back down.
Mine went from 2 to 3 then back down
6 is pretty up there though. If you’re already on thyroid meds I’d say increase the dose.