Why do you want your spine to be in a “curved” position, and what does that even mean? Do you have some kind of clinical sagittal imbalance? If so, what in the hell is paying a girl to mash on your spine supposed to do about that?
Look, we know why joint cracking makes sounds. It’s due to gas expansion inside of synovial fluid, and in the case of your spine, that’s likely occurring at the facet joints. The point is it’s definitely not chiropractor witchcraft.
If your lower back is tight and painful the solution is reintroducing mobility and strengthening your entire body, from the bottom up. How is your foot strength? Foot pronation? Hamstrings and glutes? How about your core strength and shoulder posture? Have you paid attention to how you carry your jaw? Do you move a lot every day?
I would really urge you to address these things with classic strength training and some of the more modern mobility work with things like rollers, bands, and yoga. How many minutes do you spend on focused, disciplined stretching every day? If it’s less than 30 minutes, increase it.
Chiropractic “care” is not evidence-based. People that get caught up in thousands of dollars of chiropractic services are really only achieving the placebo effect (which can be strong) that goes along with paying money for having attention paid to them. This is the very foundation of eastern medicinal practices like acupuncture (although I am a big fan of dry needling for exactly that reason: having precise attention paid to spasming muscles).
A big, big part of life is about becoming comfortable with discomfort. There’s something to be said for “loosening up your bones.” All I’m saying is do that to yourself for free, and then you won’t be dependent on a soothsayer.
I was just kidding about popping your back. The part I was trying to point out is the chiropractor is going to charge $500/month and says your libido is going to be fixed from adjustments. I have an Uncle who is the top chiropractor in New Orleans (dude is beyond ballin) and I get adjustments from him all the time. It’s fantastic and I highly recommend to anyone especially if they lift weights but even he said the libido thing was bs. Just be sure you aren’t being taken advantage of is all I’m saying. I personally totally believe in chiropractic “care” just not for libido.
@dextermorgan I will say though my libido has definitely improved from doing back stretches which really surprised me. The theory is that there are some nerves in my lower back being compressed and loosening them allows for better sensation down low thus improving libido. I’ll post the x-rays today
Can’t find the x-rays. As far as a thread update goes, essentially it seems my libido and erection issues are stemming from nerve damage in my pelvic floor area. I posted way earlier in on this thread about an infection that had started off all these symtoms and crushed my T levels. Well it’s looking like it was never an infection and the docs had that wrong as antibiotics never helped.
The course of action now is to get pelvic floor physiotherapy and hopefully that can help to minimize the symtoms. As far as symtoms go we’re talking testicular pain, discomfort near rectum/perineum, loss of sensation in scrotum, less intense orgasms, ED, loss of libido, premature ejaculation (somewhat controllable but never had this issue before all this), back pain, groin pain.
My docs had always thought this was from an infection so I always believed what they said and tried to treat that. Then when I found out about the low T I focused on that for quite a while. Turns out this pelvic floor dysfunction has probably been the culprit all along. It had happened after taking a fall on my tailbone.
Still seeing chiropractor for now too but I may discontinue that soon and focus on restrengthening my back muscles to improve my spine. It seems the chiropractor got my hopes up by saying all these issues are related to my spine, and they could fix it but this is something chiropractors are known for - claiming their practice is a fix all. Not that I don’t believe it could help a bit but it’s almost certainly not going to be as effective as physio which will hopefully restrengthen my pelvic muscles and maybe fix up some nerve problems ie the loss of sensation. It is also possible my inguinal hernia is involved as well, there have been studies proving that this type of hernia does impact libido and erectile strength.
As far as mental state goes I’m finding myself less anxious and depressed as I’ve been in the last few months so I’m sure the elevated T levels are helping. Iron levels will be rechecked in a couple weeks so hopefully they’re back to normal after about 4 months supplementation.
Figured I’d just update the thread, again I thank everyone here for all the guidance and advice. Maybe someone will see this thread and it can be of help to them. I will continue to post updates here and there and hope to eventually be back to where I was 5 years ago. A healthy happy man. Getting there bit by bit.
Against the advice of many on this forum I’m gonna try an AI. Still getting brain fog and anxiety and I wanna see if it could help. Gonna try a small dose and see what happens. My e2 is likely quite high at this point
Took 4mg aromasin last night. Maybe placebo maybe not but I seem to feel less stress today. Will be having labs come back for total test and bioavailable on trough tomorrow.
@dextermorgan how long did you have to take iron before your levels got back to normal? I’m about 4 months into supplementing and still have shortness of breath and fatigue. Gonna get iron retest today
Well holy shit. My bioavailable T was at 30 with the top of the range being 10. That was on a trough. Gonna cut dose from 225per week to 125. Thats probably why my blood pressure has been up and why I’ve been having anxiety
Dose does not correlate exactly to levels so cutting your dose almost in half doesn’t mean you get half the levels. I’ve seen that the bio T measurement isn’t exact so you may want to use the calculator that some folks have been paying here lately to see a more accurate representation of your level.
Yeah I think cutting it in half is a pretty safe bet though. I’m worried that I’ve had high blood pressure for a while too. It’s been hovering around 140/85 ish and I work a very active job. My brain fog has been weird lately and I’m worried the blood pressure could have affected my brain. Idk. Gonna try to lose some fat asap maybe that’ll help. Just wanna be back to where I was 5 yrs ago
My blood pressure when taken at a doctor’s office is 140/80. My blood pressure when taken at home is 120/60 and I’m not an anxious person. I would get your BP checked outside the doc office and I bet it’s much lower.
The weird thing is, I have been taking my blood pressure at home, when I first sit down and take it, it’s like 140s/80s. Then I keep the cuff on and try again, focusing on being completely calm and controlling breaths, after a few go’s I’ve got it to go as low as 115/68. But my worry is that could this just be due to the cuff being on a while? Would that affect things or is the lower reading legit?
Here lies the problem, you’re not supposed to take your blood pressure right after sitting down, you’re supposed to wait minutes before doing so. When you get up and become metabolically active, naturally your heart rate and blood pressure will rise, when you sit down your heart rate and blood pressure will drop.
No it wouldn’t, it has everything to do with you resting. Make sure the cuff isn’t too tight, as a rule of thumb, you should be able to slip one finger under the cuff.
As an update I’d like to state that the AI hasn’t helped anything, if anything I feel kinda weird from it. Really hoping that when I get my bloods back for iron that it’s still low (because that would explain my brain fog) otherwise what the hell is wrong with my brain lol. Sex drive still pretty non existent hopefully physiotherapy will help that. My doctor was pissed when we looked at the bloodwork showing bioavailable T triple the top of range, he didn’t even look me in the eye.
As far as personality changes I’ve experienced from TRT I feel much less anxious (but yet it’s still lingering) I’m much less hopeless, and I’m not afraid to speak my mind (regardless of how jumbled my thoughts are). I’m hoping that the iron deficiency is the cause of the rest of my mental symtoms because it’s still quite severe and I don’t believe I could get a girlfriend and have a happy life feeling this way. I have a terrible attention span and have trouble maintaining conversation, granted I do have ADHD but it was never this bad not even close up until a couple years ago.
I’m testing out Vyvanse again for now to see if it can help with some of this stuff but my goal is to eventually not need it if I can get my brain back to proper function.
