Been on 100mg a week/ injecting 50mg 2x per week. At week 2 i felt very good, but now my anxiety is through the roof, daily panic attacks. Can it be estrogen? I do have pre existing gyno and they aren’t sore, but my nips are looking a puffier than usual.
I was supposed to wait until 8 weeks in for blood work but i just feel like something is up.
Should i go in for bloods now?
Your SHBG is mostly likely low and this protocol may be suboptimal, your dosage is excessive as not many injecting 100mg twice weekly. You’re probably in excess of both testosterone and estrogen.
Most men are closer to 100mg weekly. I would do 25mg EOD since SHBG is probably <20 by now.
Shit, meant 100mg a week split into 2 doses. 50mg per inject.
I inject monday PM and friday AM
@systemlord
You will not do well on moderate dosages, I’ve seen this before and you need very frequent smaller dosage ED or EOD. These smaller doses also lower estrogen and keep levels from swinging which could also be another reason for anxiety.
If you’re starting out on TRT and have a thyroid problem, well then things will not get better anytime soon. Most are told their thyroid is normal, more than often this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
The sick care definition of normal is sick and suboptimal.
I experienced panic attacks around week 7-8 when I started. They suck. I was scared to go to sleep at night, because I knew I was going to wake up with a panic attack. One night I was so hot and so freaked out, I was sitting in shorts outside in a foot of snow for almost an hour before I could calm down. I feel your pain. High e2 was my main problem. Eod injections cured me from panic attacks. Ed injections make me feel 100 percent normal again. No ai for me, just eod of 100mg of dim.
My SHGB was 26 pre-trt. E2 was 19. I think i only got my TSH which was a 1.8. I didn’t get any other thyroid levels checked. Should i ask for them to test them when i get bloods?
It sucks, i always had an anxiety issue but its soo terrible right now, can’t even sleep. I think i am going to start doing m-w-f injections. Is that what you do?
No I did every other day. I marked my calendar every other day, and marked it off when I did the injection. And on the days I didn’t go injections, I would take my dim. Made it easy. But I honestly feel much better with ed injections. The small insulin syringes with 30 gauge needles are so easy to inject. I seriously don’t feel most of the injections. Every now and then I’ll hit a small nerve or something, but even those are better than a good im injection.
There is an obvious double standard here, LH the stimulating hormone for the testicles was checked and also to see how much testosterone the testicles were producing Total T was checked as well. TSH stimulates the thyroid gland, if you want to know how the thyroid gland is performing, you must check the active free thyroid hormones.
Whoever ordered TSH only probably isn’t very knowledgeable and likely will not be able to interpret lab values and sadly will believe in range is normal because they don’t know any better. So you get the additional tests done and the doctors is still short on knowledge and unable to help.
The problem is how doctors were taught in medical school, that you couldn’t possibly have a thyroid problem with TSH in range, but we now know better and unfortunately doctors do not get retrained to correct old outdated knowledge, they continue doing things as they were taught 20-30 years ago and will tell their patients that they are normal when in fact they are not.
Ill ask for full thyroid panel, then come back with the results. It is possible that my thyroid levels are fine?
If they aren’t, and my doc says they are, then i will go out and get an actual TRT doc
It’s definitely possible your thyroid levels are fine. It’s also possible they are not. Until you get the results you will not be able to rule it out. Ideally, you want a TSH closer to 1.0 and free T4 and free T3 to be at the higher end of the range.
I just went through an experience similar to yours. I was on 30mg of test cyp every day. At the 4 week mark, I had awful insomnia, heart racing, shortness of breath and anxiety. I dropped down to 14mg ED for 6 weeks. All symptoms except my insomnia went away. I am now on my 4th week of 20mg ED and the only remaining symptom for me is my insomnia which is well managed with melatonin, magnesium glycinate, GABA and tryptophan.
For me, I believe I was on a keto diet with too big of a calorie deficit for too long which slowed my thyroid down. Either that or my thyroid was slow all along. When I got the excessive dose of test cyp (causing high E2), it exposed the weak link in my system (slow thyroid) and that caused the anxiety, heart racing, shortness of breath and insomnia.
Unfortunately, there is not enough information on you to make any real guesses as to what is going on. Some people have anxiety for a week or two whenever they change their dose, most people have no symptoms at all. Some people need every day injections (especially low SHBG), some need EOD, most do 2xweekly, some do 1xweekly. Lots of people have subclinical hypoactive thyroids. For some this causes problems with TRT, for many it does not.
I’m really sorry to hear that you’re having these symptoms. Unfortunately, for some of us it is a long process to get our TRT dialed in and it requires patience, research and perseverance.
You just described exactly what im going through. My shortness of breath, heart racing, stomach dropping just fucking terrible. I didn’t get too specific cause wasnt sure if anyone could relate. This is god awful. I just had my first dose today of 33mg. M-W-F 33mg. Was doing 50mg every 3.5. Makes me feel like something is going on with my heart
Hi brewz…
I feel very sorry for you with the anxiety issue. I suffered from anxiety for much of my life, mostly tracing back to a beloved parent dying when I was at a shitty age.
There may not be much you can do about this particular anxiety except “ride it out” and tell yourself it’s the meds right now. Not nice to hear but comforting in its own way. If it is the TRT, the intensity of what you are going through now will likely subside. I do find that even 100mg a week can cause my anxiety to spike a little, although I generally treat it as a “buzz”. It is possible that 100mg is a little too much for you and you can get away with 80-85mg (two 40mg doses). Twice a week gives you about a 20% boost compared to once weekly (so 85mg can get you close to what 100mg would do for you on once a week).
One week last year when I injected too much I got VERY anxious and paranoid for the first day or two after the inject. Unpleasant. I hope it works out for you.
In the meantime, I shared this post on another thread about a breakthrough way to deal with anxiety. I have had excellent feedback from the people I’ve given it to. I recommend you sit and read it and take it in and see if it the advice can help you with the everyday anxiety you face (perhaps not so much with this little bout if it is chemically driven).
Although the post linked below refers to PTSD, the technique works wonders for generalized anxiety. It’s there to help if you need it. Best of luck.
I just switched my split my dose up to 3x a week. Do you think i should wait for blood work before cutting down on the dose?
Thanks a lot for sending me that thread, its quite interesting and never thought/heard of something like that. I do suffer from PTSD, panic disorder, GAD, bipolar and agoraphobia. My anxiety most revolves around my physical sensations that it gives me, pretty much engraved things so deeply in my head I cant get out of it. I’m going to start to try that narrating today. I will let you know it goes
One word advice to anyone suffering with panic attacks or anxiety that has started trt, do NOT drink alcohol. It makes it much much worse.
You saying to ride this wave out without alcohol? Or to never drink alcohol in general
Ride this wave out without alcohol. You can drink again once it stops.
On cutting dose, it depends how bad the anxiety is. If it’s extremely intense and more than you can take then I don’t think it will hurt to cut the dose by a few mg per shot and see what happens.
If it seems like you can handle it or it is subsiding then by all means wait for bloods. I don’t want to give you bad advice. It’s kind of a coin flip. I just know that when I injected too much, I had stupid intense anxiety (not panic, just an awful feeling like I’d never had before) and it was specifically related to the dose.
Good luck with your narrating. It does work, and you should feel the benefits pretty quickly. It’s kind of a willpower thing at the beginning but easy. You just have to want to do it. Feels stupid when you start but the first relief you feel is heavenly. Let me know how it goes or if you have questions.
I see a lot of ypu guys are iniecting eod or even ed. The risko of infection goes up exponentially over once per week dosing.
I also experience anxiety (which stems from hypochondria/cardiophobia, but still i find it is harder to calm down since i am on exogenous t) but i dont think that is the way to live, to inject every single day.
We have to get to the root of the issue with anxiety, which for a lot of us is the anxiety about injecting t, and we have been told since we were young that testosterone causes heart disease etc even though studies show health improvement when adequate amount of t is being supplemented.
Also studies show higher incidence of polycythemia among those who injected biweekly over those who injected once per week. Also, interestingly enough, higher incidence of hypogonadism symptom reocurrence in biweekly injection group.
https://www.jsm.jsexmed.org/article/S1743-6095(16)00182-X/fulltext
For me personally, anxiety comes when my e2 gets too low.
If injecting 100mg at once is so over the top, how come that thousands of guys are running standard 500mg test per week cycles injecting 250 mg + at once with no such psychological issues?
brain is an interesting thing. I also experienced panic attacks when i intentionally let my test bottom out just to see how i would feel. I personally feel that panic attacks are caused by adrenaline surges.
Man I am so sorry you are going through this. I had never experienced any anxiety before my first episode roughly 2 1/2 months ago. Worst thing I’ve ever experienced.
TRT is such a finicky thing. There are so many things going on and it really is different for everyone. My free T was 377 on my 30mg/day dose. My doc said he has seen patients with free T of 750 that had ZERO side effects. If you read on this forum, lots of people have anxiety with really low free T. It really is unique to each person.
For me, I cut my dose to less than half(14mg/day) what I was taking, checked labs in 6 weeks and raised my dose up to 20mg/day. Dropping my dose to 14mg/day got rid of my anxiety, heart racing, shortness of breath in 2-5 days.
I’m definitely no doctor, but if I were you I would consider dropping your dose to 25mg EOD like systemlord suggested. You should feel better pretty quickly if that is closer to your correct dose.
Also, another thing you might want to consider is trying the 20% compounded scrotal cream. I was on that before injections and felt amazing for 6 months. I had to switch to injections because I have sensitive skin that was reacting to the cream. I had zero anxiety on the cream.