I have been on various forms of trt over the past 2-3 years, but I came off of everything 1 year ago now. 6 months ago I checked my levels and they were sitting at 400 which has been my natural baseline for a few years now.
My body crashed about 7 years ago and my levels fell from 700 to 400 in the matter of 6 months and I haven’t been able to get them higher than 400 ever since. Fast forward to today, I got my recent labs back from last week after being on nothing for a year, and my levels are now at 530.
Complete honesty, my diet isn’t great, I drink beer fairly often and I haven’t been working out at all. So how Is it that I could push my numbers up? The only thing I started doing was I added daily cialis pill 3 months ago. Has anyone else got a test boost from taking Cialis daily? I read a study somewhere that said cialis had the potential to lower estrogen levels but I forget where I read that.
Keep in mind, I haven’t been any more sexually active recently either, so it’s not that. I have been taking the cialis more as preventive measures to help my ED situation.
I would assume it’s not the cialis but something else in your lifestyle caused that. Have you checked your SHBG, maybe it moved up as well?
Why did you stop TRT?
It’s just that my lifestyle has been shit. I’ve neglected my health the last 6 months to be brutally honest. Fast food, beer, I don’t go to the gym at all. So I don’t see how that could have positively affected my levels.
As far as shbg, my doctor doesn’t test for that. Not even the men’s health clinics in my province test for that. Not to mention there’s no sensitive estradiol assay either, so it’s basically impossible to find out what’s going on.
I quit trt because it didn’t benefit my sexual issues whatsoever, in fact it made them worse. And even though a test level of 400 in your early 20’s is hardly desireable, I don’t think it was the reason for my sexual problems.
@loui1991 Sexual issues can be difficult to tackle and are not good enough reason to start TRT, because the may have other causes as well. You need to have other symptoms to start TRT. I plan to start hopefully very soon and I have all the symptoms.
As per your lifestyle maybe you gave yourself easier time last year, less pushing and exhausting the body and that caused your test levels to increase? Or maybe what you believe to be bad diet and lifestyle are not so bad? No offence, but I’ve seen a lot of people claiming they eat healthy(including my mother with whom we cannot find agreement on the matter) and their diet is really shit, lacking basic nutrients, fats and etc.
I know many doctors don’t like to test SHBG but that should not stop you. Can you not find a private lab to order it?
At this point, it’s not really worth searching out and spending the money, as I don’t have low test symptoms anymore, although I am curious. I started trt for many reasons. My body crashed after a bad experience with a 5AR inhibitor. I got every single low T symptom in the book. Of course I believe most of this was related to my body not producing adequate DHT levels because a test level of 400 isn’t really that bad.
I started trt to see if it would replace androgens that we’re lost, and alleviate my symptoms, but it didn’t do anything in that regard and I felt much worse. So I made a plan to restart, and I found clomid to be a much better alternative, although I could only go on it for a month at a time.
I did 3-4 short cycles of it over the period of a few years, and I think that helped boost my androgens and metabolic rate in my body. However, it’s been over a year since I even touched clomid, and about 10 months since it’s been out of my system. My levels went back to my 400 baseline 10 months ago, and ever since then, i have done absolutely nothing to try and raise them.
Only in the last 3-4 months have I started to feel better all around, and the only thing I did is add the cialis, so that’s why I’m so curious. FInding out that my levels are at 530 now makes a whole lot of sense as to why I’ve felt better the last few months
At the end feeling well is more important than any god damned number