DarkDescartes TRT Recovery Log

Pharma TRT
263

That’s very interesting. I would have to consider the mental aspect of what Dr. O’Connor is saying more seriously.

What makes we weary of believing that is because of a few times where things were working “better”, especially the last time on 250mg weekly. How could it be mental if I had periods of success without any change in mentality?

Do you perhaps have the name of this sex psychologist by any chance?

If I don’t feel better by week 12 of the same protocol, then I might have to consider mental ED/libido issues.

Guess like always, I’ll have to give it time.

264

Super high testosterone impacts confidence so maybe it inadvertently helped the mental aspect? I’m talking out of my ass here.

I’ll find out the docs name for you

1 Like
265

I agree with you that there’s probably some complex psychology at play, but IMO, if 250 resolved his symptoms, I’d say just do the 250. It’s not an absurdly high dose.

266

Positive or negative impacts? I’m assuming you mean positive.

I’m switching to 500mg/week if so.

Jk. But I would if it was the answer.

267

I’m an efficient responder to test so I’d be pushing 22-2300 if I was on 250mg.

I do contemplate going back and just riding it out, reducing my dose later but it ruins my ability to get consistent bloodwork.

I’m just gonna have to suck it up and ride it out for a few months. I know I have more than enough test in my body. If by 8-12 weeks I’m not good and my panel looks healthy, I just may have to consider a sex therapist.

268

@ncsugrad2002

It definitely does but not a lot more than 200mg does. For me at least there’s not a huge difference between the two feelings-wise except libido gets a bit higher.

269

I’ve read pretty much your entire thread and your symptoms correlate pretty closely (if not identical) to mine. I am going to go out on a limb here and say your issue is not related to testosterone (or estrogen). You have adrenal/thyroid issues the same as me.

I am willing to bet a few things in your case:

  • You have a varicocele or some kind of similar testicular abnormality (vasectomy, hernia, etc).
  • You have elevated cortisol (or abnormal cortisol patterns throughout the day)
  • You have low free t3 and t4
  • You have elevated adrenaline (as a “backup” energy) that is lowering your dopamine resulting in libido/ED issues

T4 is often overlooked because people say it’s “inactive” which is inaccurate, various studies (which I will post in a bit) require T4 for circulation/blood flow around the body (including the penis). Sufficient ft4 concentrations are required for thermoregulatory processes to take place in the body. In fact in studies done, T3 alone wasn’t enough to bring up someones body temp, T4 also had to be available for the intercellular processes to work.

It’s important to note that subclinical hypothyroidism (as per your case) results in abnormal alternations to esteogren and other sex hormones, including the speed of “clearance” of E2 from the body. This results (typically) in estrogren dominance and other issues in a-lot of cases. Until this is fixed, your symptoms won’t resolve and you will play cat and mouse trying to “dial” in a TRT protocol sometimes feeling good, sometimes not. Depending on the quality of sleep you get, the thyroid produces different levels each day, so some days will be better than others and you will correlate this to your TRT protocol.

So how do you solve your issue? You need to get a 4x salvia cortisol test ideally twice on two different days to get an accurate picture of what your adrenal glands are doing. You then need to look (seriously) into getting on thyroid treatment. T4 gets a bad rep, but that’s typically because women have more problems with conversion than men due to estrogen (this is a whole other topic). You may need a combination of NDT/Armour and Hydrocortisone to recover, along with a proper TRT protocol.

I believe one of the reasons @dextermorgan has results from his protocol is due to the fact he has a varicocele (like me), which is associated with an abnormal increase in cortisol. Higher levels of testosterone are required to “dampen” the impact of cortsiol and by doing so increase thyroid function.

270

DarkDescartes TRT Log 75mg E3.5D Week 3

Lets change up the format.

Just started day 21 and no significant changes as to be expected.

I had the ex over for the holidays and she stayed from Monday night to tuesday night before she headed back to her family for christmas.

Contrary to my time on 100mg e5d i was able to get it up. I was decently horny but due to my lack of ability to last, due to my low libido i was hesitant to initiate contact.

However at 5-6am i said fuck, we started fooling around and i went in. To be expected, i didnt last morning than 3 minutes which ANNOYS me. I’m lucky she understands my situation and is more than comforting about it. She probably still remembers the days i used to fuck her brains out.

We continued our day as normal after waking up and i decided to go in again around 6pm the next day. This time last 4 minutes, i tried stopping and started to last but i couldnt go more than a few strokes at one point without feeling the need to bust and i let it go.

Its nice to feel the semi horniness. However i could realistically only go once a day which unless i master my cock to last 30 min per round, isnt ideal.

Part of me still wonders if more than testosterone is going on. However where else do i turn?

Idk, ill still search around and think. If anybody has any ideas, I’m open.

271

Haven’t read that much of your thread but I remember reading about the relationship of prolactin/TRH/TSH and either premature or delayed ejaculation. I’m not sure if you’ve tested these already? Below is some info on it. Basically they found a close relationship between prolactin/TRH/TSH on PE and DE.

If they are low, it tended to mean PE, high tended to mean DE (unsurprisingly)

There’s a direct relationship between all 3 of these hormones

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1365-2605.2010.01059.x

I’d take PE over DE any day… 30 minutes of pounding is fun when you want it to be 30 minutes of pounding. It sucks when you’re half numb and just doing anything you can to try to make it happen

272

well this is thyroid:
T3, TOTAL 96 (76-181 ng/dL)
T3, FREE 3.2 (2.3-4.2 pg/mL)
T4 (THYROXINE), TOTAL 6.0 (4.9-10.5 mcg/dL)
T4, FREE 1.1 (0.8-1.8 ng/dL)
T3 REVERSE, LC/MS/MS 15 (8-25 ng/dL)

this is prolactin. We’ll throw in cortisol as well.
PROLACTIN 7.7 (2.0-18.0 ng/mL)
CORTISOL, A.M.14.5 (4.0-22.0 mcg/dL)

idk if anything can be derived from these values.

273

Do you have TSH?

274

oh, yeah, must’ve not pasted correctly

TSH 1.87 (0.40-4.50 mIU/L)

275

ah ok, not sure then, I would expect a lower TSH than that to make sense based on that article

276

I might just have to roll the dice and just… wait.

Every time i read @dextermorgan posts, especially his witty and funny ones, it reminds me of myself when I’m feeling my best.

I’m scared and worried sometimes that ill have to live my life less than 100% my whole life, never understanding why.

However my best bet now honestly is to wait, which sucks because there’s soooo much uncertainty.

I don’t think this is mental, despite Dr. O REALLY trying to push this on me nor can i imagine what else would be going on in my body to cause this ailment. It doesn’t help that this time he’ll only test testosterone values. What if there’s more information on my thyroid that could be garnered, even adrenals, etc.

I’m just going to have to pray to the almighty testosterone Gods that i get better with time over the next few months. Otherwise idk what else I’d have to look at or do.

Hopefully the simplest explanation is the best one. Time.

277

Measuring the number of erections per night is quite a useful test to differentiate between psychological ED and physiological ED.

Maybe your urologist can give you more info about this test and refer you to a hospital where such a test is performed.

278

Interesting.

I do have times where i notice i get a nocturnal erections but idk if it happens all the time or consistently.

2 nights ago i had a very intense erection during my sleep and had a dream to go along with it. However the sensitivity wasn’t and still isn’t there which tells me that there is still some hormonal imbalances. I should mention i did experiment again with some masteron i had left over at 50mg EOD and i was 2 shots in by that point, maybe it had an effect.

On top of that i dont feel “scared” to go up and talk to women, socialize, etc. I feel “disinterested” that energy just isn’t there yet. That feeling of wanting to go up to a girl and shoot your shot or that charisma when you’re just feeling horny and wanna fuck it, that can be done manually but i haven’t genuinely felt it in a long time.

Maybe this is just a matter of giving my T/E2 time to coalesce but idk.

I’ll post some labs just incase people want to or can chime in and give suggestions on improvements in case im missing something.

Thyroid & Iron Panel
TSH 1.87 (0.40-4.50 mIU/L)
T3, TOTAL 96 (76-181 ng/dL)
T3, FREE 3.2 (2.3-4.2 pg/mL)
T4 (THYROXINE), TOTAL 6.0 (4.9-10.5 mcg/dL)
T4, FREE 1.1 (0.8-1.8 ng/dL)
T3 REVERSE, LC/MS/MS 15 (8-25 ng/dL)
FERRITIN 94 (38-380 ng/mL)
IRON, TOTAL 146 (50-195 mcg/dL)
IRON BINDING CAPACITY 324 (250-425 mcg/dL)
% SATURATION 45 (20-48 %)
THYROGLOBULIN ANTIBODIES <1 (< or = 1 IU/mL)
THYROID PEROXIDASE ANTIBODIES <1 (<9 IU/mL)

DHEA SULFATE 211 (85-690 mcg/dL)
PROLACTIN 7.7 (2.0-18.0 ng/mL)
CORTISOL, A.M.14.5 (4.0-22.0 mcg/dL)

279

DarkDescartes TRT Log 75mg E3.5D Week 4

Today marks day 28 of my protocol.

Per usual, no significant changes as of yet.

The girl I’m see came over again this week for New Year’s and stayed from Monday night till today when she just left.

She was on her period so we couldn’t fuck but she sucked me off the first 2 days.

As of now I only have 1 good round within and I don’t have much for the rest of the day/night. I will say when I’m horny though, i do feel into it, however the sensitivity is still lacking.

With that being said it still feels pretty good which i hope is a good sign for the future. Although when she sucks me off and is aggressive, my penis kinda hurts afterwards which wouldn’t normally happen at all in the past. Definitely still have a ways to go.

Shifting to this, i’m not ruling out the possibly of a subclinical hypothyroidism diagnosis. My t4 numbers aren’t fantastic to say the least.

My total is towards the bottom quarter of the range and my free t4 isn’t at that 50% ideal. i do wonder if it has any effect on my difficulty in dialing in trt.

Although i dread needing to use another hormone, i will if its necessary. My hope is things just get better the longer I’m on this protocol.

As for now, 2020 is upon us and i can no longer wait on this to correct. Ive been putting all i got into fixing my libido issues but to no avail yet. I need to move on conquer my goals before life passes me by.

It’s difficult but i gotta put these issues to the back of my head and focus on winning in the present moment before life passes me by.

I want to be and feel like my best self, but ill fake it till i make it and bet on myself that the rest will work itself out.

Talk to you all on week 5.

280

I seen one of your posts on reddit and wanted to chime in and say our situations are pretty much identical (as are our labs).

Much like you, I did not want to add another drug but I think I am going to need to go down thyroid route as well due to subclinical hypothyroidism.

I am also suffering from low sensitivity and ED/libido issues. Don’t quote me on this, but based on my research FT4 is a huge competent of this even with good ft3 values. Check out this study for reference:

I did not get a chance to look over your entire thread, but I vaguely recall you had a varicocele as well? If you do there is a good chance your thyroid/adrenals are out whack like mine.

281

i’ve never posted about having one but its possible i’ve had one in the past.

I remember in 2017 i had a left testicle ache sometimes and there was a possible bag of worms feeling on my left side. I havent had any of those problems since i started taking hcg back then and such. I can’t say if anything has or has no contributed to it.

My t4 numbers are on the low side but it’s too early in this protocol to be deciding on using thyroid hormones. I have done a acth stimulation test and the results came back showing it was fine. Morning cortisol last tested was 14.5 so thats pretty good.

I’m going to have to see how this plays out in 90 days. I’m taking a couple of supps that are supposed to help thyroid and even a pituitary blend from amazon. I’ll need to see if my thyroid numbers continue to get better on trt and or see if these supps provide benefits as well.

At least everything is in range but we’ll see if we can get those numbers up over time.

i did have a honey moon period on trt and there have been 2 occasions where things were a bit better than others but they werent phenomenal.

Also it’s not like everything is great except for libido, I still could use my full mental cognition and energy as well.

282

Your symptoms feel very “varicocele” like from what you are describing and your blood work is similar to mine in that respect. TRT was the same for me, a lot of things improved except libido and erections/sensitivity.

I think trialing thyroid meds is a good idea, I have a few theories on what causes issues with varicocele, cortisol and thyroid which I posted in a recent thread.

I am going to be looking into thyroid medication this year as well, will keep a log here!