I know the simple answer to this is “get bloodwork done, don’t guess”. Great idea. Impractical for most people to get a blood test done every time their E2 feels like it’s out of whack. It costs me $900-1200 each time I get T and E2 levels checked.
As many of you know, E2 can be very hard to control. I can’t seem to nail it down. Every time I go get bloodwork, it seems to be around 21-23, which is perfect. Unfortunately, my doctor’s appointments just always happen to fall at the right/wrong time when I’m feeling great. I can make an appt when I feel like crap, but by the time I can get to see the doctor and my blood drawn, I have myself back in the sweet spot, usually by sheer luck. Without fail, though, as soon as I leave there… 2-3 weeks later, I can tell I’m out of whack; but that’s all I can tell, is that my E2 is “off”.
I find it nearly impossible to tell at any of these times whether my E2 has gotten too high or too low. I can just tell it’s simply “out of bounds”. My mood changes to irritable and slightly depressed, I get terrible cognitive problems (memory gets bad, I feel “fuzzy”/“blurry” in the head and can’t think), I feel bad fatigue or tiredness… my sleep gets bad, erection quality suffers, libido gets wiped out, etc. These are all symptoms of both high AND low E2. How can I ever tell, then?! I desperately want to acquire a very important self-assessment tool that anyone on TRT needs to be able to do in long-term treatment: “Are my symptoms from too low or too high E2?”
Most of the symptoms are the same, and I don’t know what to do, take more arimidex or less. I always risk making myself worse and suffering for my decision. Maybe sometimes I’ll guess right and feel better. Sometimes I make myself worse.
I want to know—
What are YOUR ways to tell if your E2 is too high or too low? I see the exact same list on the internet, recycled over and over, which incidentally lists most of the same symptoms for both extremes. Not helpful!
I need some real advice from you guys. What tells YOU which direction you’re in? Something more definitive. Something I can say OK, IT’S TOO LOW. I need to ease up on the AI. Or it’s too high, I need to take more. I would like personal experiences and advice. This has become the bane of TRT for me, and you’d think that over a year into his I’d have it figured out, but I don’t. I promise that I have more than done my homework. I normally do good on .5mg of Arimidex 2-3 times a week, but there are times where my body just decides to defy this homeostasis and throw me into guessing land. I hate it. Ideally, yes, you want to keep it as steady as possible. I wish it were that easy for me. E2 is a constant cat-and-mouse.