[quote]IareChaz wrote:
Pardon for the noob semi-hijack…
Can you describe “the bloat”?[/quote]
Chaz,
This is a noob answering so take that into consideration. The bloat to me, felt as though my stomach was full of air. Not really the best way to describe it, but lets just say, my stomach stuck out like I was pregnant. Nothing seemed to have an impact on it (see previous posts). PKNY suggested stopping the HCG, which I did and it worked!
This was a big deal to me because I was at wits end and ready to stop the T. I was injecting the HCG every day at a low dose. PKNY’s post got me to investigate the HCG deal in more detail. PKNY post above about its impact on the body states it better than I can.
T replacement is still up in the air for me. I had an initial positive reaction, felt wonderful and then the side effects started to occur. I am going to continue for the time being as there are and continue to be positive benefits. I have put on solid muscle as a result of the T injections. However, I also notice it is very easy for me to put on unwanted fat. The added weight and the bloat, was enough for me to consider stopping.
Would I do it over again? I have to say yes. I have experienced the treatment now and have come to some conclusions as opposed to reading and wondering. Is it easy? Well not for me. Several screwed up blood tests, the side effects, but when I did feel great (first month and half) it was wonderful.
It takes some time, and a lot of trial an error to really find what personally works
for yourself. That said, Chaz wrote a really great post the other day wrt to that
statement. Many guys think test injections=health=6 pack abs, and eat what you want
with no consequences. Have to admit when I started this a few years ago I thought the same.
The reality is you still have to watch what you eat, drink and you gotta exercise
(damn it all to hell) hahaha.
I will check it out for sure. I am old, so I know what works and what does not work in terms of diet. The T has thrown a lot of what I knew out the window. I need to reset the needle and start back at basics, cals in vs. cals out and work from there.
Hormone therapy is freaking complicated, that I know for sure. “one size” does not fit all, lots of corner cases as we are all unique. I sort of like Dr John, as I said, I have seen much much worse. But, I also see where there is only so much any doc is willing to put into a single patient for a positive result. I have to believe much of this is due to the unknown aspect of the field all together. And the wide range of personalities you encounter along the way.
I have a tendency to take everything spoken by any doctor as law, not to be questioned. Yea, archaic thinking but born of my generation and upbringing. I need to slow down and examine what you and others such as Ksman have said in terms of being your own doc to some degree.
It has been an interesting journey so far. I can see the promise so it keeps me moving forward to figure things out.
We are the same age and I had the same issues with bloat, water retention, blood pressure, bitchy, depression, ext, after a month on .5 ml weekly cypionate. One reads here often about over responders to arimidex. Let me assure you there are under responders and I,m one. I take .5 mg daily for the last eight months. Fairly fast anastrozole fixed my mental issues from high e2, but took six months to lower me enough for the bloat to begin leaving. I get new labs in February so we will see. I eat lc/HF and fast weekly also. Hind site is always 20/20, but looking back I wonder how I would have faired just adding arimidex without cypionate to bring up my t levels. Arimidex drove up my t levels more than 500 points in three months. My advice is to get e2 checked again to see just how well your arimidex dose response is working. You very well could be an under responder!!!
We are the same age and I had the same issues with bloat, water retention, blood pressure, bitchy, depression, ext, after a month on .5 ml weekly cypionate. One reads here often about over responders to arimidex. Let me assure you there are under responders and I,m one. I take .5 mg daily for the last eight months. Fairly fast anastrozole fixed my mental issues from high e2, but took six months to lower me enough for the bloat to begin leaving. I get new labs in February so we will see. I eat lc/HF and fast weekly also. Hind site is always 20/20, but looking back I wonder how I would have faired just adding arimidex without cypionate to bring up my t levels. Arimidex drove up my t levels more than 500 points in three months. My advice is to get e2 checked again to see just how well your arimidex dose response is working. You very well could be an under responder!!!
Jim-----_[/quote]
Hi Jim,
Very interesting… I take .5 anastrozole EOD and roughly .5 Tcyp split into two subQ injections. Until recently I also was taking HCG daily (10 mark on a 1cc syringe). On that combo, I felt like a bloated hog. No matter what I ate or drank the bloat remained. I had several labs done mainly because the lab was not performing an extra sensitive E2 essay ordered by my doc.
As I stated, I was on the verge of saying the hell with this and stopping everything altogether. At the suggestion of PKNY I dropped the HCG and the bloat was gone! I am so happy to be bloat free! The biggest thing I miss was the initial feeling I had when I first began treatment. I had great energy and strength, felt like a million bucks. Then slowly but surely the sides started and it has been downhill since then.
I am not sure what to make of the experience. I satisfied my curiosity about T replacement but not sure I would recommend it.
T should be injected into muscle, not fat. Just use a 20 gauge to draw the T, then inject w/ a 23g pin into the thigh muscle. Doing it for yrs - painless and is the correct way to do it.
The biggest thing I miss was the initial feeling I had when I first began treatment. I had great energy and strength, felt like a million bucks. Then slowly but surely the sides started and it has been downhill since then.[/quote]
You said initially you were injecting once a week and then you changed to twice a week, correct?
Maybe you could try switching to once a week again. With that, you get some mild variation of T levels between injections, which can be a good thing. Some guys seem to do better when testosterone levels vary some during the week so that you don’t get desensitized to it. (Natural guys get a large T variation every day and do just fine with that.) When you inject twice a week, T levels stay more or less constant so your brain and body could desensitize to it like it does to any constant stimulus.
Also, I remember Dr. Crisler mentioning that for high(ish) SHBG injecting once a week can help reduce SHBG more than injecting twice a week.
Damn. I’m really glad I found this thread. Abdomen has been absolutely bonkers lately. Found out awhile back I had an h.pylori overgrowth and stomach ulcers. I took the antibiotics and felt really good for awhile, and now it seems like every day my stomach gets distended and full. Just so happens that the period I felt really good was when I had taken a break from the hcg for a couple of months. I started it again because my testicles started aching. Now I’m going to quit on the hcg for awhile and see how that goes. HRT is so complicated even without other variables thrown into the mix.