Hormonal Improvements - Personal Experience

I haven’t been on here in quite a awhile. I though I would provide an update on some of things that have worked for me. Hopefully it helps others that aren’t quite ready to make the jump to TRT and/or deal with idiot doctors.

Background - 36 now. 34 when I first discovered hormonal issues. Felt like shit, tired all the time, fat, depressed, zero sex drive, no sleep. Tried a couple differnt docs and an endo. Complete waste of time and money. Decided to do some research and take care of it myself.

Baseline
Total Test - 224 ng/dl (225-825)

Diet, off SSRI, ZMA, Z-12, superfood, Flameout, FA3
Total Test - 327 ng/dl
Free Test - 7.9 ng/dl
E2 - 41 pg/ml (<54)

Noticable improvement just getting decent sleep.

Same as above + AlphaMale and Anastrozel drops (readily available as a reseach chem)
Total Test - 531 ng/dl
Free Test - 23 ng/dl
E2 - 18 pg/ml
DHEA-s - 335 ug/dl (120-520)

Huge improvement here. Reducing E2 was life changing. No more daily 4pm crash. Much more energy and lost some weight. Dropped dosage a bit for the next test. I’m fine having in the low to mid 20s.

Ditch the AlphaMale. Add Magnesium Gel and Vit D
Total Test - 448 ng/dl
Free Test - 19 ng/dl
E2 - 20 pg/ml
DHEA-s - 438 ug/dl

Read that transdermal Magnesium would increase DHEA. Thought I would try it and it did. The residue can be a bit anoying, so I wasn’t doing it religiously but pretty consistant. Vit D supplimentation was on and off as well.

Only change is half Mag Gel half Mag pills
Free Test - 14 ng/dl
E2 - 22.7 pg/ml
DHEA-s - 405 ug/dl

The Mag gel is definately going to stay. I just ordered another full test from lef.org. Also included SHBG to the test. I’ve stuck with Vit D, Mag gel, anastrozel, taking ZMA instead of z-12, and have been taking DAA for almost 2 months. We’ll see how the DAA works at 3g/day.

Next will be “MG Test Booster” from another site (includes DAA). I’ll start that in about two weeks. After that I am going to try AlphaMale again, this time with the Mag gel and Vit D now that those are staples. After that I might try stacking “Unleashed” from another site to whichever of the three (AM, DAA, MGTest) seems to work best. Would like to see if I can get my free test up a bit more.

I feel pretty good right now but I think there is still room for improvement. Still no sex drive to speak of and only have MW a couple time a year.

I am interested in following your progress, especially with the DAA.

how many drops of adex? thinking about pairing test booster and adex

whats MW? when do you suspect you began having hormonal issues of high e2 and low test? any suspected causes?

good job making improvements to your hormones.

MW = morning wood.

I was pretty seriously depressed and medication was not working. I was becoming a pretty shitty father and husband because of it. I went from 240lbs to 265lb in a pretty short amount of time. I didn’t really realize how bad it had gotton until I saw a picture of myslef someone had taken a our block party. I had turned into a real lard ass while not really realizing it. I would also crash every single day at around 4pm. I’d lay on the couch and fall asleep if I was home. If I was on the road, it would be a real struggle to stay awake.

I don’t really know what make me look at hormone levels. It may have been after reading this board. At the time I was frequenting other boards on this site. I don’t really know what caused it or how long I had been low. I am sure if was a combination of things. The SSRI, not sleeping, shitty diet, stress at work, etc.

After my first test, I was thinking TRT for sure. After a string of dead-end doctors, I decided to see what I could do on my own. I am glad I did. TRT is a huge commitment and I’m glad I’ve avoided it for now.

Getting decent sleep was the first positive step. I have never been a very good sleeper, so I didn’t really know what a good night of sleep was supposed to be. I was on sleeping pills for awhile but decided not to continue them. Z-12 worked great for awhile but doesn’t seem to be working any longer. I’ve switched to ZMA with my Mag gel at night and that seems to be working now. I’m still not a great sleeper but it’s definately better.

Getting E2 down was the second huge step. I went from 265 to 235 in about a year. I’m back up to 240ish now, but am going to start doing circuits again in hopes of dropping another 20. I am convinced every man should have their E2 checked and lower it to the low to mid 20s before looking at T levels or doing anything with them.

I am getting a full test done in the next week or two, but really all I am going to be concerned with for awhile is free test. I’ve made huge improvements here, but think I can do better. We’ll see what SHBG looks like. If it appears high, I want to try a few things and retest.

what was your antrosozole dosage?

i’m excited to hear your results with DAA

[quote]moveitorloseit wrote:
what was your antrosozole dosage?

i’m excited to hear your results with DAA[/quote]

2 drops every day. I have no idea what the equates to. E2 tests are cheap, so I just make sure it stays in the low 20s.

To me, it sounds like most (if not all) of your boost in testosterone is directly from the Anastrazole. Before committing to a TRT protocol I decided to give Anastrazole a shot and it was the only thing I was taking; AI-monotherapy if you will. On the AI alone, it boosted my T levels from 179-200’s to 638. Please check out my thread on the matter:

In my case, my estradiol was very very high and reducing my estradiol’s levels to the low 20’s boosted my test levels to 638. In your case, your E2 levels a little high and reducing your E2 levels showed a small boost in testosterone. It seems consistent with other studies I’ve read with those with idiopathic hypogonadism and very high estradiol levels.

Good luck to you and hope you start feeling better!

I would agree with that. Especially the gains in free T, which is really all I am interested in. I really believe everybody should do E2 test just to see where they are at. It was a huge improvement for me just taking it down 20pts.

I got a nice bump (100+ pts) in total test just from getting sleep, ditching the SSRI, and some basic suplimentation. No idea what that did to free T as it was not tested at the begining.

The mag gel seemed to give me a nice boost in DHEA-s. No idea if this had any real effect on T, but testing showed a drop in total T, free T, and DHEA-s when only doing half as much gel. E2 rose 2.7 pts at the same time, so that certainly contributed to less T as well.

The AlphaMale gave me a nice bump, but it’s a bit expensive to run all the time. We’ll see what DAA does. That only costs $14 a month.

[quote]dhickey wrote:
I would agree with that. Especially the gains in free T, which is really all I am interested in. I really believe everybody should do E2 test just to see where they are at. It was a huge improvement for me just taking it down 20pts.

I got a nice bump (100+ pts) in total test just from getting sleep, ditching the SSRI, and some basic suplimentation. No idea what that did to free T as it was not tested at the begining.

The mag gel seemed to give me a nice boost in DHEA-s. No idea if this had any real effect on T, but testing showed a drop in total T, free T, and DHEA-s when only doing half as much gel. E2 rose 2.7 pts at the same time, so that certainly contributed to less T as well.

The AlphaMale gave me a nice bump, but it’s a bit expensive to run all the time. We’ll see what DAA does. That only costs $14 a month. [/quote]

The problem with using AI-solo is that your body builds resistance to it. In the study I read, the biggest boost was from 3 months to 6 months and afterwards the testosterone slowly started to decrease and estradiol slowly increases suggesting AI resistance. The study was only a 12 month study so I’m not sure what happens after taking it for a longer period of time.

Interesting. I started anastrozel in Oct of 2009. After a couple of weeks E2 was down to 18. March of 2010 it was back up to 20 but I had decreased dosage from 3 drops to 2. This doesn’t really disprove anything, as I was also down 30lbs so I might not have been converting as much T naturally. In Sept 2010 I was up to 22.7 at the same weight. I haven’t tested since then. We’ll see in a couple of weeks.

I need to drop around 20lbs and am just now getting semi-serious about it. Once I do I am hoping aromatase is less of an issue, in which case decreased effectiveness of the liquidex won’t really matter. For a period of time anyway.

None of this is incredibly scientific. I have not been the most consistant pill/suppliment taker. When things are busy and/or I’m traveling alot I miss pills and run out of suppliments. I’ve been getting better but I also haven’t been traveling as much.

Very interesting read, thanks for sharing. This makes me wish I’d tried AI monotherapy (or even HCG monotherapy) before jumping headlong into TRT. My doc didn’t put my on an AI until I requested to have E2 checked and we found it was at 42.

The fewer drugs the better, in my view–while still feeling good. If all I had to do was pop some adex every other day, I’d be thrilled. I would love some day to be able to come off all this stuff but I’m willing to accept that may not happen.

[quote]B WS6 wrote:

The problem with using AI-solo is that your body builds resistance to it. In the study I read, the biggest boost was from 3 months to 6 months and afterwards the testosterone slowly started to decrease and estradiol slowly increases suggesting AI resistance. The study was only a 12 month study so I’m not sure what happens after taking it for a longer period of time.[/quote]

I think what is really happening here is you are not boosting your other hormones, so your initial metabolic increase is short lived as your body tries to pull itself back into baseline through the HPTA feedback loops…

The body likes to maintain a certain level of T/E2 based on your other hormone levels…if it has its choice, it will bring you back to where you were before…

I’ve seen it suggested that this can be counteracted by also increasing your cortisol proudction line (through pregnenolone)…

Just got the results from blood work I had done last tuesday. I’m afraid I wasted $200. I wasn’t feeling quite normal the morning I went in for the draw. By afternoon I was full on sick with a chest cold. I felt like shit for the next 4 days. Can’t imagine this would not effect the testing, but here it is anyway. I was attempting to test the improvements from 2 months of DAA suplimentation. Just typing out the intersting bits or things that were flagged as high or low.

Glucose - 97 mg/dl - Always about the same.
Insulin - 14.5 uIU/mL (0-25)

Creatinine, Serum - 1.39 mg/dl (.76-1.27) Never paid attention to this before.
Monocytes - 17% (4-13) - Good indicator that I was indeed sick at the time of tes.

Total Test - 323 ng/dl (249-836)- Down 125 pts.
Free Test - 15.4 pg/ml (8.7-25) - Down 3.6 pts.
E2 - 17.6 pg/ml (7.6-42.6) - Down 2.4 pts.
DHEA-S - 370 ug/dl (89-427) - Down 68 pts.
SHBG - 14.2 nmol/L (14.5-48.4) never tested before.
TSH - 1.94 uIU/ml (.45-4.5) - other test in the past were 1.81 and 1.655. I’ve added Iodine since then.

C-Reactive Protein, Cardiac - 16.73 mg/dl (0-3) - Not sure if this should have been even higher being that I was sick. Maybe too early to be sure. oh well, at least another good indicator that my body was fighting off infection or inflamation at the time of test.

Not sure if I can use any of this being that I was sick. I can accept that I’m not going to see the true results from 2 months of DAA use. I’m on to another sup that has the same DAA plus vit B, Maca, Calcium, and Zinc. I’ll test again in a month or so. I’ll probably have to test E2 before that so I know if I can reduce my anastrozel dosage a bit. Hopefully taking more Zinc (new DAA sup plus ZMA) and losing some weight will allow me to get off it all together. Also a bit dissapointed I didn’t get a good TSH reading. Have to wait a month or so for that.

I felt a little better on the DAA. Libido was up slightly and I’ve taken off 10lbs since suplimenting with that and Iodine. I’ve also manipulated my workouts to take off some fat, but it’s fair to say I’m not having much of an issue losing weight.

Apologies I couldn’t provide some solid results on DAA. We’ll see how things look in a month or so. I’m also interested to see what SHBG looks like. There is a sup I wanted to try if it was high at all.

Just realized my units of measure were off when compariing free T with other tests. So results were even lower compared to previous tests. Last test was 19 ng/dl. Coverting resent test results I beleive would give me 1.54 ng/dl. Looks like T really goes in the toilet when you are sick.

Finally got some more blood work after about 6 months on DAA. I thought my last one was bogus because I was pretty sick shortly after my blood draw. Not sure that was 100% the case now. This was again a waste of money (for testing DAA). I’ve got something going on. I’ve been on Effexor (SNRI) for some time now and I think that might be the culprit. I did look into Effexor before hand and didn’t see anything obvious that would concern me. I tried it and it seemed to work for awhile. Not working so well now. A little more searching has me wondering if I have a prolactin problem from taking effexor. As I’ve come to find out (by forgetting to take my pill) that this one is going to be a bitch to get off of.

Total T - 298ng/dl (348-1197)
Free T - 11pg/ml (8.7-25.1)
DHEA-s - 326.1 ug.dl (88.9-427)
E2 - 9.7 pg/ml (7.6-42) Guess I don’t need the adex anymore.
SHBG - 11.2nmol/L (16.5-55.9)
TSH .997 uIU/mL (.450-4.5) - down a point since switching completely to iodized salt. didn’t get other thyroid testing, so not sure what that looks like. I run pretty hot and numbers have never been out of whack.

Sorry no good data on the DAA. Going to have to get off the SNRI and start over. If my numbers don’t bounce back significantly, it might be time to try and find a decent endo. I’m kind of soured on that whole experience but I really feel like I’ve done everything I can do to get my numbers up naturally…other than maybe the SNRI.