Rereading Tools of Titans.
Kelly Starrett told Tim Feriss that if you’re not waking up with wood, something is wrong. It’s binary.
I’ve never been a consistent morning-wood guy. AM boners have always been a pleasant surprise.
I’ve also struggled with libido for years, though I am on a generous TRT protocol and have very high FT.
Does a lack of AM wood indeed mean something is off?
(I feel really good overall. Libido is the only thing still eluding me.)
Nocturnal erections are not often present in the morning despite the coined name morning wood. Irrelevant IMO.
Erections are caused by the parasympathetic nervous system, the system in charge of your rest and relaxation state of your body. This is opposite to the sympathetic nervous system, responsible for your fight or flight response.
Experiencing nocturnal erections or morning erections are a sign that your parasympathetic nervous system is functioning well.
How is your sleep, do you wake up feeling restful in the morning?
I do, actually. Sleep has been good. (That’s about to change with another baby coming next week haha)
Though erections are spurred by rest/digest, there’s gotta be some relationship to hormones too, right? I find it odd that my numbers look so good and yet my libido is meh and I’m not waking up with wood.
Maybe your hormone levels are too good for your own good. When you’re in excess, this can cause some men to feel overstimulated, hyped-up preventing rest.
I don’t get erections until my ferritin levels are on the lower end and I’m taking at or less than 600 IUs of vitamin D. If I take 1200 IU, my dick pulls up inside itself and my glucose level spike.
The relationship here is the iron absorption increases do the higher vitamin D. Too much iron is toxic to the body.
I’ve actually put this to the test eating a ribeye steak versus something with no iron in it like bacon. The glucose level will spike after eating a ribeye steak, but not after eating the bacon with zero iron.
This still occurs with my ferritin levels at 56, more so at 78 and even more so at 131, 159 and even more at 222. At the higher ferritin levels, my dick was more pulled up inside of itself, more and stronger palpitations and it starts to pull itself out and come to life the lower my ferritin/hemoglobin.
My erections and libido seem to come online at the same time, when my iron/ferritin is low and hemoglobin in range but towards the top end.
My muscle tone and mass are just unbelievable with my vitamin D levels at 25, anything 26> being too high.
Looking back, the first six months on TRT were my best, until now that is, but the one thing I noticed back then was my iron and ferritin levels were at the bottom end of the range and iron saturation below range.
I guess that’s my body’s way of regulating the iron/hemoglobin and the iron supplementation threw my body out of whack.
The point of telling you this, maybe this will give you food for thought.
That’s interesting man. I’d never thought about those variables as important for libido. Didn’t think anything of them when I saw them on a blood test. My iron, ferritin, and iron saturation have always been on the low end of the normal range. Vitamin D is high normal.
Erection quality in general probably has the strongest correlation with the overall quality of my protocol and how good I feel in every way, including mood, cognition, water retention, libido, etc…
If everything is in place including E2 and neurosteroids, my erection quality will be so good (without Cialis or anything like that) my erections will literally hurt from being so hard.
For me personally, this also correlates very strongly with morning wood. If my EQ is high, I’ll have consistent morning wood.
Over time, I’ve found that tracing physiological effects is a more reliable way to infer the quality of my protocol than trying to keep track of my cognition, memory, libido, etc…because if one of those is degraded for a long time I tend to not even realize anymore and they are much more subjective metrics.
The two most telling parameters I keep track of are actually erection quality and water retention. If both of those are on point, typically the rest of my mental and physical state is also on point.
I reduced my AI to 1/8th of what it was and wake up like a bike that falls over with the kickstand out. E2 levels seem to matter.
Interesting. Whereabouts do you like your E2? Do you control it with an AI?
Sorry, struggling to understand the metaphor. The higher E2 was better for your erections, personally, or the lower?
Haha, sorry for the confusion. Meant to convey the image of a bike knocked over with the kickstand pointing up.
I initially was on 1 mg anastrozole per week. My lab values were on point, but then I had to travel for a week and forgot to take the ai, so I missed a dose and felt bettter in terms of attitude and morning wood.
So now I do .25 mg of ai every other week and that seems to be good. YMMV.
This is only anecdotal, I don’t normally use anastrozole, and need very little to have a large impact on my E2. I did re-introduce it for my last blast. I only used 0.25 mg for each injection (I was blasting a gram a week, so 0.25 mg of anastrozole, with 500 mg of Test). I felt all over the place with racing thoughts and worse ADHD symptoms. I figured it was at least in part high Test causing it, but perhaps the AI was involved. I dropped the AI, and got an improvement on those symptoms. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that the AI was the only contributor, as high test is a know cause for symptoms like I was experiencing. It certainly did seem to help dropping the AI, but I wasn’t back to normal cognition until after the blast, and back to regular TRT doses. Perhaps all placebo, since I did in fact purposely drop the AI as I suspected it causing my negative side effects. I did fine on a gram with no AI after though, so I don’t really think I am someone who needs AI, ditching it from now on.
It’s hard to say because even Total E2 (I don’t get Free E2 tested, don’t think I’ve seen it offered on discountedlabs or others) is impacted by SHBG, and the protocols I’m experimenting with right now include a low dose of Masteron to control E2 side effects, so that further complicates things since Mast antagonizes E2 at the receptor level, it doesnt’ lower E2 systemically (even though I believe it can make it seem that way by lowering SHBG, which in turn will lower Total T and Total E2).
But I can definitely say I feel better with some E2 control in my protocol. I didn’t feel good using Arimidex and have some Aromasin on hand that I haven’t experimented with yet. I tried Primo and while it did effectively lower E2 I didn’t feel as good on it as with Masteron.
So far a low dose of Mast on top of reasonable TRT has been the best protocol for me since starting TRT, right now I’m doing 16mg/day Test E + 10mg/day Mast E. Eventually I will test even lower dosages to stay below 150mg/week of androgens total.
My guarantee for morning wood is drinking too much water close to bed. My body seems to give myself a boner to stop me pissing myself.
Anyone experiencing erection problems should first tey increased their E2. Thanks to TRT farms, many men are taking way too much AI and this is the boner culprit usually IME.
Could be true. Obviously we’re all n=1 but I’ve had E2 from 23-102 over the years and haven’t observed any consistent correlation to erection quality/frequency.
One thing I’m noticing as I review my notes is it seems I’ve had better libido with HCG in the mix. I don’t often buy it because it’s expensive and I’ve been able to maintain fertility without it, but I’m gonna add it back and see how that impacts boners/libido.
In case you werent aware, HCG increases estrogen in men, so the improved boners while on HCG could be related to the increased estrogen.
Me too. Seems that the more water/pee in bladder correlates w better morning wood. Maybe morning wood is just a pressure thing? Or maybe just coincidence.
Interesting. I’ve had E2 very high before (100+) and didn’t have positive libido/erection effects…but didn’t have negative effects either.
When I add HCG, do you think it makes more sense to decrease my T dose (from 225/week) or keep it the same? Staying the same to test effects seems more scientific to me.
There’s gotta be a balance. I drink too much water, wake up to pee 2-3 times a night, and don’t wake up with morning wood.
