Doctors have told me it is a mild case like you said and refuse to provide blood transfusions unless severe since blood transfusions can also have complications such as iron overload
For my symptoms, most of the doctors just want to give me anti-depressants and Cialis
From what I saw, Defy doesn’t work with patients outside of the US. Unfortunately i’m in Canada.
18% body fat and I’m getting about 7-8 hours every night. I feel fine in the morning other than the lack of morning wood.
Morning wood can be confusing. I get it more frequently now that I am on TRT (both total and especially free test was low on several blood tests), but I would say I still only get it 2 or so days a week (used to be about once a month tops… However, I often wake up at night with a quality erection.
18% is not really that high, and sleep is good. Do you eat a good amount of fat? Fat is needed for optimal hormone production. You could also try vit D.
I’m having the same issue as this. I get about 2 each month.
Yeah I have been taking around 4000 IU of Vitamin D every day. Since I’m in Canada, it’s winter so I have to rely on supplements and foods such as salmon. I do eat avocados daily.
Any other recommendations to increase testosterone naturally?
Fish oil is supposed to be good for testosterone.
I have a speculation that many on T Nation that are having issues with low test, are possibly over training, or under recovering.
If you are not lifting weights at all, doing that is pretty proven to help. Naturally raising testosterone is kinda one of those things that works for some, but not all.
My levels were upper 300s (like 375, and 390 dL/ng range was 250 to 950 or something like that). My free T was like 11, and 10.2 or something like that and the range was 10-25. I am also early 30s, so a bit older than you.
If I were you, I would take it slow. You won’t die if you wait another couple months. Get more blood testing done to really know where you are. It is a good idea to have minimum 2 tests. I actually had 3 or 4, but they were not very complete tests.
TRT is not the end of the world, but it is a bunch of hoops to jump through as well. The actual shot is nothing to be scared of, but I really hate all the doctor appointments, the ordering of the Rx (they will only let you order in a certain time frame to ensure you are not overdosing). It is also expensive. First year was around $2K for me. I am most likely going to start self administering due to all the hassles. I know how to interpret blood work at this point, and I keep things simple.
Little update
So I went to another clinic and this time, my total testosterone went down to 223 ng/dl. The doctor mentioned how interesting it was for my free and available to be high but he also came to the conclusion that my SHBG is low and that TRT can still give benefits. He is aiming for top of free T and total T over 800. He also mentioned my thalassemia and it isn’t a concern but still is something worth monitoring just in case.
He wants me to try out 25 mg of test cyp EOD and report back in 6 weeks to readjust the dose.
Low SHBG and a TT at 800> and FT is going to be well over the top of the ranges. You won’t need more than TT at 450, take a look at your FT levels when TT is 256, it’s almost at the top of the ranges. All of this excess FT is going to create estrogen side effects.
Something I haven’t seen others mention is your HCT is already at 48%. TRT will raise that, but by how much I can’t predict, other than to say it may or may not rise enough to be a concern (which in your case would be more than about 3-4 points). If you break 50, start donating blood when possible. If you break 54, you’ll probably need to cut TRT for a while as your risk of a stroke / embolism / DVT etc. type event is going up.
Definitely don’t take this advice.
A majority of folks have HCT around 48 when starting and over 50 when on TRT.
I know people with 53-54 HCT that do not need to donate blood. I know it is very individual and guess should go by symptoms like anything in hormone optimization
Hey, I don’t claim to know everything. As I recall the OP is a young guy and severe consequences are likely years away especially if he doesn’t smoke and/or have high blood pressure…but I’m also not talking out my ass either. Your first symptom of a high hematocrit could well be a life altering stroke. Just saying.
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1161/01.STR.9.4.369
Cheers
LS
