Hey everyone I wanted to make a follow up reply. after reading what everyones said and your experiences I wanted to sit down with my doctor and go over my protocol with him and hopefully go back to injections but small daily injections and try for a few months before re-accessing because I think the constant change in my protocol just isn’t giving me time to actually feel anything work. Sadly I could only get an appointment in about a month but in the mean time he told me to re do my blood work since it had been 30 days. Although not all my blood work is back to my surprises what has come back showed my Test levels have dropped significantly on the cream.
My new blood work is:
Total test: 13.4nmol.l
Free Testosterone: 329pmol/L
SHBG: 23nmol/L
DHEA: 12.3umol/l
Progesterone: 0.8nmol/l ( High)
Estradiol: 72pmol/l
and LH and FSH and still bottomed out
So it seems being on the cream has me on lower levels of test then my poor natural production but with double the Estradiol. Im honestly really confused especially seeing my once low SHBG now 2x higher. Im guessing maybe my SHBG could have been dropping due to the injections? Will frequent injections remedy this? Based on the LH and FSH being shut down still I am wondering if its not that im not absorbing the cream but maybe that its all being converted in DHT? I tried asking my doctor to also test my DHT but he said it was " Not relevant" and maybe he is right but I assumed it would be important to see how much was being converted. I should note the blood was drawn around hour 18 but my dose is for 24 hours so by hour 24 I imagine I would have even lower levels. Maybe a twice a day application would benefit me but I’m hoping my Doctor will put me back on injections so I can give TRT a proper try. So far ive wasted 18 weeks and ended up with lower Test levels lol
Most likely. I’ve been feeling the same from the cream the last 3 weeks or so, labwork will return next week. But I’m guessing my SHBG has gone up and TT has gone down.
Also do the cream 2x daily, about 11 hours apart, and have felt fairly stable but still not nearly as good as on injections
I talked to my doctor and what he recommended at first was the cream twice a day but eventually he agreed to put me back on injections, my new protocol is 0.20mg of Testosterone cypionate 5x a week (monday to friday) with 150mg of compounded cream once a day on Saturday and Sundays, only once a day though. After 6 weeks ill do blood work , on a Friday morning before injection and another on a monday morning before injection after cream, to make sure my levels arent dropping due to the weekend cream and also to see how my SHBG is. I’m not entiring sure why he wanted me to keep the cream in my protocol but I think its to help my SHBG from dropping due to the injections and also to increase my DHT. Ill post the results and how I am feeling on the new protocol in case it benefits anyone else.
I noticed my estradiol was a little higher on the cream in comparison to my total testosterone,with my total testosterone also dropping I’m not surprised I’ve been feeling like I’ve crashed on the cream. I hope your blood results can help you tweak your protocol, my Doctor said he’s had a lot of patients on the cream feel better than they have on injection it just takes a lot longer to find the “sweet spot”.
Yeah I thought the same, I haven’t come across a similar one before and I am worried the two days of cream back to back with a once a day application will cause either spikes or dips in my levels , but I guess the only way to see how it works is to give it 6 weeks and check my blood again.
It’s not like your T levels from the cypionate are going to drop Saturdays and Sundays allowing your SHBG to increase, once levels are at a steady state, you would need to allow levels to drop over many weeks to see a decrease in the suppressive effect on SHBG.
Your doctor doesn’t know what he’s doing and he’s just shooting in the dark. In other words this is an experiment and you’re the guinea pig.
Yeah I’m really not sure his reasoning, he’s not a TRT clinic just a internal medicine specialist who commonly sees a lot of hormone issues and I seem to be the first person who hasn’t responded well to the cream but I’m hoping the 5days a week injection will keep my levels steady after 6 weeks and the 2 days of cream just do nothing and eventually I will be able to switch to shots 7 days a week or every other day depending on my symptoms . He wanted me to stay on the cream but switch to twice a day but mostly due to my insurance covering shots but not compounded cream he agreed to switch me back to injections
Yeah, my issue is that I’m impatient lol. After 18 years of using AAS and now TRT I don’t like to wait for things to balance out. So, After 4 weeks of cream and not feeling awesome I’ve gone back to injections lol. I never should have switched, but I wanted to at least give it a try.
You need Jatenzo, 7 days to a steady state. I feel like finding the sweet spot on Jatenzo is so freaking easy, as long as my Total T is at least 715 at 4 hours and it’s not dropping to early in the day, I’m in the sweat spot.
There are new companies is coming out with oral T all the time, maybe that will drive the cost down.
As of right now there is oral T in the US and Canada.
Man I would love it! My insurance won’t cover it (well, I’d need to start from scratch for them to even consider it. Then jump through a dozen hoops). But I’ve read so much about it, talked to my doc about it, etc. It’s just so much $$ right now, and even tho technically it’s feasible to pay cash my frugal side would never let me justify that lol. But I can always dream …
