I’ve been googling for a long time and finally stumbled upon the term “hypermetabolizer” which led me here. I hope someone here can help me solve this puzzle or point me in the right direction, as it’s driving me nuts!
I’m 35 and I’ve never had a strong sex drive, I’ve had low energy levels and a lot of social inhibition. No ED problems though. Last spring I did a full panel blood test and found out my TT was 370 ng/dL and FT was 8.8 pg/mL.
Not long after, I decided to start injecting test-e which I have done for a year now at different dosages, but no matter the dosage my serum levels are at about a 4th of what they should be. I have to inject 250mg a week of test-e to reach 500ng/dL and that is with 500iu HCG a week as well. From what I’ve found out this is called hypermetabolization of testosterone.
I also seem to aromatize to e2 a lot more than usual. When I first started a year ago I did the standard cycle of 500mg/ew with 0.25mg arimidex eod. Something went wrong with my pre-cycle blood work and I did’nt get my e2 result. Instead I retested them 2 weeks into the cycle and got an e2 at 70pg/mL. After a while I learned that arimidex wasn’t strong enough for me and I had to switch to letrozole. Right now I’m at 875mg test-e ew with a TT of 1800ng/dL and I have to use 0.6mg letrozole eod to keep e2 ar 30pg/mL.
From the little information I’ve been able to find the hypermetabolization could be caused by an infection. I don’t know what infection this would be, but I am suspecting that I have sleep apnea and that this could put the body into a similar state as an infection.
I’ve started doing blood work every week and my next step in figuring this out is to get my SHBG which I haven’t so far. I wish I could do a urine test to see how much I excrete but I can’t find any such service where I live. Also, next week I hope I’ll get an appointment regarding possible sleep apnea.
Any suggestion for what my next steps should be? Am I on the right path here?
I wasn’t sure where to put it. WHile I’m not strictly on TRT, my problem is in regards to my TRT dosing as well as my bigger dosing. I decided to put it here because so many search results on google for “hypermetabolizer” pointed to this sub-forum. The knowledge seems to be here. =]
Those baseline numbers mean nothing without SHBG, it doesn’t tell the whole story. If SHBG is low then you end up urinating most of your testosterone within a day or two, it’s called a hyper excreter. You may be both a hyper metabolizer and a hyper excreter and if SHBG is low you should be injecting EOD or every day.
Too many believe that it’s testosterone responsible for your energy failing to realize its the thyroid that increases metabolism including digestion and the transport of substances into and between different cells. It’s the thyroid that responsible for waking you up in the morning and steps on the gas pedal to get you moving, so if you have had a degree of hypothyroidism it would explain your lack of sex drive and low energy.
The problem is most doctors tell people their thyroid looks fine and are often wrong, they follow old outdated lab ranges and have millions of people within them souring the internet trying to find out what’s wrong with them, the USA has an obesity epidemic on its hands and most have some degree of hypothyroidism.
Most are iodine deficient caused by doctors telling patients to cut salt out of their diet and that it causes heart attacks, thyroid requires iodine or it will become diseased and hypothyroidism will happen as a result. See salt has no iodine and is heavily marketed, I pay no attention to labs on packages and always look at the ingredients.
Right now I’m actually injecting 250mg eod and still I’m stuck at 1800ng/dL when I should be around 7000-8000ng/dL. I’m losing a lot. It seems to be about the same ratio on a lower dose. 250mg once a week gives me 500ng/dL. While I could bump up the dosage to 250mg ed, I really want to get to the root of this instead. Something seems terribly wrong.
Interesting what you say about thyroid. I didn’t get it tested before starting my own T therapy but I did get my TSH tested a couple of months ago and it was at 5ng/dL (1.9 - 19ng/dL) which is on the lower end. However, since then I’ve been using 50mcg t3 daily for fat burning purposes, giving me a fT3 of 17pg/mL and that haven’t done anything to my energy or sex drive.
I guess I can split my problem into two, and maybe they’re related. A) Where does all my T go and how can I keep it? B) Why am I so tired?
I’ve got the results for this week. This is after running 250mg EOD for 5 weeks:
TT: >2881 ng/dL (both prior weeks it has been 1800 ng/dL)
BAT: > 2296 ng/dL
FT (est.): > 97.9 ng/dL
SHBG: 27 nmol/L (15 - 95)
I dont know why my TT has been standing still on 1800 and suddenly jumped up I dont know how much. Gonna try a different lab to get past this max ceiling but I’m pretty sure I’m still below 50% of what I should be at, as that’s how it always is for me.
So SHBG is low, but not low enough to draw any conclusions, right?
I don’t have any SHBG from before. I really wish I did. Up until 3 weeks ago I was using trenbolone which lowers SHBG. I imagine the result of 490ng/dL TT on 300mg test-e ew a couple of weeks ago, which is about 25% of what it should be, was that low because of the trenbolone lowering my SHBG. I will get a new SHBG result next week to see if it keeps rising the further away I get from the trenbolone cycle. I’m quite an unpure test case at the moment, but previously when only on test-e I’ve never had more than 50% of the TT I should have.
As for e2, it seems naturally I’m around 60 pg/mL, which is unusually high, but that’s how I*m used to living. Now I’m down at 20pg/mL and I find it too low. Music doesn’t sound as good, my libido is almost non-existent and erections are so-so.