Yeah, there was really a lot going on with the histamine, high progesterone (also strongly anti-androgenic), insomnia, high adrenaline, most likely high cortisol (unmeasured). I think I’m just going to have to explore more to get it “right.” I may even look into AIs (as much as they’re hated here), as my body seems to respond quite poorly to high estrogen.
I understand that everyone is unique with regard to how their biology interacts with exogenous test. But, the problem is running low replacement doses is pointless in my case. I already had middle-range free T and decent TT prior to starting TRT. The goal was to significantly raise T levels in order to really increase AR expression via autoregulation (where the receptors were still capable of expressing, anyway)… post psychiatric drug “hormonal” issues…
And it seemed to be working. The first 4-5 weeks, I experienced the return of morning wood, much stronger erections, and even days of good libido and less numbness. Unfortunately, there was some tipping point at which everything went downhill (below baseline), in spite of keeping my dose stable, and I don’t know why.
As theorized above, I believe it may have been the somewhat high E combined with the high progesterone that downregulated pro-sexual estrogen alpha receptors (and upregulated the “beta” receptors).
Any idea why adrenal activity would spike in response to TRT? It doesn’t make sense to me. You’re shutting down your testicular production of hormones. As such, preg should be lower, and by extension, progesterone and all downstream hormones should be lower too. Did my adrenals overcompensate? Have you seen this in other patients, and if so, did it eventually “settle” or did they continue to experience issues?
Thanks for any advice you can offer. Trying to partition the effects so many interrelated systems have on each other is tricky.
What is your progesterone level? I may have missed it.
0.53 ng/ml, while the upper limit for men is .48.
I know this isn’t exceedingly high, but it was only about .2 or so before TRT (have to look this up for exact number), in spite of really good pregnenolone numbers
I’m afraid I’m not much help to you. I have seen guys go back and forth with dosing frequency without seeing much difference in their labs and none regarding how they feel. I myself have seen swings in levels even on the same protocol, injecting and getting blood drawn at the exact hour, total test ranging from 760-1100, though it is usually low 900s. I’ve seen that with others, significant fluctuation even though they insist (and I believe them) they are taking injections and getting labs at the correct times.
I do not think E2 or progesterone are an issue either.
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Yeah if you look over on the Steroid side of the forum there are many folks that had the same experience with Anavar killing their libido. It was quick too. Like 10-14 days in and bam… Dick don’t work.
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And I guess they take T as a base with this?
None of this makes sense.
The first 5 weeks of TRT, while riddled with side effects, gave me positive sexual benefits (strong morning wood, good erection qualtiy, and even some days of libido). Then after this, everything fell apart. I practically became impotent overnight after week 6 or so 7. Bloods above show that T was over 1500, E2 in reference range (T:e2 ratio around 35:1), and all other numbers pretty normal (this was taken when impotent).
I decided to drop my dose after getting bloods to see if I would feel better with lower T and E2.
I dropped from 210 to 160 to 140 to 120 (what I’ve been running for the last month).
Running 120mg/wk, many of the side effects (high adrenaline, appetite loss, sleep/anxiety problems) are gone. I’m STILL getting heat-induced histamine rashes, however. I have no idea how this is possible, as I changed esters AND carrier oils. Maybe I am sensitive to these rancid seed oils and need to try MCT as a carrier instead?
On 120 mg/wk, I feel pretty much asexual again. I also now have some low e2 sides (joints cracking/popping constantly and some join pain to boot). Not sure what to do…
How long on 120¿ Body needs to figure out again how much to convert to estrogen.
I feel best when this is around 17-20:1, maybe if your e2 came up your libido would return?