Hey,
I have gel prescribed at 20mg/day via shoulder rub. My Dr states no need for HCG due to 20mg/day not shutting down my natural production.
Question 1 = Is this true? Doesn’t seem true if I’m getting 140mg/week or does all of the 20 not get absorbed?
Question 2 = I bought some Test C in case the Dr doesn’t Prescribe me anything. I’m questioning if I can just Sub Q this Test C and wait to be switched or would I be obvious via bloods (he said after a few months to see how I tolerate the gel)
Sounds horrible, but you may be one of the few that responds to this
Isn’t the weekly dosage 1-200mg, me getting 20mg/day (140/week) isn’t so bad is it?
I think gels have like 1-10% absorption. So you’re getting maybe 2mg per day. Average natural male will make 7-10mg daily. Gels really aren’t a great choice for most
9-14% according to this study
Edit: they went up to 100mg applied daily
This confused me
“ We conclude that transdermal T gel application can efficiently elevate serum T and free T levels in hypogonadal men into the mid to upper normal range within the first day of application, achieve steady state within a few days, and maintain serum T levels with once daily repeated applications”
How does 9-14% bioavailability of 75mg/day (let’s say 7.5) cause then to be in the upper range
The problem I have now is if I do IM Cyn the bloods will come back way above baseline so it would be obvious, so now I need to do this Gel if I want continued treatment off this endocrinologist
Did they give their range in that study? Maybe the high point was 700ng? I didn’t real the whole thing.
You’re taking the gel that doesn’t really work to make your endo happy? Maybe time for a new endo right?
It’s via the NHS, it took me 5 months to just get this guy. If I do IM cyp and then stop 5-7 days and apply gel only prior to blood tests would this make it appear I was on Gel the whole time?
Trying to figure out how to provide TRT correctly but keeping my endo unaware of it untill he swaps me to IM in 2 months
Ah there it is. I was wondering why you were sourcing your own test yet worried what the endo would say. Seems like you didn’t need him in the mix.
No, Cyp has about 1 week HL. If you were trying to fool him I’d stop injections 3 weeks before then go back to gels
I think with 20mg he means the already absorbed amount (net amount), which in my opinion should be enough but every body is different of course. I’m also on some gel (I guess with approx. 10mg absorbed T per day) for some weeks now and I feel fine. You can enhance the absorbed amount largely If you rub the gel or cream directly on your scrotum - but it will burn quite a bit depending on how sensitive you are down the
In regards to shutdown: I personally think that gel will also shut you down but to a slightly lesser extent and maybe the time to shutdown takes more time. For me personally, I believe my balls got a bit smaller after week 4 of daily transdermal T application. I will check my blood levels, esp. my LH and FSH soon to see how supressed I actually am from the gel. I would recommend you do the same.
In my opinion, if you apply your gel in the morning it pretty much mimics the natural circadian rythm of testosterone production, although not 100% accurately of course. That means you start your day with pretty high levels in the morning and noon and they drop throughout the day and are pretty low in the evening. So you don’t have consistent high T levels like with injections if you don’t apply gel again in the evening again. With injections timed in the right interval, you will have constant high T levels (which is per se unnatural) and hence a more suppressive effect imo.
Your doctor is an idiot.
To be fair from looking and as per previous poster stated, this is only 2-3mg/day. From looking at studies 5-10/day seems to increase to baseline levels but that would be 50mg-100mg via gel. I have testogel, he specifically said only one pump (20mg=2mg/day) even if I ‘enjoy’ the feeling dont double pump.
I’m currently doing sub q 15mg/day of TEST C, do I need to load for one week due to half life of 5/7days.
My plan is to stop 1-2 weeks prior and just administer gel as prescribed so ‘trick’ him as it’s NHS based I don’t want to lose him
Still think losing him would be like losing a third nipple; no big deal.
But, maybe you can show him that study (plus plenty more) that prove he’s clueless about hormones, and that’ll fire him up to learn more so eventually there will be one less idiotic doctor on the NHS. And then he can teach others and so on and so forth