Glad to hear the appt went well tho. U should be able to keep HCT down and HDL up on 308mg of test per week. Why the 308mg and not 300mg btw? Lol. And what brand of cyp are u using?
But to keep HCT down just make sure u stay as hydrated as possible. Try to drink all water with minerals in it. That’s HUGE when trying to properly hydrate. I only drink mineral water, like pellegrino type water. But it’s my local grocery store’s version. Says it’s still from Italy tho. But even with it already having minerals, I still put a little bit of Celtic sea salt in it as soon as I open it, along with some liquid magnesium chloride. But having minerals in ur water is the key to staying properly hydrated and will help a ton with keeping HCT down. And as far as keeping ur HDL up, just make sure to get in as many healthy fats as u can. I personally cook everything I eat everyday in grassfed ghee, I eat 5 whole pastured eggs per day, eat 7oz of steak twice a day (although it’s London broil and fairly lean), and I eat organic grassfed raw cheese and sardines multiple times per week. Those are all great sources of healthy fats that should keep ur HDL up. U can also do fatty cuts of steak, fatty fish, avocados and olive oil
The 308 makes things easy for EOD application (88 mg EOD). I just ordered some Cipla from Defy. Honestly I’m not sure what brand I’ve been taking, though – it’s whatever CVS gives me. It’s extremely cheap to get it at CVS but I bought some through Defy just to stock up.
That’s interesting – never heard that. I’m really good with hydration, drink water all day. If HCT does climb up, though, I’ll buy the expensive water
Thanks for the tip on the healthy fats, too. I could definitely use more of those. I find it’s easy for calories to get out of hand if you go over the top with fat, though. All about balance!
25mg/ day of Oxandrolone is way overkill if ur using it strictly to decrease SHBG. Were u only using it to lower SHBG? And what was ur SHBG before and after if u were?
Ya I’ve used it for months at 15mg/ day. Not to lower SHBG tho. Just for a tiny bit of recovery and anabolic effects. It unfortunately dropped my SHBG from 33 to 11, and I prefer my SHBG to stay around 30 if I can help it. I currently still use 10mg sublingually preworkout 3x/ week. So a total of 30mg per week.
No need to buy expensive water just to stay hydrated. Simply just toss in a little bit of Celtic sea salt. Drinking water is obv good, but if it’s just plain water without any minerals in it ur not hydrating urself like u think u are, so just keep that in mind
And ya fats are more than double the calories as carbs and proteins per gram, so u definitely have to be careful. Was just saying that make sure any grams of fats u eat per day are coming from healthy fat sources, and don’t waste ur fat calories on crappy fat sources, if u can help it.
Any reason for ordering pharma brand Cipla cypionate over compounded cypionate through Defy? Jc
You’re probably right. IIRC, it was a bit expensive, so it made more sense to get the bigger tablets. Yep, I was using it for SHBG purposes. It went from 73 down to 28, then back up to 85 when I dropped it.
I actually just heard that recently, that you should let it sit under your tongue. I was just swallowing the pills.
Just because I live in NH, so the laws don’t let you get a big bottle of generic T. I try to stock up and get the biggest T I can. My Rx T comes in 1 mL vials (really small). I generally order 10 mL from Defy but need to get the Cipla.
Oh I live in Plaistow, NH atm, but have lived in Mass most of my life. And Mass has the same exact law. I’m actually using Pfizer cyp from Empower via a prescription from Defy, and use Pharma test partly for that reason. So I can get a 10ml vial shipped instead of 5ml’s at a time. But will be switching back to pharma enanthate because I think I might have felt better on enanthate than cyp. Unfortunately pharma enanthate only comes in 5ml vials. But worth it if I do in fact feel better on enanthate
Idk if u should always take Oxandrolone sublingually. I’ve just heard of the benefits if ur strictly using it for workout purposes. It gets into ur system quickly and u can feel it a bit during the workout, and it helps with a little boost in strength and endurance, ime, and I’ve heard that if u take it sublingually like that it’s in and out of ur system fairly quickly, and there’s less negative effects health wise. Not sure if that’s true or not. Not too worried regardless tho, like I said, only taking 30mg total per week. But man ur SHBG was pretty damn high, maybe u do require a pretty high dose of Oxandrolone per day to get ur SHBG within range. 15mg per day dropped my SHBG 20 points. 25mg/ day dropped ur SHBG by 45 points. Idk if taking 15mg per day like I was doing would be enough to drop ur SHBG enough. But what ur doing with the higher test dose seems to be working, so I wouldn’t worry about where ur SHBG is too too much
U said that u didn’t feel that good on 50mg of Oxandrolone EOD tho right?
Small world! I am in Windham. NH is better than MA in every way IMO.
What difference did you notice between cyp and enanthate? I know you didn’t have a good experience in Boston, but you can find a place there that provides T under insurance coverage and still see Defy for doctors who really are up on the literature. It can be best of both worlds.
Yeah, my SHBG has always been crazy. Pre-TRT it was always up near 200. Still don’t know how to explain it…probably some combination of genetics, overtraining, low-carb dieting, and chronic stress. Hormones are so complicated.
At first when I took anavar, I was feeling good. But then I got into a weird headspace. I started feeling depressed and sometimes having violent thoughts, just way moodier and less stable. Maybe I’ll experiment with a low dose someday, but I’d love to stick to just T if possible. My general philosophy with health is to keep things as simple as possible and focus on the “big rocks.”
Oh Windham is awesome! Would love to live there. So a guy on the EXCELMALE make reported that he had low cortisol on cyp, and his cortisol levels were much healthier on enanthate. He tested it multiple times, and his results consistently showed this effect. And my cortisol levels always came back pretty low anytime I’ve checked it on HRT. And I suffer from a bit of brain fog still. Some days are worse than others. And the brain fog is usually accompanied by fatigue. So the worse the brain fog the worse the fatigue usually. And I naturally have high dhea-s levels, and dhea and cortisol have an inverse relationship. DHEA goes up, cortisol goes down, and vice versa. So I’ve always thought maybe my brain fog could have something to do with low cortisol. So I ended up switching to pharma enanthate, and I think it made me feel better and less foggy and decreased my fatigue a bit. I ended up only tearing cortisol once on the enanthate, and my cortisol level came back on the higher end. So idk if the enanthate was increasing my cortisol like it was the other guy, or if it was a fluke. Currently on Pfizer cyp and gonna test cortisol levels soon, and already have a bottle of pharma enanthate to switch back to once I’m done with the Pfizer cyp I’m on now. So I’ll test cortisol on this cyp, and then test cortisol again after switching back to the pharma enanthate
Wow, 200?!?! That’s crazy! Never seen someone have a SHBG so high. Mine was around 55-60 when I started, and I thought that was high! Lol
Ya hormones can definitely be complicated. And everyone’s so different. U really have to figure out what works best for u, and u only. But ya sounds like ur body didn’t like such a hefty dose of Oxandrolone. No idea what was causing u to not feel well on it, but clearly it wasn’t meshing well with u. Keeping things simple is definitely a great approach
I was feeling emotional this morning…I’m usually a super calm guy, but I was way overreacting to small things. Then I realized I had missed a dose of T.
Could just be a coincidence or placebo, but I’m guessing not. Good reminder to always check your calendar
Could be coincidence I guess. U feeling better after injecting? I know injecting test isn’t something we should immediately feel, but sometimes u’d be surprised. Some people feel joint relief benefits of deca after a week or less, and people say ur not supposed to feel any benefits of deca until 2-3 weeks, so u never know how quickly u’ll notice effects of certain things
As far as I know Empower no longer makes the compounded Oxandrolone capsules. Luckily the tabs are very easy to split. I’m currently using their 48.5mg Oxandrolone tabs, and breaking them into quarters. I take a 1/4 of a tab sublingually preworkout 3x/ week. They’re obv not always exact when splitting them into quarters, but it’s one of the easier tabs I’ve had to split in my life. If u were only splitting them in half it would be a piece of cake
Anytime. I remember trying to order the capsules more than a year ago and they had stopped making them back then. So what are troches anyways? Are they basically like lozenges that ur supposed to let dissolve sublingually? Sound pretty ideal for me since I always try to absorb as much of the Oxandrolone sublingually as I can prior to working out anyways
That is some insane shoulder vascularity there! Took a bit of a break from the board, but catching up on your thread and glad to see you’re doing well.
All right y’all, looking for advice. Libido has disappeared over the past few weeks.
At 220 mg/week, libido was good but not great. For a short time after I bumped to 308, it was tremendous. Felt amazing. And now it has gone away (worse than at 220). Edit: I made the switch from 220 → 308 two months ago.
Lifestyle-wise, no major variable has changed (aside from the dose). Sleeping well, training well, feeling good overall. Just a libido issue, and I want to get back to banging my wife. I see a few options:
Keep rolling with 308/week until my next bloodwork in March
Switch to a happy medium dose (perhaps I feel best somewhere between the two)
Consult my doctor about a low-dose AI (I haven’t taken an AI at all on TRT and have been scared off by the Bossa crowd)
I say ride it out for now. If there hasn’t been any changes in your life or new stress, it might be a fluke, or might be something in the new protocol or something else all together.
I think it is normal when bumping up the dose to feel a period of higher libido. That usually settles down after time. How long have you been on 308? Are you sure it is lower than when you were on 220? Might have just been super high, so now in comparison it feels low?
