You are better off having the free thyroid fT3 and fT4 hormones tested.
What has been you history of using iodized salt?
Feeling cold easily?
Your thyroid labs suggest something is not right. Is your thyroid enlarged, asymmetric, sore or lumpy? Thyroid needs selenium to work properly and selenium deficiency can lead to pathologies.
Please eval you overall thyroid function via last paragraph in this post.
250iu hCG SC EOD is sufficient for a LH replacement dose.
What were your LH/FSH lab results before hCG?
Have you had a semen analysis to see if you appear to be fertile? The outcome will steer your TRT options.
Your failure to create T with hCG has too possibilities:
- Your hCG is bad, you can do a pregancy test kit and should be positive.
- Your testes do not work, primary hypothyroidism.
The only situation where primary can be fixed is if there are surgically correctable vascular abnormalities.
“I used 5mg every other day for a few months and things went back to normal”
- EOD of what?
Many who come here have low-T and thyroid issues.
Many who come here are young like you. And those guys land here, probably making the incidence of such problems appear to be greater than in the general population.
Training when thyroid is not right and with low-T can be harmful to the adrenals as one’s energy levels are low and compensation with sheer will power and adrenalin is not sustainable.
And your low-T, height and age means that you should also be screened for:
- fertility
- Klinefelter syndrome - Wikipedia
Please read the stickies found here: About the T Replacement Category - #2 by KSman
- advice for new guys
- things that damage your hormones
- protocol for injections
- finding a TRT doc
Evaluate your overall thyroid function by checking oral body temperatures as per the thyroid basics sticky. Thyroid hormone fT3 is what gets the job done and it regulates mitochondrial activity, the source of ATP which is the universal currency of cellular energy. This is part of the body’s temperature control loop. This can get messed up if you are iodine deficient. In many countries, you need to be using iodized salt. Other countries add iodine to dairy or bread.