I am currently running my first cycle of tren. Ive done test for years and my current doseage of 900mg/wk of test plus 1500mcg of adex has always worked great for me. Perfect test/e2 balance with no sides at all. I am a week into my first time running tren along with the test/adex. Tren is at 400mg/wk. I am having some pain in my knees the past couple days. Not intolerable, but mildly uncomfortable and not a side i am used to. Is there any reason the tren would be affecting my e2 levels, considering my e2 is all converted from exogenous test, and not natural test that the tren would be down-regulating? Maybe its just pain from pushing myself harder in my leg workouts?
Or is this typical of a tren side and not necessarily related to e2?
Any input would be appreciated. Its mild enough i can grit through it for a cycle, but if theres something i can adjust to help with it, thatd be awesome.
It’s not a typical side of tren per say, but it is a typical sign of more aggressive cycles, growing quickly, and going harder.
Check out kneesovertoes guy on youtube or instagram, consider some of his techniques through this cycle. Walking backwards, progressive ATG split squats, etc… all can be done as a warm up, to kill two birds with one stone!
This was always my first symptoms when I was lowering E2, intentionally or not. I ended up finding out (through testing) that just about anything that lowered e2 (vitamin D, NAC, Melatonin) would end up dumping my e2, and my first symptom was always knee pain. It felt like mild inflammation , not limiting, but pain definitely there. Once i let my E2 go back up it would go away.
You may consider lowering your adex dose for a few days/weeks and see if the symptom subsides. Obviously labs would prove if that was the case, but also symptom resolution would be a good indicator, at least for me. Hope this helps…
As a side note. When I was clueless as to what was happening, My e2 was chronically low, and my knee pain increased to a point that i had trouble walking. I was depressed, as MRI and X-ray showed NO damage, but i felt the pain, and it was destroying my quality of life. I literally could not ride a bike, or climb stairs. I hope this steers you in the right direction if this is your issue, because it was living hell. Eventually all my joints started to feel the pain, hands, especially.
Yeah, i figured even if the issue isnt e2 crashing, it couldnt hurt to let my e2 levels go up a bit just to test it out. I decided to cut my adex dosing from 3 days a week to 2 days and see how it feels after a week or two.
If it were me, i would cut the adex dosing out completely, let the E2 rise up quickly and see if your knee pain goes away, would give a much clearer indication if that was the cause.
Well i dont think it was the e2. I havent taken adex in over a week. Knee pain seems the same but my face has gotten puffy from the e2. So ill be continuing the adex as before. Doesnt surprise me, since that adex doseage always worked fine for me before.
My new thought is maybe it was the caber. I only took 0.25 of caber, but the timing seems like it would line up. While its not a “typical” side effect of caber, joint pain does show up in some of the lists of “less common sides”, so im leaning towards that for now. Ill be doing bloods at the end of the month, so ill get some official clarity then.
I may have jumped the gun on the caber as it was. I know a lot of people say dont start it until you need to because a lot of its sides can be harsh, but I though I’d be safe starting with a small doseage of 0.25 e5d.
Just as a note, Even when i let my E2 normalize, it took about another week or so before i felt my knees getting better, it wasnt instant. If it were me, i would let the E2 stay high for a few days, unless you are obviously having Gyno issues pop up. Gyno would be the only case where i would even TOUCH e2, but that is just me.
So i finally got bloods back. Drew them last week thursday. At the time they were drawn, i was 2 weeks into my 400mg/wk tren cycle. I was 2 days removed from popping half of a 1mg adex tab and havent taken one since, so e2 will likely be higher. My knees began hurting again later that week, albeit not as much as what triggered this thread to begin with. Have been doing 0.25 caber 1x/wk.
Current(1 week ago) TT is 5800, FT is 2900, E2 is 121, PRL is 11.4 and SHBG is 5.
My free T : E2 is at a 25ish ratio so im really not sure what was causing the knee pain.
And honestly knee/joints i would assume would trigger pain when below an actual value and not necessarily a range, so im not sure…
I havent taken any adex since a couple days before that test and my libido has been nonexistent this week but the knee pain has also been gone. Kind of stuck where to go. Im thinking maybe breaking up the 0.5mg doseage up into 0 25 2x a week?
What do you guys think? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, especially this being my first tren cycle, the polypharma part of this is a bit trickier to me than just managing test and e2…
That would defeat the purpose of using this cycle to dial in my doseages for now and future cycles. I have years of experience with test only cycles with little to no side effects and a handful of other single compound cycles. Anytime i try a new compound its a learning curve, but at least by midway through the cycle i have all my doseages dialed in to what works well for me.
Barring any other feedback pointing me in another direction, my current plan is to divide Adex up from last weeks 500mcg 1x/wk dose into 250mcg 2x/week and see if that helps me toe the line between the low libido and the joint pain. Im also going to change my injection frequency from every other day to 2x a week but at the same doseage, to try and bring my SHBG levels up higher.
You know your body better than any of us. Keep us updated on your progress. You should get a CRP blood test in the meantime to see where your inflammation markers are at. Never hurts to have more data.
Good advice, thanks. Ill get the CMP test panel from quest sometime this week. I took 250mcg of adex yesterday and had decent libido last night. If this new injection schedule works out for me and the knee pain doesnt return, ill get another hormone profile done as well after giving the new levels 2 weeks to stabilize. If i have no issues between now and then ill use that as my new baseline for any future test/tren cycles. I also plan to order quests comprehensive mens health profile at the end of this cycle, which includes all the hormone panels, the metabolic profile, cholesterol, psa, etc to see how this effects me. I know 19-nors are notorious for how differently everyone reacts to them.
Sounds like you have your answer here. I would say you are going to have a difficult time feeling “normal” on this much gear and not having at least one issue. Whether you are chasing your high E2/libido, or lowering e2 enough to cause you knee pain, or side effects from the tren. For me, if i let my e2 climb and i felt the knee pain resolve, i would have my answer… To that question at least.
Yeah it seems to be a much thinner line to tread with this combination than just test. I think ive got it dialed in though. With the 0.25mg 1xweekly im juat getting slight hint a knee pain for about a day after taking it, and my libido has definitely returned. Only symptom of the tren im dealing at ht moment are these lower back pumps, but im hoping the taurine pills i just bought will help with that.