Been hypogonadal for 10+ years, cause unknown. Tried to correct with diet, exercise, and supplements to no avail. Been on TRT for almost a year and still low. In fact, with TRT, I only go as high as pre-trt levels, sometimes lower (~200-300)- weird
Started with 50mg/2 weeks now at 200mg/e 5 days. Injecting in glutes using 23G 1 inch needles. Under care of endocrinologist. Good guy but cant seem to figure it out.
Experiencing horrible crashes by day 4. Cant get E levels to go up either so get symptoms like joint pain. I’m aware 200mg so often is a high dose- still not seeing benefits like increased muscle mass and weight loss. Memory and cognitive functions are shit.
Losing weight is impossible despite diets, gym and intermittent fasting. Lost weight in the past with modafinil but not practical.
Only other abnormal test is thyroglobulin which is always low.
Is it practical to use a higher dose? Is there something wrong with receptors? Considering getting off TRT altogether.
Have you tried more frequent shots? Try 100 every 2 days or something and see how you respond. What does your SHBG look like? TSH? How is your vitamin D? How is your sleep?
You’re going to have to provide labs with each protocol or we may never know why you’re having problems. Your SHBG level will dictate injection frequency, large doses of T for a low SHBG guy is a ticket to disaster.
You may be a hyper metabolizer requiring larger doses than most men, then 40-50mg EOD may be needed. We have a member here who has middle range SHBG and is a metabolizer and doesn’t feel good unless doing 50mg EOD to keep his estrogen in range.
Horrible crashes every 4 days is an important piece of info, it is key to the injection frequency needs to be closer together.
Some labs from when I was dosing 200mg/week. Have not re-tested since starting e/5days.
Forgot to mention I have mild sleep apnea but I’m very symptomatic. Sleeping on my side with two pillows helps avoid the zombie state some.
From June, 2018
Free test (direct) - 7.4 (low) Reference Range: 8.7-25.1 pg/mL
25-Hydroxy, Vitamin D 23LOW - Tried to correct this. Using Vitamin D causes serious cramps in my back and next that can be debilitating. Even eating dairy will do this so I stopped.
Magnesium (been taking for years) and vitamin K doesn’t help so I left this alone for now.
I’d like to learn more about this. Given my last SHBG test from the start of the year ( 33.8NORMAL Reference Range: 16.5-55.9 nmol/L), is a dose of 100mg E/3 days reasonable or is this too high? I’m concerned with doing more than 200mg/2 weeks total and the potential for side effects.
Endo wont do fT3 and rT3. Said it’s only for “really sick people”. I can try my primary or a walk in lab.
Sleep apnea, I am mild and generally don’t qualify for CPAP. Although, if one is really symptomatic, I can push for this and the insurance might cover it.
DHEA, IGF-1, CBC- all normal. I donate blood 2-3x a year.
Hey man, don’t get off TRT, chances are you are going to be feeling just as bad without it if not worse. It takes a lot of patience and time (I still don’t have it figured out). E2 is a low, maybe get off the AI/lower the dosage. Also, what Testosterone Ester are you on? (Cypionate, Enth , undec, etc.) I’ve heard of people having an allergic reaction on other forums to certain kind of Esters and the testosterone never really increases because your body is trying to fight it off. Maybe switch esters, it’s very wierd that you aren’t responding to 200mg+ per week given that would put alot of people in semi-super physiological levels.
I’m on Cypionate. You’re right. I should be a beast at 200mg every week. I even researched ways to inhibit the enzymes that metabolize T to make the levels last longer. Found 3 pathways and quercetin inhibits all 3. Doctor laughed it off.
I’m a little concerned about using such a high dose for so long. I suspect no matter what dose I put in my body, it will get metabolized in 3-4 days. So I will try using 50mg e/3 days and see how I feel. That puts me right around 250mg/e 2 weeks.
Yeah that sounds about right, maybe taking a blood test on day 1 and a blood test on trough you’ll have a sense of how fast your body metabolizes T. Also, maybe request your doctor to change esters if possible to rule out any possible allergic response.
Your doctor is an idiot, I have normal thyroid labs and hidden in the details is high Reverse T3. He said only for “really sick people”, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard to date!
Normal doesn’t mean anything in relation to you, only everyone else. I can have my Free T midrange and feel like pure crap even though it’s consider normal yet I feel far from normal.
In other words normal for you isn’t normal for someone else.
Started dosing 50mg e/3 days today. I also changed the syringes. I was using a big ass 23G x 1 inch needle and switched to a 29G x 1/2 inch needle. So much more comfortable and still feel my dose. What a fucking relief! I hated shooting up with that big ass needle. Now i’ll be able to rotate my sites better and do shoulder, leg, etc.
I’ll follow up with my doc in a month to see how my levels are. I’m also going to test all the thyroid stuff next week.
Tested levels after being on the schedule above. Total T was up to 800 and free T was 25.8… Everything else looked good. However, I started getting sides like acne all over my body and sperm count showed no sperm. In the months in between, doc had me using really high doses every 4-5 days and I think this killed my boys and sperm count. Also, my blood pressure suddenly started shooting up as high as 150/100. It took a year to finally get stable levels and I’m still not crazy about being dependent on shots for the rest of my life and injected myself with cottonseed oil at that. I would get this strange reaction from the shots where I would feel tired and lethargic If I dosed in during the day so I always shot up at night. This meant that by day 3, I was already crashing until my dose at night. Really strange.
Once I got off the shots I crashed, felt horrible as expected. Wanted to give myself a couple weeks to washout the cypionate and starting using forskolin in the meanwhile to try a boost levels. I think it worked. I felt pretty damn great like I was still getting shots. I got labs done to see if this actually worked. Waiting on results.
Doctor put me on a new strategy.
Titrated off shots and will be starting clomid. He suggested 25mg MWRSun but I think i’ll do 12.5mg EOD.
I’m confused, did you actually feel better with the stable higher numbers? Do you want to have kids? Is that why you worry about sperm production? If you have been low for 10 years and now one year on TRT I don’t see how you restart on clomid. I assume that his idea?