Thyroid lab ranges are mostly useless.
TSH=2.84 is way too high, should be close to 1.0
- This may be from not using iodized salt.
- Your thyroid cannot work right without adequate iodine.
- Please provide long term history of [not]using iodized salt.
- Iodine deficiency often affect everyone in a home.
You might:
- gain fat easily
- have low energy and mood problems
- have sparse outer eyebrows or generalized hair thinning
- anxiety
When TRT restores metabolic rates, if thyroid cannot keep up, things can be unpleasant some times.
We can get a good idea about your overall thyroid status via oral body temperatures. Please post oral body temps, see below. This is very important.
We need doses in mg’s and iu’s. Potency per ml is not standardized. When you state 50iu hCG I suspect that that is “50iu” on an insulin syringe, 0.5ml which would be 500iu hCG if mixed to 1000iu/ml.
If T is 200mg/ml you are injecting 200mg once a week which would be too much. And weekly injections create high levels then low. So then your lab results are more determined by lab timing and are thus rather useless.
Please try:
- Injecting twice a week.
- Take 1/4mg anastrozole at time of injections
- Inject hCG subq at time of injections
- Always do labs halfway between injections to avoid lab timing artifacts in lab numbers.
Then new labs for TT, FT, E2 in 3 weeks.
Anastrozole is a competitive drug with T and needs to match serum T levels. Your doc does not think about that. So you need smoother T levels. Please inject T with #29 1/2" 0.5ml insulin syringes, subq, not IM, over upper legs, pinch up a mound of skin and inject into end of mound with needle parallel to muscle below. You can select a spot where you cannot see surface veins and press with a syringe cap, swab the spot then you can see where prepped and inject there. With upper legs you can see what you are doing. Avoid decades of IM needle damage to muscles.
More labs: - all energy and vitality oriented
- fT3 - the only active thyroid hormone
- fT4 - a reservoir for T4–>T3 conversion
- please not T3, T4 or indexes etc which are obsolete.
- AM cortisol - at 8AM or one hour after waking up.
- IGF-1 to eval GH status
- [Thyroid auto-immune panel possible later if indicated.]
Your T and E2 levels really suggest that you thyroid is holding you down.
Your in-range thyroid numbers makes your doc think that things are great or perfect! [insert rant].
Action items:
get explicit with your doses
get the oral body temps ASAP
throw out non-iodized salt
high potency B complex multi-vits with trace elements including 150 mcg iodine and 200mcg selenium in a men’s product which means that iron is not an ingredient.
The stickies have to be that complete and complicated because doctors are typically uninformed, apathetic and dangerous. Guys need to learn these things in self-defense. If things were different, there would be no need for this forum.
Please read the stickies found here: About the T Replacement Category - #2 by KSman
- advice for new guys - need more info about you
- 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.
KSman is simply a regular member on this site. Nothing more other than highly active.
I can be a bit abrupt in my replies and recommendations. I have a lot of ground to cover as this forum has become much more active in the last two years. I can’t follow threads that go deep over time. You need to respond to all of my points and requests as soon as possible before you fall off of my radar. The worse problems are guys who ignore issues re thyroid, body temperatures, history of iodized salt. Please do not piss people off saying that lab results are normal, we need lab number and ranges.
The value that you get out of this process and forum depends on your effort and performance. The bulk of your learning is reading/studying the suggested stickies.