I read somewhere that HCG also helps keep other sex hormones from being produced, such as pregnenolone.
Are there other reasons? What is the minimum effective weekly dose to achieve these benefits?
Thanks.
The norm is 100 ED, 250 EOD or 350-500 twice weekly.
Thanks, these are in IUs? So 700-1000 IU per week?
It stimulates progesterone production which is responsible for endothelial function and keeps the adrenals and thyroid from shutting down.
No reason to inject HCG more than 3x per week, it has a bi-phasic pattern, so any more than that and you are wasting your HCG
500 IU (international units not to be confused with insulin units) twice per week is what we start our clients off at and go up if needed.
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It should in theory increase your testosterone. Maybe, 180 mg test with HCG is equal to 200 mg of test per week.
Obviously, it will be different for each person. If you had very low T like sub 100 ng/dl, this probably does not hold true.
Edit: Had another thought. Some men just don’t produce much E2, and even on TRT have low E2 (this is rare). HCG is a good aromatizer to E2, so it can raise E2 if it is low.
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Thanks for the detailed reply. Do these benefits you mention outweigh the possible negative side effects of HCG (such as from higher E2), for someone who does not care about fertility or atrophy? Do you prescribe it even to your clients who don’t want kids and don’t care about their ball size?
Well to be honest the high E2 thing is a myth in our opinion, it does not show it in the literature, only slight elevation.
Also generally we don’t see it in practice, so I am not sure what the negatives are to HCG besides cost.
But yea HCG is great, it keeps things moving so logically speaking, it just makes sense. Plus the whole progesterone thing is a big deal.
Also people tend to lose fat on it, I am not a big believer in the HCG diet but hard to argue with effects.
Hope this helps.
Plenty of posts from guys who stopped HCG because it caused them E2 problems.
Are you a practitioner or work at a clinic?
It’s all in their head most of the time. We don’t see big elevation on labs, and when we do, it’s not because of the HCG its because of their body fat.
I am not a practitioner but yes we have a small network of physicians that have been treating low T for a decade now, and one of our doctors is a Uro who has been doing it 25 years.
Crazy how bad placebo is, especially when talking about testosterone.
This is a good read if you have the time, 3 men developed “tenderness”. Out of 40 men only 9 men had higher E2 levels, 269 pmol.
The dose was 5,000 IU
Isnt that almost 25% though?
Yea and it would be fair to say 25% of those hypogonadal older men were fat too.
Then the study is flawed!
However, they should have base lined them before hand… and if so, their fat would already be affecting their E2.
Unless HCG made them fatter, LOL
Not necessarily if you dont have FT you can’t make E2.
Prior labs have 0 to do with any TRT regimen. They tell you one thing and one thing only, whether you have a deficiency or not. Thats it.
Remember these were 5,000 IU dosages BTW, how is the study flawed?
I was just joking.
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Also another note when looking at the study, is that teste size actually decreased. This is what we see as well.
So unfortunately HCG is not a good choice to prevent testicular atrophy, and atrophy is not a good indicator of function.