@iron_yuppie pretty much covered it. So I’m late to answering your question. I like what he suggested.
My former TRT provider thought 500 iu EOD was kinda the maximum effective dosage. Anecdotally, I have had good results with 200 iu 3X a week. Not sure what to believe here.
Is this because HCG converts directly to E2 without aromatase? If that is the case, wouldn’t it make sense if E2 was too high from a combo of HCG ->E2 and aromatase activity (converting exogenous testosterone) that blocking the E2 from aromatase activity would be beneficial.
Maybe I am missing something here.
I agree, but what about when combined with a cycle level of testosterone.
FWIW, I am against AI use in almost all cases, but just going over the logic used here.
Okay how about mixing guys? Does it say in the box how much of each to mix?
No, but the math is pretty easy. 5,000iu of powder + xml of water = concentration
So 1ml of water means that there is 50iu of HCG per .01ml of water. So 10 ticks on an insulin syringe is 500iu, 5 ticks is 250iu, etc.
If you add 1 mL of bact. water to 5000 iu of powder, how much volume of solution do you have? It won’t be 1 mL, it will be more. The math isn’t as easy as this if you want to be precise.
The pharma kits I used to get from empower included 11,000 iu of HCG powder and a vial of 10 mL of bact. water. The instructions indicated to add the entire 10 mL of bact. water to the powder. The instructions indicated that the solution was 1000 iu/mL. That means that 11,000 iu of HCG powder displaced 1 mL of volume. You could then say the HCG displaces 0.000091 mL/iu.
Using your example of 5000 iu of HCG and 1 mL of water, we would end up with a total volume of 1 mL + 5000 X 0.000091= 1.45 mL. We then have 5,000 iu of HCG in 1.45 mL of solution. The concentration is 5000 iu / 1.45 mL, or 3,448 iu/mL. 10 ticks would be 345 iu, 5 ticks would be 172 iu.
Now most of the time with 5000 iu of HCG, you would add 4-5 mL of bact. water, and the error using the math you propose becomes less. With 5 mL, we would end up with 5.45 mL of solution. We would end up with a concentration 917 iu/mL.
Generally, you will get a vial of bact. water and a vial of HCG powder. You use a syringe to pull out all the bact. water and add it to the HCG powder vial.
I had never seen a displacement estimate that was quite so high. I suppose it’s possible that it is so, but I usually worked off of a much lower number. Good info.
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It is possible that the HCG I had from empower had a filler in it. Doing something like that would make dosing the powder easier to do accurately.
Empower is trying to make an easy to use kit, so it is possible that they add filler to make it so that you add 11,000 iu of HCG to 10 mL of water to get 1000 iu/mL solution.
I could be way off on HCG displacement if Empower was doing either of the two things I said above. FWIW, your method isn’t terrible as most people aren’t only adding 1 mL to 5000 iu of powder. The more liquid you add the less impact using the simple math has.
I suspect this as well.
IIRC, this spec applies to compounded testosterone as well. I’ve seen where men have claimed to feel off after getting a new vial of compounded testosterone. It doesn’t surprise me, if you were to go from 80 → 125% of the stated dose, or the other way, I could see that causing noticeable effects. on a 150 mg prescribed dose it would be like going from 120 mg/wk to 187.5 mg/wk.
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Could be. Could be I assumed incorrectly that the vial contained 10 mL like most vials do. I am putting the highest probability on human error based on my observations of myself and my memory.
This would indicate that they think the volume displacement of the powder is negligible. If this is the case, technically I am still correct on how to do the math, but wrong on the details of volume displacement, and @iron_yuppie is correct enough for anyone wondering how to mix and dose HCG.
Doing the math as precisely as possible isn’t going to do much to ensure dosing accuracy when they are only required to hit between 80-125%.
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Thanks guys I’ve been following this information every time you guys comment. Once my stuff arrives I’m going to come back and see if I can make sure I mix correctly. And ask any more questions to be extra safe. All I’m doing is 500mg of test E a week (250 on Friday night and 250 midday Tuesday) and am on week 5. I just want to prevent the shrinkage as much as possible if not pump them back up also. I’ll try to provide vague pictures of what I have once it arrives and mark out any prohibited details to make sure I understand this before I do my first pin of the stuff. Very new to this so any over elaborated details are extremely welcomed and encouraged. I also have clomid as my PCT.
This topic gets discussed in pharmaceutical science classes a lot but it gets overlooked in real life. Fortunately there are some changes that happened with T4 for example in the last few years to provide some resolution for patients.
Hey mnben
Here’s something to read for you
Well I read a bit. Lots of studies posted by you and readalot. What did you conclude?
My theory about AIs not working well in the balls is ITT is much higher than TT whilst on HCG.
My conclusion basically is that competitive AIs should have an effect (very individual how big) and exemestane should work just fine.
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I guess my point to Iron was that if you are taking exogenous test, and HCG, and E2 is too high, then using an AI could make sense even if the AI didn’t impact the E2 from HCG. He seemed to assert that an AI wouldn’t help in that situation, but it didn’t make sense to me (at least this is what I inferred).
I would rather just not use HCG if it required an AI, than do both HCG and AI. But if someone is dead set on using Test, HCG and AI and have high E2 issues, saying an AI won’t help because it doesn’t stop E2 conversion from HCG is non sensical as the E2 level is a combo of aromatization and conversion from HCG, controlling one of the additive components of E2 would help. I am quite verbose here, sorry.
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That’s my fault for being unclear. I just grow weary of the conversation regarding HCG and AI, so I tend to shorthand things. The reality is that the target of the information usually knows almost nothing about what they’re doing and giving them the whole scenario seems like too much effort on my end.
But if we’re going to be dedicated to telling the whole story then yes, an AI helps because it will stop conversion elsewhere and as such lower the total number. My problem with that is it requires the user to be able to address a few questions that they will under no circumstances be able to answer. Such as “how much higher is your e2 on hcg vs where it was before?” and “how many (whatever units being used) of e2 does your AI dose drop by?”. The reality is that you can nuke your existing e2 completely with letro and then pile up as much hcg as you can get into your syringe to try to make up the difference. Then do blood work and measure precisely how much your e2 rises from hcg alone. But nobody, not even the criminally insane, would do that. So instead you get guys who are probably not experienced and certainly not prepared and you ask them to delicately find this balance by estimating things that are way above their pay grade. I’ve been on trt for 3.5yrs now, I’m a pro in my opinion, and I haven’t the slightest idea how much impact on e2 my hcg use has. So yeah, I go with the whole ‘AI isn’t effective against e2 from hcg’ because it’s mostly true and it has the benefit of keeping them from trying to do something very hard that they will most assuredly fuck up. Anyway, that’s the context
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I flip flop on approach. Maybe waiting until the poster asks for the why is better? It is hard to tell often if they want the how or the how and why.
I assumed you would think this (based on the quality of many of your posts). It is why I put that “I inferred”.
Hence the advice of use an AI when you need it. Trying to get someone to understand that UGL AIs aren’t all dosed the same, test isn’t all real or dosed accurately, we respond to AIs differently, etc., can be difficult. They just want you to say take X twice a week. Well that would be irresponsible.
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You are spot on. It’s the same difficulty as someone with tamoxifen mono therapy and high aromatization has, only even more difficult. You would have to get all drugs to steady state and then just change one variable. But then you run into the problem of your body not being always the same regarding enzymes and other processes. Basically impossible to figure out. Still I wouldn’t write an AI doesn’t work for hCG induced aromatization.
hCG is a peptide it won’t get converted to a steroid. HCG induces aromatase
How is that? More test from HCG = more aromatase activity?