bump
About adex side effects: There are many side effects from driving E2 levels too low. Any research on adex sides, of which I have not seen any, would need to control for serum E2 levels. I have been under the impression that adex was symptom free, no direct effects and that the effects were secondary effects from low E levels. I would like to read up on male adex sides if anyone can help with that.
Could adex have an effect in the gut that is disproportionate from GI exposure to the oral doses? I don’t think so, as it is a competitive drug and that suggests that it would remain mobile. There is a concern about how AIs affect local T–>E aromatization, is in the brain. I don’t know that that is well understood. One would expect such effects to be substantially common to letro as well.
I have a concern about how hCG use, perhaps in larger amounts, drives T–>E aromatization in the testes. The T levels there can be up to 80 times greater than serum levels. A competitive AI like adex cannot effectively control aromatization in the testes. Increasing adex to compensate for testicular aromatization might be limiting lean tissue aromatization and creating adverse effects, perhaps affecting ones mental well being. This remains a theoretical question. This effect could worsen AI side effects - whatever they might be.
Can somebody tell me what a “typical” dose of the Letrozole would be? Given that I normally do 8 drops of the anastrazole every other day, should I be doing 4 drops every other day of the Letrozole, if I were to try it?
[quote]entheogens wrote:
Can somebody tell me what a “typical” dose of the Letrozole would be? Given that I normally do 8 drops of the anastrozole every other day, should I be doing 4 drops every other day of the Letrozole, if I were to try it?[/quote]
The issue with letro is that some tank E2 with tiny doses. The dose-response is not considered predictable enough to make blanket recommendations. There really is not a common base of knowledge about using letro in TRT settings. It might work great your you, or not.
Bear in mind that there are also anastrozole over-responders. Perhaps the guys who tank on letro are the same who are anastrozole over-responders.
If you find the right dose, there is no reason to expect that you will feel any different if you have the same E levels. If you try and later feel otherwise, please post. We are all lab rats.
[quote]KSman wrote:
The issue with letro is that some tank E2 with tiny doses. The dose-response is not considered predictable enough to make blanket recommendations. There really is not a common base of knowledge about using letro in TRT settings. It might work great your you, or not.
[/quote]
I think I will stick with anastrazole. I went off of it for a while and just resumed. I have taken too much anastrazole before (forgot and took it two days in a row) and suffered the consequences (extreme fatigue and body ache), so I have no desire to play around with something
whose dosage is even more unpredictable.
[quote]KSman wrote:
entheogens wrote:
Can somebody tell me what a “typical” dose of the Letrozole would be? Given that I normally do 8 drops of the anastrozole every other day, should I be doing 4 drops every other day of the Letrozole, if I were to try it?
The issue with letro is that some tank E2 with tiny doses. The dose-response is not considered predictable enough to make blanket recommendations. There really is not a common base of knowledge about using letro in TRT settings. It might work great your you, or not.
Bear in mind that there are also anastrozole over-responders. Perhaps the guys who tank on letro are the same who are anastrozole over-responders.
If you find the right dose, there is no reason to expect that you will feel any different if you have the same E levels. If you try and later feel otherwise, please post. We are all lab rats.[/quote]
I started taking letrozole at the recommended dosage (.36 per day) after my blood test turned up “just below too high” levels of e2. I haven’t had blood tests taken, though I can say I experienced a few of the signs of increased testosterone levels, such as increased libido and increased energy when working out. My free testosterone was already incredibly high (for a man in this day), so I can’t say it really changed too much. For a guy with lower free test levels, I bet it would do a lot.
Edit: I also might add I have pubertal gyno and it changed almost nothing, maybe reducing it a little.
Long standing gyno tissue can be resistant to reduction with low E. Think in terms of months, not days.
Letro?
yah, Letro. Also, you are correct in that I have only been using it for 4 weeks, however I was not really doing it for the gyno, but to raise test levels a bit. But, that is always good insight. I can always hope it will do something
If you lower E to a specific level with adex or letro, there is no reason to expect that one would increase T more than the other. With age, this response can be expected to be less than one sees in research papers using younger normal males. Such effects can be out of reach for males with declining T.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
You might well be able to get your value up by other means, though, such as taking a low dose of an aromatase inhibitor such as letrozole, if you can acquire it. A quarter of a 2.5 mg tab four or five times per week should be enough.
It might even get your free T above the top of the normal range – that has been seen in the literature (though with a differing dosing protocol of a single whole 2.5 mg tab once per week, which is probably not as good a method though it surely would have better patient compliance.)
The advantage of this approach is that it doesn’t further shut down your natural production, as taking exogenous testosterone will do. This approach does not produce dependence, whereas taking exogenous T on an every-week basis does.[/quote]
In regards to a low-dose of Letrozole, with something that wipes out most of the estrogen in the body, is there any possibility of estrogen returning in higher than normal levels once you’re off of it (estrogen rebound)?
I only ask because I was once advised that Letrozole could possibly make gyno worse. Furthermore, although you have stated its side-effects are better tolerated, what kind of side-effects would be experienced under a low-dosage of Letro?
With proper doses that achieve optimal E2 levels, there are not any side effects… none.
Achieving the proper dose cab be difficult with letro, VS adex, because there seems to be a wide variation in dose-response that we do not see with adex. But it will work well for some, as it does not for others.