I’ve also considered this as a potential reason for the ED. On SARMs, I had a weird sense of Euphoria. On my first prohormone cycle, I had that alpha “on” feeling, but with SARMs I got an “on” feeling and a weird euphoric sense of well being. I found that, especially since stopping SARMs, if I go without an orgasm for a few days, overall I feel more confident and and positive (like that SARMs euphoria but less obvious). I researched this and it has something to do with dopamine receptors repairing (or something like that). If this were the case and my neurotransmitters have been damaged over the years, is there anything you’d suggest that could help?
Many trt people with low shbg are on daily shots and getting their best results. Look around at other boards.
Also many experts are now advocating dailies for low
Shbg.
Why just dismiss the possibility that daily shots may help some? It’s ignorant.
Smaller doses/amounts being released from the esters daily may be a better approach for
Many.
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I would definitely try it and don’t worry that you may be loosing muscle mass - it will not happen. Actually I found that I had more strength after taking one week off. Especially intense workouts can exhaust your central nervous system and you need to give it time to recover.
Because it argues against the pharmokinetics of testosterone cypionate, I’m not trying to be ignorant. I’m just stating facts that the fluctuation between ED shows of TC is too minimal to have significant therapeutic value unless one is a genetic anomalie that clears the long ester very fast.
If you were talking about test prop, TNE or test acetate/ some other shorter ester I’d fully understand. It’s like saying “I pin 12mg of testosterone undecanoate daily”… I’d be like “fucking WHAT!!!”
Are you telling me that an individual is going to feel a difference if their hormonal status (given they’re metabolizing and eliminating the drug normally) flutuates by more than 50ng/DL/day?
The biggest problem I have with long term ED shots is the potential for build up of scar tissue, unless you’re literally using a slin pin, this is a possibility. You don’t want this
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I don’t
Care what the half life is or what the science is behind it.
What we know is that many benefit from daily shots. Why argue against it? Aren’t we supposed to support how one feels greater than what numbers say? Or what a scientific half life says?
Yeet, but placebo can be a very powerful game changer. That being said I believe system Lord gets legitimate benefits out of ED shots, who am I to argue against it, you’re right. I just want to avoid people doing harm to themselves and potentially building up mass amounts of scar tissue is a situation I’d like people to avoid
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Most doing daily shots do very high gauge syringes or
Subq.
I’m trying daily shots now. I have a thread on it but it’s so early to make any judgments either way.
I use like… 19-21G needles most of the time, daily shots … Would be… Not great for me haha
Harpoons you’re using.
We’re all guinea pigs here in basically a new medical field.
I’d actually like to try the daily cream
I could use smaller gauge needles, I just can’t be bothered to attach them to the syringe so I use the 1.5 in, 19 g needles that are pre packaged with the syringe as it’s only about ten seconds and the pain is over. I only shoot 1x/wk thus I’m not too concerned about scar tissue.
There are other factors at play here, cypionate injections spikes levels and this can cause problems for some regardless of testosterone, estrogen metabolism rates. People who suffer from anxiety seem to do well on smaller injections versus large ones because these spikes in testosterone and estrogen can affect mood stability.
There is a genetic component, this is what the experts are saying on the subject.
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I’m not too aware of the science behind the frequency of injections. I’ve read that, especially when injected Subq, testosterone is released pretty smoothly.
I don’t remember if I mentioned in my OP, but when I first started therapy, I would inject 200mg once weekly with 2mg Anastrazole. The first 2 or so days after injection, I definitely had high estrogen symptoms and no morning wood. By days 6 or 7 after injection, I would feel a lot better, with morning wood. I told my physician about this and since then I’ve slowly adjusted to E3.5D, than ED. Injecting every morning isn’t inconvenient to me, and regardless of esters and the rest of the science behind it, I definitely feel better doing ED injections, even after only one week.
Update:
I am beginning an “Iodine Replenishment” protocol recommended to me by my doctor. Iodoral, Selenium, Vitamin C, and unrefined sea salt are all being delivered right now. I bought a bottle of an Iodine solution at a vitamin shop nearby, just to see if I could notice any difference with it while I waited for the delivery. Been supplementing with about 12mg Iodine daily the past two days and can already say it is helping my fatigue. I’m excited to begin the Iodoral. According to the protocol, I’ll be starting at 50mg daily of Iodine, 300mcg Selenium, 2000mgs Vitamin C, 1/4 tsp celtic salt, and a basic 450mg Magnesium 30mg Zinc ZMA supplement. The whole protocol is designed to replenish my Iodine store as well as detoxify any bromide, fluoride, and other metals that may be currently occupying space for iodine (I think). Slowly, I will dose everything smaller and smaller until I find a maintenance dose that suits me and my diet. Hopefully, this iodine replenishment will end my symptoms. I’ve also added 1g L-Tyrosine to my post workout protein shake to help with any CNS strain from intense training.
Sometime next week, I will take a rest day or two from the gym and see if this has any effect. Also next week, I will be picking up more proviron. I want to see if I can get my libido back through this Iodine replenishment first, eliminating the need for it, but I’m faced with a good deal on proviron and would like to have it on hand in case it does not resolve, as I had a decently strong sex drive and was able to maintain erections while taking it 40mg daily for a few weeks.
Below is a screenshot from my IR protocol
Lastly, I’ve been getting a pain in my jaw lately. I recognize this pain as something I sometimes got during my LGD cycles. I physically cannot close my mouth all the way, and trying to makes the left side of my jaw hurt. I’ve heard this can be a side effect of too much Vitamin D? I take 2000iu daily, 4000iu if I think I won’t be in the sun that day.
Thanks again everyone for contributing. I’m very dedicated to making TRT work out for me and I’m enjoying learning about it.
@beak118
Sooo…as you can see, there is A LOT of disagreement on many topics, even within well informed and established members of our forum and for that matter, the entire community of TRT in general.
I don’t know how many times I’ve come across really old YouTube videos from established docs in TRT who said it HAS to be done like this, this, and this for everyone…and then it changes, and the professional making an evidence based guess is wrong.
roscoe88 puts it very clearly. We have quite a few really well established studies that have helped guide us in this field but so much of it is up for debate, as you can see.
I’m sorry a lot of your questions aren’t directly being answered and you’re getting a lot of conflicting data but we’re all strongly biased based on our experiences and the docs we like. We also derive a lot of conclusions from established studies which may give us direction from that study but do not directly support the conclusions we come too.
Often times these conclusions are as right as the are wrong, which gives us better predictability than throwing a rock in the dark and hoping to hit a target, though we still aren’t exactly sure where the bullseye is yet.
Until more conclusive studies are done to directly support what we are making educated guesses on, we are acting as guinea pigs and our egos flair occasionally.
All that being said…I’d like to throw a couple thoughts out there, that’s all they are, just things to consider. I won’t tell you what to do because I’m not a doctor, I don’t play one on TV, and if I did, I wouldn’t be using my acting skills to potentially medically harm you for recognition.
KEY POINTS:
-Your young and may have the potential to reverse the harm you’ve done to your Endocrine system from your use of PED’s. On the other hand, you may not.
-If you choose this way of life, it will be with you medically forever and may be a serious medical pain in your ass later. If you balance out your Endocrine system beyond just sex hormones, everything may return to normal…it might not.
-TRT is forever and will be waiting for you regardless of other therapies working or not. You can always come back to the complicated, long term, less studied world of TRT if the more well studied shorter and less complex therapies don’t work…again, your young and more likely to have an elastic component to your biology than someone like me who’s older.
-PED’s often take a good amount of time to bounce back from…ask the guys on the Pharma forum.
-Everyone wants a quick fix. TRT may seem to offer a quick fix, but will a more patient approach fix your symptoms in the long run if given every opportunity? TRT is not a quick fix. I’m just saying that TRT is really great for those that need it, but please be sure you need it. It is NOT a magic bullet, especially for those with other avenues.
-If you just decide that you want to be on hormones, for any reason and you haven’t exhausted all other possible therapies first, only you can judge yourself. Only you will reap the benefits and/or have to deal with the downsides of TRT (just like the PED’s).
-If this is REALLY what you WANT or NEED, take it slow and look at one thing at a time. For example, please don’t worry about SBGH’s arguable points and mechanisms of actions, just get the labs done and learn it’s basic role in TRT.
-When you have your labs, you will have what you need to have and post them for members to examine. The stickies for this forum mention a pretty thorough list of things that should be examined before taking further action.
-You asked about Dopamine, Neurotransmitters, brain/body repair in a post above. I will tell you my own experience. I drank like a fish since I was 15, I used meth almost every day from 17-20, I’ve been severely addicted to opiates my entire life and have kicked every kind of opiate numerous times (a Methadone kick makes a Heroin kick look like a walk in the park on a sun shiny day BTW). I’ve eaten massive amounts of LSD, Mushrooms, and Ecstasy. I’ve huffed Freon, Air Duster, tanks worth of Nitrous Oxide…you name it. I quite it all when I was 24 and then again at 27 after an awful relapse that lasted a year.
MY BRAIN AND ALL IT’S RELATED FUNCTIONS SHOULD BE TEA TOTALLY 
UP BEYOND ALL REPAIR. My other organs and their functions should be shot…liver (I’ve had jaundice more times than I can remember), kidneys, stomach, vascular system, etc…have all taken serious beatings…but they all bounced back somewhat intact.
What I’m stating isn’t the fact that I used ridiculous amounts of damaging substances for extending periods of time.
What I’m saying is that I screwed my entire neural/biological system (that includes Endocrine) up. It took years sometimes after I stopped a couple substances to begin to recover from the damage and it DID to at least 90% over a couple years. No doubt I’m paying dearly for it now, but a young body and mind are resilient. Time will restore function to some of the most hardest cases.
Look, I’ve seen guys drop 1,000 mikes of acid for their first time and never quite come back…but it’s really really rare man.
I’m 40 and I’ve put my mind and body through hell. Time and patience can repair what sometimes seems completely unrepairable sometimes. If the mind and body weren’t so resilient, I would be 100% dead or at least completely unfunctional. I’m just saying at 20yrs old, most of us come back from some pretty heavy brain and biochemical damage.
Many end up dead
Yes we do charlie. Many of my “friends”, actual friends, and family died from it directly or a cause related to it.
Since the first time I got clean 8 family members have died from it…
Thank you for the input! Im very sorry about those you’ve lost… I’m confident in my decision to stay on TRT and want to give it more time as I truly believe I’ll figure out the protocol for me. Again, I ended my last cycle mid September and endured terrible symptoms after a failed PCT until I decided to finally begin TRT late November. Perhaps, with more time, my endocrine system would recover, however I’m 18 years old and living with those symptoms was painfully difficult as they hurt my relationships and dominated my life for a while. I decided that TRT may prove to be inconvenient in the long term, however, I could not bear the symptoms I was living with and I did not want to risk any harms of living with Low T, especially at my young age. I saw it as an opportunity to not waste my younger years dealing with all those problems. Dealing with TRT is a handful in itself, but it’s very fascinating to me. And I won’t lie: it feels pretty cool to start every morning off injecting testosterone into my body.
Update: Been a couple days since beginning the Iodine Replenishment protocol mentioned above and switching to Everyday dosing of T+AI (HCG EOD). I will say that this is the best I’ve felt since beginning therapy. Still have some difficulty with things like fatigue (getting out of bed in the morning, mainly) but I believe that, further into the iodine protocol, I will continue to get more energy. I can feel my sex drive coming back and get morning/spontaneous erections much more frequently (moreso than when I tried upping my T dose to 300mg weekly for sometime). I no longer feel tanked after workouts and usually have good energy for the entire day about an hour after waking up (I take my 50mg Iodoral with breakfast). Also, I’ve noticed an increase in appetite. Prior to the iodine protocol, I would eat breakfast and not be hungry until dinner time, would total about 2 meals a day and still wasn’t losing weight. (I used to be able to eat ~5000 relatively clean calories a day and not gain weight, before PEDs while I was still natural). After starting iodine protocol, I eat when I’m hungry and total 3 meals a day at around 3000 calories. Again, I’m 6’5 235lbs ~12%BF.
I ordered the proviron today and will be receiving it later this week. I’m going to hold off on starting it as I want to see if my sex drive and libido will recover with time without more drugs. If i were to start it, I would take 2x25mgs tablets daily, in morning and before bed.
Thanks again to everyone for all the input.
It’s part of life. Honestly, the majority of people on this planet have been through much worse. I don’t think charlie understood I wasn’t promoting recreational drug use. I was explaining that neuroplasticity is incredibly underrated. I think it’s fair to think that based on my comments, what I was getting at could have been misunderstood. I did not communicate my point very well by using taboo experiences that set off alarm bells in most people’s minds.
Regardless, I fully respect your decision brother and am very happy you are getting some relief. My Testosterone waned out significantly over a 4 year period and I can’t imagine what it would be like to be hit with these symptoms all at once…especially at you age. Welcome to the community.
Update:
I’ve noticed a dramatic increase in energy since starting iodine… physically. I no longer feel exhausted by the end of the day. Maybe this sounds weird but I’ll be sitting still and will feel driven to move my body. Just bouncing my leg up and down or something…not hyperenergetic or anything, but just not constantly physically drained. It feels much more natural now that I have energy during the day, but my body knows when its time to sleep and I have no trouble going to bed at night.
The reason I say physically is because mentally, I’m positive that I’m not there. I noticed a rapid improvement with stress and anxiety overall when I switched to everyday T+AI dosing at a mildly lower weekly dose, which led me to believe that excess testosterone floating around after injecting 100mg at a time caused high estrogen, making me very emotional and anxious. Despite this improvement, I’ve been noticing rapid mood swings. I’m talking one hour I’ll feel like superman, the next hour I’ll have no confidence. Yesterday in the gym I was in a weird, angry rage, which was a nice fire to have when hitting the weights but kinda scary to me that I felt that way out of nowhere. I mellowed out later in the day. Today was a much calmer day and I was still being able to train just as hard.
Two weeks into iodine and I can feel which symptoms are improving and which are not. My low sex drive and my brain fog (really hard to focus and feel less in the present) are the two I’ve noticed no improvement with. I’ve been doing a ton of research and found that TRT can suppress pregnenolone, which is vital to many brain functions and such. I’m unsure if pregnenolone deficiency is the root of these symptoms, however researching pregnenolone deficiency symptoms has made me confident that this could be an answer I’m looking for. On top of that, I found that HCG can usually be sufficient to reverse pregnenolone suppression with regards to TRT. I have distinct memories of missing HCG doses back in November and injecting extra HCG for a few days to catch up (which I now realize isn’t proper) and feeling very good in the few days following those high HCG doses, leading me to think that that could’ve raised my pregnenolone. I picked up a pregnenolone supplement and am trying it at 30mg a day for sometime to see if it helps with the symptoms. I’ve read on other forums that pregnenolone has helped guys on TRT with sex drive so I’m gonna give it a trial run.
I should mention that I tried DHEA supplementation a while back and was positive it spiked my estrogen within 2 days and stopped it. I researched about it and found that DHEA really only metabolizes to Testosterone and Estradiol, leading me to think that there was no reason for this supplementation given that I’m already injecting T and have sufficient E2, however, pregnenolone metabolizes into many different hormones important for brain function and I believe it may not have same effect. I will update on how adding pregnenolone goes.
I also want to add this, in case it means anything. I noticed my testes were still smaller than before and mentioned this to my doctor. He upped my HCG dosage to 400iu EOD (about 4 weeks ago) and I’ve noticed some slight improvement. They are still relatively small and not full, however. Very tender. I want to know if I should further increase HCG or if this could be the result of something else.
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Everytime you change the T dosage, your levels are no longer stable and take 6 weeks to become stable again as your body adapts, until then you levels will be fluctuating. Adding anything to your protocol after changing things up isn’t advised as it’s just to many moving parts to analyze.
Make changes to your protocol and change NOTHING for at least 8 weeks, but if you keep making changes every week or couple of weeks, you’ll never find a balance because you’re constantly changing things.
Pregnenolone affects memory more than anything, so if memory is sharp odds are you don’t need pregnenolone. Pregnenolone cause my heart to race for 6-8 hours, I couldn’t wait for it to wear off.
Hello everyone! Good news.
So I did an experiment on myself this week. A few things to explain first:
- SARMs have been proven to have a notable effect on cognitive function and create a sense of well being
- This sense of well being, could it be related to dopamine?
- Abstaining from sex (and NoFap) creates a much better sense of confidence, libido, mood, etc. with regards to upregulating dopamine receptors
So, this week, I went about 5-6 days without any orgasm. I’ve always noticed that I feel much better, more confident + stable mood, when I’ve done this. I believe it can be credited to an increase in dopamine receptor functionality, as without orgasm, my brain may be deprived of dopamine and increases receptors to scavenge for any. I know this isn’t the exact way things work, but I think I have some idea of this system…
On top of this, I’ve learned that steroid abuse can lead to long-term damages on the neural level. As SARMs have been shown to have neural effects like creating a sense of well being, I’ve been led to believe that perhaps I’ve damaged myself in my brain from my year long SARMs frenzy. Basically, I think my brain has become dependent on LGD-4033 to function properly and now that I’m done with SARMs, I’m feeling the effects of withdrawal.
Anyways, this was all just speculation until this week. After almost a week of no sex, I decided I’d try L-Tyrosine, a precursor to dopamine. This dosage was split into two 7g doses about 2 hours apart. I took the first 7g dose and went to class. In class, I weirdly got very aroused from just looking at a girl. Arousal that I haven’t felt in a very long time. I considered that it may have been the L-Tyrosine, so I took another 7g dose after class. Within an hour of taking the second, 7g dose, I felt an acute spike in libido. I was horny for the first time in ages! I even got a spontaneous erection while I was just sitting there, which may sound odd, but was very exciting! I looked further into it and found that my symptoms are spot on with that of low-dopamine. I believe I may have fried my brain in some way from all the SARMs use.
I kept taking the 14g of L-Tyrosine split up with meals for the next few days. I no longer get that acute spike in sex drive and such, but I feel somewhat better and do get some erections without physical stimulation, something that has made me very hopeful for my symptoms.
Anyway, I shared this with my doctor and am awaiting a response. I wanted to ask about drugs like Wellbutrin and such. I would not be very eager to become dependent on more drugs and medications for life, however, if my neurotransmitters really are damaged from the SARMs use, I’d be open to trying them. I’m very confident that low-dopamine is the source of my symptoms, as I haven’t experienced such a strong change in mood, libido, and energy from any other thing I’ve tried since starting TRT (such as IR, ED dosing, HCG, raising AI, etc). I want to learn more about taking a pharmaceutical approach to this issue. Is there some blood tests I could get to see if this really is the issue? Could doing a trial run of some kind of anti-depressant be effective at seeing if it works for me? Are there more options to try before anti-depressants?
The tyrosine has been helping a lot and I wish it was the answer to my problems, but hasn’t had nearly as strong an effect as since my first dosing when I hadn’t had sex in a week. Should note that I had sex that night as I was really horny, however I think this may have re-saturated my dopamine receptors leading to the tyrosine being less effective. Please let me know what your thoughts are on this!
@thehokiefloyd I believe that my SARMs use could have had effects on my brain similar to that of your prior drug abuse that you mentioned. Did you experience any similar symptoms to mine? You also mentioned that it took years after you stopped to recover naturally. As much as I wish I could wait that long, I’m 18 and am scared that some of the best years of my life could go to waste if I don’t actively seek a solution now. Do you have any thoughts or more experiences to share related to this post?
@systemlord I agree that I’ve been moving pretty fast and not giving my body entirely enough time to stabilize itself with regards to changes in my protocol. However, the effects of the tyrosine from the other day when I tried it were acute after dosing. I mean, it was like I had taken a magic pill that would cured all of my symptoms within an hour after I took the first 14g dosage. I really believe this could be the answer… what are your thoughts on this? Also, I’m not certain that I’ve been feeling any effect from the pregnenolone, but I haven’t experienced any adverse effects since adding it and have heard it is good to backload that pathway when on TRT, so am going to continue it for the time being. I do have poor memory, but I believe that could be related to decreased neural function from SARMs.
Please let me know your thoughts.
I’m starting to bold the main parts of my posts on this thread as I’ve realized I tend to write novels in each post
Thanks again everyone
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