800mg Test Cyp a Week, Total Test Is Only 1406!

I’m thinking about doing dailies for TRT just to see if I notice a difference. Just pre load 7 shots at a time

:anguished:

Its no biggie actually, if you use slin pins. GH and insulin is often times injected multiple times a day.

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Short answer is No. Area under curve for the former is not the same as the later. Timepoints you mention don’t tell the whole story.

If you want more I can share more detail.

Goal is to minimize cumulative dose for the performance and health goals you have that may be conflicting.

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@readalot what do you think about this? My shgb is usually around 13-15 (or has been). Been doing E3D and thinking about trying daily shots. Would it make more sense to stay with cyp or switch to prop? Or does it even matter

TLDR: doesn’t matter.

More details that are of probably little help but may interest some.

Thought about your question which was reason for delay in responding and trying to answer as succinctly as possible based on the constructive feedback I’ve received recently. I FAILED! If your goal with respect to question is to maximize muscle growth then my short answer is I don’t think it matters. Area under the curve (how much your body processes) will be proportional to dose so whether you do cyp or prop doesn’t matter.

Guys who have low SHBG need to inject more frequently?
SHBG is related (correlated) to but doesn’t appear to drive (causation) clearance rate. There’s a whole bunch of stuff that determines how your body clears fT, SHBG is not one of them. Your body eliminates based on free T not Total T. TT is set by your SHBG and free T via dynamic equilibrium (chemical kinetics). Guys typically look at their TT and get confused as hell when trying to understand clearance rate. This is where this idea that guys who have lower SHBG need to inject more frequently came from. For the same fT a low SHBG guy will read a lower TT so he thinks he isn’t getting the same bang for his buck even though his fT is the same as the higher SHBG guy. In addition, I’ll argue that WE don’t understand the value of keeping supra T (TT and fT) levels constant with respect to positive vs negative side effects.

Hence, for 250 mg/week of TC (mild cycle for many based on their metabolic clearance rate of free T), do we need to inject ED or once weekly if our SHBG is 10?

Remember, elimination is driven by free T not Total T. If you really want to know your elimination kinetics it will take some work as I’ve discussed a few times how you can measure AUC and determine how your body processes T. Still seems trial and error to me and related to age, liver activity, lymphatic activity, where you inject, blah blah.

Example:
So what’s the goal? Gainz or something else?
Given SHBG of 10.
Given 250 mg/week of TC.

Better to inject every day and keep constant TT (constant free T) at say 1500 ng/dL (55 ng/dL) or inject once weekly and have peak TT (fT) at 2000 ng/dL (77 ng/dL) and trough TT (fT) at 1000 ng/dL (36 nd/dL)?

Good question that I can’t answer for an individual. Running your body at constant and HIGH TT(fT) levels continuously seems like a bad idea from health perspective. From GAINZ perspective, I have no clue. What drives GAINZ, fT or TT and what’s their individual contributions? No one knows as far as I can tell. Others thoughts or feedback?

Homework: do this same example for a guy with an SHBG of 30 nmol/L and compute the TT / fT levels for ED vs weekly injections? What does this tell you?

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Thanks for the reply man!

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This is best answer you have given structure wise… I actually was inclined to read it all twice.
The idea of making paragrapghs with questions(the crooked letters, lol) and then anwering them, really helps to oversee the text and actually concentrate on the answer.
If it would all be in 1 pile of letters, it would seem like a long comment, but when its paragraphed like that, it seemed very short and to the point.

Extra question - so, if SHBG does not change the fact how fast we metabolise test, is it possible that some people need ED injections?
Maybe my tests were wrong, but me doing ED injections of 250mg shows same test levels as when i did 400mg E3D.
Of course, in my shit coutry all we have in lab is “testosterone” and god knows what is it - free, total or smth…
also my E2 skyrocketed, which means i am getting more test, right?

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Help me understand, when did you test your level for the 400 mg case? Right before the next injection? Same bottle of test for both cases? To get the complete picture we would do time points for both TT and E2 over the course of a week for both cases to get complete picture.

The point of attaching Testosterone to an ester like cypionate or propionate is to slow down the absorption and make elimination take more time. Hence, less injection frequency required. If you are a fast metabolizer and using propionate ester and want more constant levels then inject ED. With suspension, YES you would need to inject ED. With cypionate, not as critical unless you are a mutant metabolizer. I invite guys to measure their TT every day for a week to get the whole picture:

See this graph for example for a representative Test Cyp case. If you measure your TT at trough (right before next injection) for E3D injections, its highly likely your reading will be lower than if you are injecting ED (same total amount injected per week)
image

Here’s E7D vs ED:
image

Does this mean you are getting less Test or are absorbing more? Absolutely not. Hence my comments regaring the total Area Under Curve (AUC). The AUC for all these cases is the same. It’s the integral amount of testosterone in the bloodstream over time which is proportional to the amount of testosterone injected into the body (mass balance). The pharmacokinetics of the testosterone ester and injection frequency just changes the concentrations over time. That’s why you have to look over the entire time frame from one injection to the next.

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Ok, i understood it all from the graphs…

Dont you think its a bit more healthier to be more stable instead of these ups and downs?

Take a look at this post and this plot for a prototypical normal male with working HPTA:

image

So for a normal guy he’s always pulsing LH and Testosterone. That’s the way the body naturally works.

Now once we move to exogenous T use and you are talking about abuse (supra T levels). Is it better to pulse or stay constant (blue line below):

image

I don’t know and have to been trying to figure that one out. Probably neither from a health perspective :-). From muscle growth perspective? I doubt it makes a difference for the mutants who actually benefit the most.

this is interesting as many people will say that high spikes of GH and/or insulin are better than just constantly average levels… the difference is the fast half life, so you can actually time the GH pin just like an insulin pin.
then again, testosterone works different, and muscle is repaired whole day…
but yea, at the end of the day i guess it doesnt really matter that much, huh…

Yes, here you are talking about compounds that are in and out in minutes/hours instead of days and hence timing over the course of the day may be important.

Abstract

The half-life (t1/2) of disappearance of endogenous GH from serum was studied using physiological effectors to stimulate and then suppress GH release. GH secretion was stimulated by a single iv injection of GHRH, followed 45 min later by an iv bolus dose and then a 2.5-h infusion of somatostatin (SRIH) to suppress further release. The in vivo t1/2 of GH in seven men was calculated from serum GH concentrations measured at frequent intervals after beginning the SRIH infusion. The mean t1/2 of endogenous GH was 18.9 +/- 0.8 (+/- SE) min by monoexponential analysis and 3.5 +/- 0.7 and 20.7 +/- 0.7 min by biexponential fitting. In these normal men, the decline in GH concentrations after GHRH and SRIH administration was similar to that after the administration of GHRH alone, which yielded a t1/2 of 20.3 +/- 1.9 min. We conclude that the physiological kinetics of endogenous GH removal/disappearance can be estimated in vivo in man using GHRH with or without SRIH infusion.

I think you are right. The guys who will benefit the most will always look better than me even with their TT at 300 ng/dL and mine at 5000 ng/dL!

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I’d argue that for guys on TRT it’s much more important to pay attention to frequency and SHBG. The doses are so small and riding the fine line between high-range and over-range, keeping all other health markers in the green.

On cycle doses (250+) I think you could get away with not worrying about frequency (as tied to SHBG), based on the example you gave. Either scenario you’re above range and likely feeling the benefits of the cycle.

Adding this (I’ve put on here in a few places) here as this is the most succint description of the confounding of SHBG vs injection frequency requirement I’ve found (attribution to cataceous on ExcelMale):

The issue with this study is that they are basing MCR on total T rather than free T. The standard equation used is:

Production_rate = MCR * Hormone_concentration

But as I argued above, the proportionality applies to free testosterone, not total. So the equation should be:

Production_rate = MCR * Hormone_concentration = MCR * FT = MCR * f(SHBG, T)

The reason it might appear to work anyway is because at constant SHBG, free T is nearly proportional to total T. So you get:

Production_rate = MCR * f(SHBG, T) ~= MCR * f1(SHBG) * T = MCRx * T

The problem is that their measured clearance rate, MCRx, is actually dependent on both the underlying metabolism (MCR) and SHBG. Unfortunately they don’t separate out the two, which potentially weakens their conclusions. The results are further muddied by the drop in SHBG—mainly in younger men—over the course of the experiment. It’s frustrating, because they did measure free testosterone, apparently by an accurate method, along with baseline and final SHBG values—so they did have the raw data needed to separate out the various effects.

Sorry I can’t link the post on here. SHBG is sometimes strongly correlated to other variables that do control testosterone elimination rate but does not control it itself (causation).

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Is anyone else’s mind blown at the level of @readalot ‘s intelligence? :exploding_head:

We are very luck to have you on these forums.

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Thank you for the kind words. I definitely give it the ole college try on here. I appreciate it and sorry for my delay in telling you that.

Post your bloodwork on these protocols in the dose response thread if you dont mind. I assume you have trough data for these or other blast runs?

Dont care to do anything about 7 months old stuff. I am in the next phase now, different goals, different approach. I am not here to post papers and copy-paste numbers, i am here to talk with people who have similar goals and post progress pics and lifts and all the good stuff :slight_smile: