Afraid to Start TRT. Share Your Experiences?

These levels aren’t normal for a 29 year old, maybe for an 85 year old. The issue is a lot of doctors has zero to little education in sex hormones as its completely ignored in traditional medical schools and residency.

Why are you afraid of a hormone your body produces naturally?

My protocol is 50mg twice weekly, this produces around 697 ng/dL and Free T at 30 pg/mL ( ranges 8-25.5). So slightly above the ranges for the Free T.

I feel much better than I did pre-TRT, I could barely get off the couch without wanting to collapse to the floor. Pre-TRT numbers was 91 ng/dL, LH 3.6 and SHBG 12.

Libido is high.

I will start out by saying the disadvantages of remaining low-T are grim health wise, TRT the disadvantages is infertility, but this can be dealt with by a course of HCG and FSH injections in conjunction with TRT or clomid.

Most regret not starting TRT sooner once on TRT, I resisted at first and suffered needlessly. My thought was I didn’t want to shut down my natural production even though it would never be enough to sustain me.

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Could you please share your story with testosterone therapy:

  1. What’s your protocol? 60-70mg twice weekly to 200mg once weekly

  2. How do you feel? good

  3. How did you feel before testosterone therapy? I guess OK. I knew I wasn’t 20 years younger.

  4. What’s your libido? good

  5. How long have you been using testosterone? 8 years

  6. Did you have children before you started using testosterone? yes

  7. What are the disadvantages of testosterone therapy? time, doctor’s visits, lab follow-ups, and money

  8. Do you regret starting therapy? I regret not doing it 10 years sooner, at least, maybe 20.

I would deal with this before starting, dependent on your specific fears, I suppose. If I sense any hesitancy or fear with potential new patients, I try to talk them out of it. I have found that those overly concerned with side effects will usually have them, because they focus on looking for them. You tend to find what you look for in life.

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I self treat (after getting screwed by Drs for years) I take 250 mg test/week and 200 mg mast/week

Awesome (especially for being 56)

Like shit. Weight gain, depression, ED, poor libido, etc

Crazy high. Wife has to put limits on our sex life

15 years

yes

Few, but things like high RBC and blood pressure issues.

Hell no!

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  1. 100mg test cyp twice a week

  2. Good, but tired. (Possibly I’m in too much of a caloric deficit and am currently one week into a diet break)

  3. Like absolute shit for 4-5 years… anxiety, brain fog, poor concentration

  4. Before trt I had a high libido, now it is effing rendonkulously high. (Giselle is a happy camper)

  5. 9ish weeks

  6. Yes

  7. Too early to tell

  8. Not yet

As far as your brother having higher testosterone than you I wouldn’t worry about what others situations are.
I had my highest pre trt tt 3.5 months removed from a diet and 8 months removed from the gym. I managed to gain 40ish lbs in 3.5 months and went from a tt of 413 to 630…but my ft has always been low and no matter how I tried to diet or workout or say eff it, I always felt like shit.

As someone with anxiety, high pull is on point. I’ve finally started getting comfortable administering my shots, but I was completely inside my head about it. It took to my 3rd shot for me to do it. Just continue looking at the pros and cons of trt and don’t make a decision until you are 100% sure it’s what you want. For me, I felt like such shit that I had nothing to lose.

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  1. 100 mg per week with added HCG for fertility I used in past for 1000 IU thrice per week. Now it’s just 100 mg a week.
  2. I feel normal. That’s it.
  3. I felt awful.
  4. Libido is fine.
  5. Almost 20 years.
  6. I had children after with HCG.
  7. Doctor’s visits.
  8. Absolutely no regret. I have hypogonadism, a medical condition, and a medical condition should be treated, in the way diabetes and hypothyroidism are treated. TRT is nothing more than medicine for me. It’s not used as a PED or physique enhancement. In medicinal doses T isn’t a PED; it has one functioning as a normal man.
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Seriously consider testing the hypothesis that T deficiency is your issue with a fast acting testosterone application that can simulate the diurnal variation in T levels throughout the day:

There is nothing physiological about using a testosterone ester for TRT. With fast-acting testosterone preparation you can pulse your T levels once or twice a day with minimal impact to your HPTA. Take a look at the research and Natesto would be the highest priced option; you can get either compounded nasal gel or testosterone troches to do the same thing for much less cost.

If I was to go back and do it again, I would strongly consider this route first given your blood work.

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https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/andr.12137

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The OP stated he was afraid of T therapy. He didn’t state he was afraid of testosterone. There is a distinct difference, especially with the way T therapy is done for many men today.

OP has no idea what his issue is. If you start taking long acting Test ester and no benefit, you are on a long journey to get back to square one with your HPTA.

You have zero basis to state this T level isn’t normal for a 29 yr old. Please provide data to support this statement.

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  1. What’s your protocol?
    200mg cyp per week inject 50mg or 25units every other day subq
  2. How do you feel?
    been getting stronger at the gym , little bit more mental energy for the day, not bad overall
  3. How did you feel before testosterone therapy?
    not terrible , just kind of depressed,
  4. What’s your libido?
    not a big difference honestly, though my natural test in the afternoon was 800ng/dl… lol
  5. How long have you been using testosterone?
    about 3 months
  6. Did you have children before you started using testosterone?
    not having kids
  7. What are the disadvantages of testosterone therapy?
    $200 a month…money well spent though i think
  8. Do you regret starting therapy?
    i was gonna do it eventually, it was inevitable. trt seems like a no brainer. its pretty easy .
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Reference Ranges for Total and Free Testosterone Levels

Vermeulen, A. (1996). Declining Androgens with Age: An Overview. In Vermeulen, A. & Oddens, & B.J. (Eds.), Androgens and the Aging Male (pp. 3-14). New York: Parthenon Publishing.

Age Total Testosterone Average (ng/dl) Free Testosterone Average (pg/ml)
25 – 34 616 123
35 – 44 667 103
45 – 54 606 91
55 – 64 562 83
65 – 74 523 69
75 – 84 470 60
85 – 100 376 54

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Thank you very much, unfortunately Natesto is not available in my country :frowning:

So it seems that I have the testosterone of 85-year-old men despite leading a healthy lifestyle. I’m afraid what my levels would if would drink alcohol, eat junk food, etc…

  • What’s your protocol? 160mg test cyp EOD, hcg 1x a week and dhea.

  • How do you feel? Good. Normal. I have energy again and the soreness is mostly gone.

  • How did you feel before testosterone therapy? Total shit. Tired, low energy and ALWAYS sore. My soreness was soft tissue aNd not joints. I believe i was losing muscle mass despite working out 3x week. My issue was high shbg and next to zerp free test.

  • What’s your libido? It was fine before and fine now.

  • How long have you been using testosterone? 9 months

  • Did you have children before you started using testosterone? Yes

  • What are the disadvantages of testosterone therapy? Money for gear and tests but its worth the money to feel normal again.

  • Do you regret starting therapy? I regret starting so late. I went thru 6 years of feeling bad which kept getting worse. Despite tons of blood work and labs every doctor i saw said it wasn’t test issues. I should’ve trusted my instincts sooner and trusted docs less. I wish I found my current doc and this board sooner tho.

Nope. That wouldn’t be a particularly solid conclusion to draw from the information presented and goes back to the distribution of Total Testosterone for males vs age. Everyone thinks they should be above average but thats not how it works.

https://academic.oup.com/edrv/article/26/6/833/2355179

There is absolutely nothing abnormal about your Total Testosterone level:

Find yourself on this plot in terms of percentile vs age:

What is the percentile?

Whether you will experience symptom resolution with T therapy is another question entirely and you will have to do the homework to determine if there are fast acting T preparations you can access (if you decide to go that route). I mentioned other options besides Natesto.

Data from that study. Adding the SD with the mean data allows ignorant people to understand the full picture:

image

Calculating Mean +/- 2SD indicates there’s absolutely nothing abnormal about the OP’s TT level even with this dated study as reference (e.g., 243-1091 ng/dL for the 35-44 yr age group).

Right, the numbers reported were averages. That is not to imply one is abnormal for not being average.

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Averages are meaningless without a standard deviation figure. Exactly half of the people will be below average and half above. The moment someone thinks they are below average they ask whats wrong…

Question is are you experiencing a large amount if symptoms that are synonymous with Low T. And does exogenous testosterone treat thos symptoms. Then weigh that up with the side effects and costs.

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Maybe, maybe not.

Not typically. Given this example, with scores of 10, 5, 3, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,
the average is 2.9, which makes 70% below average.

But, I think you’re right, if your point is if you torture numbers long enough, they’ll confess to anything.

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Incorrect @highpull Your’e using a mean average in your example. Use the Median which is used in any normalised distribution and as I understand it is used in medical statistics then my point still stands.

If you use a mean like you have then outliers (such as 5 in your example), massively skew the “average”

That would be disastrous if used as methodology in medical terms as you only need a few outliers with a medical condition to make the vast majority of a population distribution one side of the average.

Its why its a horrendous measure of average salary- the few folk earning billions make 98% of folk earning “below average” if you use a mean.

Median is just a far better measure in those circumstances.

Take your example

5, 3, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1

The median is 1.5 half are below and half are above.

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Might as well take this all the way which I am sure is what the OP wanted :slight_smile:

https://www.mathsisfun.com/data/standard-normal-distribution.html

Normally distributed variable like TT or height (with proper outlier analysis), mean = median = mode.

God help us all! :slight_smile:

Sorry for the interruption, now everyone back to their 1200 ng/dl trough TT levels.

If the logic some people like to use on here was accurate, we’d all be walking around at 6’5’', 250 lb, 8% BF, and 12" you know whats. Unfortunately, that’s just me and a few other (relatively speaking) fortunate and lucky individuals.