Estradiol: Why You Should Care

30iu hCG is what? Are you confusing your insulin needle volume dose with IU’s? You mean 300iu? Not everyone mixes hCG to 1000iu/ml

Your calculated anastrozole correction is 0.25mg EOD * 32/22 = ~.37mg EOD or 1.27mg/week

You were taking .875mg/week and with 125mg T ester per week should have been taking 1.25mg/week. Note how close the 1.27 is to the 1.25

You should have followed the recommendation of 1mg anastrozole per 100mg injected T ester as your first try.

Dosing 3/8ths of an Arimidex pill will not work well. This is where a liquid is more suitable.

FT without range is sort of useless. You cannot compare FT across different labs, it should not be that way.

With that one dose change, you will have great numbers. You should feel a nice change with E2=32–>22

I go through a clinic that uses a compound pharmacy. They send me the adex in .25mg capsules. How should I go about increasing the dose if they wont change the amount in the capsules or if they wont provide a liquid option? They may but in case they don’t I’m just wondering how to go about increasing the dose and achieving stable levels, or if that’s even possible…With the HCG a 5000IU bottle lasts one month and I shoot at the 30 mark of an insulin needle EOD

hCG, the missing information is the iu:ml. Assuming that your 5000ml had 5ml, that would be 1000iu/ml or 300iu for “30” on your syringe. Again, you should know and talk hCG IU’s, not insulin IU’s.

Ask to have your compounded prescription changed to 37mg. If so, you can use up the old ones if you can cut some in half and take 1 & 1/2.

Anyone having any issues switching from brand Arimidex to generic anastrozole? I was switched to generic back in August. I’ve been working out more and still gaining weight around the midsection since then. My diet is good. I’ll have bloodwork done in 10 days.

Lets wait for the lab results. If a generic is true to dose, there is no reason to expect any differences. Differences in a situation like this can be swamped by result variations that arise from changes in lab timing relative to prior dose of T and anastrozole. Introduction of hCG is also a game changer.

We do not want to let this issue grow beyond the purpose of this sticky.

Contradictions between TRT anastrozole dosing needs and high anastrozole effects in normal younger men:

We know that many guys on TRT do very well on 1.0mg anastrozole per week. We also are aware of studies where younger normal males were given 1mg or 2mg of anastrozole per day and their E2 levels averaged around 17mg/ml. [There were no significant differences between the two doses.] The result is that T levels have a strong increase, LH/FSH goes up and E2 does not drop too low levels. While technically interesting, the costs would have been extremely high.

That much anastrozole would take take E2 way too low for TRT guys and can lead to loss of libido, depression, loss of energy, ED and joint aches.

So how do we reconcile this apparent contradiction? Thankfully the needed data to resolve this is mostly already in this forum. The high dose anastrozole issue has been discussed here before, but is appropriately not in the stickies. We do have guys who find the high dose anastrozole data and they think that that is a clinical recommendation. A research paper is rarely a clinical recommendation. We have seen where doctors who go in that direction in a TRT context which is stupid and harms the patient. [Clinical research papers often are useful for determining treatment.]

We know that higher hCG doses lead to elevated or high E2 levels that do not respond very well to anastrozole. In this context, higher TRT doses of anastrozole have often been seen to be ineffective in approaching levels near E2=22pg/ml. The high doses of hCG over stimulate the testes. The concentration of T inside the testes can be up to 80 times higher than serum levels in young virile males. High hCG doses may be increasing this concentration level even higher and some males will respond more than others. In the context of TRT, for older guys we can expect the testes of many to be blunted by age. So this effect could be expected to be stronger for younger males who have secondary hypogonadism. Because anastrozole is a competitive drug that competes with T at the aromatase enzymes, the ratio of anastrozole to free testosterone determines the outcome. A serum level of anastrozole that does a good job of managing peripheral aromatization of T–>E2 is mostly ineffective inside the testes where the T concentration levels are so much higher than serum levels. From this, you can easily see that higher doses of hCG drive intratesticular T–>E2 aromatization that cannot be managed with sane or affordable amounts anastrozole. If you drive T–>E2 down to close to zero in peripheral tissues, we can expect that there may be adverse effects in the brain and elsewhere.

We know that SERMs increase T and E2. LH levels can go high. From this we can expect that there can be effects that are similar to high doses of hCG. [We also see a few take a SERM and hCG at the same time, totally wrong.] SERMs can easily lead to high rates of T–>E2 inside the testes and we would expect E2 levels to be unmanageable. We have seen a few hints of this effect in the forum [and in PMs sent to me].

In one of the studies of high dose anastrozole in normal younger males, the following was postulated: The serum E2 levels do not drop as one might expect because higher T levels are creating more E2. Well we would also expect that, no brainer. But we know that peripheral T–>E2 in this context must be very very low. The only conclusion is that the testes alone are creating enough E2 to support healthy serum levels of E2. In this context, we get the same effect as a SERM and LH/FSH levels are increased, driving up intratesticular FT concentrations. [Why FT, because SHBG is only found in the blood and not in peripheral tissues; the T cannot be SHBG bound. We should expect that some would be weakly bound to other proteins, very little is known about that to my knowledge.] In light of this, these ideas really enforce the points presented in (2) above.

Summary: Low dose anastrozole works well in the TRT context of weaker or little testicular T generation. SERMs and high dose hCG can create high levels of LH/FSH that create high T levels driving high levels of T–>E inside the testes. High dose anastrozole can create the same effects as high dose SERMs or hCG, with the exception that peripheral T–>E2 is then very very low and the resulting serum E2 levels are not pathologically low, but can be healthy as a result of the testes producing enough E2 to support decent serum levels. But note that there could easily be adverse effects from blocking T–>E2 in the body where E2 is created for local utilization. The discrepancy is resolved and understood.

A danger: We know that high doses of hCG can over stimulate and down regulate the LH receptors inside the testes. Testicular LH insensitivity would be classified as testicular failure aka primary hypogonadism. I think that there is enough evidence to suspect that high levels of LH induced by SERMs or high dose anastrozole can over stimulate the testicular LH receptors and lead to the same LH receptor downregulation that one risks with higher doses of hCG. When older men with age degraded testes use higher amounts of hCG, SERMs [or high dose anastrozole] as a TRT treatment , they are at risk of damaging their testes that support those TRT methods.

What does sticky refer to?,
im new on here and have posted on a couple of other threads.
Keep up the good contributions, is there any docs/specialists on this T replacement forum, seems alot of very knowledgable guys on the whole TRT subject, are any professionals?
Cheers

Do not post crap like this in the stickies.
At the top of the forums, you will see topics that have yellow icons. These are ‘stuck’ to the top of the list and are called ‘stickies’. Read these. Do not post into stickies with your personal concerns, they are not meant to address personal particulars. Look as the ‘protocol for injections’ and you can see how that got messed up.

There are a few docs who float in and out from time to time. But most here simply have learned a lot because they have had to know more than their docs, and that really is not hard to do.

Didnt realise there were rules, dont understand what stickies are, kind of figured that posters on here are just knowledgable and clued up and most are not professionals just learning from research and experience and each other, and i hear you about docs not being to bright and clued up on TRT as im in the UK and docs/specialists are not so good at TRT here.

Did not need that chit chat here either.

I was diagnosed with hypogonadism which is probably due to my testicle being removed cause of cancer, anyway I was told by a doctor to take Tamoxifen Citrate (Nolvadex) to lower my estrogen, but should I really be taking Anastrozole (Arimidex) cause my androgen levels were low, but my test levels were “normal”. The Nolvadex has made a difference, but is it dangerous to my Androgen Receptors?

Nolvadex is a SERM - Wikipedia which blocks estrogen in only some [selective] tissues and SERMs increase E2 levels. The tissues not protected then have increased estrogen problems. Anastrozole reduces E2 levels. You did not understand all that the doc said or doc is confused.

Nolvadex is also increasing your LH, FSH and T levels. That is what you feel. Nolvadex and SERMs in general are not considered candidates for life long therapy. There are side effects.

Read the advice for new guys sticky for starters. The protocol for injections sticky has a lot of basic info that you need. Sorry that it was hijacked.

You can take some anastrozole and nolvadex. [Note, do not take hCG and a SERM at the same time.]

You need E2 labs while on Nolvadex to know where you are. Please post your labs and ranges.

You can have other problems. Not everything is a result of low T levels and TRT may not be all that you need.

Your question did have some general value. Otherwise, do not inject your case details into any stickies or hijack other guy’s case posts.

I’m curious if anyone has considered whether one form of testosterone is more likely to aromatise to estradiol than other forms? Ie. Will testosterone enanthate potentially convert to estradiol more readily than testosterone cypionate?

Absolutely not. Testosterone esters are not testosterone and thus cannot aromatize at all. After the ester groups are removed, bio-identical testosterone is the result and that can aromatize to E2. For a given serum T level, it does not matter what ester was used to deliver the T. Less frequent injections promote more T–>E2 aromatization [result of higher peak T levels]. Note that 100mg of T eth delivers more T than 100mg of T cyp.

Convert is not a good word for this.

There are some anabolic steroids that will not aromatize, but those are not testosterone. There are some anabolic steroids that will aromatize to some degree that are not testosterone.

This link was provided by one of the forum members in a separate thread. Good (albeit simple for us) discussion on use of AI’s published by a medical center. More ammunition for your doc if needed:

http://www.sandiegosexualmedicine.com/index.php?page=male/sexual-medicine-treatments/aromatase-inhibitor-therapy

I meant to post that with this link also, now it doesn’t speak that one is on TRT more so that it is well tolerated in males the AI here is Aromasin, something that may be of value when presenting facts to Your doctors. As can be seen this was studied by Endocrinologist, the morons that tell most of us that “Estrodiol” doesn’t need to be checked? Fricken 8 pound water heads
http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/full/88/12/5951

[quote]VTBalla34 wrote:
This link was provided by one of the forum members in a separate thread. Good (albeit simple for us) discussion on use of AI’s published by a medical center. More ammunition for your doc if needed:

http://www.sandiegosexualmedicine.com/index.php?page=male/sexual-medicine-treatments/aromatase-inhibitor-therapy[/quote]

Another print off for You to take to your doctor

http://jcem.endojournals.org/content/89/3/1174.full

I would be interested in posts describing what too high e2 levels feel like and what too low levels feel like. I am working with doctor now to dial in adex level per week and it would be helpful to have here to work with.

thanks

This is in the stickies, also see the protocol for injections sticky.

So what happened with the arguments that taking nolvadex or something like arimidex actually hurt your gains on a cycle. I believe it was the late dan duchaine who made that comment about nolvadex. the estrogen and the puffiness that goes with the aromatizing of androgens are part of the strength gains that you see especially while taking something like testosterone or dbol etc.