Estrone and Estriol

Quick question: how are estrone and estriol (E1 and E3) produced in men? Are they produced via aromatization, similarly to E2? Or are they produced in a different way?

Thanks!

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Thanks KSman. What about hcg? I know hcg for some reason stimulates the testes to produce estradiol. What about the other two?

The reason I ask is, because of my low SHBG, E2 is hard to control. I’m considering taking a crazy high dose of arimidex and just dosing the hcg until my E2 level gets to around 22.

But if I were to do that, how will the other estrogens be affected?

Is there any reason why you are obsessive about E1 and E2?

That sounds insane. Please explain.

My E2 is proving hard to control with just arimidex, so I’m wondering if I can just take ~1 mg / day to completely stop the conversion of T to E2 and stimulate the E2 production with hcg.

And then I’m curious as to how it would affect the other estrogens.

Sounds like a bad idea. First, that’s a lot of Adex. We don’t know how that much Adex taken for years will effect your health. Second, I don’t think you’ll make enough E2 from the hcg.

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That’s not how it works. The only pathways your body has for any kind of estrogen production rely on aromatase activity. You can’t completely shut down aromatization with an AI and still expect to somehow produce E2 (or E1/E3 for that matter). All hCG does is stimulate cells in your testes to function at a higher level. The increase in E2 from hCG comes from the fact that testes are producing more T than before and thus aromatase has more T to convert to E2.

For you own sake, please don’t try to shut down your T->E2 activity. You will feel much worse than you do now.

That’s actually not totally true. hCG can cause aromatization in the testes, which is unaffected by an AI. At least, that’s what KSman has said.

If what you said were true, why wouldn’t everyone with secondary hypogonadism be on hCG monotherapy?

Quite a few people do hCG mono therapy, but in order to achieve high enough T levels some people require dangerously high doses of hCG that can lead to gonadotropin receptor desensitization.

KSman’s point about aromatization in the testes is valid, but it isn’t that intratesticular testosterone (ITT) aromatization isn’t afftected by an AI at all. It is affected. It’s just that ITT concentrations are so much higher than serum T concentrations that ITT aromatization happens at a higher rate and is harder to control. Since an AI will exist in the testes and the peripheries at more or less equal concentrations, it is easier to compete with T for aromatase binding outside of testes than inside (assuming our AI is a reversable competative aromatase binder, like anastrozole).

If you take a shit tonne of AI you can definitely shut down all estrogen production (intratesticular included). And you will feel terrible. But more importantly, even if you take an AI at a dose that allows for IIT aromatization but shuts down peripheral T aromatization (like 1mg Anastrozole per day), you will feel terrible.

It’s not enough to have a good E2 level (ie, high AI and really high hCG to jack up ITT), the E2 needs to be synthesized from T in the right tissues. Your brain cells, for example, need the aromatization T->E2 to actually happen locally (inside them) for certain processes to proceed normally.

That’s part of the reason why it is recommended here to take T, hCG (low dose to keep testes running, but not jack up ITT), and adjust AI as needed.

The other thing to consider when adjusting anastrozole dose is that you likely won’t even start to feel a true affect of the drug for three days or so after you take it. So if you are taking it at the time of injection, you want to give yourself at least a week before you even start to think about how you are feeling. The are so many things that can give you the same symptoms of high/low E2 that you want to gauge how you feel on average over the course of weeks, not hours or days.

Thank you very much for this informative answer. Now I understand a little bit better why T + anastrozole mimics the body more naturally than what I suggested. Well, let’s see where a quarter tab every 2 days (with my injections) gets me.

Thanks again!