Ok hope I’m posting this correctly. I have been on TRT for two year and boy has it been a journey. I am 36 now however two years ago I had my T levels checked. I have always suffered from depression and lack of motivation and drive since mid 20’s. Anti depressants did not work so my partner told me to get T checked. It came back at 9.1 or 262 depending on units. This is clearly very low. The doc said it was normal but I had done my research. I said I wanted referring and did. The endo put me on sustanon every two weeks. I did feel better to start with but in my trough day I was still only at 10 nmol. I went private and they reduced it down to every 9 days which gave me a healthy level of 18. However my e2 was up at 213. They prescribed me Arimidex one tablet 3 times a week which I thought was a bit severe so took half a week. This dropped my e2 to118. Guess I’m an over responder. Now my question is this. I usually feel the best nearing the end of my week closer to my next jab. Is this because my e2 is still high at the beginning of the week and drops off towards the end as my T does or is my e2 low and then rises towards the end of the week as the Arimidex wears off.
This happens to me when I inject just once a week.
First few days, a bit of anxiety… then slowly I start to feel great, with the day or two prior to next shot feeling best. Rinse, repeat.
Increasing shot frequency will help this.
The reasoning behind it, in my opinion, is because your test to e2 ratio is best those final days. Get a blood test on one of these good days to see where your numbers land.
Likely your e2 is higher and your T is lower…making for a good ratio.
This is an indication your dosage is excessive, you need more frequent smaller injections to have higher testosterone in relation to estrogen. If your E2 is out of balance with testosterone, then I would expect you to feel unwell.
It also sounds like you metabolize testosterone more quickly than most men and need to inject smaller doses more frequently to keep levels elevated. You might be better off injecting 125mg once or 65mg twice weekly is should work nicely.
Injecting every 9 days is odd to say the least. If you do not have SHBG labs I suggest that you do because this value should be considered before choosing a protocol. If SHBG were low then you definitely need more smaller frequent shots.
It can take the better part of a year to figure out the perfect protocol.
That’s low SHBG my friend, no wonder you responded the way you did. I would recommend either ED or EOD dosing or I expect you’ll never feel optimal. My SHBG was 16 and do best on ED shots, EOD works I just do not feel as good.
Pmol for e2 on my blood tests. I know how I can feel as once in a blue moon I feel like a god. But it is very short lived. I can’t seem to replicate this on demand. I thought a low shbg was a good thing ? Also can sustanon be split. Also surely Ed or ood would have to be sub q not sure I fancy injecting in a muscle that often.
Low SHGB allows for more free t but also allows more free e2 to float around as it is not there to bind to it. So that could be a problem for some. Also seem to metabolize through test quicker. Low SHBG can also be linked to insulin resistance So like most things too much isn’t great and too little also not great.
I can’t say for sure but do believe you would do better with smaller more frequent injections. As for subq vs intramuscular that is a hard one as some respond better to one and some respond better to the other. I just started daily subq and I am doing well so far but I just started just over a week ago, I was on cream prior. As vonko said it is something you will have to experiment with. Whichever you choose though I recommend riding out at least 6 weeks to see if it will work for you. Any less and I don’t believe you are giving it a fair shake.
I have 1” orange needle for my shoulder which is where I do my jab anyway. I also have the next length down 5/8ths is it. Would that be ok in shoulder or too short
Ok so assuming I do 250mg every 9/10 days if I divide 1ml by 10 and do one sub q a day. Shall I not do the Arimidex as that should give quite level hormones ?
I think you are saying that 0.1ml is what you would inject per day sub q? So if your t-cyp bottle is 200mg/1ml that is 20mg a day. With your lower SHBG you may even be able to go lower but I think it would be decent place to start. I can’t say for sure it will lower your E2 but I do believe it will help quite a bit. Going lower, without knowing your syringe though I am guessing you may need to get different ones to easier read the smaller dosing.
Hopefully the more veteran guys can chime in if I am wrong at all.
Yes divide your dose by how many days. So if you want to start at the current (you are injecting every 10 days) then divide 1ml by 10 so yes .10ml
I use 1ml 30g 1/2inch needle easy touch syringes and inject IM into the side delt. I used the same size for sub-q as well. I’m not super lean. I just started IM EOD about 3 weeks ago so it’s not long enough to have an opinion but so far I think I felt better on daily sub-q. That could change 3 weeks from now.
If he was going to start with current dosing he would actually be injecting around .12-.13ml as he is around 175mg a week currently which would equate to 24-26mg a day, correct? That is if his cyp bottle is 200mg/ml and not 100mg/ml. Because of the shorter peaks and troughs I believe you should lower dosage though so I would not start at current dosage.IMHO
Oh I thought he said he was doing 1ml every 10 days. I don’t subscribe to the lower dosage with more frequent injections theory but that doesn’t mean I’m correct. I tried it and felt better when I went to my previous total dosage when doing less frequent injections. So same dosage but more frequent injections felt better than lower dosage. My labs came back fine too.