Help Getting Hormones Under Control

Age: 21
Height: 6’4"
Waist: 32"
Weight: 160 lbs

Body/Facial Hair: Plenty of hair on genitals. Lots of leg hair. Small amount of naval “treasure trail” hair, on the sternum and near collarbone, and around the nipples (one of which has had a barely noticeable gyno lump since I was 14). I have less underarm hair than my brother and father. My facial hair is dark, but I can’t grow a thick beard. Hair on cheeks and neck is thin. Mustache and chin can be grown out better, but my brother and father both have thicker facial hair than me. I have never had much body odor, and I don’t have to wear deodorant because nobody every notices.

Fat: I don’t carry much fat at all. I actually look pretty ripped for being so skinny.

Health History: Never really get sick. I will get a bad headache that occasionally leads to vomiting once or twice a month. Generally, I feel unmotivated to get out of bed, little motivation to finish school, and general fatigue and mild depression symptoms. Somedays, I look and feel like shit: my hair seems dry and out of control, I get pale with dry skin, I feel more unmotivated and depressed than usual, and I have little appetite. My efforts to gain weight over the past few years have been failures. I wonder if my thyroid could be a problem.

Drugs: Never been on anything

Lab Results: I had a private company test my blood last summer, here are the results of relevent items:
Albumin, Serum- 4.9 g/dL 3.5-5.5
Testosterone, Serum- 578 ng/dL 348-1197
LH- 5.9 mIU/mL 1.7-8.6
FSH- 2.7 mIU/mL 1.5-12.4
Estradiol- 36.1 pg/mL 7.6-42.6

Diet: My eating probably needs to be more consistent. I generally eat 2500-3500 calories per day. Breakfast is usually oatmeal, banana/apple, and orange juice, but I sometimes sleep through it. I eat fast food as a meal around once per day, usually Chick Fi La fried chicken sandwich, fries, and soft drink.
Milk
Cranberry Juice
Weight Gain Shakes
Broccoli
Sometimes a post-workout shake of whey, coconut oil, oatmeal, bananas, honey, blueberries, and milk
Almonds before bed

Training: I try to get in a Starting Strength workout 3 times per week.
I squat, deadlift, bench press, overhead press, and do pull ups. I’ve been lifting off and on since playing football for a couple of years in high school. However, my progress has pretty much stopped for a year or two, and my numbers aren’t very respectable.

My shoulders have mild either bursitis or tendonitis, depending on which specialist I talked to, and over-working them can cause annoying pain. Sometimes my back aches after squats and deadlifts. My numbers that I’ve plateaued with on Starting strength are Squat- 225 (3x5)
Bench- 170 (3x5)
Deadlift- 230 (1x5)
Press- 105 (3x5)
I generally feel really unmotivated to workout atleast 1 or 2 of the 3 workout days.

Testes: I don’t think there’s anything really wrong with my testes. I might have a very mild varicocele(s), but nothing that really bothers me.

Erections: I usually wake up with atleast a 50% semi, on occasion a 70-100% erection. It never lasts for more than a minute after I get up. Every now and then I get randomly hard before bed. I think I masturbate to porn for too long and too often and it has negative effects, a problem which I have decided to fix.

Any advice on what I should do to optimize my hormones given this info? What tests should I have done? I feel very fatigued and unenergetic atleast 2 or 3 days out of the week, where I don’t want to anything all day.

I would also like to know the most cost effective way to have tests done and strategies for talking to doctors. I am in college right now, away from my regular doctor, and I would like to consult a new more anonymous doctor about these matters. I am still on my parent’s insurance and have an insurance card. Can anybody kind of walk me through a process of how to get the tests I want done?

About what I think is Varicocele: I’m pretty sure I have this, though not 100%, it could be a hernia, or cyst or nothing at all just something random like reoccurring blue balls. I should probably get it examined to figure it out. If it is varicocele, I would want to address it with the microsurgery procedure. This procedure is supposedly the gold standard for varicocele treatment. The possible progressive negative effects on testosterone and fertility as well as annoying pain from varicocele are not anything I’m interested in experiencing. Can any of you give me some good advice on who to see about this issue? Strategies for discussing it? Should I get a semen analysis done?

I don’t really want to deal with any under-lying physiological problems sabotaging my hormones, so I’d like to get all this behind me.

I think you buried the lead - they key thing for me here is that your nuts hurt. I’d get to a doctor and then to a specialist (urologist?). It sounds hard at first, but it’s actually pretty easy to just tell a general practitioner that your nuts hurt. He’s seen and felt plenty before.

I’d start with either a university health Doc or else research another general practitioner who is local and takes your insurance. Do your research ahead of time and find a local Urologist who takes your insurance, so if you get a referral from the GP you can ask for a specific name.

For the porn issues, check out the material at http://yourbrainonporn.com/

[quote]nomadic wrote:
I think you buried the lead - they key thing for me here is that your nuts hurt. I’d get to a doctor and then to a specialist (urologist?). It sounds hard at first, but it’s actually pretty easy to just tell a general practitioner that your nuts hurt. He’s seen and felt plenty before.

I’d start with either a university health Doc or else research another general practitioner who is local and takes your insurance. Do your research ahead of time and find a local Urologist who takes your insurance, so if you get a referral from the GP you can ask for a specific name.

For the porn issues, check out the material at http://yourbrainonporn.com/
[/quote]

Yea I guess you’re right. Does anybody here know of any good Urologists that know how to actually fix problems and not just give out antibiotics? I don’t want to be told I have epididymitis, then a hernia. I also don’t want to be told there is nothing they can do about the varicocele if its not affecting fertility. From what I understand, the effects of a varicocele are progressive. I’d be looking for a urologist around Birmingham/Atlanta/Columbus/Montgomery/Mobile/Pensacola.

And you’re right about yourbrainonporn. I’ve been visiting that website for about a year now, though I’ve been unable to break the addiction. Lots of interesting stuff there.

Since posting about the Varicocele last week, the aching sensation is virtually gone. The veins size seems like it has slightly diminished also, and if it is a varicocele, it is probably nothing serious at all. I’m not really worried about it any more.

However, I still feel unmotivated and unenergetic and generally unsatisfied most of the time. I need some advice on what type of bloodwork I should have done (testicles, thyroid(iodine), pituitary, hypothalamus). It would be nice for somebody to give me a clear plan of how to diagnose and search for the solution. Like how to test for all these things at the same time without drawing out this process for months, where to go for these tests, Companies like PrivateMDlabs that have specific labs that combine all of these tests.

My symptoms have caused me so much frustration, stress, and worry over the last few years that I have taken this semester off from classes, which is a big deal. Getting my mind and body right is priority number 1 for me right now. I’ve been kind of waiting on pins and needles for some responses in this thread. I like this forum because the posters seem to have an open-minded and logical/practical approach these issues, but responding to individual’s threads seems kind of rare here. Do you know of any other forums like this one that have more frequent posting going on?

Sorry if I come across as panicky, but my mental state does not feel that great right now, and I’m kind of frustrated obsessing about how to fix this problem without knowing exactly the best way to go about doing it. Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

I bought a thermometer a few days ago to check for signs of hypothyroidism. I’ve checked my temperature upon waking up twice which turned out to be 97.3 and 97.0. The first time I checked during the day it was 98.6, but the other days have been 98.3, 97.7, 97.9, 98.2. From what I remember my body temperature has been lower than normal for atleast 7 or 8 years. Usually in the 97s.

Dry skin and hair could be thyroid along with iffy body temps. And there are some associations to your migraine headaches.

Please provide your iodine intake as per the thyroid basics sticky.

[quote]KSman wrote:
Dry skin and hair could be thyroid along with iffy body temps. And there are some associations to your migraine headaches.

Please provide your iodine intake as per the thyroid basics sticky.

[/quote]

I do not supplement with Iodine. Any iodine I get would be through iodized salt I guess, and most of the foods I eat are probably made with Sea salt instead. How much iodine should I supplement with given my bodyweight and do I have to worry about Iodine poisoning?

My temperature when waking up this morning was 96.1

Please read the thyroid basics sticky and keep checking temps.

[quote]KSman wrote:
Please read the thyroid basics sticky and keep checking temps.[/quote]

I was 96.4 this morning. When should I take the Iodine pills? With food? All at one time?

Also, I bought a product called Terry Naturally Tri-Iodine. Its comes in 12.5 mg doses and contains Sodium Iodine, Potassium Iodine, and Molecular Iodine (from kelp). Is this a good product?

That product is good. Do not take with high fiber or high starch. You can take 50mg all at once or divide if you can manage the routine. After a while your guts may tell you to cut back as the iodine affects gut fora. But try to take the 14 X 50mg over a longer period some how. When done, get a high quality probiotic to establish good bacterial balance.

Ok so I’ve been taking 50 mg of these Iodine pills per day. I first started taking them on January 19, and here is what my oral temperatures have looked like over the past few days:

19th: 96.4 waking up, 98.4 afternoon, 98.4 late afternoon, 97.9 before bed
20th: 96.2 waking up, 97.5 afternoon, 98.4 late afternoon, 97.1 before bed
21st: 95.9 waking up, 97.7 afternoon, 97.7 late afternoon, 97.7 before bed
22nd: 96.1 waking up, 97.6 afternoon, 98.4 late afternoon, 97.7 before bed
23rd: 96.4 waking up, 96.3 afternoon, 98.1 late afternoon, 97.9 before bed
24th: 96.8 waking up, 97.0 afternoon, 98.6 late afternoon, 98.8 before bed
25th: 95.9 waking up, 97.7 afternoon

This doesn’t look like much improvement. Are results supposed to take longer? Also, I haven’t noticed any changes in my bowel movements that would indicate the flora in my gut being affected by the 50mg/day dose (It might have made the stools slightly more loose, but no diarrhea or anything that is a problem). The thermometer I am using is a new 10 dollar ReliOn digital thermometer I got from Walmart. I can take a series of oral temperatures within 5 minutes of each other and come up with a difference in range of an entire degree(ex. 97.5-98.5).

This morning, I broke down and tried a rectal temperature. I got a read outs of 97.7 and 97.5 the three times I measured it within 5 minutes. Minutes before this, my oral temperature was 95.9. This afternoon when my oral temperature was 97.5 (I cleaned the thermometer pretty thoroughly), my rectal temperature was 99.0. What do you make of these differences?

I have not noticed any significant changes to my appearance or mood. I might feel slightly more motivated and eneregetic, but that could be placebo.

What do you think of my situation?

Only one week, go for two then switch to maintenance dose, 6.6mg every week or two.

Improved metal effects are good sign.

Your rectal temps are looking a lot better in the AM than oral. So your mouth is closed when you sleep. Not sure what to make of this. Anyone else to check temperatures there?

Your temps may not be so bad. Some will have higher TSH to compensate for low iodine and be functioning reasonably well, others not. If iodine intake was low, taking iodine is a good measure nevertheless.

The biggest uncertainty/doubt is your temperature measurements.

The fast acting thermometers are looking at the transient response of the thermistor signal and guessing/calculating what the temperature must be. How well does this work? Good question. When I see a unit that gives me 98.6 in the afternoon, I have a reasonable confidence. If my room is cold in the AM and the thermometer starts from cold, does that effect the result? I too have noted that testing over and over again produces different results. With some units, I think that when you start with a warmish thermometer, the unit takes a long time to get a reading and in that case I guess that it has switched to a direct temperature mode. Sorry if my engineer is showing.

[quote]KSman wrote:
Only one week, go for two then switch to maintenance dose, 6.6mg every week or two.

Improved metal effects are good sign.

Your rectal temps are looking a lot better in the AM than oral. So your mouth is closed when you sleep. Not sure what to make of this. Anyone else to check temperatures there?

Your temps may not be so bad. Some will have higher TSH to compensate for low iodine and be functioning reasonably well, others not. If iodine intake was low, taking iodine is a good measure nevertheless.

The biggest uncertainty/doubt is your temperature measurements.

The fast acting thermometers are looking at the transient response of the thermistor signal and guessing/calculating what the temperature must be. How well does this work? Good question. When I see a unit that gives me 98.6 in the afternoon, I have a reasonable confidence. If my room is cold in the AM and the thermometer starts from cold, does that effect the result? I too have noted that testing over and over again produces different results. With some units, I think that when you start with a warmish thermometer, the unit takes a long time to get a reading and in that case I guess that it has switched to a direct temperature mode. Sorry if my engineer is showing.[/quote]

Can you elaborate on the maintenance dose of 6.6 mg every week or two? Thanks

[quote]LAgoon wrote:
What do you think of my situation?[/quote]
I think your situation can immediately improve if you splurge and get a second thermometer. How desperate were you to put something that was once in your anus into your mouth?

[quote]evitagen wrote:

[quote]LAgoon wrote:
What do you think of my situation?[/quote]
I think your situation can immediately improve if you splurge and get a second thermometer. How desperate were you to put something that was once in your anus into your mouth?[/quote]

Personally, I like to toss my own salad, so its not a big deal for me. You can just about wipe all the shit off before you put it back in your mouth anyway. Its only supposed to go about 1 inch in, but I like to push my limits. More accurate readings that way, and all of the shit that you miss on the thermometer will dry up and flake off over time

"Can you elaborate on the maintenance dose of 6.6 mg every week or two? Thanks "

Take 1/2 pill once a week or every two weeks.