Yes normal guys not on TRT tend to be in the middle of the range around 450-600 and yes, as we can all attest, men in that range typically have normal drive and erections. Your Free T is not bad…I would like to see it around 100 on that scale but your Total T appears low but that also depends how many days after your last shot you took the test.
Haven’t been in T for approx the past year. When my insurance changed I got a new endocrine guy. He asked me if I have a fear of having kids and could that be what’s causing my low libido. I just looked at him and said no. Very sarcastically.
Ahh gotcha…from your first post I thought you were on 100mg every two weeks.
Where’s the “stupid things docs say” thread?
1 Like
Yeah I put it wrong. I saw a dr who put me on that low dose for a while. And it did almost nothing. When I told him about taking 200 once a week, he said nobody really needs that and equated me wanting that dose to Barry Bonds. It was the stupidest meeting I’ve ever had with a dr.
You can decide if this is good advice. Find someone who would be willing to give you 150mg a week. If you’d like to try less and see if your response is acceptable, fine. I’d take 150mg.
Yes, it would.
1 Like
What does the number 100 have to do with anything? What does that number demonstrate as to how he will feel?
he literally just told you. If he gets there he can evaluate how he feels and see if he needs to go up or down.
No.
What he said was this:
To which I replied that 500 doesn’t demonstrate anything. Take 100 men at that level and they will all feel differently. If the goal is to target a number, you don’t understand hormones.
Then YOU said:
To which I asked what 100 has anything to do with anything.
ALL OF YOU are making the exact same mistake by aiming for a NUMBER. This is NOT the way things are done. Forget the stupid number.
Pretend you are on a deserted island with all the testosterone and syringes imaginable but no labs. What would you do? You’d figure out how much you need to take and how often to take it until you felt better. If you got off that island, ran labs, and wound up with a number that surprised you (lower or higher than you thought) would you alter your proven best protocol because of that? If you did, you’d be a nut. The number doesn’t dictate shit. Stop aiming for a number. Stop thinking that if you get to a certain range you’ll be symptom free. This is INCORRECT. There is no number on the planet that will indicate how a man will feel therefore numbers are meaningless.
If I was on a deserted island, I would take 50mg a week and wait a few weeks and evaluate. Feel good? Stay at that dosage. Feel bad, up the dose to 75mg a week and wait a few weeks and evaluate. And so on and so forth.
Now why does the number matter at all? Because as @thisguyneedst said the actual people he knows in real life with a number around 500 have “normal drive and erections”. As you’ve been shown, multiple multiple studies show that 50-100mg a week gets the vast majority of people to that 500 number. Period.
Now why is my approach infinitely better than yours? Cuz you start a guy off at 150 a week and when he still feels like shit in 8-12 weeks you have no freaking clue whether he should go up or down. Period.
So you’re able to take a guess with certainty and I’m not.
Lol!
This is hilarious.
Nope…I’m able to start at a level that is low enough that I can titrate up and don’t have to even worry about titrating down. You start at a level where you simply don’t know, on your deserted island there without blood work, whether your symptoms would resolve by going up or going down in dosage.
I can’t make this any clearer. If you can’t understand it, I simply can’t help you.
Oh, I understand it just fine. The problem is, it’s wrong. I can demonstrate why.
Your entire argument is based on the fact that you figured out you only need 50mg a week to feel better. You’re then coming up with a “here’s what I should have done” which is easy to do now that you know the answer.
I have NO IDEA what someone’s ideal dose will be. Maybe it will be 100 and maybe it will be 400. NO IDEA and I have never once suggested that I know.
You would start a guy off on 50mg a week. 50mg are extremely rare outliers. You’re not placing your bet on any statistical probability. Instead you’re placing your bet on a statistical rarity. You must suck at gambling.
Now, imagine you’re a doc and I’M your patient. You’d start me off at 50mg a week. This dose would chemically castrate me within a month. Any doc will tell me to wait 6-8 weeks to assess a protocol which is best practices. So, my life is hanging by a thread after two months. Then you raise me to 75mg for another 6-8 weeks. So now I’m 4 months in and I want to kill myself. You’ve already got it in your head that no man needs more than 100mg so now you start inching your way up more slowly, because you have a bias towards low doses. How long would it take you to get me to the 250-300mg a week that I need to feel normal? A year? Two years? Three years?
In contrast, I start at 150mg a week and then assess. If the guy has symptoms I can usually make a pretty good guess if I need to go up or down because of experience. I’ll also be able to make a pretty good guess as to HOW MUCH I’ll need to go up or down. It may be as much as 50mg if required.
I also have NO BIAS towards any specific dose. I’ll go as low or as high as I need to go to get the guy better. You’re biased towards low doses right out of the gate.
I can absolutely guarantee you that if we each had to dial in 10 men, I’ll get them dialed in better and FASTER than anything you could even conceive doing. I’ll bet everything I own on that bet.
I can’t make this any clearer. If you can’t understand it, I simply can’t help you.
1 Like
Multiple wrong things here.
-
I’ve already congratulated a guy for reducing his dosage to 18mg a day which is obviously more than 100mg a week. So just factually wrong there.
-
You’re dealing with people who are already living with hypogonadism who have never touched exogenous test. So, I’m likely to improve(admittedly only slightly in some cases) their current situation.
-
I didn’t need no 12 weeks to see immediate improvement. I’m doubtful it’s even necessary and is an excuse by the high dose pushers when people complain that their high dose isn’t working. Like just give it time man. Well in my case, as soon as my body got rid of the extra test I immediately felt better. Steroid plotter told me I’d be back to a release of 4-6 mg a day within 12 days of my last shot. And it happened like clock work for me.
-
You don’t have any objective way of knowing whether he needs to go up or down. In your words, “you can make a pretty good guess”. Yeah no thanks not going by your “pretty good guesses”.
-
I also have no bias in terms of dosage. If it takes a dude 400mg to feel good and he doesn’t have any side effects, no skin off my nose. I’d say go for it.
Finally, if we’re dealing with 10(20 preferred) men, I’d get them dialed in faster because statistically speaking you’re going to find that most of the guys who want to bang the cart girl are going to be floating around 400-600. I can get them there in as few as 12-20 days if they are coming from a higher dose.
You’re making so many assumptions here it is staggering. Your brain is too closed to be taught. In your list, your number two was a pure assumption. You apparently know the past history of all the men I’ve worked with? The number 3 you are stating 12 weeks and it is standard best practices to wait a bare minimum of six weeks to assess a protocol. If you haven’t learned that yet and I don’t know what to tell you. Your steroid plotter means nothing to me because it is only stating what level is being achieved in what amount of time and you have to then wait for that level of testosterone to actually have an effect in the body. Otherwise I could simply take a huge dose in all at once and feel better immediately. It doesn’t work that way! I absolutely have an objective way in deciding whether or not to go up and down and that is based on my experience. Does he have anxiety at that level? Is he breaking out in massive acne at that level? Is he feeling much better than he did before? Is his sleep better or worse? These are all things that you just haven’t how to deal with on a regular basis to gain the experience that I have. And your last step about the guys floating around at 400 to 600 is pure nonsense because you are still aiming for a number and numbers are meaningless! If a number meant something we would all be targeting that number and that would be the end of it but it is not that simple. If it was none of us would be in this forum right now. There is no way possible that you will get a guy dialled in within 12 to 20 days!!! That in itself tells us everything that you are completely delusional in regards to hormone optimization.
@highpull how many patients have you got dialled in within 12 to 20 days like this guy? We should all be taking lessons from him! 12 to 20 days he says!
This has got to be the most delusional statement in the entire history of this forum.
I assume that my being able to get dialed in was because I came from a ridiculously high dose for me. Might take longer going the other way. Also, you would have sucked at diagnosing me as being too high. Anxiety nope. Acne nope. I did have insomnia and a feeling of being “wired” all the time. Also high hematocrit which most of you clowns have pooh-poohed for the last 2 years. And that damn red face.
You have anecdotes Danny. You’re the KSMan of 2019-2020. And just like him you’ll fade off in to the sunset as well.
In my real life the actual people I see with levels at 500, or higher, do not have normal energy levels, libidos or sexual function. I wonder why someone who has “normal drive and erections” would even know their level. If they felt good, normal, happy with these other aspects of being a man, why are they getting their testosterone checked?
I believe there are a lot of men running around at those mid range, or lower, levels that feel fine, or happy with how they function. They do not show up in the office.
Though some feel terrible, many that do come in know they are a little off, but do not feel terrible. Once starting TRT, they are shocked at how much better they feel. I often hear, “I didn’t realize I felt so bad. I forgot what it felt like to feel good.”
Your doctor should have a clue. For starters, most guys starting at 150-200mg a week are very happy with the results and feel great. For those that do not, they experience one of these two scenarios:
They feel worse. Drop the dose.
They do not feel any better, no change, or only slight improvement. Increase the dose.
I think I mentioned in another thread that about 80-85% of the guys stay at the
starting dose. For every one that is lowered, ten are increased.
1 Like
Just want to make it clear that I was quoting @thisguyneedst. He was the one that reported that his friends at 500 have normal libido and erections. I know it wasn’t intentional but the way you quoted it could make it look like I said it.
He is:
A) Making an assumption as they didn’t run labs so he has no idea what their actual levels are.
B) More assumptions that they FEEL normal and some of them could be lying.
C) More assumptions that if he got to their imaginary number that he would feel like they do and nothing could be further from the truth.
2 Likes