Low T, I Think It's Thyroid? Ksman (was on Clomid now t-cyp)

Ok. So heres an update while on clomid. Just to sum up - had low normal LH and FSH. My T crashed (no steroids taken) with major hot flashes. I believe it crashed from high temporary stress. I also just recalled that I was occasionally taking green tea extract fat burner with has lots of EGCG 400mg per 2 pills. Could have been a day or 2 I took 4 pills. So perhaps that may have been a cause too.

Had 2 readings of T in the 200’s. last one before clomid it was 380. I believe that my body was coming back from the crash naturally but needed a boost. So endo started 25 EOD. Ive been doing this for 2 weeks now. Feel good, energy better, night time erection more common. Hair growth on face def accelerated. Though I may loose erection - usually need constant stimulation. This was the same before clomid. So when I want to be sure to perform I take 40 mg viagra. I did read that guys on clomid still suffer in the erection department. So I will see when I get off of clomid what happens.

So i started clomid because i believe I needed a little boost to help bring T back to normal. SO my thinking is that I will ween myself off of clomid and T should go back to normal (not exactly sure what normal for me is though because I never took a test when I was fine). But my goal is over 500 T.

Here;s what I can use advice on please. I am itching to get a blood test but it has only been 2 weeks on clomid. I have a script already chking for cbc, met, lipid, psa, thyroid, T, FT, LH, FSH.
When is a good time to go for blood? I want to 1st confirm it is secondary Hypogonadism by seeing that the LH is now high normal. But I also would to go 12.5 EOD this week. Should I check blood before I go 12.5 or dont go 12.5 at all? Dr. wanted me to continue 25 eod and take blood test in 3 months. I dont like that.

Thank you!

@KSman
@grungephreak
Happy thanksgiving. If you have a chance soon to see my last post and comment that would be super. Thank you.

I would wait 4 to 6 weeks like the restart sticky advises. If LH and FSH are good and test levels are good then things are looking good. If LH and FSH are good and test is low you are primary. If LH and FSH are low and then of course test is low you are secondary. When you are done weening off and LH and FSH do not maintain you are secondary. Time is key in this, though its hard because we do not want to feel poorly any longer. Do yourself the favor and wait six weeks, get the labs back and then you will know the next step. Good luck and have a blessed Thanksgiving!

1 Like

@KSman
I have a few questions that I hope you can help me out with. Including Thyroid issue. I appreciate your time.
Attached is also a summary of specific labs (instead of scrolling all the way up).

I started clomid 11/7. I believe (may be wrong) that my T production dropped like a rock from a short period of high stress. heres my plan.

  1. I just took blood work Monday and will get results soon. I expect with how am feeling and faster hair growth, better erections that I can get confirmation that LH and FSH are higher since on clomid and T production responded well.

  2. I will ween myself off of clomid (currently taking 25 EOD) will go 12.5 EOD for a week or 2 then 12.5 E3d.

  3. I will recheck my labs after am not sure how long after I stop clomid. If my T maintains and LH and FSH are normal, I think I do not need TRT.

  4. If labs no good, i think I rather go on injections then continue clomid for life.

THYROID. I have been reading all your great insights @KSman . My hands feel cold (not in the summer - i am in NY) for many years. It never hit me. As I type this my hands feel cold. My oral temp during the day have been 97.7. Just starting checking morning and it was 96.8 This morning. I am getting another digital thermometer to confirm. My son came home yesterday same thermometer he was 98.6 (good to be young!).

I am thinking about IR but I dont want to mess up my plan in determining why My T dropped and if its primary or secondary or none of those if it was just temporary.

I have IOSTAT that I can use to do IR. Here are my questions.

  1. Is it a good ideal to do IR now while on clomid and while am trying to figure out what my body is doing?

  2. How long after I stop clomid should I retake labs?

  3. If my results from blood from Monday are not what I expected, may change my train of thought. Does my plan sound logical?

Thank you again.

@KSman I just got labs back. Please Take a look and see my questions in post directly above. Am not happy with results. At least I think the pituitary responded well to clomid. But testosterone i think should be higher with all that LH. Thyroid slowed down.
Thank you.

Thyroid could be affected from not using iodized salt. Provide history of that.

IR must have 150-200mcg selenium, not optional.

Your oral body temps [10/26/0217?] low while the active hormone fT3 was very close to mid-range. This suggests rT3 is elevated and should be tested again. Stress is a major factor with adrenal fatigue and rT3.

Your drop of fT4, fT3 and increase in TSH could be from dropping iodine. fT3=2.8 expected to reduce temperatures.

I do not suggest testing T3, T4, only the free hormones.
With low T3 this suggests low thyroid binding globulin. While this condition could be inherited or acquired, it is not considered harmful.

Yes, your testes could be producing more T, but are not. At 40 years, there are signs of aging. Thyroid fT3[rT3] may affect testicular activity. You are Vit-D3 deficient, that affects everything. Find 5000iu Vit-D3 taking one per day, 25,000iu for first 5 days. Also at your age, DHEA is dropping. DHEA-S labs to eval. 25mg DHEA available on vitamin display shelves. Some EFAs may be helpful, fish oil and/or flax seed meal/oil.

Your high LH/FSH might be leading to high E2 levels. - waiting
Not helpful when you change testing methods.
Increased SHBG suggesting E2 is higher even as higher FT is an opposing force.

See thyroid basics sticky for references to:
stress
illness, infections, inflammation, chronic, acute
adrenal fatigue
Wilson’s book


Please read the stickies found here: About the T Replacement Category - #2 by KSman

  • advice for new guys - need more info about you
  • things that damage your hormones
  • protocol for injections
  • finding a TRT doc

Evaluate your overall thyroid function by checking oral body temperatures as per the thyroid basics sticky. Thyroid hormone fT3 is what gets the job done and it regulates mitochondrial activity, the source of ATP which is the universal currency of cellular energy. This is part of the body’s temperature control loop. This can get messed up if you are iodine deficient. In many countries, you need to be using iodized salt. Other countries add iodine to dairy or bread.

KSman is simply a regular member on this site. Nothing more other than highly active.

I can be a bit abrupt in my replies and recommendations. I have a lot of ground to cover as this forum has become much more active in the last two years. I can’t follow threads that go deep over time. You need to respond to all of my points and requests as soon as possible before you fall off of my radar. The worse problems are guys who ignore issues re thyroid, body temperatures, history of iodized salt. Please do not piss people off saying that lab results are normal, we need lab number and ranges.

The value that you get out of this process and forum depends on your effort and performance. The bulk of your learning is reading/studying the suggested stickies.

My father has hypo thyroid. Wife always buys salt with iodide. I have to say that I generally use little salt on my food, wife does cook with it but nothing ever tastes salty.

I dont know my temp reading when my ft3 was better. I gather that my temp during the days was always around 97.7 from my memory. Wife has same temp in the morning as me 96.8.

So you think I should start IR while weening off of clomid? I have amazon delivering selenium 200 today - convinced wife to try IR. Wife is very over weight.

I already dosed at 5000 IU of D several weeks ago and take 2000 oil IU a day now. The D results are pending with the Estradiol.

I have been taking 1 gm of fish oil EOD, dr said for HDL help.
So its ok to take DHEA without blood test?

So what should i do next -am so confused (not from you) from me. I read thats if am hypo I am not making that LH - GnRH connection. So should I ween myself off of clomid, take more blood AND THEN try IR? then more labs to see if I need medication for tyroid THEN see how T production responds before I do TRT?
Also since at this point free t4 is low and IR does not work, is just a t4 medication best route to handle thyroid issue?

Thank you very much.

I got my Estradiol-s back its 20.5 (range 8-35)
Vit D 29 range over 30. So It went up from 20 to 29. May do another few days of high doses.

Interesting I still have issues with maintaining an erection at times. @KSman please see post directly above too and hopefully you can answer my questions.
Also, new basal thermometer reads .3 higher than the one I was using. Basal takes about a minute to show final reading. Other I had 10 seconds or so.
Thank you!

Looks like everyone in the home may be iodine deficient.

With low thyroid function, mitochondria are slow, body temps fall, energy levels are down, every system in the body is affected, brain and libido for sure. Mitochondria burn less sugars and lipids/cholesterol from blood stream, insulin resistance and weight gain are expected and cholesterol increases. Our bodies are not perfect, we need to make sure that we avoid things that allow decline. Vit-D3 converts to Vit-D25 an essential steroid type hormone that has many effects as it is needed for proper gene expression. While fT3 directs mitochondria, CoQ10 enables and it made in the liver, some who take statin drugs to reduce cholesterol can have a resulting CoQ10 deficiency. Mitochondria make oxygen free radicals as a bi product of making thyroid hormones. The enzymes that clean the free radicals up have selenium as catalytic reaction sites in their structure. A lack of selenium leads to tissue damage and the immune system cleans up the wreckage but can mis-imprint the mess as foreign and then you have an auto-immune disease. High TSH+time+selenium_deficiency is a bad combo. Low iodine leads to high TSH. High TSH can lead to thyroid nodules that make thyroid hormones freely, not controlled by TSH feedback loop. So over time low iodine presents as hypothyroid but can progress to hyperthyroid. Very few doctors understand this progression and triggers.

When hypo from low/inadequate iodine, when introducing more iodine, this appears to be a period of high vulnerability if selenium deficient.

The medical community has forgotten the lessons of iodized salt from 95 years ago. The thyroid lab ranges mean that they do nothing until the pathology is really horrible. The thyroid lab ranges represent the base level of thyroid pathology in the community that was used to establish the ‘normal’ ranges and that process automatically determines that only 5% of the population can be considered unhealthy. If 100% of the population had cancer, that method would consider that cancer was normal.

great info. Can you please take a look at my questions above in my last 2 posts? I want to try and do things in the right order.
Thank you.

Take DHEA without labs? Maybe, then test DHEA-S later to see if you get to mid-range or better. DHEA starts to decline in 30’s. But feel free to test DHEA. Some will be OK at age 40, I may have jumped the gun on that, given my perspective as a senior citizen.

I see little reason to connect use of SERM’s and IR.

T4 work well for some people, but others then cannot make a enough T4–>T3 from that and they will do better with a T4+T3 combo. Many doctors are clueless about that. Thyroid issues are more complex than TRT and you will need to soak up knowledge from more than this post or forum. IR worked well for me for a few years after wife purchased a non-iodized product. But over time that failed and then T4+T3 would not restore body temps and I now used time release compounded 25 mcg T3.

@systemlord @anon10035199 @grungephreak
I will try some IR. if anyone can comment - Not sure of I should ween off of clomid and then do injections for life. Am 40. I am leaning to injections because with a high normal LH I only produced 500 T on clomid. I was taking 25EOD of clomid. Just started 12.5 EOD, I think I need it every day. The day I skip clomid I have no wood and cant maintain erection.
If clomid slowed down my thyroid, I much rather to injections.

But I like that i was able to get a reading of 20 on E2 after a month of clomid. WHen I think about it I must have had low T for more than a year, just that when i was younger it did not affect me sexually until 40. I have more hair growth on face than I ever had before. I use to shave 2x a week, now need 4x.
Any opinion from any of you would be great. Theres a lab chart a few post up.
Thanks.

@anon10035199 if you have a chance to comment. Thanks

What is your question exactly? I’m not super knowledgeable about thyroid or clomid.

That’s ok. I will keep everyone updated. I stopped taking clomid, and will see how it goes. will recheck labs in a few weeks, unless I crash before than. I just done like the idea of staying on clomid when all it does is get me to 500. I am thinking about mono hcg therapy as well.

Why don’t you just do TRT???

Shots for life and not sure if dr. will give hcg (not for fertility) but to have balls and most of all I read other things in our body need LH.
And I think what happens when I get older (am 41 now), like 60 or 70, shots just continue?

If it’s between the shots v.s feeling the effects of low T I’ll take the shots. You make the choice sound difficult. When I started TRT I told the doctor I wanted to inject once weekly, the idea of injecting more often I wasn’t a fan of until I got tired of feeling mediocre (low SHBG) and all I had to do to feel better was inject more frequently.

Shots for life seem like a big task in the beginning, but it really isn’t. Especially using the sub q method.

Do you have kids? Are you planning on them? I understand there are some people that love HCG, and cant live without it, or cant stand the shrinkage from test. If this is the case, you either need to get over it, get hcg, or suffer.

Seems like a straightforward answer to me.

I am super excited. I decided to call the Dr. and inform him I decided to try the injections.
I stopped clomid early last week and I can already feel that my T is decreasing from the 500 level that clomid achieved (which I think is low for me). I am starting to get mild hot flashes, penile sensation declining, ED worse. I actually finally had decent facial hair growth with the clomid, so I must have been low for a long time just that when I was younger my body adapted better and had almost no symptoms.

I am going to try to do the 50 mg 2x a week right off the back. We will see how it goes when the office calls me back. I may mention HCG, to see their take on it, but will not insist on that at this point.