I’m just curious about empirical HCG dosing among the members here and how effective they believe their dosage is.
I take 238iu E3D. (Accidently put an extra .5cc BA water in my mix) My nuts are pre trt size and I feel good. I’ve read post here where as little as 100iu is injected 2xW and others that are 1000iu per week. The norm appears to be 250iu EOD.
Would a pregnenolone or progesterone testing be a good indicator for effective dosing adjustments?
Does anyone know of any studies that have covered LH receptor down regulation over long term hcg usage at these levels?
250iu hCG SC EOD was shown to be a LH replacement dose. So that natural level of LH receptor activation is thought not be a problem.
If one wants to take less hCG, the benefit would be less cost and for those who get too much testicular E2 generation with hCG, a lower dose might solve that issue. [This is where I have been suggesting that lower doses should be explored.]
Another approach would be a lower dose that still keeps the testes in an acceptable physical state.
Pregnenolone levels depend on many other things, such as CpQ10 levels, anti-oxidant levels and many other things. So that is not going to be a dose driver.
There are studies that show that 17-HydroxyProgesterone is related directly to intertesticular production of Testosterone. and that 17-HydroxyProgesterone is impacted directly by HCG. so by monitoring your 17-HydroxyProgesterone levels you can determine if you are taking too little or too much.
[quote]jrm850 wrote:
I’m just curious about empirical HCG dosing among the members here and how effective they believe their dosage is.
[/quote]
FWIW, I can tell you that I started out doing TRT w/o hcg for 2 months. 1mg of anastrozole effectively controlled the E2. But, my testicle started shrinking, so I started doing 250iu EOD of hcg. I found after several weeks that I could not control my E2 any more, no matter how much anastrozole I took. So, after reading the threads and discovering that hcg can escalate E2 in the testicles, I cut back to 160iu hcg EOD. I am doing very fine with that amount and my nut is back to normal size.
[quote]jrm850 wrote:
I’m just curious about empirical HCG dosing among the members here and how effective they believe their dosage is.
[/quote]
FWIW, I can tell you that I started out doing TRT w/o hcg for 2 months. 1mg of anastrozole effectively controlled the E2. But, my testicle started shrinking, so I started doing 250iu EOD of hcg. I found after several weeks that I could not control my E2 any more, no matter how much anastrozole I took. So, after reading the threads and discovering that hcg can escalate E2 in the testicles, I cut back to 160iu hcg EOD. I am doing very fine with that amount and my nut is back to normal size.
[/quote]
Thanks for the info TG. This is really what I was after. I haven’t had labs done since I started HCG (labs next week) but My Anastrozole dose is up to 2mg per week now just to keep my nipples from itching. I do 120mg per week coupled with the 238iu Hcg. Before I started HCG, I was taking 150mg per week and 1mg of anastrozole. My E2 level was 36. So I knew I would have to up my Azole dose to 1.6mg per week without taking hcg into consideration. I couldn’t find a lot of information about how much hcg raised T levels (I know, different for everyone) but I did remember KSman saying it raised his T level 17%. I made the assumption that I could expect roughly a 20% increase in T levels and aromatase from the HCG and had to either drop my T dose or increase My Azole dose accordingly. I dropped the T to 120 and raised the Azole to 1.6mg per week. I have slowly raise the Azole dose to 2mg according to sypmtoms.
i was taking 150mg test enan im shot once/wk for 6 wks w/out ari or hcg and recently switched to 50mg test enan e3d and 5mg ari e5d along with 140 iu hcg eod. i have been on this almost 4 wks and will be getting blood work done next week to see where things are at, but i suspect i may need to increase the hcg as sometimes my balls still hike up, but id say 2/3 to 3/4 of the time they are where they should be.
while doing only the test i noticed major atrophy so it has gotten better but like everyone on here i’m trying to tweak things to 100%. i also would like to switch to .25mg ari eod but my caps are .5mg and i feel my e2 levels are still a bit high at times.
Currently bringing hcg back to regime with bad experiences of from the past… 100-125 iu daily got my E2 to explode and eaven 2mg of anastrozole daily was not eunogh…
Now trying to find out would 50iu daily still do the expected work for testicular size without massive need of AI.