My 3 Year TRT Journey from Hell. Advice Needed

HCG is necessary to provide a LH analogue while on exogenous TRT. It completes the downstream hormone cascade: Cholesterol>Pregnenolone>DHEA>Cortisol, etc. I do recommend sublingual or topical Pregnenolone cream 12.5mg daily to support Progesterone/Cortisol pathway.

Prop hurting is one of those bodybuilding anecdotes. But those guys are doing 100mg per day. I do 10mg/day with a 28g 1/2in slin pin. I can inject pretty much anywhere pain free. Try the pregnenolone sublingual. Also why did he advise against dhea? Mine dropped to around 30 on a scale of 200+.

I 100% agree with you and you actually are stating almost my exact protocol. Iā€™m on daily prop and cream. 5-10mg sublingual dhea and pregnenolone. Plus 100iu HCG eod. This gets me to an upper range natural diurnally fluctuating hormone status. But for the OP considering he was struggling I recommended pulling some variables and starting from scratch and building from there.

Thank you for your replyā€¦ Can you clarify for meā€¦ I thought examastane killed the enzyme that converts test to e2? There is no e2 rebound? From what Iā€™ve read it takes time for the body to produce the enzyme again?

Thank you for your replyā€¦ I was hoping someone might have a theory as to why I would feel good sex drive after discontinuation of a short burst of high dose testosterone or dianable with trt dose running in the backgroundā€¦ It really does baffle me especially as test prop or dbol have a very short half life in which case they would have cleared my system leaving me back on the trt dose only and yet I had this short period of feeling great or how I should be feeling on a 24/7 basisā€¦ I did consider getting a saliva test for cortisol and believe I may be able to do DHEA at the same time and I will now do this at the earliest opportunityā€¦ So just to clarify are you saying that the dbol or high test was correcting my adrenals or cortisol and then when the high test cleared they were working OK and the trt dose was working for me? What I will say is that some ago when suffering with low test and before starting trt I did get blood work done for morning cortisol and it came back top end of normal on two occasionsā€¦ I would really appreciate if you could add further commentā€¦ Much appreciatedā€¦

But you know that cortisol synthesis is done in the adrenal glands? And unless you are a ferret (yes ferrets how cool is that!) you dont have LH receptor in your adrenals. And to check the functioning of the adrenal glands your physician tests DHEA-S.

Leydig cells contain LH receptors but pregnenolon or progesteron synthesis is not impacted by LH withdrawl due to HPT axis shut down, because LH triggers T synthesis by regulation of two enzyme downstream of pregnenolon or progesteron, 17, 20 lyase and 17 beta HSD. In leydig cells it has actually be shown that upon cessation of LH stimulation the levels of pregnenolon and progesterone go up and not down due to accumulation these precursors.

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No its not. The fact that morning cortisol came back at the high end essentially excludes adrenal insufficiency. And that salivary cortisol is useless to identify AI has also been shown multiple times.

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:heart:

Fom Wikipedia ā€œExemestane is quickly absorbed from the gut, but undergoes a strong first-pass effect in the liver. Highest blood plasma concentrations are reached after 1.2 hours in breast cancer patients and after 2.9 hours in healthy subjects. Maximal aromatase inhibition occurs after two to three days.[10] 90% of the absorbed substance are bound to plasma proteins. The liver enzyme CYP3A4 oxidizes the methylidene group in position 6, and the 17-keto group (on the five-membered ring) is reduced by aldo-keto reductases to an alcohol. Of the resulting metabolites, 40% are excreted via the urine and 40% via the feces within a week. The original substance accounts for only 1% of excretion in the urine. The terminal half-life is 24 hours.[6][13]ā€

It is a ā€œSuicideā€ inhibitor, but you are always making more, so you should start coming back up after a few days. It depends on individual production and how effective Exemestane is in the individual.

Thank you

Thank you for everyones comments hereā€¦ I guess there may never be an explanation as to why I get libido for a short duration after discontinuing ten days of dbol on top of my TRT and then libido disappears on TRTā€¦ I feel confident it is something I can repeat and it will happen every timeā€¦ I also find it a coincidence that despite having good blood work on TRT not only do have no libido but my body also has a problem with injury healingā€¦

Going forward, I am thinking of dropping the AI and just running small daily injections of test prop and HCGā€¦ I may consider afterwards of introducing a DHEAS supplementā€¦ I will post back here to keep others informed of my progress incase it may help others in my situationā€¦ Thank you allā€¦

KNOWLEDGE!!!
thank you.

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Was test prop the first ester that you used? Did you previously experiment with test e or c? Were they not effective for you?

Prop wasnā€™t the first. I did C, E, sustanon, etc plus ancillaries. you name it. only thing I never tried TRT wise was pellets. Like many I was one of those guys who would feel good sometimes and was constantly tweaking things. There would always be a window where I felt great and I kept trying to zero in on that window over the course of years and landed where I am. Not that I felt horrible on the various protocols Iā€™ve tried. But thereā€™d be these great moments and i have the type of personality that couldnā€™t let it sit and I had to figure out how to make that sustainable and repeatable.

My daily swing is free T peaks 35 and troughs at 20 with prop and cream.

How are you now feeling on a daily basis? Good libido? Is it stable?

Libido is great and consistent.

Pleased to hear it m8ā€¦ All the bestā€¦ :+1:

Hi m8, can I ask, are you in the UK? My doc has written me a script for test propionate but itā€™s no longer available here in Englandā€¦ Iā€™m told by three different pharmacys that itā€™s no longer licensedā€¦ Is your testosterone propionate supplied under the trade name Virormone?

Iā€™m in US.