Hello, I am 33 years old. This is my second cycle. I just started my 4th week yesterday evening. I got blood work done yesterday b4 my pin. I have not taken any AIs this cycle. I was going to see if I could go without this time… My cycle is 500mg test E, pinned 250mg twice a week, wed and sunday (planning on adding anavar on week 6). HCG 250ui on tuesdays and 250ui on saturdays. Got my blood results today and got me a bit scared. My e2 is somewhat high. No itchy or sore nipples. Should i be concerned about this? Should I start my arimidex .25ed or .25 eod or .5 ed or .5 eod? And get blood done again in 2 weeks? or is this level of E2 normal as long as i dont start getting gyno symptoms? Sorry if you dont need all the numbers, I really didnt know if all of this is necessary. Thanks in advance for any advice!
ok, I just took .25. Do you think i need to get my blood work again in 1 week or wait 2 weeks?
also, if I up the HCG, will my LH and FSH go back up??
and Do I have anything to worry about with BUN and BUN/Creatinine ratio??
I honestly wouldn’t during cycle. HCG is most useful for helping the transition off cycle back to normal. I would wait until a week after your last pin to increase. It might come up a bit now if you increased but remember you’re on heavy doses of suppressing hormones–it’s not going to make much difference right now in concrete terms.
No, i would not worry about the creatinine ratio unless you are unhealthy or have a medical history. Training load has a big effect on creatinine and BUN numbers in a panel. Particularly creatinine.
Hi mate - I would say that HCG is great to use during a cycle. As an LH analogue it will mimic the LH and keep the testes running, thus making the transition to SERM and coming off cycle much easier. As it suppresses LH i see at as less useful post cycle and if not used during cycle then you have more damage to recover from. It is generally accepted that the pituitary fires back up very quickly after cycle in most cases whereas the testes can take a while to get going again so the HCG really helps here.
I know you have been around a long time and would appreciate your thoughts on this.
Hey buddy! As far as the ‘generally accepted’ part, where are you getting that from? I’ll admit I haven’t kept a close eye on the research literature but I haven’t seen anything about recovery kinetics of pituitary post cycle in there. In fact at least one case study reports the opposite, and anecdotally we all see the same posts (“Help! I cycled and now feel like shit 6 months later”) in fairly moderate frequency.
I should clarify my remarks first–my position is that using hcg for the last 2-4 weeks or so of higher-than-natural testosterone is enough . This is also why I would rather use 750 iu/week than 500 iu during the whole thing. This is pretty well in line with what Bill Roberts has suggested in the past as well, as he has mentioned either using it on cycle at ~500 or in the last ~4 weeks at 750-1500 per week. Because the OP is already using 500 iu and his values are still flat-lined (which shouldn’t be too surprising for obvious reasons–AAS use as well as hcg being an LH analogue) I don’t see any reason increasing it now while still on the cycle will help. Keep in mind I am not suggesting he go OFF hcg.
Also, typically long term hormone administration has certain feedbacks that come into play with it–the HPTA with steroids, etc. With very short cycles like 2 weeks you see almost no real disturbance, but the longer the cycle the longer the disturbance if no steps are taken to mitigate those feedbacks the harder and longer recovery is. This is the whole reason PCT is necessary right? And it happens in numerous other areas besides AAS use. Well, if one’s goal is to restore natural production I don’t like the idea of exposing the body to supraphysiological levels of an LH analogue for long periods of time. Now I will grant that the body’s sensitivity to hcg dosing doesn’t seem to be overly ‘finicky’ for boosting testosterone, but I don’t really see a huge benefit to long term hcg use during cycle as long as you get ~4 weeks in at the end and clear ahead of time for SERM use.
Since he’s using 500 mg of test E the approximate point of reaching natural concentrations will be about ~3/4 weeks after his last pin (500 > 250 > 125 >62.5), following which he would start SERMs. That leaves 1 week at 500, and 3 weeks at 750+. Half life of hcg is ~ 1 day so only a few days are needed to clear. So if for some reason my suggestion to increase at 1 week post pin is disagreed with it’s not really all that problematic for me and he can start a week or two earlier.
Thanks for this - i am finishing off at work at the moment so will read more thoroughly later.
I missed the part of his post where he mentioned already using HCG so apologies for that.
With regards to the pituitary recovering quickly the best explanation i have seen was by Dr Rand McCain on the Youtube Channel muscle insider. To give a bit more context he was talking about how it turns back on pretty much instantly and gets LH/FSH going again and that it can take a lot longer for the testes to get going if they have been shutdown for an extended period of time. i have also seen a couple of other sources that support this that i considered reliable but i cannot remember where unfortunately.
Would you mind also giving your thoughts on managing HCG use for younger TRT users that blast and cruise with a hope of maintaining some fertility. I generally stay on 250iu mon/wed/fri.
Thanks again for the input and sorry for hijacking the thread - hopefully it is somewhat relevant…
Haven’t seen that video, I’ll have to go check it and him out.
For longer cycles like blast and cruise I’d probably recommend the HCG at least on and off, if not just staying on. With the decision being made to never come all the way off higher than normal doses of test, my dislike of long term HCG is lessened considerably as it is probably the least problematic way of keeping things running. I should definitely note that there’s no literature saying that long term administration of HCG is bad, it is just personal preference on my end because HCG dosing will keep GnRH shut down at the pituitary and generally I don’t like chronically using things that mess with the pituitary when they can be avoided and still produce results in 4 weeks. Of course, if deciding on blast/cruise then that is kind of a moot point in many ways already lol. In the context of this thread I’m thinking about HCG for ‘standard length’ cycles 8 or 12 weeks.
yes, as you can tell, I am new to the game. I dont plan on doing pct. was just going to cruise on trt levels after cycle. and go back on cycle in a month or 2. Can I take HCG my entire life to keep testicles at normal size and hanging low?
Hahaha. No, I used to post occasionally years ago. I got bored and frustrated (for obvious reasons) when people like BushidoBadBoy and others stopped posting interesting things. I come back in and check in occasionally…I think before the last couple days I checked in sometime around last year lol