o, and just another thing…i’m not some kind of hippy health freak who hates people who eat meat and so on…i’m 44 now and for 10 years i’ve seen people around me dropping dead, young, old, healthy, unhealthy…so thats whats make you wonder, what is it that made a uncle harry that never smoked, Always hikking on holidays, eating normal, just some wine in the weekends, die of lungcancer ( just a example)!!! what is it that most have in common…food, most drink alcohol every day, just a few beers after work, but not considering themselfs alcoholic. Just pick up any product in a package in your wallmart and start reading what is really in there…even the so-called healthy foods and vegan shit is full of shit that just doesn’t belong in our body’s.
No, you cant avoid it, but you can be aware of the things we consume, and with the health problems worldwide, chronic pains/obesity/neurological stuff/ new diseases like ADHD/ALS/ Fribromyalgie and so on…we should all think about the where this comes from.
Nope, you definitely don’t have to be a “hippie health freak” to be concerned about environmental toxins and what’s in our food. I used to treat myself like shit. Cigarettes. Alcohol & weed every night. Dabbling in other drugs. Soda. Processed food. And so on.
I actually had a bit of an epiphany on this stuff in my early 30s. Cut out the cigs first. Then cleaned up my diet. Cut out the dabbling in pills and shit.
In my mid-30s, I got really into local food. Shop mostly at the farmer’s market and in the produce section of the store now. I think that high quality meat is one of the best things for your body. But the thing is… low quality, factory farmed meat that’s full of garbage is probably one of the worst things that you can put in your body. A grassfed steak from a local farm is a completely thing from cheap, mass produced ground beef.
I’ve actually probably crossed the line into “hippie health freak” in my journey to unfucking my mind and body. I’m not some hippie SJW, but I go to a Naturopath, I do yoga, and I get acupuncture done among other things. Am I 100% sure that all of it works? No. But it makes me feel better overall, so it’s worth it to me.
I’ve just gotten to a point where I’ve made major gains in my health and lifestyle, but kind of hit a plateau. And the final frontiers are getting off of SSRIs and getting in better shape exercise-wise.
Once I found out how low my Free T was, it explained why I had done all of that stuff but still had too little energy to work out and still felt so goddamn moody and felt like I still needed the SSRIs.
I’m really hoping that TRT is one of the final puzzle pieces healthwise that helps me to get get off of SSRIs and have enough energy to work out and fuck my wife instead of just falling asleep after dinner every night.
I would not advocate a diet full of mass-produced meat, but I know for a fact that a vegan/vegetarian diet is deficient in many micro-nutrients. It takes a few years to deplete your body’s stores of them, but there are things in meat that you do not get in plant-based food. Vegans have to supplement as time goes on, things like B12, magnesium, iron and a list of other things. Mass produced meat is pretty terrible nutritionally and tends to be flavour free, but avoiding meat altogether is worse than eating reasonable amount of that stuff. It’s better to avoid the mass-produced stuff, especially eggs, not just for your health but because it changes the supply by changing the demand. And my life experience makes me firmly anti-weed. I have been first-hand witness to too many people that use it at all different quantities. I don’t give a damn what the current fad is, weed is not good for you and should be avoided just the same as tobacco. Moderate use of alcohol can have benefial effects, and I don’t mean several beers a night, I mean a drink here and there of decent quality stuff.
As fr as 5-HTP, ravers use high doses to bridge off of MDMA, you can get a similar rush but it’s short-lived and down regulates everything for weeks. It needs to be used carefully.
It’s not our place to tell folks to stop ssri. Some really need it. It’s not always low t that causes these symptoms. Some of us have bad wiring and others have abused drugs to the point of no return.
If one can get off and live focused and happy then sure definitely get off. If I were put on an ssri for something temporary yah it’s ducked up.
But some men need it .
i’m affraid we just have a different view on some things like alcohol and weed, the meat part…we think the same, cause i know meat is good for you, and we started with SOME meat again, but it still is crap what is available to us from stores.
The 5htp, i didn’t know that, i just shared my way of quiting the meds, and trust me…people end up on metadon when quiting opiods, when you could push through yourself with the right mindset, nutrition and yes…weed…from quiting opiods you get RLS…look it up, weed stops this and make you sleep like a baby… but lets not turn this in to a bad discussion, i’m just sharing my thoughts, and one thing is certain, ssri’s are crap, and i cant immagine that a TRT and a ssri could work together.
indeed, not my place, but thats what forums are for…sharing your thoughts, doesn’t mean that i’m right or wrong, but who knows…maybe i’m the one that gives him the extra push he needed, cause no mather what you say…NOBODY needs this horrible med that makes you feel NOTHING. Or thats not completly true…big pharma needs it to spike up there biljons. they gave me this shit the first time i went to a doc with my problems, low energy Always tired, moody, low or no libido…hmmmm you must be depressed, here take this.
The first 2 weeks i remember verry wel…i was driving for my job, and the one moment i was driving in a street and the other moment i was on the freeway…i just lost the part between that. This stuff dont make you feel good or ok, it makes you feel nothing, dont care…and who knows, the topic poster also has high SHGB…me to, and guess what, the moment i introduced testosterone in to my life was the moment i felt normal for the first time in my life…looking back and looking at older bloodwork, this was Always the case, High SHBG, and this forum that i just found is the first one i found info on about high SHBG…cause i got bloodwork done recently, and the docs here tell me AGAIN…great bloodwork, you should be happy, that my SHBG is 118…ahhh we just use this to calculate your free test. I just cant immagine that him using a SSRI that makes you flat, gives him the full potentiial of TRT. And yes, some of us are mental unstable, but life is hard, and it sucks from time to time…deal with it, cause you only got somany years to go here…so how do you want to spend these years? Living like a zombie, or make the best of the crappy cards we are all dealt!!!
I have a drug addict brother, my opinion is not going to budge much on that. CBD oil on the other hand may be useful, but I think we’ll see over time with that one. I understand what you’re saying, and if weed helped you then that’s fine, I just would always advise against it based on experience. It might help, but I know for sure it can hurt, especially with an addictive personality.
i hear you, and i agree 100% on that part…but i could share it with him cause he allready used weed, so assuming that he is off now…
I’m from Amsterdam…the city of weed, for us it was normal, everybody smoked weed or almost everybody…when you a teenager living in Amsterdam then you spend your time in coffeeshops, but we all grow up, and then real life starts.
I would rather take all the alcoholics and addicts and give them an option of becoming addicted to weed or attempt to get sober with that chance of getting high or drunk again .
thanks for your input and opinion, i’m not here to get in to heated discussions with anybody so lets just leave it at this…
For michigan, i really hope you get your things together, from what i’ve understand is that you just had a baby? This is your main focus now, to be there for your family and when you see the joy of raising a kid then the rest will follow…good luck my friend.
Oh no not trying to. I don’t even smoke. FFS I walked into my garage and i smell marijuana being Smoked . How ironic.
Hey guys, so I was feeling really rough during the shut down in week 3 & 4, and my doctor advised going ahead and adding in the HCG. He wants me to do it twice a week, the day prior to each of my injections. Injected it a couple of days ago. Felt WAY better almost instantly. But now I’m another day out from my next HCG injection, and I’m feeling pretty rough again.
He has me doing 20 units (.2ml) twice a week. My bottle is 5,000IU, which directed me to mix it with 5ml of bacteriostatic water. So that would mean that 1ml is 1000IU, and .2ml is 200IU, correct?
From what I’m reading in the stickies, the half-life of HCG is 24-36 hours (which is probably why I’m feeling rough again now) and I should actually be injecting 250IU (.25ml) EOD. Is this correct?
Can/should I start with this protocol now since the HCG had me feeling so much better? Or wait until the 6 week mark? My doctor isn’t planning labs until 10 weeks.
Do I need to add in an AI or anything if I’m using HCG, or just wait to see if there are symptoms?
He’s trying to bridge your levels because they’re dropping off before the next dose. You cannot stay on hCG forever, it downregulates the receptors over time so that you will have to up the dose cycle off of it periodically. Better would be to get your new bloods because you probably need to bump your dose of test up a little.
This is normal, your body is adapting to the new hormone levels. Almost everyone has a rough time in the first couple of weeks, once levels have stabilized you should feel better.
Pretty frustrated here, guys. Just got my 5 week labs (I’m in week 6 now). My numbers are perfect, but I still feel like shit.
I had added in HCG (200iu EOD) in week 3 per my doctor’s advice. Prior to adding in the HCG, I felt like I was dying and was having straight up cognitive difficulties. I couldn’t remember basic industry terms at work and could barely hold a conversation. The HCG resolved that issue.
But I’m still feeling super moody. Irritable. Depressed. Anxious.
Thought my E2 was getting high, but labs show that it’s fine.
Not sure where to go from here. Doctor suggested possibly dropping my dose of Test.
I’m afraid that if I drop the HCG, I’ll go back to feeling like part of my brain is missing.
Getting a saliva cortisol test done this week to see if that could be an issue.
Doctor says that thyroid looks fine.
Does this sometimes just take awhile to start feeling the benefits? I hate to give up too early, but at this point part of me is wondering if I’m just not going to benefit from TRT.
Labs below (taken in trough):
Edit: Scheduled to get more complete labs in week 10.
So, Free T3 below bottom of the range, TSH above top of range, SHBG double the top of the range, prolactin sky high, free T is barely in range WITH TRT. Nothing about those thyroid numbers was okay, they are quite distressing actually. You test level was not high but not the problem. You quite clearly have a thyroid problem and need a new doctor, preferably one that graduated from medical school. Lowering your dose is laughably stupid, what is that supposed to do for you other than crash your free T back below range? What is he doing for that SHBG? Why the heck is it so high? Go see an endo and get rid of this doctor altogether.
So my current doctor is at a local “TRT mill”. Are there any great remote doctors that anyone can recommend? I know that Defy is one option, but I’d love to work with someone who’s really a rockstar. I remember seeing someone on here recently talking about a Dr in Georgia. Happy to fly anywhere in the US for an initial consult if need be.
Thyroid is terrible, another case of normal TSH and Free T3 is abnormally low. T-mills rarely care about their patients and are only selling a product for profit, they care about nothing else.
No experience dealing with thyroid issues other than what’s in the thyroid sticky. What’s the normal treatment? Is this a case where Iodine/Iodide supplementation might be useful or should I not fuck with it until I can talk to a doctor who knows what they’re doing?