Starting Daily Anastrozole. I Don't Care What You Say

You wouldn’t believe how many guys there are in my FB group alone with levels over 1800. Then you go look at their profiles and expect to see some jock. Instead, it’s just some regular guy, clearly not in it for gains. They only feel normal at that level. They don’t even understand all these intricacies like we do. For them it’s just medicine. There are TONS of guys like this. It’s getting out of hand. In twenty years most men will be on TRT. Just watch.

And, yes, we can’t call it TRT anymore. TT for Testosterone Therapy perhaps. Nobody is replacing anything anymore.

True, I forgot about that. So would you prefer to be pain free until you’re 70 or be on pain for your entire life and live to 90?

If you had to take 300mg a week and had total at 2200 to achieve that, how would you react to people telling you that no man needs more than 150mg and anything over 200 is a cycle? These are ignorant fools.

I don’t take 300mg/wk (closer to 125mg/wk), but if this were the case I’d probably continue using on the basis of the risk/reward being in my favour. If 300mg allowed me to live a pain free life, that would be absolutely life altering. I don’t think I’d make it to 70 on 300mg forever, but if 300mg/wk significantly reduced my daily level of discomfort, or even cut it in half I’d keep at it.

Honestly, I’m young so perhaps my opinion is amenable to changing within with age… but if 300mg gave me just twenty more good, pain free years as opposed to the alternative I’d probably opt for that.

I can understand the prospect of a subset of people using higher dosages on the basis of individualistic benefit, this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s healthy though. For some you could argue the impact on quality of life supersedes the risk involved. I don’t like to make statements or absolutes as I have no real world, clinical experience within relation to managing men/women on HRT but I fully understand your point of view :slight_smile:

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Totally off topic but have you ever looked into Thymosin beta 4 and BPC-157? My sister has lived in debilitating pain for 30 years. I gave her an injection of an entire vial of each and she called me 48 hours later, sobbing, because her pain has vanished. I gave her two more such injections over a period of a month. She’s cured. Her pain has not returned and she has regained full mobility. I’ll be doing a video on it. Peptides are the future… I’m sold.

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What would you do if you had a patient who was in the physiologic range and had all the symptoms of low T? Then you do a few experiments and realize he is only symptom free when his levels are double that, regardless of what you’ve tried. Do you:

A) Double it so that he is symptom free or

B) Tell him it’s supra, way too dangerous, so you prescribe 8 different meds to help him feel ‘normal’?

Before you answer, what do you do when you start seeing this occur over and over and over with dozens of patients and it is becoming more and more prevalent each year? What do you do? Stick to the range?

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I’m so sorry I missed those. I’ve been away from this forum for some time and I continue to get tagged in stuff all the time from newbies joining the site and finding old posts of mine. It wasn’t intentional.

I only visited because someone tagged me in something, and someone I know personally asked me to go check it out. I didn’t have any intention on staying yet I keep getting sucked back in :wink:

You realize, of course, that running ‘supra’ (debatable what that even is anymore) does not necessarily equate to higher HCT. I’ve been on 300mg a week for quite some time, for example, and all my blood parameters are normal.

If HCT has jumped and they’re experiencing symptoms of it being an issue, as in your example of BP of 140/90, then absolutely this causes an issue. This individual’s body doesn’t handle higher levels of androgens well (with the assumption that he’s properly hydrated as this can skew HCT results) and either needs to lower his dose or some other means. My point is what do you do when a guy has HCT at 55 and feels absolutely fantastic and is completely symptom free? We see this a lot. I’ve spoken to some physicians and demanded a number as what they consider high enough to be a concern. “Sixties” was the response.

The same example they always give me is the men living at altitude with high levels. Why is it not causing them wear and tear? Why aren’t they all donating blood every few weeks?

Does it need to be monitored? Yes. Do we need to rush to a clinic to do a phlebotomy just because your levels get high sometimes? No. Keep an eye on it, by all means. Symptoms need to be addressed. But symptom free and totally optimized? What do we do here? If it would cause damage it wouldn’t cause ‘immediate’ damage. If it was monitored and we start to slowly see issues develop over time, as would be the case, we would intervene and make any required changes.

Does that clarify my position on this topic?

Plenty of guys that I knew are dead from use. It is almost always categorized as “Congenital heart failure” or something to that effect. It’s not congenital, it’s running a gram of test as a base and using other stuff in cycles. Some guys can do it and live a while, a lot of guys will suddenly drop dead and everyones will act surprised. I have a former training partner with a pacemaker, the question is whether it’s the result of overuse of AI’s or overuse of AAS. Could be both. We lean towards AI’s being the culprit in his case.

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I’ll send this to a few people. If I get a reply I will most definitely let you know.

You’d probably get a lot more response if you posted this in my FB group… but I’ll see what I can do.

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What some guys do is they create a dummy account and don’t add any actual ‘friends’. They use the account for the sole purpose of joining a Facebook group so they can participate in discussion on topics like you do here. This way you have no actual ‘news feed’, no notifications… just posts and threads like you’re already doing here.

By the way, 300mg gives me a total that hovers around 1200 and a free that hovers around 35, sometimes up to 40. It’s hardly anything crazy. 1200 was in the normal range just a few years ago. I’m not running any crazy levels. HOWEVER, I do come across men getting free T over 40 using a peasly 100mg a week. This is why I keep banging my head on the wall when people talk about doses. Doses are IRRELEVANT. Serum levels attained with said dose is much more relevant. Even then, serum levels don’t equate to symptom resolution either so…?

If you lived on a deserted island, with limitless supplies of testosterone and no access to labs, what would you do? You would figure out how much you needed to take per week and how often to take it to resolve symptoms… and life would be so much easier :wink:

Appreciate all the comments, commentary, and intentional and unintentional humor. When I log on to TNation it is after doing my own research into studies, clinical and reviewed. My intention for a forum is honestly to get anecdotal input from people who have personal experience. Personal experience can be subjective of course, but when taken with the entire picture is important. Imagine following one of the protocols from a doctor or from a study and you are in fact the 1 in 20,000? You may look to a forum to find others with the same case, and yes I’ve read posts discussing that this may be misinformation. But I think people need to utilize forums for what they are, conversations of opinions and personal experience. I do agree that everyone reaction to protocols may be different based on your own physiology. That is why some of us are on TRT to begin with. So AI, no AI, my thought is there are cases that this can be personal and I wouldn’t fault someone for asking for anecdotal information over and above their no doubt impeccable ability to google. Everyone needs to understand that using anything exogenous will be cause and effect on the body, and understand the risks prior. Understand, and move forward.

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What I do enjoy about that particular group is that we get a lot of anecdotal evidence from guys sharing their experiences. We also see what different physicians around the globe are doing. When we see a lot of problematic guys from the same physician, it becomes clear that strategy isn’t working. We also see guys doing very well coming from a particular physician so we inquire as to what that physician is doing that the others aren’t. We have a number of actual physicians in the group with some specializing in TRT, men’s health etc… others are endocrinologists, GPs, urologists, ophthalmologists, naturopaths… so sometimes a guy will make a post and he winds up getting an expert in a specific field come in with a perspective that many of us wouldn’t have thought of. There is also a constant sharing of new literature and studies. I have a group chat going on with a number of physicians and they are constantly sharing with me what they are seeing in their practice… stuff that is working and stuff that isn’t. All for the betterment of our own knowledge so we can help more guys out… nothing more.

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For the past 18 months I’ve been doing 300mg a week. On 250mg a week I was 80% there but still had some issues that didn’t seem to get resolved. With the 300mg, I’m 100% and symptom free.

To anyone reading this, this is a HIGH dose for most men that would put your levels to double or potentially even triple of what I have so do NOT use this as a point of reference as I’m an outlier.

I have tried weekly, twice weekly, EOD, and daily. I have tested each of these methods several times. EOD gives me the best results FOR ME. So, 85mg EOD is what I do. I’ve switched between SubQ shots and IM shots and don’t notice any difference either way, though some men can see a huge difference between the two.

Serum levels last time I did 250mg a week EOD were 1068 ng/dL with free of 28 ng/dL.

On 300mg a week, my total always hovers around 1200 ng/dL with free always sitting between 35-40 ng/dL.

SHBG has always been between 18-20 anytime I’ve measured it.

Bloods are done the day of injeciton, prior to injection, as it always should be. This would be considered best practices for ‘trough’, though there is hardly any actual ‘trough’ when doing EOD shots.

I’ll also add, my prescription is for 250 and I get the extra 50 on my own as I don’t want to put unneeded stress on my prescribing physician. I’m in Canada so the laws are rather lax here for this type of thing. Nobody is going to send me to prison for having a couple of vials of testosterone and, on rare occasion, nandrolone. It’s very different in the USA.

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Appreciate your comments. I suppose my point is that I do like reading personal experiences as much as the studies. At times I see guys sharing their own thoughts getting shot down because its not whats in the literature. Danny I have followed your youtube prior to getting tested and on TRT and joining this forum so I respect your expertise. Wish I would have sooner, life has a way of getting in the way!

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You’re quite welcome! We can’t completely disregard anecdotes and only use studies, I agree. However, when you’re caught up with the literature and hear an anecdote, you become significantly more educated as to what the issue might be based on science on not on bro science.

If I had a dollar for every one who contacted me that insisted that they needed an AI, and we simply tweaked their protocol a tad and suddenly all those ‘high e2 issues’ vanished, yet e2 serum levels remained virtually unchanged. Had I not been caught up with the literature, I would have assumed E2 was causing the issues, because ‘bro science’, and spent the rest of the time trying to figure out how much more or how much less Arimidex he needs to be taking which would be an epic waste of time.

The more science we learn, stuff like how aromatization actually occurs, where it occurs, what are you actually measuring when doing labs, what can fluctuate wildly throughout the day… stuff like being hydrated to get accurate hct numbers… why PSA isn’t really a good indicator of anything… I could go on an on. You need to get caught up with the science and use those tools to solve the issues coming in. Without them, we’re all just making guesses. I want to keep guessing to a minimum and I can only accomplish that if I know what is actually occurring based on men’s physiology that we can demonstrate and not anecdotal evidence. So when something can be demonstrated in the literature backed up by a ton of references… and then you start going through all the references… and then you can start applying said techniques with men and seeing that you can demonstrate the same outcome as in the studies… it sure as hell becomes difficult to deny. Then you hear the bro science guys say it’s all crap and you just want to strangle them LMAO

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That’s one HELL of a freakin’ difference between you and I on the same dose. So you now understand why I get all worked up when I hear “Anyone who needs more than 200mg a week is on a steroid cycle”. Meanwhile the guy on 100mg a week is WAY higher than me. I’ve seen guys taking 400mg a week are barely get their free T over 30.

Guys need to stop referring to a dose as something you can use to compare anything with. It’s utterly useless.

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My FT on 100mg split E3.5D was 178 (35-155).

I’ve upped to 250mg split E3.5D.

Hopefully this amount gets me up to at least 250 FT or more and i can feel some sorta benefit from TRT, primarily libido.

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Hell of a good strategy there? Wonder who gave you that idea? :wink:

17.8 ng/dL free T… don’t know too many guys feeling good there. That 250 should get your free T probably closer to 40 ng/dL. If you’re not feeling any difference at that level, testosterone isn’t your issue. You should feel ‘something’… anything. Then if you do, assess over time, and you can always work your way back down if you need to, if dose reduction has no impact on symptom resolution.

I had to do the same exercise when I started. All the docs put me on baby doses and nothing work. I demanded a proper experiment to go to an ‘extreme’ and do 200mg a week just to see if I felt anything. That made all the difference in the world and I finally felt something. Started lowering dose and I was getting worse so it was clear I needed to go up, which I eventually did.

Funny thing… all that time I was demanding that they give me an AI because my E2 was 40 and it was WAY above the 20-30 range that ‘every bro science guy knows that’s the best range to be in’ LMAO

I’ll never forget the first thing I noticed when I stopped that AI. I was able to BREATHE better. It was so odd. It’s as if my lungs had opened up. Not saying this occurs with everyone but it most definitely occurred with me.

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On an old protocol of 300mg every other week, i did feel something at times, so i think upping the dose will help.

Second 125mg shot tonight. I’ll check in in a few weeks time… or earlier if i start to feel something.

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That’s where I stand most of the year. I feel great. Nice to meet you LOL. Thats on 140mg/wk. My TT is usually around 8-900 ng/dl. I have run short periods of 300mg/wk and 500mg/wk. I feel the same at 300mg/wk but at 500mg/wk I have issues with E2 (breast pain / gyno lump formation) as well as anxiety. Not sure what my levels were at either though.