I don’t drink very often. Only on occasion. I had an event. Either way il be smarter next time!
My E2 still showed <44pmol/L on the sensitive test so I believe at least that was accurate if alcohol consumption should have raised it.
LH should show a # by what I have read, but being new here, will let the experts take over. Even me being on TRT I should be zero and still mine showed .2
I think the test was skewed due to what I was up to the night before and the lack of sleep.
Also seems wrong to have a blank LH? The test must have malfunctioned somehow.
Have your libido/boners come back yet after pausing the arimidex?
Yeah it/they have. However I experienced merely one day where my morning wood was like it was when I started the Arimidex… so hard woke me up, didn’t go away for 20mins or so. There was a period of about a week or so where I wasn’t feeling any sexual drive but I’ve masturbated everyday since the last week. So that’s got to count for something, but I feel it fading off, much like when I kept taking Adex and it slowly disappeared.
I think I may be travelling up through to higher E2 now. Noticing bloat is coming back. I got a blood test today so I should see where I’m at after ceasing Arimidex for almost 3 weeks.
If my test comes back good and E2 is on the rise again I’ll restart at 0.125mg.
New Labs from yesterday after 9 days of ceasing arimidex for those who care/interested or have any advice 
So 9 days before these latest labs, my E2 was less than 44pmol/L. Now it has risen to 111 pmol/L.
I also think it’s safe to say the crazy night out I had gave me those shitty testosterone results. As now you can see it’s coming back up to normal. I may have crashed temporarily.
Based on my labs, and the symptoms I tell you below. Do you think I can start the Arimidex again at 0.125mg EOD? Or should I wait longer?
So from when I noticed I was low to my latest labs I felt the following from top being low E2 to bottom of the list being where I’m at now.
Joint popping
Tiredness
No libido
No morning wood
Night sweats
Morning wood starts to come back
Libido starts coming back
Morning wood one day was so hard (like I experienced a few days into the first week of Arimidex) Libido seems good, masturbating daily sometimes twice
All of the above is tapering off concerning wood and sex drive
Bloat is coming back
Noticing the moodiness badly now
What do you think? Safe to start again or am I jumping the gun? It took 9 days for me to go from <44 to 111, and I even had a small 0.125mg dose in that time.
Just thankful my test isn’t crashed and my E2 is rising and not taking too long either! Be careful with Arimidex guys, it’s a powerful drug.
My labs have a whole different layout and ranges. Symptoms tell me high E2 but your ranges posted show 99-200 and you are 111, so by that, seems you should be ok. But on my labcorp test 111 would be super high And I should be 22, so I dont know, can’t really comment on it, since I dont know enough.
Are your ranges in pg/ml or pmol/L?
111 pmol/L is 30 pg/ml.
Top of that range 200 pmol/L is 54 pg/ml
So in American units my lab range would be 26-65 pg/ml.
My doctor says I should be around 80 pmol/L which puts me at 21.8 pg/ml.
Does that clear anything up?
Anyway I spoke to my doc and he said start the arimidex again. He also said my labs “prove that aromatisation is not within my testicles”… I seriously have no idea what he means, and how my labs (10 days from <44 - 111 pmol/L) proves that. If anyone knows that will be awesome.
Ok that sounds right, 21.8 for you should be ideal, I am same as you are right now at 30, but i dont really have any bad things from being at 30. Hoping when i get to 22 area on e2 it will help with energy level.
Yeah but my 30 pg/ml was just a snapshot. That number will bounce back to 54-70 where it usually sits without an AI where I feel like shit.
I saw energy improvements so you certainly might.
Hey @briggsey, found this thread and just wanted to ask you a bit about your progress since it seems i’m in a very similar boat as you. I’ve never been on TRT and my lab results from a few days ago show my TT at 668 [142 - 923] and my E2 at 51 [11 - 44]. I also have some symptoms of hypothyroidism with low temperature and everything else that goes along with it. My TSH, fT3 and fT4 were good though, have to wait 3 weeks for rT3 results as i suspect low adrenal function.
Anyway, did you manage to dial in an appropriate dose for your arimidex? What about finding the underlying issue that could be causing the high E2? I’ve read somewhere there is a connection between thyroid and high estradiol or the adrenals and estradiol, did you look into that maybe?
Also, what are your thoughts on Iodine supplementation, did you notice any improvements, i’m thinking of starting it, but am a little hesitant if i truly have weak adrenals. I’ll maybe do a 24h cortisol saliva test to be sure.
And just a personal observation i’ve had that might or might not be connected to all this, a few months ago i was megadosing zinc (150mg/day) per a Charles Poliquin article and felt great while doing it, libido high, boners like never before, morning wood, etc… but the effects have slowly been disappearing since i’ve stopped and i’m thinking now since zinc seems to be a natural AI it might have lowered my E2, hence the effects i felt. Anyone think that is plausible?
Definitely plausible, zinc is indeed an estrogen suppressor in high doses.
Hey @nabitek I’ve only just seen this now.
Do you have any other labs? FT, SHBG etc? My total T is double that of yours. But you still have high E2 regardless. My doctor says I am borderline hypothyroid.
Unfortunately I have not found the underlying cause for my high E2. I have a couple theories and one of them has to do with cigarette smoking. I smoked for 6 years and all these issues came about as soon as I quit cold turkey. I’ve now been quit for 10 months. It turns out and some studies confirm that cigarettes can have an Aromatase Inhibitor affect and can also disrupt the endocrine system. Aside from that my doctor says I need to reduce my visceral fat, the fat inbetween all my organs, as he believes this is where my aromatisation is coming from. Interestingly enough, I’ve noticed my body sort of recompositioning while on the Arimidex. I’ve lost some weight and have toned up a bit. Not much since I’m not dieting but the midsection of my body looks less “estrogenic” if that makes sense. I was never really fat, but the bulk of my fat was in my midsection. It seems to be slowly going away.
I am currently taking 0.0625mg of Arimidex EOD. Because of Christmas and New Years and now being sick I haven’t been tested yet for E2. I will report back soon and we will know if that microdose is doing me good.
Iodine - I tried for a month and loaded, at first it seemed that it was helping with energy but I’m going to put that down to placebo. I don’t think I was ever iodine deficient and the oral tests I did was with a bunk thermometer.
As for the zinc, I remember experiencing the same when taking ZMA a while back, then the effects dissipated for me.
I’ve done a lot of research in the past three weeks and have become fairly certain my high E2 is due to low cortisol. I just got my rT3 results back and my FT3/rT3 ratio is 13, which points to an adrenal problem (should be over 20), which would explain my hypothyroid symptoms, even with FT3 and FT4 labs normal.
There’s a number of interesting threads to find if you google ‘low cortisol high e2’ and with me it just seems to explain all my symptoms. I believe it goes roughly something like this: low cortisol → higher CRH → higher ACTH → higher adrenal e2. I also remember reading something about smoking being connected to cortisol as well, IIRC it stimulates ACTH, so when you stop, the production might drop, eventually leading to low cortisol. Could be the case with you as well, might wanna look into it.
I’m back on megadosing zinc for the past few weeks and i feel better again, i’m also taking some adrenal support supplements, most notably licorice root and ashwagandha, but i don’t want to do this long term, so i will do a 24h cortisol saliva test, which is the most reliable way to confirm low cortisol and then go from there.
If you’re saying quitting smoking may end up causing high E2 I’m starting to feel kinda crazy. I quit smoking 4-5 years ago and that’s more or less when my issues started. I’ve been taking an AI for the past 2 months trying out different dosages and have had some mild success, but last week I went on a holiday where I smoked cigarettes and drank alcohol on a daily basis - and my erections have never been as hard as they were last week. Morning wood was so hard that it was actually painful and they seemed endless. I would also get several random erections looking at girls walking past the pool. Now I’m back home (not smoking or drinking at all) and a few days in erections are starting to get softer even though I didn’t change my AI dosage.
Could this make sense? Or just a coincidence? @KSman
I said that, not nabitek.
Well it was a bit convienient that I inherited all these symptoms as soon as I quit smoking.
Either way heaps more research needs to be done
Just for fun … How would you react to vaps or nicotine gum?
I have no idea, I’ve never tried them. I feel a bit weird about considering a nicotine addiction as a solution, lol. But I guess it would be funny to try for experiment purposes.
I guess another explanation might be that I was waking up at 6:30am every day during the holiday so maybe the only difference is I simply didn’t sleep through my morning wood. And maybe I’m not getting erections throughout the day because there’s no half naked girls walking around my house.
Ahhh I just wish this thing was easier to solve. Every time I feel like I found the perfect AI dosage it just stops working after a while.
I feel you man, it happens to me too. It has to be us taking our E2 too low.
Then I wait 3-4 days like now and I get all my boners back and libido. Then I start getting tired and moody and bloated again and that’s usually when I go back on.
I’m currently on 0.0625mg EOD, and it worked for the most part but still took me too low after a month or so. I’m over responder though to Arimidex.
Doesn’t sound strange to me.
I feel like my issues started when I quit caffeine.
Both are stimulants. Could expose an adrenal fatigue issue once removed or the adrenal system needs to rebound.
“A smoker can get nicotine to the brain very rapidly with every inhalation. … Nicotine acts as both a stimulant and a sedative. Immediately after exposure to nicotine, there is a “kick” caused in part by the drug’s stimulation of the adrenal glands and resulting discharge of epinephrine (adrenaline).”
“Nicotine | Psychology Today”