It’s amazing how you judge my critical thinking abilities and then make statements like these. It’s astonishing, really.
You are making the ASSUMPTION that 100mg will maintain physiological levels. 100mg for me would not accomplish this by a long shot. I had a deficiency at that dose. 300mg a week keeps me just slightly above the high end of normal. For you, this dose is a cycle. For me, this is TRT. This is why I keep insisting that dose is irrelevant. You’re making all these calculations based on meaningless numbers. Your math will not apply to me and I’m just one example.
You are overcomplicating things by trying to use mathematical formulas because it is the only way you can make things right in the world in your own mind, yet your math will not apply to all men, as there will be tons of exceptions to this rule. If there are exceptions to a mathematical rule, the rule becomes useless.
250mg a week a puts me in high normal. So 3.5 times of that for a cycle for ME would be 875mg a week. For @unreal24278 these values would be completely different than ours with totally different math.
Formulas, charts, graphs, etc. do NOT work to optimize a man. Period. You can fight it as much as you want (as I did years ago) but the end result is always the same.
No assumption, that’s the dosage that will maintain physiological levels for ME (that’s the context of my note above and @unreal24278’s comment). Yes, we already agreed the dosage may differ between men that will maintain physiologic levels (see the first post I did in this thread, I even mentioned you and cited our posts on this).
Please don’t try to muddy the water and confuse my position.
The reason @highpull and I settled this very quickly up above is because he quickly conceded what he’s doing is not TRT but “TOT/function” replacement therapy to treat symptoms for a condition that is somewhat nebulous and clearly not easily definable or quantifiable in medical terms. Here’s the exchange:
We were done with this very rapidly and I think constructively. The other plus with @highpull is he didn’t come into this thread, a thread I tried to thoughtfully construct for guys, and defecate right in the middle of it with a big pile of fakenews so to speak:
So who’s misrepresenting the dosage per man variability issue? Your comment that 7 mg/day of testosterone (equivalent weekly dosage of TC = 70 mg) will chemically castrate a man (average man, most men, 90% of men, @yeti308, @dbossa, ??) was scientifically inaccurate and completely confuses the crap out of guys coming on here looking for valid, thoughtful, fact based information.
Therefore go back to above and revise your statement to something along the lines of what I recommended.
Concede that your recommendation (and the providers you learned from) would and are raising many men above physiologic levels of testosterone (by your own comments and comparing against dialysis free T reference ranges). This resolves “symptoms” but the long-term consequences of such a treatment are unknown.
This is subtle but very different than saying:
There’s no magic protection by making sure you don’t raise dose past the MINIMUM amount to resolve symptoms if that dose puts you firmly above physiologic levels. Heck, there’s no guarantee with TRT (inside physiologic levels).
The correct word here is WILL, and not MAY, considering you enjoy semantics. I too can play that game.
What’s the point of providing a treatment that doesn’t fix the underlying issue? If TRT is simply to get a man into a range, where it doesn’t resolve any issues, than TRT is pointless.
I have seen less than ten of those among the approximate 2000 I have come across. I’m not misrepresenting a damn thing. I’ve asked the physicians I deal with how often it is sub-100 and they stated it is incredibly rare. It is a tiny fraction. For the vast majority of men, this is chemical castration. Men need to be aware of this. You’re using yourself, an outlier, as an example to demonstrate your math. This is not the norm by any stretch of the imagination.
@readalot, I’ll leave you to argue with yourself and obsess about more mathematical formulas, charts, and graphs, none of which have any bearing on helping a man get better (which you’d know if you actually did this on a regular basis).
I’m going to head back over my Facebook group and help the guys out to ensure they get better.
And where do you think these men fit in the distribution of men who use testosterone worldwide for TRT/TOT, etc to address hypogonadism or some other EDC-based medical issue (other) that you refuse to engage/discuss with me? Where do you think these patients reside in that distribution? Think about the potential survivorship bias involved by the time they get to you or some of the providers you work with? Prescribing guidelines by a myriad of medical organizations have a conspiracy to not give men enough testosterone to bring them back to physiologic levels? I’ve already shown the scientifically-sound distribution of dosages to bring a man back to physiologic levels and invite men to determine that dosage for themselves.
We agree that a man should use the minimum dose of testosterone to address his “symptoms” (there you go @dbossa period, not question mark), assuming those symptoms are legitimate and applicable to hypogonadism. Do you also agree that once a man exceeds physiologically-relevant ranges we just don’t know what the long term consequences are for him? I’m fine with TOT and men having access to it, but can we agree they should understand there is risk involved and long-term consequences are unknown?
Again ducking the complete context of my post. And yes, I should have had a period there instead of a question mark. My observation is you are slippery and don’t debate in good faith given your multiple instances of partial quotes and selective sharing of post content.
Dear Reader, if you’ve made it thus far, congratulations. To sum up the discussion with @dbossa, the crux of the debate between us resides here:
my response:
And finally, a discussion of dosage/serum level vs risk:
You’ll have to decide with your provider what dosage/dosing frequency will work for you (TRT for medically indicated hypogonadism or TOT/FRT to address some other issue) but I invite you to be aware of potential issues with running your T levels above physiologic and the difficult line to draw between TRT and “TOT/FRT”. That’s it. There’s seldom a free lunch and the higher you go I’d argue the more risk you are taking on (hence U-shaped mortality relationship with most parameters). How much “symptom” resolution vs how much risk to take is the $1M question.
Thank you for the suggestion and I agree we should debate respectfully and logically. But we owe it to the reader (since we are going to the trouble) to get the facts straight and clearly identify opinion/conjecture/speculation and be honest and transparent (discuss) about the potential survivorship bias involved with TOT patients. What the ratio of TOT / (TOT + TRT + AAS-cycle patients) actually is I do not know. If that ratio is small (my hypothesis), the recommendation of needing >= 25-30 ng/dL free T to resolve symptoms in my opinion is reckless because you would be running the majority of patients at higher free T levels than they “need”. But again this becomes subjective I realize and I am firmly for personal choice. The work I choose to do here is to support proper informed consent.
This all comes down to what trt is trying to be. If it’s medicine then it pretty much has parameters that exist and straying outside of them is not a common occurrence.
But if it’s what it looks like (hint: it is) then the numbers are meaningless because it’s not real medicine, it’s just a feelings-based legal way for somewhat privileged men to get more out of life than their grandfathers ever could. That’s fine, but it isn’t materially different than having your doctor prescribe you other “treatments” that make you feel good. Hell, the recipe for good feels is pretty damn easy: twice daily take .5mg Xanax and 10mg adderall. Add in a few walks in nature each week and a few gourmet dinners and you’ll feel fanfuckingtastic. Anyone want to argue that my plan wouldn’t make a lot of dudes feel good?
You all are fighting about numbers vs what works and while it’s been entertaining it’s absolutely absurd to think it makes a difference. If you have a credit card and a doctor(ish) at a clinic willing to work with you (or a consultant like Danny) then you can find exactly the right dose and schedule that makes you feel young again. And that’s what’s being sold here, eternal youth. And if you think that isn’t what you’re buying—and what you’re explicitly asking for—then you’re lying to yourself. Now of course there are outliers like @unreal24278 who have very unusual circumstances, but that’s not the norm. The norm is “here is my money, make me be able to bang my wife and eventually my mistress with more frequency than I currently can manage”, “give me the vigor of a 22 year old so I can get into the best shape of my life”, “give me the stamina of a 22 year old so I can better face the unending bleakness of my existence with some measure of fortitude”. Nobody walks into a clinic and asks to have his numbers line up perfectly with any guidelines. He just wants his dick to line up parallel with the floor again. The level of over complication here is unnecessary. The minute you drop the fiction that this is real medicine is the minute you accept that numbers don’t matter. Embrace the mantra that lol nothing matters.
I’m not conceding anything until my attorneys have been able to review every post. There is clear evidence that some have posted without proper documentation and it is more obvious some are posting multiple times. The integrity of tnation is at stake and my office staff will see this through, all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary.
I’m imploring all my TRT patients with supraphysiological levels of testosterone to remain calm and not take to the internet or the streets. Violence is not the solution. We must be patient and let the system work.
Good stuff, all this along with some casualties along the way (myself included). That’s what I am trying to help educate folks on. But you are correct as usual, I concede…Bringing extreme scientific rigor to this type of forum may be futile but I gave it the ole college try. No bro-science. Thanks for the feedback.
Also, I applaud your beautiful sentence construction, grammar, while always providing just the right balance of education and entertainment. It truly is a gift, congrats.
Good one. It’s all good till you take the ambulance ride. I do remember sorta laughing in my mind on the way to the ER realizing the joke was on me. I hope I continue to be in the vast minority here. I continue to enjoy/suffer from being a member of very small groups.
I think we all appreciate the effort you put in and the passion you have for making sure both sides of the story are told. And I appreciate @dbossa and his experiences as well. You both make this place better. But when all the dust settles what we see is a system that is inconsistent and utterly rudderless. So everyone has to man their own boats and hopefully find the shoreline.