What is TRT and What is NOT TRT

[wolf359]

If the main thing is ED, have you considered adding 5-10mg of cialis daily? Generic is available now and is pretty cheap with a Goodrx coupon.

You also may need a dose bump on your trt. What levels does your 100mg get you too?

[mip1950]

Just started @100 mg after being off TRT for seven months. PDE-5 inhibitors produce migraines for me, even at a tiny dose. My primary told me to avoid them. Too bad. The few times I tried tadalifil, I had great erections and a headache for a day and a half. A pounding, nausea producing headache doesn’t put one in the mood for sex, lol.

[wolf359]

Yes, I can see that as being an odd combination of things. Barely functioning from a migraine and a rock hard erection.

But fair enough.
Perhaps add some citrulene or arginine as supplements, they’re precursors to nitros oxide so that might help some.

[mip1950]

@wolf359; Thanks for the suggestions. However, citrulene or arginine worsen my bipolar illness, making me hyper(citrulene) or manic(arginine). I’m taking liothyronine(T3) because several of my doctors believe that I have cellular thyroid resistance. Labs are useless because they can’t reveal what’s going on at the cellular level, so I just take medication, daily, and slowly increase the dose over time. Regarding testosterone, I’ve read case studies on PubMed of cases where it took 2 to 5 years for T to resolve various physical/metabolic issues as well as erectile dysfunction. Yes, those men might have been outliers but its taken me years to understand that TRT can be a slow road to restoration of health and sexual function.

[BrickHead]

Great post.

Saved it.

[bearpump]

I inject 30mg every day via subq and my total T is 1019 ng/dl (last time I tested it).

[wolf359]

Yeah, I get what you’re saying. I suspect cellular /metabolic issues is why some guys don’t feel wll unless their test levels are really high, not all but some.

So you’re kinda left with just trying stuff. All I can recommend there is to make only one change at a time and keep a journal of what’s going on in your life, diet, exercise, stress, sleep, etc and how you feel. It’ll really help you build on small improvemens.

Also keep in mind everyone feels better or worse at times, just because something is off doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re on the wrong track now the journal will help you track trends above the daily experience.

Good luck.

[mip1950]

Thanks for the encouraging words. I’m 70 and so effing tired of chasing this or that as I try to restore some degree of physiologic function(sex, sleep, energy) but giving up isn’t an option. Bipolar illness is a neuro-endocrine disorder, thus circadian rhythm is out of wack, as are hormones. If I had this knowledge and intensity when I was young, I would have gone to medical school. Now, I’m trying to save my life. There’s an irony there that I’ve become an amateur endocrinologist/pharmacologist as I try to compensate for the damage done by bipolar. All of this to get a reliable erection and make love to my wife.

[blshaw]

@readalot

I see the AI Wars are still raging over multiple threads.

It’s because people love to make something simple more complicated. Have low testosterone… take some testosterone. Not too much and you’re good. I guess it would make for a boring forum.

[st_t]

@readalot

Ok, so how about 160 mg/week (that’s 112 mg of testosterone per week):

Once again confirmed with blood work, if I inject once per week my peak is 2150 ng/dL and trough is 766 ng/dL. If I inject every 3.5 days (twice weekly) peak goes to 1700 and trough is 1000 ng/dL. Remember the green shaded region is the range I spotted you as “physiologic”. So at either dosing frequency, I am running supraphysiologic for peak and get back into physiologic for trough.

So, 160/wk still leaves you at suboptimal levels at times.

[mnben87]

What is optimal?

[trtwuzup]

@readalot you were restricted by this forum? Why would they silence you? I don’t particularly like that.

Anyway, do you think there is an optimal free t that men on trt should be on?
And if the answer is depends on symptoms, can you tell us where you think most men are at in terms of free t that are doing well?

Personally I am in the upper range of free t , just concerned if these levels as I age can be detrimental to other bodily functions and systems.

[Chris_Colucci]

@readalot

I’ve been put on restriction given my tendency to way overpost/overdetail on here

I literally have no idea what you’re talking about.

@trtwuzup

you were restricted by this forum?

Nope, he was not.

[dptfit]

For the record I figured you were talking about your house CEO, I can relate lol. I limit my forum time to the few minutes I can sneak at work.

Just a note about the AI battle, and again anecdotal but that is what I value in forums. I can google studies all day long. I drank the Kool-aid, no AI. Had blood work, E 2 very high. Doc asked if I was taking the AI and I told her that everything I was reading said not to. She told me forget the bro science and take it. I take .125 per week on average, made the TRT optimal for me. Glad to see some cooler heads on the topic prevailing, I was absolutely turned off before the banning and almost left the forum (TRT only, love the pharma section) because it became unreadable.

[blshaw]

@dptfit

because it became unreadable.

Ditto

[disciplined_trt]

Are my conversions correct for those studies? It seems HED is animal dose / animal conversion factor.

So for ex in the mice study 10 mg/kg would be a HED of 10/12.3 ~ 0.8 mg/kg?

And in the rat study, the HED would be 10/6.17 ~ 1.6 mg/kg?

So at a human weight of 90kg the rat study equivalent would be a HED of 90*1.6 = 144mg of Test P? But apparently they’re giving that to the rats 3x/week, so accounting for the slightly heavier Test C ester (30% vs 20%) we’re basically talking a 500mg/week equivalent for a 90kg human being?

In the mouse study, they say 10mg/kg for 30 days which makes me think they give them that dose every day, which since the conversion factor is twice that of the rats but there are slightly more than 2x the number of days (7 vs 3), we’re talking about a HED of over 650mg/week.

Am I completely off here?

Also how valid are those weight conversions when it comes to pharmacokinetics between rodents and human beings? How do we know these are valid? It’s not a rhetorical/passive aggressive question, I don’t know much about this stuff and I’m just curious how much evidence there is that we can draw valid cross-species conclusions using those conversion rates. For ex maybe rodents have very low SHBG and therefore their Free T is through the roof compared to most human beings. Do we know whether homeostasis in rodents is expressed by the same ratios between hormones as in human beings?

As an aside, 30 days seems really short for the mice study. I know Test P builds up much faster in the blood but still takes (according to SP) about a week to reach close to 100% concentration levels. That leaves 3 weeks of effects to measure, not really a long term study (not a criticism of your content, just saying I wish they’d run actual long studies because that’s the data we’re desperately missing)

[iron_yuppie]

@disciplined_trt

As an aside, 30 days seems really short for the mice study.

It’s actually a good length because mice have much shorter lifespans. So 30 days represents a bigger portion of their life than it does for a human. It’s why they use mice in the first place. You can’t measure the effects and safety profile of a new, untested drug over the course of two years in a human; with mice you can measure that time frame much more quickly and easily.

[disciplined_trt]

That’s a good point, I’m just not sure how much evidence there is that the lifespans and related effects are comparable in a proportional way.

[spiceweasel]

@readalot

@vonko (RIP)

Did I miss something?

[ncsugrad2002]

He got banned