Somewhat dose dependent, but 1-3 weeks for FSH and 4-5 for LH to reach complete suppression.
Yes.
Measure it and keep a log.
Do blood work in a few weeks and adjust from there with your provider. Appears you may have to balance positives vs negatives WRT dosing if your log shows significant impact to BP/RHR.
Agreed with @highpull on the rough shutdown timeline. I will spare everyone the graph with confidence intervals.
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Thank you both for the responses. Seems like I need to up the dose. I started with only 3 clicks at 10 mg each. Hard to know the absorption but Atrevis gel is supposed to be better.
When on the cream is there a time that is best to do labs? After application how many hours? I am not applying to the scrotum yet but if I canāt get my levels up I may have to do that since it appears better. Sleep has been an issue and that seems to be a problem when levels are not high enough or too much roller coaster.
thanks again.
Relevant data here:
If you want peak perhaps 2-4 hours after application. Mid to trough 6-8+ hours after application.
Thank you.
I have had night sweats for the last 3 nights. I know low T can cause this but is there other causes out there? Too high or too low estrogen. I assumed I need to go up in dose but wonder if I need to go down? This is quite frustrating and the only way to know is probably to choose one or the otherā¦
IMHO you need to ride it out. If you truly feel you have a low dosage by all means go up, then give it time. Its been a long time since I was on cream so I canāt say if that is a low dosage or not.
Edit: I just went and looked at my log for my dosage on cream and I started with 5 clicks of my dispenser with a 10% cream. I ended up at about 8 clicks on a 20% cream (believed I was getting 20mg per click) before I moved to injections. So if you truly are getting only 10mg per click I would say you are on a low dosage. I would verify you are getting the dosage you believe before adjusting though. My clicks were a lot smaller than a lot of other dispensers that others I have seen used on here as I believe they were getting 50mg per click.
But donāt go chasing every symptom right now. Your hormones are in flux as you just started and endogenous is shutting or has recently shut down. What you feel now may be nothing when things settle.
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Thank you all for the level headed advice. I appreciate the knowledge and experience here.
I did defer to the doctor and pharmacist who specializes in this and I did move to another click (2 in the morning, two in the afternoon). It is a small dose but I was so leery of a large dose to start based on my past I now realize I will need to ride this out. The doctor said the same thing, letās look at symptom resolution and go slow.
How are you doing on shots? What is your protocol? Thank you.
Gibbon
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I am doing good on shots. My normal protocol is 18mg daily shallow IM. Right now I am playing with same weekly dosage divided into 2 injections rather than daily just to see if I notice a difference. Only been doing it about a week and a half so canāt report much. My libido has seemed to be up slightly. Never been an issue just something I noticed. Being its been such a short amount of time I am not going to say that it really is attributing to it. It could be just the change is slightly affecting and will go away or it is just something that would of occurred anyways and coincidentally lined up with it. We will see.
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Morning wood is becoming a common occurrence now. 
I kind of was impatient and past week did 120mg split in 60mg twice a week. But feeling great. Not sure if 120mg was the sweet spot or lowering dose finally ākicked inā my system since these protocols have a lagging effect, maybe 120mg will prove to be too much.
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I havenāt done any blood work but after two weeks of cream I am sleeping terrible with hot flashes. Pharmacist sayās it is either low or high estrogen. I did raise my cream dose 25% and slept even worse last night. I always thought that people chased high estrodiol but it got me thinking about low estrogen and symptoms. I didnāt have this until recently so I wondered if the only way is to get labs or actually lower my dose instead of raise it right now?
I donāt understand it all exactly but is the ratio of test to estrogen very important and if I am raising T but my estrogen is low could this cause symptoms? When I had a E2 test it only said it was below 20 but didnāt give me a number
Yes - I havenāt taken any t3 in about a year now. Feel no better or worse.
I should get a full thyroid panel done, but have not. Iāve only had my TSH tested, which for the past year has been around 0.80 or so.
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When you look at the chapter very closely in the references it appears they lumped testosterone in with anabolic steroids with regard to adverse effects. Thatās a big no-no and why testosterone get such a bad name.
I asked him the same question a few years ago lol. He is a Beartooth fan.
You may also want to check these out:
I read the book chapter and conclude the opposite. See tables 1 and 2 (ECs and VSMCs) if you donāt want to read the chapter. The toxicity/dose response of testosterone in humans is complex enough and transfer function between rodent studies and humans also fraught with uncertainty for a number of reasons.
But I understand itās an easy rationalization to make (T is āsafeā unlike those ādangerousā other AAS). Thanks for taking the time to comment.
I understand but this is what is so confusing to so many of us. Can we really take a rodent study and translate those results in the humans in every instance? In other words what about the studies where we give humans testosterone and then see what happens. From what I have found there has never been any harm in any of the randomized control trials that have been done. So if it caused harm and cardiac toxicity why havenāt they seen that in human studies? Hasnāt been used for like over half a century? Major institutes like the mayo clinic as well as the DeBakey Institute which is known for its heart transplant etc. have put out papers about testosterone and they all reported to be cardio protective. So much confusion but what Iām trying to find is an actual randomized control trial where testosterone caused a major adverse cardiac event and I canāt find any.
Also, when they talk about giving 500 mg that once again is in the bodybuilding realm and actually has nothing to do with testosterone therapy from all the studies that I have looked at. Canāt you kill yourself by drinking too much water? Iām just trying to find any harm from any study giving men a rational dose of testosterone like for testosterone therapy. The harm caused by excessive doses of anything cannot be applied to men taking a normal dose can it? You seem to be well-versed so can you show me any harm involving the heart or any other body system with a normal dose of testosterone not 500 mg or more? I donāt consider the bodybuilding world and the dosages use their as well as the substances should be discussed in the same conversation with men needing testosterone therapy