Finally filled my prescription for Androgel. Wondering if I can expect to see much of an effect at first. I’m a little bit leery because I’ve seen stuff that indicates that T supplementation can cause some people to have increased levels of anxiety and even have panic attacks. I also have some minor heart problems - mostly skipped beats or palpitations, but my doctor says nothing is wrong despite a week of being on a Holter monitor and getting an ultrasound done.
Anyone?
I have never taken androgel, but with injectable testosterone I didn’t ‘feel’ anything for a few days. The second night I barely slept, but woke up feeling as if I didn’t need to sleep any more. At the time I was also going through physical therapy and doing exercises every day, and two days after my first T dose I got a HUGE pump from doing my exercises. I came in from the garage and even my girlfriend noticed; She said, “Wow, it looks like you just gained 10 pounds in your arms!”
No idea what the gel is like, but I imagine any increase from low to normal testosterone levels is the same regardless of the product. I could take a few weeks before you notice anything, so don’t get discouraged if you don’t feel better over night. The full effects came at around week four/five for me.
It’s going to take a couple of months before you really notice a difference on the gel. I haven’t read anywhere that it will increase anxiety. For me, it decreased mine a lot. So you might actually find that you have less. Time will tell.
I can’t comment on using gel with your heart conditions. It would be best to do a lot of research to verify if what he said is correct.
There is a lot of study required to properly understand TRT. You need to learn to be able to take control of your own health management and cannot be passive. This is required because docs are quite useless and ignorant while not been able to think for themselves. Most of what is written in the stickies will be good reading. Start with the advice for new guys sticky.
Note that if you gave thyroid issues, you may not be able to absorb transdermal T. So do not skip over the thyroid and iodine issues.
Transdermal T absorption is about 10% and highly variable. So for your T delivery system, statements about what you will feel and when are difficult.
The important things to understand from the get-go is that docs do not know what they are doing and E2 [estradiol] management is mission critical.
Post your labs with ranges. We need more info about you as per the advice for new guys sticky. Read the posts of others here and see how thing flow.