Reply With QuoteWhat is your age.
All men lose Testosterone over time. I don't know the level at which one starts injections. I receive once a month of low levels of Testosterone injection. But then, I'm 71.
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Diagnosed with Low T
Hi All,
Maybe I have found the reason for my lack of progress in the gym, poor sleep, general low energy and repetitive injuries over the last year (or two).
Long story short is I've been through several rounds of blood tests with my doc over the last month or so. My lipid profile continues to suck (genetics) and I've been complaining to my doctor about low energy, etc.. Lo and behold thyroid was normal but testosterone was between 200-350 over multiple blood tests.
This is already below optimal but still "normal," so, I get referred to an endocrinologist and after more tests, my "free T" and "bioavailable T" are below even the reference range. My SHBG and Albumin are somewhat high and basically leaving nothing left over. Mystery solved!
Anybody else here on TRT? I have a prescription for 100mg/week and will probably start injections this week. Hoping this will get me back on the road to being my old self again.
Member
What is your age.
All men lose Testosterone over time. I don't know the level at which one starts injections. I receive once a month of low levels of Testosterone injection. But then, I'm 71.
Member
I've been on BHRT/TRT since August of 2016. Changed my life. Well, that and the two total knee replacements I had in early 2015!
100mg/week is a great amount to start with. If your doctor is like mine, he'll want your available test to be in the 800-900 range and will adjust your amount up or down to get you there.
Did your doc give you an aromatase inhibitor (Anastrozole/Arimidex)? An aromatase inhibitor (AI) will cut down on the amount of testosterone that gets converted to estrogen in your body. If you don't have an AI, you might get sensitive nipples. You'll know when you climb in your car and put your seatbelt on, trust me! If you get sensitive nipples, make sure to get an AI or a SERM (selective estrogen receptor modulator, doesn't prevent testosterone conversion to estrogen, but blocks estrogen at the receptor. The main one I know of is called Nolvadex), otherwise you might end up with gynecomastia.
We're all different, so it might take a couple visits with your doctor to sort things out. My doctor had me do blood work every three months until we found the right balance.
Let me know if I can answer any questions, I'm not a doctor, but I'm obsessed with learning, and I can refer you to my sources.
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Go for it....Originally Posted by Masher
Member
Hey Carson,
I'm just shy of my 47th birthday . . .
As I understand, the gradual testosterone starts around 35 and varies greatly on an individual basis.
Member
Thanks for the info. No I'm not on an AI yet, but hey I just started. :-)
I have a 4 week followup and 3 month followups scheduled, so I suspect monitoring will be the order of the day for a while. Might just be psychological but I had a great nights sleep last night after my first injection.
By "changed your life" can you be more specific? Which health problems or issues were resolved? I'm frankly hoping for an end to my constant nagging injuries and for better sleep.
Member
Yes, I would completely believe that. It's been the same for me.
I don't know how typical I am, but here goes. Before I started BHRT, I had no energy. I'd come home and fall asleep every night. Of course, at my age, I was also getting up 5-6 times every night to pee. I also had to pee a lot during the day; it was hard to take road trips without stopping. I've also fought with arthritis pretty much my entire adult life, so I've had a lot of joint pain. My sex life sucked (or didn't, lol) and I wasn't really able to hike or bike or do much of anything with my wife. (I'm 58 and my wife is 50.) It was frustrating thinking that I was dragging her down and I didn't want to condemn her for the rest of her life.By "changed your life" can you be more specific? Which health problems or issues were resolved? I'm frankly hoping for an end to my constant nagging injuries and for better sleep.
So, I started injections. First thing I noticed was that I had a lot more energy and I felt like a young guy again. Second thing I noticed was that I could understand lyrics of songs on the radio. I made this observation to my wife one evening. She was sitting maybe three feet away from me and she looked me straight in the eye and whispered, "can you hear this?" I said, "of course I can hear that!" She looked at me with some shock and said, "well, you couldn't hear that last week." Turns out that I had lost a lot of hearing. I knew that I had to read lips and correlate that with the sounds I heard in order to understand what people were saying to me, but I hadn't really thought about how bad it was until that moment. My wife told me that she always knew that if I wasn't looking at her when she talked, she would have to repeat whatever she said. I have no idea how this is possible, but there is a direct correlation between the testosterone therapy and the return of my hearing!
I now pretty much get up once a night to pee and I can go several hours during the day without peeing. (Unless I worked out late and drank a boatload of water in the gym, then I'll usually get up a second time.) I don't need naps like I used to (although a nap on a weekend afternoon is magic!), and I'm able to kill it in the gym. Right after I started injections, I realized I had a second chance at life, so I committed to hitting the gym to take every advantage I could. My wife and I have pretty much been in the gym six days a week for the last year and a half. At first, I just worked out without changing anything else about life, but the further along I went, the more changes I added. (Little changes that you can maintain are way better than big ones that you can't.) With the new energy and consistent workouts, my appetite improved. Funny, but the testosterone really gave me the urge to eat better too. I now eat lots of chicken and rice, fish, sweet potatoes, etc., and I don't have much of an urge to eat candy, chips, or other junk. My waist is smaller, my shoulders, pecs and lats are bigger, and even my legs are improving. I'm starting to see veins on my quads! Seeing how my body has responded has really been a positive feedback loop and makes me more committed.
Now, it wasn't all smooth sailing. TBH, the two things that I had to work through were some ED and the joint pain. The ED stuff was psychologically the most distressing. I was fine for three or four days after my injections, but then I lost energy and couldn't maintain an erection during sex for the rest of the week. At my first three month followup, my testosterone was above 1500 (the highest number on the Labcorp chart) and my estradiol was undetectable. In my case, the doctor had given me the aromatase inhibitor Letrozole. For everybody else, Letrozole seems fine, but in my body, letrozole was too powerful. So, the first thing my doc did was take me off the letrozole. Second thing was to move to two injections per week to smooth out the peaks and valleys. In a few weeks, the ED problem pretty much disappeared. A couple weeks after that, I started getting really sensitive nipples (that seatbelt thing), so I checked with the doc and he put me on arimidex. I take half a pill with each injection and that has solved the problem.
As for the joint stuff, I spent the first year doing light-weight, high-repetition sets in the gym. I'd pretty much aim for 20 reps with everything, then once every couple weeks or so, I would do some crazy pumpalicious workouts doing 50 rep sets. Talk about getting used to a different kind of pain! You've got to get in touch with the inner masochist for this stuff! LOL. I talked to my doctor a bit about this, since I heard a lot of bro-science in the gym. Guys would tell me that too little estrogen (estradiol) would cause joint pain. Other guys told me too much estrogen caused it. In my case, my doctor prescribed a low dose of nandrolone along with the testosterone. This has been magic! My joints feel fantastic now! And honestly, I'm rather enjoying the extra size and strength that seem to be coming along with it. At that point, I was able to change my workouts away from the high-rep bodybuilding style to the SS LP style and that's how I found this site.
I really think you have to put the entire package of your life together properly. BHRT is only one part. Training is important, nutrition is important, recovery/sleep is important. All together, it really has changed my life. Oh yeah, did I mention that my wife really likes the way I look now? I mean *really* likes! We go at it 3-4 times a week now. It doesn't hurt that my wife also went on BHRT (Sottopelle), we train together, ride bikes together, eat healthy together, and are both feeling and looking better together.
Alright, this is pretty long, I should shut up now...
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There's a good couple of episodes of the Barbell Medicine podcasts
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Thanks for sharing, that is all very interesting. What you said about dragging people down, I have for a while now felt like I was becoming an "old man" for lack of a better term. I'd be fatigued just basically ... all the time. I have had moments where instead of participating in fun and games, I'd rather just sit on a bench and watch everyone else. It is so odd because it starts to feel "normal" to you even though you might ask yourself why. It's such a gradual change that I think I went a long time not noticing it.
Very interesting about the hearing effects, I'll look out for that. I do have achy joints a lot too, more than normal. Again, like an old man, I just haven't felt like I could move around very quickly, very little progress in the gym, and so on. I'm looking forward to some positive changes.
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