Hey everyone,
New member, but have been on TRT for just over a year. I've been going through an insane period of being forced to try different TRT medications, lack of access to doctors and crazy hormonal swings over the last several months. Things are finally starting to settle down and have recent test results to share.
I'm a 44 year old male. 5' 11" tall and weigh about 175 lbs.
Let me start at the beginning. About 2 years ago, I was diagnosed with low testosterone. My tested level at the time was 220 ng/dl. I was put on Androgel (1 packet a day). 4 months later my T was up to 367 ng/dl, but I didn't feel any better. libido & energy were still low as before. I was told by my urologist to maintain the same dose. 6 months later, my T was now 197 ng/dl. I upped the Androgel to the pump bottle and was doing 6 pumps a day. 6 months after that, July of this year is when things started to get crazy. First my T was at 401 ng/dl. not bad, libido was about 30% better, and so was energy, but my sleep sucked. Another positive was that I had regained the desire to exercise and have been doing so regularly since. Another reason for my visit to the dr. was that my insurance company had decided to stop covering Androgel. I had to find something else to use. First try was Testim. It is beyond me how anyone can tolerate that stuff. I couldn't stand the smell. My wife threatened to kick me out of the house if i didn't wash it off and my shirt stuck to it all day long. So back to the dr. Next I tried Androderm, the patch. I'm a hairy guy, so I had to shave myself in a new spot every day to put on the patch. It irritated my skin, had trouble staying on, and made a plastic crinkling diaper like sound every time I moved. It was fairly embarrassing, plus the dose in the patch wasn't enough to keep my T level up and I was not about to put on 2 patches every day. So finally I end up on Testosterone Cyp injections. 100mg/week. Wow! Talk about feeling like Superman. This was the greatest thing ever, for about 3 weeks, then my libido and energy started sliding down that estrogen laced hill. I knew my estrogen levels were rising mainly because I was starting to get sore nipples and my libido pretty much tanked. I pretty much stopped even thinking about sex. I tried to get an appointment with my dr. to get an estrogen inhibitor, but that proved futile. For some reason, the urologists in my area are super busy. This was early September and I was told that I couldn't get an appointment to see my dr until November first. I asked about seeing the nurse practitioner, they said no not for what I need to see him for. I looked into every other urologist in my area and they all belong to the same group, so no matter who I called, I ended up at the same central booking agency. I begged them to let me see any doctor and was met with "sorry" best we can do is November 1st. By early October I had had enough and walked in to my doctors office without an appointment and demanded to see the Nurse. Crazy thing is, within 15 minutes, I was sitting in the nurses office. I told her my situation She said she couldn't prescribe me the medication without the doctors permission. My ddoctor was on vacation and the sitting doc was at lunch. She finally got a hold of him and he said that he would not prescribe it without a blood test, even though my symptoms matched perfectly that I had high estrogen. Then the nurse dropped another bomb on me and let me know that the practice was changing its association with the local hospital network. They were in a state of transition and so my insurance company no longer accepted them, so anything I did with them would be considered out-of-network, of course that meant paying cash up front along with a $500 deductible. I left that place never to return. I knew that I mainly needed blood-work done to know what my levels were, so I went to see my PCP. He's a pretty cool guy and agreed to give me all the testing I needed. I told him my saga and first thing out of his mouth was "well, you should really be seeing an endocrinologist not a urologist, they know much more about whats going on with you."[Slap to forehead
] I got my test results, see below. He wants me to see an endocrinologist as well, but I have to wait at least a month to get an appointment. After seeing my results, I did manage to convince him to prescribe me anastrozole to get my estrogen down. Note that at this point, I pretty much have no desire to have sex and couldn't even if I tried. I am in the best physical, muscular and cardiovascular shape I have ever been in. This drives my wife crazy because she see's how good I look and is very attracted to me, yet I don't want to have sex with her or myself even. Also sometime around late September I found Dr. John Crislers website (allthingsmale.com) and another website mens-hormonal-health.com. I read everything on those sites and changed my injection cycle from 100mg/ml 1x a week to 50mg/.5ml every 3 days. I also bought some HCG from alldaychemist.com to help supplement my now shrinking testicles.
So here are my results as of 11-1-11:
Component Your Value Standard Range Units
TESTOSTERONE FREE 34.81 5.00 - 21.00 ng/dL
TESTOSTERONE 986 348 - 1197 ng/dL
% FREE TESTOSTERONE 3.53 1.50 - 4.20 %
ESTRADIOL 50 8 - 43 NG/L
SEX HORMONE BINDING GLOBULIN 29.5 16.5 - 55.9 nmol/L
DHEA SULFATE 161.7 88.9 - 427.0 ug/dL
PROLACTIN 8.1 4.0 - 15.2 NG/ML
Component Your Value Standard Range Units
HDL 49 40 - 59 MG/DL
CHOLESTEROL 172 110 - 200 MG/DL
TRIGLYCERIDE 61 40 - 149 MG/DL
LDL CALCULATION 111 50 - 99 MG/DL
This isn't all the results, but I think these are the important ones. Let me know if anyone wants more results.
My current TRT regimen as done every third day:
50mg Test Cyp
.25mg anastrozole
250iu HCg
So, I know that my T is pretty high, but still normal. I feel good at this level physically, my Estrogen is crazy high as I suspected. Any help with what the other results relate to would be great.
My PCP said to take 1mg of the anastrozole every day (he is not an expert at this), but I have read that I should take only .25 mg every 3rd day with my T injection. How long will it take to get my estrogen down taking this drug? Should I follow my doctors advice or the advice of others that I have read about that have experience with this? Should I do a concentrated dose of anastrozole for a couple of days to knock my estrogen down? Are there any other supplements I should be taking?
I hope I can learn from this group and eventually become a worthy/participating member to help others in my situation. It would be nice not to feel so alone with my hormonal issues as nobody I know is going through the same thing I am right now. I really just want my libido back. I'm hoping that will return when my estrogen gets more to a normal level.
New member, but have been on TRT for just over a year. I've been going through an insane period of being forced to try different TRT medications, lack of access to doctors and crazy hormonal swings over the last several months. Things are finally starting to settle down and have recent test results to share.
I'm a 44 year old male. 5' 11" tall and weigh about 175 lbs.
Let me start at the beginning. About 2 years ago, I was diagnosed with low testosterone. My tested level at the time was 220 ng/dl. I was put on Androgel (1 packet a day). 4 months later my T was up to 367 ng/dl, but I didn't feel any better. libido & energy were still low as before. I was told by my urologist to maintain the same dose. 6 months later, my T was now 197 ng/dl. I upped the Androgel to the pump bottle and was doing 6 pumps a day. 6 months after that, July of this year is when things started to get crazy. First my T was at 401 ng/dl. not bad, libido was about 30% better, and so was energy, but my sleep sucked. Another positive was that I had regained the desire to exercise and have been doing so regularly since. Another reason for my visit to the dr. was that my insurance company had decided to stop covering Androgel. I had to find something else to use. First try was Testim. It is beyond me how anyone can tolerate that stuff. I couldn't stand the smell. My wife threatened to kick me out of the house if i didn't wash it off and my shirt stuck to it all day long. So back to the dr. Next I tried Androderm, the patch. I'm a hairy guy, so I had to shave myself in a new spot every day to put on the patch. It irritated my skin, had trouble staying on, and made a plastic crinkling diaper like sound every time I moved. It was fairly embarrassing, plus the dose in the patch wasn't enough to keep my T level up and I was not about to put on 2 patches every day. So finally I end up on Testosterone Cyp injections. 100mg/week. Wow! Talk about feeling like Superman. This was the greatest thing ever, for about 3 weeks, then my libido and energy started sliding down that estrogen laced hill. I knew my estrogen levels were rising mainly because I was starting to get sore nipples and my libido pretty much tanked. I pretty much stopped even thinking about sex. I tried to get an appointment with my dr. to get an estrogen inhibitor, but that proved futile. For some reason, the urologists in my area are super busy. This was early September and I was told that I couldn't get an appointment to see my dr until November first. I asked about seeing the nurse practitioner, they said no not for what I need to see him for. I looked into every other urologist in my area and they all belong to the same group, so no matter who I called, I ended up at the same central booking agency. I begged them to let me see any doctor and was met with "sorry" best we can do is November 1st. By early October I had had enough and walked in to my doctors office without an appointment and demanded to see the Nurse. Crazy thing is, within 15 minutes, I was sitting in the nurses office. I told her my situation She said she couldn't prescribe me the medication without the doctors permission. My ddoctor was on vacation and the sitting doc was at lunch. She finally got a hold of him and he said that he would not prescribe it without a blood test, even though my symptoms matched perfectly that I had high estrogen. Then the nurse dropped another bomb on me and let me know that the practice was changing its association with the local hospital network. They were in a state of transition and so my insurance company no longer accepted them, so anything I did with them would be considered out-of-network, of course that meant paying cash up front along with a $500 deductible. I left that place never to return. I knew that I mainly needed blood-work done to know what my levels were, so I went to see my PCP. He's a pretty cool guy and agreed to give me all the testing I needed. I told him my saga and first thing out of his mouth was "well, you should really be seeing an endocrinologist not a urologist, they know much more about whats going on with you."[Slap to forehead
] I got my test results, see below. He wants me to see an endocrinologist as well, but I have to wait at least a month to get an appointment. After seeing my results, I did manage to convince him to prescribe me anastrozole to get my estrogen down. Note that at this point, I pretty much have no desire to have sex and couldn't even if I tried. I am in the best physical, muscular and cardiovascular shape I have ever been in. This drives my wife crazy because she see's how good I look and is very attracted to me, yet I don't want to have sex with her or myself even. Also sometime around late September I found Dr. John Crislers website (allthingsmale.com) and another website mens-hormonal-health.com. I read everything on those sites and changed my injection cycle from 100mg/ml 1x a week to 50mg/.5ml every 3 days. I also bought some HCG from alldaychemist.com to help supplement my now shrinking testicles. So here are my results as of 11-1-11:
Component Your Value Standard Range Units
TESTOSTERONE FREE 34.81 5.00 - 21.00 ng/dL
TESTOSTERONE 986 348 - 1197 ng/dL
% FREE TESTOSTERONE 3.53 1.50 - 4.20 %
ESTRADIOL 50 8 - 43 NG/L
SEX HORMONE BINDING GLOBULIN 29.5 16.5 - 55.9 nmol/L
DHEA SULFATE 161.7 88.9 - 427.0 ug/dL
PROLACTIN 8.1 4.0 - 15.2 NG/ML
Component Your Value Standard Range Units
HDL 49 40 - 59 MG/DL
CHOLESTEROL 172 110 - 200 MG/DL
TRIGLYCERIDE 61 40 - 149 MG/DL
LDL CALCULATION 111 50 - 99 MG/DL
This isn't all the results, but I think these are the important ones. Let me know if anyone wants more results.
My current TRT regimen as done every third day:
50mg Test Cyp
.25mg anastrozole
250iu HCg
So, I know that my T is pretty high, but still normal. I feel good at this level physically, my Estrogen is crazy high as I suspected. Any help with what the other results relate to would be great.
My PCP said to take 1mg of the anastrozole every day (he is not an expert at this), but I have read that I should take only .25 mg every 3rd day with my T injection. How long will it take to get my estrogen down taking this drug? Should I follow my doctors advice or the advice of others that I have read about that have experience with this? Should I do a concentrated dose of anastrozole for a couple of days to knock my estrogen down? Are there any other supplements I should be taking?
I hope I can learn from this group and eventually become a worthy/participating member to help others in my situation. It would be nice not to feel so alone with my hormonal issues as nobody I know is going through the same thing I am right now. I really just want my libido back. I'm hoping that will return when my estrogen gets more to a normal level.
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