TheWestern
New Member
I've been lurking this forum for years, actually signed up as a member in 2020 but have never posted. I was diagnosed with low testosterone around that time at 36yo (around 290 ng/dl) with fairly severe fatigue, end of day body aches, poor sleep, inability to gain mm mass. I signed up with a well known and respected TRT clinic and found that I responded well to testosterone; with no other lifestyle changes I lost body fat, gained probably ten pounds of muscle, the fatigue was gone, the body aches were gone, several chronic injuries I'd had since the military back in 2004 hurt less for the first time ever. My provider at the clinic worked with me quite a bit to dial in my dosing. At the high end I was pinning 30mg of test a day and 10mg of nandrolone decanoate (low SHBG led to daily injections). This reduced my chronic injury pain to almost zero, but I had high hematocrit and over time some symptoms of polycythemia, with high BP (150/100 mmHg range).
Increasing water intake and donating blood helped with the hematocrit. Being consistent with cardio helped with the BP. Since I had a baseline that provides good results and seems sustainable, I decided to source my own hormones, since the clinic I was using was quite expensive. I also wanted to try a low dose HGH regimen (2iu/day) which would have been about $800/mo from that clinic.
My interests are more long term functionality/health/anti-aging than bodybuilding, I do a full blood panel every six months. I'm interested in other compounds that might not have been available from a TRT clinic but may be effective for my goals.
Here to read and learn. I work in healthcare, on the clinical care side of things, and since starting this journey I've been amazed at how little hormones are considered by most healthcare professionals, and how little they seem to know or be interested in HRT (I was obviously guilty of this in the past as well).
My goals are to find the combination of compounds that is most long term sustainable, with the fewest health side-effects, and gives the greatest effect.
Thanks all for what you've already contributed to my journey.
Increasing water intake and donating blood helped with the hematocrit. Being consistent with cardio helped with the BP. Since I had a baseline that provides good results and seems sustainable, I decided to source my own hormones, since the clinic I was using was quite expensive. I also wanted to try a low dose HGH regimen (2iu/day) which would have been about $800/mo from that clinic.
My interests are more long term functionality/health/anti-aging than bodybuilding, I do a full blood panel every six months. I'm interested in other compounds that might not have been available from a TRT clinic but may be effective for my goals.
Here to read and learn. I work in healthcare, on the clinical care side of things, and since starting this journey I've been amazed at how little hormones are considered by most healthcare professionals, and how little they seem to know or be interested in HRT (I was obviously guilty of this in the past as well).
My goals are to find the combination of compounds that is most long term sustainable, with the fewest health side-effects, and gives the greatest effect.
Thanks all for what you've already contributed to my journey.
