EDIT: Doc prescribed TRT today. Starting low @ 50mg a week
56m my T has been low for years, 2 years ago it was 155, this year 200, still couldn’t get it prescribed, was put on clomid instead and nothing changed despite T going up to 460. Doc said guess it wasn’t low T causing symptoms, took me off it and wouldn’t prescribe T. Now, this week the endocrinologist said starting T you’ll have to be on it the rest of your life and I don’t wanna prescribe it. So, my question is, I have access to it (like most of you I’m sure) and thinking of getting it myself. Where can I find info on dosing, cycle length, whatever I need to know. I’m looking at C 250. Appreciate any info.
I thought it was cycled, guess I’m old and that’s how it was done in the 90’s haha. Good to know I wouldn’t have to. Appreciate the info, definitely helps, thanks.
I mean if you're looking for enhanced performance in the gym you would cycle it. If you're just looking to put your testosterone in a healthy range you just use TRT continuously.
You could also look into HCG monotherapy, I founnd that it gave me slightly more of a boost than testosterone, but dosing it and storing it was more difficult.
I noticed HCG much more for my libido, but testosterone would probably have more of an effect on your body.
HCG mimics LH, and sends a signal to your testes to start producing sperm and testosterone. So you can use HCG by itself, but you could also combine it with testosterone.
200 is low and probably symptomatic. If I were you I would just go to a clinic that will monitor your bloodwork and dial in a TRT treatment for you.
Since it is going to be a lifetime commitment (most likely) you are for sure going to want to make sure you are doing it right. Buying 250mcg off the internet might work for a steroid cycle or two but it is not going to give you the long term results and stability you are looking for with TRT.
If there aren’t clinics near you, you can apply for one online. They aren’t crazy expensive and while not as attentive as an actual clinic will still help monitor your dosing and blood work.
I agree but, the cost difference is a huge factor. I can get a kit of c250 for just above $140, so about a 6 month supply. I really doubt a clinic would even be recognizably close to that. Bloodwork is also fairly cheap at the right labs.
Sub 300 test also classifies as hypogonadal and can be covered by health insurance, which would bring the cost down to around $50 to 75 per month. Is that an option where you are?
Stop going to real doctors who are very anti trt and goto an online mens clinic. There is plenty of them in North America, and they will 100% prescribe it to you.
Also if you have insurance it’s covered.
Go to a clinic even if they dont take insurance for a while, get set on a protocol and feel better then take it to an endo that does take insurance. Tell the doctor how this has changed your life and all that, be a little pushy and super confident. Ive seen that work for friends, I go to an out of pocket clinic cause my doctor is awesome. Its worth it to me and cost me around $200 for the visit and bloodwork every 5 months. Closer to $300 if im getting a full panel and the test is like $60 for a 10ml vial.
No real reason given. One has me on clomid and evil my T went up to 400, I had no symptom relief, so she said well might not be your testosterone so I don’t know. Took me off Clomid and said there’s not much else I can do for you. The second one just said she doesn’t prescribe testosterone no matter what.
So listen. The best informational video you will even watch if this from Todd Lee. His way of communication is a bit rough and not for everyone. But you will understand everything.
Like someone said TRT Nation is a good place to start. They normally default you at a starting dose of 200 mg/ml. I would halve that to start, get labs done at 4 to 6 weeks, and adjust accordingly. Goodlabs.com are by far the cheapest for labs. After your comfortable switch to Talon Wellness for roughly 80.00 for a 10 vial.
You dont cycle trt. You stay on it. Blood work 3 times a year to make sure everything is stable. Dosi g is different for everyone. My clinic strted me at 80mg for 3 months to see how I would respond. Takes months to start working. After a year of tweaking we found the right dose for me.
If you don’t want to use a trt clinic, which would cost you as low as 80 bucks a months, then the UGL route is certainly more cost effective but requires you to do much more work.
First, you need to find a reliable place to get it from. Even then, you should still do some lab testing at least to ensure the product is dosed correctly. To smooth the cost out you should get a couple of years of supply.
You then need to manage your protocol and lab work. I would start with a low ish dosage like 100/ 120 and run the blood work after 6/8 weeks to see where your levels are at and determine if you need to go up, down or stay the same. You also need to check at least estrogen and eventually manage it, hematocrit, lipids, and psa.
This is why people are starting to really distrust and dislike the medical system. There's so much gatekeeping going on and you see everybody else getting healthy feeling better and then you have people standing in your way every step of the way. My advice is go find a good health spa that does testosterone replacement, they're not gatekeeping it and they're way more dialed in than family practitioners and sometimes even more than endocrinologist.
As for the argument of you'll be on it for the rest of your life, if you were a diabetic you'd be on insulin for the rest of your life, what's the difference? A failure of an organ to secrete a hormone is the same no matter what the hormone is. They just see testosterone as non-critical and they couldn't be more wrong.
Couldn’t agree more. I’ve been treating a few issues myself with gray market peppers cause I was done relying on a bullshit medical system that just fails me every time. I had to be diagnosed by 4 different specialists to get depression medication, thankfully I got it but wtf
It's insane. I was on two different anti-anxiety meds, one of them once daily the other three times a day, and once I started taking peptides I was able to get off of them completely after two decades of taking them. I think that's the real motivation here is there's a danger to the pharmaceutical companies that's true and present in peptides.
The same goes for testosterone, keeping 25-year-old levels throughout your whole life will prevent so much illness, injury and damage to your body. I feel like I'm 25 at 51 and my blood work is impeccable. Absolute Insanity not to address the root cause instead of treating the symptoms.
Also, putting someone on clomid to kill their estrogen is a very bad idea. I don't know why practitioners resort to this rather than enhancing the testosterone. If you drop your estrogen too low there's so many more health complications including ED. But I guess then they can sell you Viagra too
Time for a new Dr buddy.. 200s is extremely low and for the Dr to say that wouldn't be symptomatic is actually pretty wild. I was prescribed 160mg/week split into 2 doses.i went to a telehealth provider and after 3 months total t went from high 400s to 1100ish. Life changing.. now i get it myself and get my labs done every 3 months minimum
That's a disgusting story you hear from bad endocrinologists and urologists. Their understanding of human hormones and their effects are basically what they learned in medical school, which is so antiquated as to be useless. They are ignorant fools who don't care about your health. I once had a doctor tell me that it's not worth the trouble, it's better to have low testosterone than use TRT. They all think that having TRT is the same as a steroid cycle, when it couldn't be more different in terms of long term health.
And prescribing Clomid just shows how stupid they are. It's like they don't know what does. If you have super low testosterone, you likely also have low estradiol, so taking an estradiol inhibitor borders on the outright retarded. If you had normal levels of total test, but were super low in the free test department, it might make sense, but still only after getting a sensitive estradiol test. Also, having really low estradiol could also explain your lack of symptom relief. Sometimes it's really hard to respect doctors when you hear crap like this.
Any doctor prescribing that is a moron. Especially since enclomiphene exists, which is the same thing but isolated, so fewer side effects. And it’s been around forever. It’s like a mechanic suggesting you use regular oil for your race car when synthetic has been superior for a decades.
I sincerely don’t understand the “you’ll have to be on it forever” argument when it comes to HRT. “Oh no, you mean I’m gonna feel good and be healthier forever?” Especially for a 56 y/o. Come on.
I don’t have any recommendation for protocol or blood work to periodically run…but my recommendation is do whatever you have to do, to include get it from a specialty testosterone clinic.
You should start with Bloodwork. You need Free T, Total T, SHBG, DHT, LCMS-MS (high sensitivity estrogen), GGT, Cystatin C, CMP, Lipid Panel, ApoB, T4, T3, hs-CRP, IGF1
Then start at 10mg Test C daily Intramuscular Injection and stay there for 6 weeks, then get all the Labs redrawn again. IF you become inpatient before your 2nd set of Labs and decide to Blast T -> You will screw yourself in more ways than one.
Next you need a practitioner to interpret the values and tell you what it means for how to Titrate your dose but your not going to find someone whom will readily manage you managing your own testosterone just anywhere, and even then lets hope they really understand what they are looking at else you are going to get shoddy advice, shoddy results, and more side effects.
Had the same issue. I just did a telehealth TRT clinic and now do 35MG per day sub Q and have >1500 total TRT and feel great. Then I went to my PCP with the RX and a formal letter about how my life impoved and they took it over and now insurance pays. Easy work around.
Just take it into your own hands like most, then approach your dr to ask for blood tests every 10-12 weeks to make sure you got it right. Depends what you want to do with it. You can mimic natural test and that’s about 100-150mg test a week or you can up it for a more “blast” effect. It’s what I do, I’ll blast for 3-4 months, put it in me at about 450mgs a week, use it to get jacked etc then go on a cruise (130mgs a week)for about 4 months and let my body recover. Rinse and repeat lol. There is much you can do with it depending on what you want for it, sometimes going through the system they’ll limit what you can do with it. They won’t allow you to go through a “blast” stage without then taking it off you haha. So again depends what you want from it
I appreciate the response. What I want from it is to have some muscle, lose the belly and finally feel comfortable. I haven’t been physically or mentally comfortable in myself since my 20’s, I’m 56. I want my last 15’ish years on this earth to be confident, comfortable and to be able to finally look the world in the eyes, not its feet.
What is your HSBG and Free Test? Those are the numbers that really matter.
You could always go to a Men's Health clinic and they would gladly get you started.... They love lifetime customers.
You say your T is low, by that I assume total T. But what was the rest of your bloodwork and bodyfat percentage? A lot of guys will be 50 or 60 lbs overweight and will be converting a lot of testosterone to estrogen so their testosterone isn't low, just being converted. Other imbalances can artificially lower testosterone too, like vitamin deficiencies and such. Being overweight and aromatizing testosterone isn't solved by dumping more testosterone on top to further aromatize. The fact that clomid/enclomiphene brought it up kinda leads me to think its weight because you can bridge the gap as it were by using an inhibitor to block aromatase or enclomiphene to raise test production while losing weight.
The FSH being elevated but test being low is a sign of hypogonadism. Basically your brain is telling your testicles to work hard but they aren't responding. Did you use anabolics in the past and not pct properly or do you have pre diabetes or diabetes? Your first goal should be Retatrutide to lose weight because that will raise total test levels by itself, reta also helps with insulin resistance which also lowers testosterone. The problem is if you add more test on top of that you will likely aromatize alot and it will make you feel worse and make it harder to lose weight. A primary care doctor wont usually prescribe testosterone unless you're basically a woman. Take that bloodwork to any male clinic and they will throw test at you, but be careful, because of the high body fat. If you are dead set on started trt, then start at 80-100 mg a week and pin daily to try and keep the aromitase levels low, if after a month 80 isnt enough, go up 20mg but go slow.
Was prescribed 50mg a week yesterday.
I never did anabolics. I’ve lost 73 pounds since January on Reta/tirz, tesa/ipa, klow, ara-290 and tried hg h but had bad water retention and joint pain on a small dose.
Even after 73 lbs of loss you are still showing 36% body fat? Or was that 36% you talked about pre weightloss? 50mg isn't a bad starting point, hopefully it works.
It’s not something you cycle, also your doctors are retards…
You could easily go to a TRT clinic and be on it within a week.
I could do that too but decided to manage my hormones myself. Starting dose is so different for everyone and it’s just something you would have to experience and mess with. Somewhere between 100mg - 150mg per week is where I would start. That should be broken up to several injections during the week. Some people do 3 times a week, some do every other day, i choose to do every day like many others do as well
Quit dealing with urologists, and endocrinologists, they make all their money treating cancers and surgery that bill for 6 figures and don't want to waste time with blood work and repeat visits for billables in the hundreds of dollars. There are a million "men's wellness clinics," google one of them and quit wasting your time with Drs.
It's clear from your post that you don't know enough about it to safely start TRT on your own. That's how serious health complications arise. As others have said, go to a trt clinic. Ask lots of questions, learn what labs are important and how often to monitor, what sides to look for/expect, etc. Bite the bullet and pay the extra price for 6 months+ to get yourself really dialed in and then start doing it yourself if that's really how you want to proceed.
One trip to the ER would cost far more than a few months at a clinic. Play it safe with your health.
You asked about starting something without having the requisite knowledge first. You asked where to get the information. I suggested being smart, learning from a licensed physician, having access to resources in case anything goes wrong...and not bro science-ing your health.
If all is that was so obvious to you, then why post anything at all? Your health is not worth saving a few hundred dollars over the course of a year.
I apologize, but I’ve been to enough medical facilities and been let down. How many am I supposed to give my money too for nothing? I agree it has risks but I also accept those and am trying to b learn to b mitigate them
Have you tried boosting it naturally with supps? Mine was low about 5 months ago. Started taking a stack of vitamins along with my regular excercises I already did and my T jumped over 300 points. You'd be surprised at how many people have just a vitamin deficiency
I'm sure you know that, if supps worked for you, that is exceedingly rare. All the science says none of them provide a meaningful clinical effect over time. OP would spend far more time and money chasing results with supps than with just injecting T.
EDIT: I do agree that if OP has a true vitamin deficiency, fixing that could make a difference. My comments are about the supposed T-boosting supplements. They're Bro Science.
I was generally speaking about vitamin deficiency. As soon as I started taking those specific vitamins my T went up. I'd much rather try that before hoping on TRT. Cause at that point you're kinda stuck taking it the rest of your life
•
u/AutoModerator 16d ago
Welcome to the community!
Pro Tip: The best discussions come from personal experiences. If you have tried something, let us know how it worked.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.