Estrogen treatment to increase estradiol in men with low E2

[DragonBits]

At this point I am just curious, but since we all believe estrogen is important, what does one do if your level is too low?

i have a feeling if i lose weight, stop taking dhea, my estradiol will move down to 12 ug/dl or so or maybe even lower.

Right now I am 5.4 and 165 lbs, so at least 30 lbs over weight, my sensitive estradiol test is 20.8 ug/dl (8-36) with an over range FreeT 20.7 (6.6-18.1) . In my profile pic I was ~150 lbs, now I am 165lbs. Not obese by the BMI scale, but overweight. And my DHEA is 50% higher than the top of the range 450 ug/dl, and I am taking HCG. All things that many men report as increasing their estrogen.

So has any man ever taken estrogen? What is too low an estradiol level?

 

[Vince]

I'm just wondering before you started trt where you primary or secondary?

 

[DragonBits]

I'm just wondering before you started trt where you primary or secondary?

Secondary for sure, though I could have been a bit primary.

I never measured Estrogen when first on TRT, and only measured it when I stopped in 2015, at that time estradiol (not sensitive test) was unmeasurable and TT was 326 with FT 4.7 (6-18).

I took clomid at that time (2015) for 3 months, and my TT rose to 478 and FT to 7.7 estradiol to 27.6. But I had some testicular atrophy before I started the clomid, so hard to tell how that might have affected things.

But I started TRT this time, my TT was between 348-390 (different years) and estradiol was unmeasurable once, once 7.3 and was high as 11.1 without any hormones added.

No doubt my estradiol will increase with increasing levels of TT, but not as much as one would expect, and since I will for sure stop DHEA and if I lose weight, I thinking estradiol is likely to decrease.

I will wait till my weight gets down to less than 150 lbs, (cross my fingers on that), and retest to see what it going on.

BTW, my libdo is good, I have had it far higher on TRT at times, but that time it was annoying high, kind of like a monkey in heat. I have no freaking idea of what hormone combination caused that.

 

[Vince Carter]

To a fiar extent what is low E for one guy to the next can vary wildly and SHBG has to be known to know if its low, for you. The point being is the Free Estradiol, just like the Free T that is available for use in the body. The sensitive test for E2 is akin to only using Total Testosterone for a lab test.

If a guy *needed* to boost his E for some bizarre reason, cheap oral DHEA tablet from WalMart would do the trick quite well.

 

[Vince]

I don't know what your testosterone levels are at besides your free T, but as we all know E follows T. So of course if you increase your testosterone levels you're going to increase your E levels.

 

[Vince]

When my testosterone levels were in the 500 my E levels were very low, even with DHEA.

 

[DragonBits]

To a fiar extent what is low E for one guy to the next can vary wildly and SHBG has to be known to know if its low, for you. The point being is the Free Estradiol, just like the Free T that is available for use in the body. The sensitive test for E2 is akin to only using Total Testosterone for a lab test.

If a guy *needed* to boost his E for some bizarre reason, cheap oral DHEA tablet from WalMart would do the trick quite well.

Been there, done that, didn't work (for me). And since dhea is so high, I am cutting it out.

You didn't catch the details on my first post about my dhea-s is 50% higher than it should be.

But here is more detail. A week ago I had a blood test, my DHEA was at 450.5 (30.9-295.6) which is way over recommended, my FT direct was over range as well, my TT was 690, not particularly high, though my SHBG was 41, likely limiting free estrogen as well. (Now I can buy that the direct FT measurement isn't the most accurate, one should use the much more expensive lc/ms to measure FT.)
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It seems to do nothing for my estradiol levels, and I was taking 25mg DHEA, my DHEA-s went from 95ug/dl >450.5 (30.9-295.6). WHich is 50% higher than the top of the range. While my estradiol measured 20.3 ug/dl (8-35) (from another thread.

 

[Vince Carter]

can you clarify what DHEA you used...oral micronized capsule? Sublingual? Transdermal? It's the cheap garbage tablet that will aromatase, the others are far less likely to > E

 

[lowe2sucks]

i don't see why you want to increase your estrogen it's in range
testosterone is antagonizing estrogen so maybe because yours is very high you feel symptoms of low estrogen try reducing your doses
some get tons of e2 with free t being at top of range + hcg and dhea maybe your body just doesn't want high e2 at this moment so it put brakes on your aromatase enzyme

 

[Nelson Vergel]

I used a low dose estradiol cream from Empower for a few weeks when I crashed my estradiol a few years ago while using oxandrolone (It is a DHT analog and DHT blocks E2). It helped.

 

[DragonBits]

i don't see why you want to increase your estrogen it's in range
testosterone is antagonizing estrogen so maybe because yours is very high you feel symptoms of low estrogen try reducing your doses
some get tons of e2 with free t being at top of range + hcg and dhea maybe your body just doesn't want high e2 at this moment so it put brakes on your aromatase enzyme

I don't have "high" libido, just OK and I am happy with it, BUT it's been far higher, though I have no idea what hormonal combination caused that. (If I had to take a guess, and it would be a total guess, my estradiol was lower than where it is right now.)

Like I said, at this time I am not worried, but if i lose weight conventional is that my estradiol will decline. And I will stop using DHEA for sure, again people mostly believe that high dhea causes excess estrogen, and my dhea is very high.

So if it declines, then I would be concerned. Libido is only one obvious effect, bone health, HDL and tendon health are more important.

Everyone on the forum says estradiol is important for our heath, so if it's low why not take an estrogen cream product? Though "low" is never really defined.

At this point I am only curious about this subject.

 

[Joey786]

You stated the range of free t as 6.6-18.1. Are those numbers in pg/ml? I agree with userjoe, losing body fat might not decrease your estradiol at all. I believe that’s more of a bro science myth.

 

[DragonBits]

Your e2 isn’t what would be called low. Plenty of people are good with e2 of 20. DHEA does not cause high e2. It’s not cause and effect. Even supplementing DHEA for higher e2 is questionable.

Unless you get extremely lean as in 6% don’t expect your aromatase levels to budge much if any. Haven’t seen any proof that going from 20% to 10% does a damn thing. Many accounts I have read were obese people using trt to improve health and assist weight loss. End of the journey e2 was not changed significantly.

Measure your hdl. Get a bone scan. Probably a non issue.

If you want to experiment then do so, but don’t jump to so many conclusions with no proof. Gonna be a rough ride if you do.

I agree that my current E2 of 20 isn't really low. While I was on self directed TRT for 5 years, I never measured my E2 so I have no idea what it was during that time. My HDL varied between 36-54. My last measured HDL was a month ago at 36, kind of low.

Since starting to measure E2, it has varied from unmeasureablely low to a high of 56 (with the TT of 1389 ng/dl). I will find out what happens as I lose weight and continue TRT.

I intend to go from 30% BF to maybe 15-20% BF.

I won't get a bone scan anytime soon, just don't want to pay for it. If the doctor ever want to order it and medicare would pay for it, sure, no problem. Not terrible expensive, but not even close to the top of my want list to do a dexa scan.

If I had estrogen cream I would give it a try just to see how it made me feel. IMO it seems easy to just stop and my E2 would go back down again fairly quickly.

I see a lot of posts from people who "crash" their E2 using an AI, I wondered why not use some estrogen cream to quickly bring it back up. But right now, I am just curious about if anyone had ever considered it.

 

[DragonBits]

I don't know what your testosterone levels are at besides your free T, but as we all know E follows T. So of course if you increase your testosterone levels you're going to increase your E levels.

Vince,

I first measured E2 in 5/23/2015. These are all the times I measured e2, the asterisk is the sensitive test, those without the asterisk were a non-sensitive test.

The last 4 tests were all in 2018. The actual dates don’t seem that important.

TT and E2 and % of TT converted to E2.

326 ng/dl <5.1 pg/ml (No TRT at all) ???%
478 ng/dl 27.6 pg/ml (on clomid) (5.64%
407 ng/dl 7.3 pg/ml (No TRT at all) 1.7%
390 ng/dl <5 pg/ml (No TRT at all) ???%
348 ng/dl 11.1 pg/ml*(No TRT at all) 3.2%
1389 ng/dl 56.2 pg/ml*(On TRT +HCG) 4%
690 ng/dl 20.3 pg/ml* (On TRT +HCG) 2.9% (9/8/2018)

It seems clomid boosted my E2 much more than it boosted my TT, though it did increase both.

Looking at the data, I would expect between 2.9-4% of my TT to be converted to E2, but I don’t know the effect that DHEA, HCG or BF% was having on that.

Though when not on TRT at all, E2 conversion will go down to below 3% - to less than 1.5 %, I can’t tell how low the % since it wasn’t measurable. I expect the peaks and troughs of TRT has a lot to do with the higher % of E2 conversion.

BTW: I got a blood test for DHT on 9/15/2018, it was 74 ng/dl (30-85 range).