Natural Testosterone diurnal patterns? trying to dial in TRT and dose timing, etc.

[BillyJ03z]

Has there ever been studies done on natural diurnal patterns of healthy males... such as blood taken ever hour or 2 hours throughout a 12-24 period to see how steady Total and Free Test levels are?

From my limited research the consensus is that Testosterone is the highest in the AM and falls up to 43% throughout the day.... Now this diurnal cycle makes sense naturally as when we awake in the morning we are supposed to feel energized and strongest to start the day and as night time approaches the Test should accordingly drop ramping down energy levels preparing for sleep.

I need to figure out the peak cycles of my body when injecting Test and the associated esters so I can get my test levels highest in AM and then fall throughout the day into the night time... This is where I believe daily injection would work best for me, especially since I am a low SHBG guy...

thoughts?

 

[Vince]

Has there ever been studies done on natural diurnal patterns of healthy males... such as blood taken ever hour or 2 hours throughout a 12-24 period to see how steady Total and Free Test levels are?

From my limited research the consensus is that Testosterone is the highest in the AM and falls up to 43% throughout the day.... Now this diurnal cycle makes sense naturally as when we awake in the morning we are supposed to feel energized and strongest to start the day and as night time approaches the Test should accordingly drop ramping down energy levels preparing for sleep.

I need to figure out the peak cycles of my body when injecting Test and the associated esters so I can get my test levels highest in AM and then fall throughout the day into the night time... This is where I believe daily injection would work best for me, especially since I am a low SHBG guy...

thoughts?

It's impossible to match your body natural cycles of testosterone. There's no way you can inject testosterone and get everything just right.

 

[BillyJ03z]

It's impossible to match your body natural cycles of testosterone. There's no way you can inject testosterone and get everything just right.

Obviously you can't perfectly match natural diurnal cycle... but you can get dialed into the best scenario closest to natural cycles.... Since we are naturally highest Test in the morning then if we can figure out when the Test peaks (depending on ester) then you dose accordingly.. obviously this would only work with daily injects schedule.. this is why I think nighttime injection may be best...

 

[Vince]

Obviously you can't perfectly match natural diurnal cycle... but you can get dialed into the best scenario closest to natural cycles.... Since we are naturally highest Test in the morning then if we can figure out when the Test peaks (depending on ester) then you dose accordingly.. obviously this would only work with daily injects schedule.. this is why I think nighttime injection may be best...

I do inject daily, every morning. I really never felt any swing in my levels, testosterone or estrogen.

 

[BillyJ03z]

I do inject daily, every morning. I really never felt any swing in my levels, testosterone or estrogen.

I've posted my following labs a few places on Excel already but they are relevant to this discussion.....

I was on Test Cyp 3 x Wk MWF @ 40mg/IM (120mg/wk total) ...... and the following was my blood work 24hrs after monday injection *labcorp
Total Test-643
Free Test- 23.3
E2- <20 (I was using AI (.25 mg adex) due to my E2 previously skyrocketid from DHEA supplementing as I had no E2 issues prior)
SHBG- 21.10 (13.30-8.50)

about 2 months of Test Prop @ 20mg/ed/SQ inject (140mg wk/total)... no AI... **

Blood work was drawn 24hrs/next day after injection) *labcorp
Total Test- 468 (198-679)
Free Test- 16.2 (6.8-21.5)
E2- 20 (20-53)
SHBG- 22

So what jumps out at me is that on Test Prop my trough was TT 468 and FT 16.2 so obviously I hit my peak earlier and these numbers would be perfect at night time... I just need to figure out how long Test Prop peaks before dropping... Let's say if I hit my peak 12 hours after injection then injecting around 8-9 pm would be ideal.

Now the Cyp injection is interesting.. those numbers are ideal in the morning and from what I remember I actually felt pretty good during that time I was on Cyp 3 x wk at that dose... I was supposed to get 24hr and 48hr blood tests with the Cyp protocol but something happened where I didn't get the 48hr (must have been work related)... the thing that concerns me about the Cyp is that those levels seem to be still too high for that dose and I don't know if that is peak.. further, If adopting an ED protocol with CYP will there be a carry over from injecting each building test levels higher...

 

[Cataceous]

I'm increasingly pessimistic about the possibility of achieving anything approaching a normal diurnal variation in serum testosterone with the esters we have available. Even daily propionate probably ends up yielding pretty flat levels. [Edit: My own subsequent use of testosterone propionate contradicts this. I found that excessive diurnal variation was possible, and that mixing with a longer ester allows for tuning the size of daily variation in serum testosterone.]

One alternative is topical testosterone. But absorption can be quite variable and you can get higher DHT and estradiol relative to injections.

Another alternative is straight testosterone, either in oil or as a suspension in water. But this also has issues: greater PIP, difficult to obtain legally in the U.S., possibly too short of a half-life, and may also result in higher aromatization when injected subcutaneously.

 

[Vince Carter]

So inject at night and report back. Why you need validation and/or study is strange...just do it and see how you do

 

[BillyJ03z]

So inject at night and report back. Why you need validation and/or study is strange...just do it and see how you do

Well, personally for me studies are great because they validate if something may or may not work... I'll always research studies on an issue before I implement a change or routine because if it has already been proven to be a failure Im not going to repeat a known failure, but even if studies were a failure they also give me options of making adjustments applying different variances that have not been tried in past studies...

Next week I go for blood work... so I will stay on my current ED protocol of 30 mg SQ of Test Cyp and see how my blood work looks at trough and then I will attempt a night time injection routine and see how that goes....

 

[TLR]

From what I remember, Dr. Saya posted on here that if you inject daily after around 40 days your level has reached its peak and is pretty much flat line stable. I believe he was referring to cypionate and that it takes 5 half lives to reach the peak due to the "stacking" effect taking place. All that said, with a half life of 8 days I don't think you are making any perceptible difference with time of day that you inject. If mimicking daily peaks and troughs is the goal I don't think any injectable gets you there.

 

[HealthMan]

The only way to try to mimic this is either testosterone cream/gel or testosterone suspension. I tried testosterone cream before and feel better using injections. Plus absorption varies quite a bit.

 

[at15]

Cypionate everyday is completely opposite of the pulsatile nature of natural testosterone.
The best you can do is inject cypionate once per week to mimic the pulsatile natural response but it will be on a 7 day schedule instead of a 24 hour one. Cypionate everyday is basically steady state, there is very little peak or trough. In the early days Dr. Crisler had many patients who seemed to really like the variation on a 7 day schedule. Also he always stated: "variation in hormone levels are part and parcel with youth"

 

[Cataceous]

...
The best you can do is inject cypionate once per week to mimic the pulsatile natural response but it will be on a 7 day schedule instead of a 24 hour one. ...

My hypothesis, backed up by a little theory, is that these longer cycles can be a problem because they allow for greater peak estradiol and lower trough estradiol compared to either steady levels or to relatively rapid natural diurnal variations.

 

[Henry]

I use Androgel and hit 1400's at peak and around 460's the next morning before application. Obviously I'm taking too much Androgel but you can see that it doesn't work like injections which give you a steady state, no matter how often you inject. If you want to try to match the rhythm, it's not perfect, but it's closer than injections.

 

[fifty]

Henry can you tell a big difference in how you feel at 1400 vs 400?

 

[Henry]

Not really. At night, and in the morning, before I apply the gel, my libido is very strong and erection quality is excellent. If I didn't run the blood tests, I wouldn't have known there was a difference.

 

[Rain27]

@Enrique wat dosage androgel?

 

[Henry]

I use 4 pumps, the max dose. I really should drop it down to 3 but I've been running this dose for years with no side effects

 

[Rain27]

@Enrique androgel is at 1%?
Each pump how much is ?

 

[Henry]

Hi, this is Androgel 1.62% and each pump has 20.25mg's per pump so 4 pumps is 81mg's. Now, most people only absorb 10% so I would say that a person gets around 8mg's a day, which supposed matches a healthy person's output of T per day..

 

[Henry]

Henry can you tell a big difference in how you feel at 1400 vs 400?

Something I forgot to mention, the 400 is before application so, for the majority of the testosterone drop from 1400 to 400, I'm likely asleep.