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See below It is, as it results in non-physiological levels for a vast majority of men. Since you're so fond of anecdotes, take a spin through the Excel Male forums and look for posts describing symptoms that are clearly linked to excessive doing, such as elevated hematocrit. This will be...

Once again you're projecting. You foist high doses on anyone looking for help because you think they work for you, even though you don't acknowledge having tried anything else. You're a perfect example of the bias inherent in the anecdotes that Phil Goodman relies on. Meanwhile, I would expect...

Two can play that game, but I can get favorable results with a neutral question: Question: Statistically speaking, based on all information available to you, which approach is more likely to maximize quality of life for hypogonadal men? Based on a comprehensive review of available medical...

I reviewed every one and It appeared that you hadn't read them; many have no bearing on the discussion, and at least one provides direct evidence in favor of physiological dosing. None support the premise that supraphysiological dosing is preferable to physiological dosing for treating...

The point of being on TRT is to treat hypogonadism and thereby improve overall health. If you had started with above-borderline natural free testosterone then most likely there would have been no point in being on TRT. The high-dose apologists may point to some rare conditions where functional...

You are encouraging my speculation that you haven't even tried physiological dosing and therefore have no idea what you're talking about. Your promotion of excessive dosing—without any exploration of normal levels—is a prescription for misery in many, even if you have thus far avoided negative...

You need to revisit our long discussion so that you won't continue to mischaracterize it and omit key details. The study you're so enamored with did not have any doses that yielded physiological levels. With a choice between hypergonadism and hypogonadism, the latter appeared worse in the time...

I don't recall seeing you document the amount of time you've spent using low/medium physiological doses to firmly establish that they don't work for you. Maybe there are older posts to this effect? For it to count you'd have to spend a few months at these levels, e.g. 50-70 mg TC/week. Or did...

My approach is overly complex and impractical for most; it involves multiple daily injections. It's much simpler to first try significant dose reductions, and if no luck there then try switching to a short-acting form of testosterone, as these resolve hypogonadism with less hormonal chaos than...

What were things like under TRT? It looks as though you've had a pretty decent recovery, probably getting free testosterone into the healthy normal range. That new prolactin level is high enough to cause problems for some men. If there are no other obvious problems then you could run a trial...

In fairness, if they operate similarly to places like AllDayChemist then speed should not be expected. Seems like it can easily take a month to get medications from India.

Bingo. Excessive testosterone may also be a factor. I have had this issue a lot over many years of TRT. Only more recently with much lower doses and adding back the suppressed kisspeptin and GnRH (-->LH+FSH) have I regained more consistent sensitivity that is approaching pre-TRT levels.

Here's the post mentioning the new Maximus formulation. It's followed by a healthy debate about my concerns of hormonal suppression in TRT: https://www.excelmale.com/threads/advice-on-next-steps-mid-low-free-t.32606/post-299385 A long thread on the Maximus product...

It's plausible, but will depend on the circumstances and the individual. I should have mentioned that oral testosterone is right at the border of what might be considered short-acting. The formulations based on testosterone undecanoate appear to be suppressive of the HPTA, but I think it was...

Verified short-acting forms of TRT at this point include testosterone nasal gel and buccal troches. It appears that absorbing 1-1.5 mg of testosterone via short-acting delivery methods 2-3 times per day does not result in a complete shutdown of the HPTA. I consider this highly desirable, as...

That estradiol isn't overly low, and furthermore, it's likely that estradiol lags testosterone by some time, perhaps a day or two. So it's possible that a day later your estradiol is significantly higher even as testosterone is declining. The lack of energy and motivation sounds like what I...

As an aside, this dose should never be characterized as "normal". Few, if any, healthy men on the planet are likely to be producing this much testosterone naturally. Actual replacement doses are more in the range of 40-100 mg TC/wk, with even the higher end of that being suspect. I assume that...

Are you generating these posts with AI? In any case, it's a myth that low SHBG makes "levels swing too fast". Variation in levels is controlled almost entirely by the form of TRT. Inject testosterone undecanoate and your serum testosterone changes very slowly. Put testosterone nasal gel up your...

Prices continue to rise, but I think originally I was getting FGF-18 for as low as $300 / 100 µg when buying a milligram. This is for the 98% purity grade. You can probably still get 95% purity for somewhat less money, though not sure if that's advisable. In any case, the protocol is three 100...

It points to using an immunoassay-based FT test, aka "direct" method, which is hopelessly inaccurate even when scaled. Use the Vermeulen result.

No androgen deficiency. The lowish SHBG means free testosterone is respectable, around 12.4 ng/dL by the Vermeulen calculation. Elevated estradiol is potentially an issue, but you need to confirm that the result is accurate. If the test is immunoassay-based then it could reflect significant...

The cited "natural" T: DHT ratios seem too low. I always figured more like 10-to-1. Long-term effects of being far from this are unknown. Per Grok: In healthy young adult men (typically ages 18–40), serum total testosterone levels generally fall in the range of about 300–1,000 ng/dL (often...

Ok, that is a good FT test, and I consider 125 pg/mL to be high for a daily trough level. Three hours post-injection is a reasonable time to start looking for the peak. Best guess is that the peak occurs in the 2-6 hour range. The truth about using numbers is that they are important, but they...

Which free testosterone test is that, both methodology and normal range? If it's a so-called direct test it's nearly meaningless. With many FT tests 125 pg/mL is very robust, sometimes even excessive, for a daily trough value. Increasingly I think the daily peak value of free testosterone is the...

I have some fresh lab work along with various thoughts: The TS protocol is the same as above, nominally 1.5 mg three times a day, with the actual dose seeming to be 40-50% lower than that. In this case I targeted lab work at 45 minutes post-injection to catch a possible higher peak in serum...

I did do a course of subQ BPC-157 injections several years ago and didn't seem to experience any benefit. Apparently there was a small, uncontrolled study with intra-articular injections in humans. The results were favorable, suggesting more research should be done. In theory though, if an...

Another update: I have complicated the protocol with ancillaries to the point that causality may become blurred. Nonetheless, I think that FGF-18 is and will remain the main actor, and it has the most supporting research. After the previous series of three FGF-18 injections I...

This is a stretch, as there are several caveats: It's a fairly small study, N=36, all but possibly four were college-educated, none was on exogenous testosterone. The cross-sectional design of the study means that it does not prove causality. Higher natural testosterone could be a byproduct of...

Not low. The original dose is close to 6 mg of testosterone a day, similar to average healthy production in young men. Even the lower dose is still 5 mg T/day, which is perfectly respectable compared to natural production. Need to escape the reality distortion field around TRT. The potential...

For a starting point I'd just use the high-end AI estimate for serum level variation with pure testosterone acetate of 60% above and below the mean. As expected, this is larger than the 50% figure I usually use with propionate. The target variation is 25% above and below the mean. Solving the...

If this were the case then you would not expect these opposite results seen in this study. With N=234 it is pretty well-powered. It's even more surprising because you expect lower troughs with IM vs SC. @FunkOdyssey, do you see any confounders in this research? While IM-TC and SCTE-AI provide a...