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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...

Here is the reasoning: At steady state DHT is being cleared at the same rate it is being produced. If we can assume that clearance is proportional to the free hormone concentration then at steady state the free levels are always driven directly and proportionately by the production rate...

In steady-state conditions Proviron should not have much influence on free DHT unless it is significantly affecting 5ar activity. But I would expect a reduction, if anything, due to possible negative feedback of higher DHT-like activity. Otherwise Proviron is just adding on to existing DHT...

There's not going to be one fixed number. It depends on individual susceptibility. Also see the data tareload/readalot posted here, along with reasons why higher levels are problematic...

I have the usual quibbles: Low SHBG does not mean more free testosterone is available, on average. Free testosterone is determined by the production rate, or the dose rate when under TRT. The grain of truth in the statement is that the reduced buffering capacity of low SHBG means transients in...

Welcome, and thank you for your effort to increase our knowledge. In my ten years of frequenting the forums I have seen only a few reports of such symptoms. Perhaps this is due in part to the greater emphasis on taking divided doses. It's becoming less common to see men injecting 200 mg of...

Those are the gold-standard tests. Did you happen to have SHBG measured prior to TRT? If it used to be higher then it's another sign that this testosterone dosing is high for you, as androgens drive down SHBG. However, it's also possible that you are genetically predisposed to low SHBG. Such...

What do your tests show? Lowering SHBG, either the actual levels, or virtually by tying it up with Proviron, does not affect free testosterone after stabilization, assuming an unchanged TRT dose. The original article should be updated to reflect this. It's covered in detail here...

As I recall, the nightly dose was added to a PG-free Minoxidil Max product, while the morning dose was in ethyl alcohol and cyclomethicone.

The dose was 1 mL. 50 mg/mL ~ 5% 25 mg/mL ~ 2.5%

Unless you have some other health issue this is suggesting that your dose is still too high for you. Although having total testosterone of 500 ng/dL may not seem excessive, with your daily injections you are probably maintaining this level 24 hours a day. This is an unnatural pattern, as...

I tried clascoterone a few years back and could not tolerate it. At the time I noted a pounding heart and anxiety during two separate trials. The first trial was with 50 mg applied topically twice a day. The second was with half that dose, 25 mg. I asked the Grok AI if excess cortexolone could...

Any way you look at it the your dosing is excessive—basically double natural production. But regardless, before you head down other rabbit holes consider trying a more sensible initial strategy for treating primary hypogonadism, which I assume is what you have with one or both of the "boys"...