Discuss: HCT drops on its own without a donation

[Vince Carter]

That's news to me...no need to donate blood just cut your dose and it'll drop on it's own. Discuss.

 

[HealthMan]

If you lower your dosage enough to “slow down” RBC production yes HCT can drop without donation. RBC life span is 120 days approximately so it can be a slow process. Old RBC “die” and are replaced by new ones. If RBC production is slower than before (given lower testosterone dosage) HCT will drop.

 

[Vince Carter]

Seems to me though you would have to manipulate your dosing to such an extent that you wouldn't be in a steady-state or at all consistent in your therapy though. I believe you can keep it down possibly, with a lower dose and maybe that's a lot of our problem here, running such high TT and FT numbers. But that it would just go down on it's own seems implausible without a donation.

Ive got CBCs of my numbers and I'm cutting my dose down from 28 > 24 > 20mg/D so I might be able to see if minus a donation if HCT will drop by that alone.

 

[HealthMan]

Seems to me though you would have to manipulate your dosing to such an extent that you wouldn't be in a steady-state or at all consistent in your therapy though. I believe you can keep it down possibly, with a lower dose and maybe that's a lot of our problem here, running such high TT and FT numbers. But that it would just go down on it's own seems implausible without a donation.

Ive got CBCs of my numbers and I'm cutting my dose down from 28 > 24 > 20mg/D so I might be able to see if minus a donation if HCT will drop by that alone.

Agree about the lower dosage should be part of a long term protocol (not with the goal of reducing HCT and then resuming higher dosage. That wouldn’t work. HCT would increase again after resuming higher dosage).
However a low enough dosage will bring down HCT without the need to donate.
I would go as far as saying that everyone should be able to control HCT by lowering dosage alone (assuming cause of high HCT is solely due to TRT) however for some people the dosage to achieve that would be too low and not enough to bring relief for low T symptoms. So lowering dosage to control HCT is not pratical for everyone. However we see that a lot of people on TRT are chasing high TT and FT numbers and those numbers are measure at trough. So a lot of people on TRT are on supra physiological dosages that makes HCT control only possible with frequent donations.
Also frequent donation combined with “high” TRT dosage (dosage that greatly supress hepcidin) can make HCT stabilization impossible. Frequent donation lowers ferritin and that combined with low hepcidin will cause the body to “push” more iron into the blood then increasing RBC production and HCT.