Dosage and blood work anomaly

[Detroit Diesel]

I have an issue I cannot figure out. Been on trt 3.5 years mostly on 140 mg/wk. I had issues with high hematocrit so I started slowly reducing my dose. On 140/wk my total was around 1400. I dropped down to 100/wk and my total test came back over 1500. So I went to 80, came back at 1292. I felt good so I dropped to 50 mg!! Bloods came back at 1292, exactly the same as 80 mg/wk. I always waited 6 weeks before doing blood work, estrogen has come down from 42 to 18, but total T does not go down. Hematocrit went from 18.2 to 15.6. I’m not taking anything else. Why is this happening??

 

[Cataceous]

It's possible that your higher dose of 140 mg/wk drove down your SHBG substantially. As you lowered the dose your SHBG recovered by varying degrees. Think of your dose of testosterone cypionate as driving free testosterone, not total testosterone. Chances are pretty good that if you had been measuring your free testosterone with an accurate method then you would see a good correlation with dose. Total testosterone should be considered as a dependent variable, the result of a complex function of free testosterone, SHBG and albumin. Total testosterone can correlate with free testosterone when the other variables are constant, but in your case SHBG is likely inversely correlated with dose, which effectively prevents a rise in total testosterone with dose.

In any case, free testosterone is more important than total; it's largely what drives your results.

 

[Vince]

I have an issue I cannot figure out. Been on trt 3.5 years mostly on 140 mg/wk. I had issues with high hematocrit so I started slowly reducing my dose. On 140/wk my total was around 1400. I dropped down to 100/wk and my total test came back over 1500. So I went to 80, came back at 1292. I felt good so I dropped to 50 mg!! Bloods came back at 1292, exactly the same as 80 mg/wk. I always waited 6 weeks before doing blood work, estrogen has come down from 42 to 18, but total T does not go down. Hematocrit went from 18.2 to 15.6. I’m not taking anything else. Why is this happening??

Do you do labs on injection before you inject? How long do you wait after reducing your dose? I usually wait at least 12 weeks after adjusting my dose, then I would consider labs.

 

[Detroit Diesel]

Always doing labs before injection on injection day. As I stated in my post, I wait at least 6 weeks after changing protocol before doing labs.

 

[Vince]

Always doing labs before injection on injection day. As I stated in my post, I wait at least 6 weeks after changing protocol before doing labs.

Sounds like you're doing everything right when having labs.