Insomnia on TRT

James · May 18, 2016

Has anybody had insomnia that they attribute to there trt?

ERO · May 18, 2016

I have had insomnia due to stress in the past but that was before I started TRT.

Let me ask - why do you think it is due to TRT? Not being a wise ass, genuinely curious as this is not a side-effect of TRT that I have ever seen or read about in any reference or TRT book.

CoastWatcher · May 18, 2016

When do you inject? Do you experience insomnia only in the wake of an injection, or is it more frequent?

James · May 18, 2016

ERO - You may be right. I really don't know if it's from TRT. A couple years ago when I started I was injecting 160mg once weekly and had horrible insomnia. I lowered the dose in 20 mg increments down to 1 shot of 80mg per week. I've always been a 1 time a week injection guy. Last week I went to twice a week at 60mg per injection (120mg total), which is basically the 1 injection equivalent of 140mg a week, which is damn close to my original 160 mg that I started on with such bad insomnia. I have notes at every change im my protocol and slept great at 100mg once a week, but at that dose I had no strength gains in gym. It's such a delicate balance to get things right. I'll tough it out a couple more weeks, maybe add some melatonin and then may drop down to 50 mg twice weekly. Insomnia is on Nelson's sticky about potential TRT side effects.

James · May 18, 2016

CoastWatcher said:
When do you inject? Do you experience insomnia only in the wake of an injection, or is it more frequent?

Monday am and Thursday pm. It's only been since I changed to 60 mg twice weekly. Looking at lifestyle influences, I went to from exercising at 6:00 am to doing it at 4:00 pm. That's not to late, but can't help. I don't take caffeine.

ERO · May 19, 2016

Interesting. Do you have trouble getting to sleep or go to sleep and then find yourself wide awake at 2-3am? The latter is what I had - it was my cortisol spiking at the wrong time due to stress. I have had success with the following supplements, but not much of anything with Melatonin.

Seriphos - 1 with dinner, 2 before bed
Glycene - 5 before bed
L-Theanine - 1 before bed
DHEA - 25mg before bed (DHEA opposes cortisol)

I know everybody is different, but if you have late night cortisol issues (you can check with the 4 tube cortisol test) these should prove helpful

Vince · May 19, 2016

James, I guess you need to pick between sleeping or gains at the gym. I would think when you're sleeping good, your gains would be better.

ERO · May 19, 2016

Is there any discernible pattern or correlation between your T-shot(s) and insomnia, or do you just sleep badly all the time if your T dose is too high? I ask because perhaps if you experimented with daily T shots, which by definition are gonna be very small doses, your sleep might not be affected. I realize that is more work than twice weekly shots, but in reality it takes me maybe 5 minutes every morning to do my T shot so it is not as troublesome as it seems on paper.

James · May 19, 2016

ERO - I don't take naps and fall asleep easily at night, yet find myself wide awake a couple hours later. Never did the 4 tube cortisol test but doc took blood and my AM Cortisol was 14.3 ug/dl (6.2 - 19.4).

My DHEA pre TRT with Quest and was 403 ng/dl (61 - 1636). My DHEA post TRT with LabCorp is 184ng/dl (31 - 701), so maybe I should supplement with DHEA. The more I think about it, maybe it's high early AM Cortisol more so than the Test, because when I was injecting 100 mg once a week, which is a larger single dose than my current 60 mg twice weekly, my sleep was great.

Vince - Sleeping good is probably a more desirable side effect than gains in the gym...at least at my age, 44.

Weasel · May 19, 2016

I believe elevated e2 affects my sleep negatively. I've no labs to prove this but certainly seems to be the way im leaning....food for thought.

James · May 20, 2016

Weasel said:
I believe elevated e2 affects my sleep negatively. I've no labs to prove this but certainly seems to be the way im leaning....food for thought.

Yeah it's probably not the high T, per se, but the high E2 that causes insomnia.

ERO · May 20, 2016

James said:
ERO - I don't take naps and fall asleep easily at night, yet find myself wide awake a couple hours later. Never did the 4 tube cortisol test but doc took blood and my AM Cortisol was 14.3 ug/dl (6.2 - 19.4).

My DHEA pre TRT with Quest and was 403 ng/dl (61 - 1636). My DHEA post TRT with LabCorp is 184ng/dl (31 - 701), so maybe I should supplement with DHEA. The more I think about it, maybe it's high early AM Cortisol more so than the Test, because when I was injecting 100 mg once a week, which is a larger single dose than my current 60 mg twice weekly, my sleep was great.

Vince - Sleeping good is probably a more desirable side effect than gains in the gym...at least at my age, 44.

Your sleep issues sound like a Cortisol spike at night as you present the classic symptom - one goes to sleep easily but then will be wide awake in a couple of hours. If I were you I would try DHEA with dinner and those other supplements I mentioned earlier. It won't cost you a ton to try them and you should see improvement quickly - like in a week or less, possibly even the first night.

I fought that same thing for years and man, it was awful, but I sleep great now.

James · May 20, 2016

ERO said:
If I were you I would try DHEA with dinner and those other supplements I mentioned earlier. It won't cost you a ton to try them and you should see improvement quickly - like in a week or less, possibly even the first night.

Stop by the health food store this evening and they didn't have micronized DHEA so I passed. I suppose I can order it online, but I'll go to another store tomorrow that I'm confident we'll have it.

Antisosa · Feb 10, 2018

Hey! I came across this kind. Do you still keep on the same protocol? I have same issue as you. Fall asleep fine but go to bed and around 2-3am I’m waking up and this is every night.

ERO said:
Interesting. Do you have trouble getting to sleep or go to sleep and then find yourself wide awake at 2-3am? The latter is what I had - it was my cortisol spiking at the wrong time due to stress. I have had success with the following supplements, but not much of anything with Melatonin.

Seriphos - 1 with dinner, 2 before bed
Glycene - 5 before bed
L-Theanine - 1 before bed
DHEA - 25mg before bed (DHEA opposes cortisol)

I know everybody is different, but if you have late night cortisol issues (you can check with the 4 tube cortisol test) these should prove helpful

GreenMachineX · Feb 22, 2018

Antisosa said:
Hey! I came across this kind. Do you still keep on the same protocol? I have same issue as you. Fall asleep fine but go to bed and around 2-3am I'm waking up and this is every night.

Yep, same here! I'm over it. I get sick, flu-like symptoms, when I don't get enough sleep. I can't live like this.