What T levels won't increase HCT?

Murdock · Aug 26, 2020

Does anyone know what is a "safe" testosterone level to maintain that won't increase hct, or if it does only by very little? For example is 700ng/dl safe from hct increase?

Vince · Aug 26, 2020

When you increase your testosterone levels, by injecting testosterone, you’re going to increase your HCT. The less your levels increase, the less your HCT should increase. Over time , normally your Hct should stabilize.

My HCT have stabilized.

GreenMachineX · Aug 26, 2020

Keeping my levels between 500-600 has my HCT at 50. I do wish I could go higher, but not worth the risk.

rayrock1 · Aug 29, 2020

Green Machine, How often are you injecting ? have you tried daily?

TorontoTRT · Aug 29, 2020

It’s very individual. Your case will be unique to you. In some like me no dosage or protocol lowers HTC. Nothing. I’ve had as high as 58 hematocrit with test levels between 500-1500.

GreenMachineX · Aug 29, 2020

rayrock1 said:
Green Machine, How often are you injecting ? have you tried daily?

I’m doing 50mg twice per week. I haven’t tried daily, I don’t really get how it could be better. Doesn’t the trough (not peak) determine HCT/HGB?

rayrock1 · Aug 29, 2020

I think its the range of the peak-trough that tends to increase the hemocrit levels. Thats why a lot of guys here inject daily to keep the levels flat lined and minimises the HCT increases. May want to ask vince or madman for opinion.

TorontoTRT · Aug 29, 2020

Daily injections increased my hematocrit even more.

GreenMachineX · Aug 29, 2020

TorontoTRT said:
Daily injections increased my hematocrit even more.

This is my concern.

Vince · Aug 30, 2020

rayrock1 said:
I think its the range of the peak-trough that tends to increase the hemocrit levels. Thats why a lot of guys here inject daily to keep the levels flat lined and minimises the HCT increases. May want to ask vince or madman for opinion.

Yes, I inject daily. When I started daily, my HCT stabilized. It doesn’t work for everyone. So I really don’t know if it was from daily injections or just long-term trt.

Cataceous · Aug 30, 2020

TorontoTRT said:
Daily injections increased my hematocrit even more.

I've been promoting the hypothesis that a possible solution is to have relatively low daily troughs in serum testosterone to complement physiological-level peaks, thus imitating what nature does. This is accomplished via daily morning injections of both a short testosterone ester and a medium/long testosterone ester. The doses are adjusted to yield reasonable serum testosterone peaks of 600-800 ng/dL, and pre-injection troughs that are ~40% lower, e.g. 360-480 ng/dL. For guys with high or low SHBG it's better to consider free testosterone, such as what's calculated via Tru-T. By this method, middle-of-the-road free T is about 24 ng/dL, so this would be the targeted peak, and the targeted trough would be more like 15 ng/dL.

Alternatively, if a guy is convinced that he does best in all other regards at a certain testosterone level, then that level is made to be the daily peak, while dosing is adjusted to give a trough that's 40% lower.