New Member
I started try about a year ago with an online clinic...part of their protocol was 1/2 of a CC of HCG twice a week....I switched to a local clinic and they said that's a waste and said it was only if I was going to stop TRT....they put me on 4 mg of finasteride a week....my balls seem to be shrinking...could use some advice.....
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Knowledgeable Member
Two main reasons for HCG in TRT.
1-Maintaining fertility
2-keep balls from shrinking.
Some people like it for holistic reasons.
Senior Member
HCG is optional, but I am a proponent of its use because it replaces the LH signal that is lost when you are on TRT. I personally use about 1000 IU per week in split doses, which ends up costing me about $700 per year for Pregnyl brand HCG from my local pharmacy (I have a script). The testicles are not the only glands that have LH receptors. The seminal vesicles and Cowper's gland also have LH receptors. I'm not sure about the prostate, but it wouldn't surprise me. The seminal vesicles make about 50-60% of the volume of your ejaculate, so this is probably why guys report their loads drying up after years of TRT with out HCG.Originally Posted by marklewis68
Regarding 4 mg of finasteride a week, that's an odd dose considering the half life for the drug is about 4 hours. Most protocols call for daily dosing, usually starting at 1 mg per day. It comes in 1 and 5 mg tablets. However, I have had great success in dissolving 5 mg tables into 2 mL of vodka and dispensing low daily doses via drops in my drinking water. After numerous experiments, I've established that 1 drop contains 0.06 mg of finasteride. I'm still working on optimal dosing.
New Member
What is the finasteride for??? And the send me 5mg tabs and I'm to take 1/4 of a tablet 3x per week...so I was rounding dosage.
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Senior Member
I do't plan on having any kids but the reason why I started some HCG was because I did not enjoy the feeling of shrinking testicles and sperm production was reduced.. HCG is good for preserving some fertility and keep them full/normal sized
Junior Member
I don't use HCG either. Some people claim to experiment a well-being feeling using it. Dunno if it's true or this effect is limited only to few people.
One fact is true, it raises cost in your treatment significantly.
Senior Member
Finasteride blocks the conversion of T to DHT. For guys that are high in DHT (as I am), this can be beneficial to helping to prevent BHP and also to slow down erythropoiesis, which are two of the main side-effects of TRT (particularly at doses over 100 mg T-cyp per week).
Personally, I'd go with my vodka/eye dropper method for daily dosing to ensure a steady supply of this quickly metabolized drug. I have at least 1 lab showing that it is very effective. BTW, at 1/4 tablet 3X per week, your daily finasteride dose come out to 0.18mg/day, which would be about 3 drops per day using my method. For a listing of supplies, see the post I made in the stickies for "Best Practices in TRT". In the section for E2 control, I describe a similar method for dispensing low dose anastrozole. There are links to where you can purchase the supplies you need (bottles, eyedroppers, etc.). Not that the dilution is a little different than the posted anastrozole protocol. With Finasteride, I use 5 mg diluted with 2 mL of vodka (not 1.5 mL as with anastrozole).
HRT Specialist ~ AR-Platinum Elite-Hall of Famer ~ No Source Checks
If you don't have bph or blood issues I would not take Finasteride. It's a bit aggressive without an established need, imho.
-*- NO SOURCE CHECKS -*-
Senior Member
I agree. You need DHT labs once you are on a stable TRT protocol to determine if your DHT is indeed out of range. If you start it from the get go, you'll never know if it was actually needed. Kel is correct, a little goes a long way, and again, you need DHT labs after you start to zero in on the correct dosage. You don't want DHT to go too low (unless you need to for BHP) because it can wreak havoc on your libido. Also, you need to watch E2 while on Finasteride because you are blocking a dead end metabolic pathway for T excretion, so there's a build up of T, and that will drive more conversion to E2.
Finally, also remember that while on finasteride, and for 4 weeks after discontinuation, you are not eligible for blood donations. Finasteride is HIGHLY teratogenic to developing male fetuses. You can really mess up their sexual development with very low exposure to the drug.
Knowledgeable Member
I go the cheap bastard route for hCG. I take 350 IUs of hCG every 3.5 days, so the overall rate of administration is the same as 100 IUs per day (which was the late Dr. Crisler's recommendation). And the total cost of everything I use, from the drug itself down to the alcohol wipes, is less than $13 every 30 days.
One reason it's so cheap is I use an overseas source from a country where pharmaceuticals generally are much cheaper than in the US. Some of the other products people on this forum are using are coming from UGLs (underground labs) but that's not the case with hCG. I buy from a pharmaceutical company that's in a country where they're not prohibited from selling to overseas customers.
This is pic of a vial from my most recent buy. The hCG is delivered in a freeze-dried tablet in a sealed glass vial with a flip-top security cap and a rubber stopper (known as a "septum") that's made for inserting the hypodermic needle through to both reconstitute and then withdraw the hCG.
Different brands are packaged differently but in this case the glass vial comes sealed in a blister pack which in turn comes in a very nice hi-gloss box that even has an embossed logo. Every bit of the packaging and printing screams "professional pharma." And it's sold so cheaply that you probably couldn't make profit off of selling a fake drug in such high-quality packaging.
And I can tell you from my results, the shit is fo realz. I had significant testicular atrophy owing to three years of TRT with no hCG. Within two months that was completely reversed and my nards were as plump and as taut as I ever remember them. Plus it changed the composition of my loads and brought back morning wood, which TRT alone did not.
If you have doubts, it's easy to check with an early pregnancy test. hCG generally only turns up in significant concentrations in people with certain types of cancer and in pregnant women. An EPT shows positive in the presence of hCG, so it's as good as purpose-made for testing whether your hCG is 'genuine.'
hCG is administered subcutaneously (sub-Q) into the fat around the waistline. It has a pretty short half-life and injecting it into the fat slows absorption, which is especially important to those of us who don't pin every day. 1cc insulin syringes (AKA 'slin pins') are the weapon of choice because they're cheap, readily available with the needle already attached, and available with needles from 29 to 31 gauge, so small that you usually don't feel them go in. Such a small needle would be an impediment to an oil-based product like Test but it's no problem to water-based hCG. They're also marketed as "U-100" syringes. I usually get 3/8" or 1/2" needles, depending on what's available.
I found my hCG source by searching old threads for recommendations. Figure out who you think are the most knowledgeable members, then look for recommendations they might have made in the open forum. I found an old post by one of the guys who really seemed to know his shit and he mentioned 'safe meds 4 all.' Search on that and the real deal should be one of the first 'hits.' We're not supposed to post the real URL but if there's an image of a white guy who resembles Morgan Freeman, you're in the right place. And they're not by any means the only source, I just mention them to get you pointed in the right direction. I would encourage you to search for yourself, you might find a better source.
Some of these (overseas) online sources have a questionnaire for you to fill out with your first purchase, including asking whether you have a prescription and what condition is it for the treatment of, but that's strictly CYA. They don't ask for any documentation.
hCG in the US requires a prescription but there is no customs enforcement for it. Back when the AIDS epidemic was big news there were political activists who got the drug import laws changed so AIDS sufferers could buy medications from overseas that weren't available in the US. And there were some other relaxations that went along with that change. So this might be a spin-off from those actions, I don't know. What I do know is that the box I receive is clearly marked from a foreign pharmaceutical company. The customs declaration usually says it's a "health supplement" or some such. And by following the tracking number I can tell each shipment spends a couple of days in a customs house, but it never fails to clear customs and be delivered to me.
The first time I bought hCG online I only ordered two vials. That way I'd have enough to test whether it was genuine and not run out before I could receive the re-order, but if the company turned out to be bogus I wouldn't have lost much money. Now I order five vials at a time, eight months worth.
As I mentioned, the hCG comes freeze dried. To reconstitute it, you inject sterile water into the vial containing the tablet. Just like freeze-fried coffee, hCG is made to dissolve instantly on contact with water. So you inject sterile water into the vial, swirl it a bit, and then draw out the hCG. There's nothing says you can't draw out your dose from that itty-bitty vial but that could be problematic.
The more hCG you buy at a time, the cheaper it is. If you refrigerate it after you reconstitute it, it will last at least 60 days before it starts to lose its potency (some say 120 days). So to save money, most people buy vials big enough to last for several injections.
If you're only buying in the single dose size, then there's no down side to using the original vial for reconstitution. But if you're going to have to divide that 2cc up into a bunch of smaller doses, it could get complicated because you're measuring in volumes so small that the graduation marks on your syringe might not be adequate. Long story short, the smaller the total volume is, the greater the per-injection error is bound to be. The greater the volume, the less significant the errors will be.
I found this out the hard way because the first time I bought hCG I tried "cheaping out" and used just the original vial, but I found that was a bad idea. It wasn't that I was worried about my doses not being a consistent size (although consistent would be better), I was more worried that inconsistent measurement could allow a vial to run dry unexpectedly. And I wouldn't want that, especially if that's the last vial I have on hand, because orders from my overseas source take 2-3 weeks to arrive.
The solution was to buy larger vials to transfer the reconstituted hCG into. Now I buy sterile 10cc vials so the final volume of my hCG is 10cc. 5000 IUs into 10cc is 500 IUs per cc and 50 IUs per 0.5cc. So it also makes the math easy. I buy sterile 10cc vials in batches of 10 for about $1.40 each.
One other change to the larger glassware. If you're reconstituting to take the entire batch at once, sterile water is okay. But if you're going to refrigerate it and take several doses from it over several days, it needs to be bacteriostatic water (bac water), not just sterile water.
Besides the cheap overseas source for the hCG itself, my other big savings is blending my own bacteriostatic water. Most of us need bac water because we reconstitute hCG enough to last for several doses, and the bac water helps stop creepie-crawlies growing in your hCG while it's hanging out in your fridge.
Bac water is nothing but sterile water with 1% benzyl alcohol added, so it's not difficult to blend yourself, and I think what the online companies charge for it is outrageous. I bought 600cc of benzyl alcohol from a lab supply company for $6 and I get sterile water water from Wally World for $12 per liter (1000cc). I blend it in sterile 100cc glass vials, which are the single most expensive component, ~$8 each. 99cc of sterile water and 1cc of benzyl alcohol makes 100cc of bac water. And that 100cc is enough bac water for 500 days-worth of hCG. Including the cost of the glassware (pro-rated), it costs me 94₵ to produce bac water enough for a 10cc vial of hCG.
Total cost to me for 50 days-worth of reconstituted hCG (a 10cc/5000 IU vial) is $14.40. Grand total, including slin pins and alcohol wipes, I'm spending a bit less than $13 every 30 days.
EDIT:
The benzyl alcohol I bought for $6 was 60ml, not 600cc(ml). At a 1% concentration, 60ml is enough to make 6000ml (six liters!) of bac water.
Last edited by Beetlegeuse; 04-09-2019 at 11:52 AM.
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