Too many questions, and trying to read what I can.

[SEOINAGE]

There has been two times in my life I have noticed a huge decrease in my hormone levels, first I still felt reasonable afterwards, second happened just over three years ago and I have been falling a part ever since. Exercising regularly but my body just keeps getting more and more problems.

Anyways, I finally had a testosterone panel done, doctor said I was fine, decided to see an endocrinologist anyways, because for 30 years old my numbers weren't even close to being up to par. I have one daughter so far, 11 months old, and I want to have a few more kids. The doctor took more blood and is testing pituitary gland, thyroid as my levels of this are fairly low, and thyroid antibodies? I talked to him about having kids and he mentioned HCG but said it might not work if my gonads are damaged from the thyroid antibodies or whatever he talked about. If I can have kids now why wouldn't HCG resurrect me? Anyways this is one of my biggest concerns, and will have results next week.

Other concerns are if I would be better off cycling to bring my regular test production back up to normal, as I hear some of the main fertility issues come from prolonged use. Also curious why so many other things are taken during steroid use that I don't believe are involved in HRT, are serms and an AI not at all necessary in HRT? I already have gyno in my left breast, and the doctor said it appeared to be the type that would only go away with surgery. Never taken steroids or prohormones either.

I am a little reluctant to go on HRT but think it is needed. And he talks about doing a trial run of it to see if i respond, but should i tell him I want to hold off on it till my wife is pregnant again? we were planning on trying really soon anyways. I guess I will know next week whether the doc thinks HCG will work for me or not.

If you have any insight or information on the above feel free to help me out, I would appreciate it.

[Lemonada8]

What were your blood work values?
Ask about using clomid for fertility treatment it's commonly used at 25mg we for several weeks with monitoring

[SEOINAGE]

Testosterone, serum 418 ng/dL their ref range, 249-836
Testost, %free +weakly 18.7% ref range 9-46
tests, F+W Bound 78.2 ng/dL ref range 40-250

You are talking about using clomid after I start HRT when i want to have a kid?

[Lemonada8]

Your values look fine the clomid would be ao u don't have to go on trt

[SEOINAGE]

But won't clomid not work if my nuts are actually damaged and my pituitary gland is already producing excess amounts of LH?

[Lemonada8]

Ur nuts work fine from the blood work it seems.... Did u get LH and fsh.values?

[SEOINAGE]

Will have those this week, If it comes out fine I will talk to him about clomid if he doesn't bring it up first. I would hope he would exhaust all other possibilities before putting me on HRT. Thanks for the advice and input.

[HRTstudent]

Your numbers look okay. As far as fertility and wanting to have kids soon, from what I've read TRT is probably not your best option. Aside from the fact you may not need it (numbers and the symptoms of "Low T" are so generic that it could fit the bill of a huge number of conditions), from what I have read from medical texts is that if you plan to have kids they generally say get off T for a year. Now, people can still get a woman pregnant on T even. But what the goal is is simply improving your odds.

HCG is another option. It has been used for standalone HRT. It's also a big player in fertility treatment. So you could talk to your doctor about that.

At the end of the day, you have some options to consider but it really sounds like your problems are not the result of low T. Rather it seems to be something else and perhaps your T is slightly lower than it might be but probably not the main issue.

As far as cycling and steroid concerns you mentioned, just leave that alone. "Cycling" will do nothing positive for your mood or fertility. In fact, it will almost assuredly make you moodier and hurt fertility at least in the short term. The goal with TRT is balance and trying to get you to optimal physiologic levels so you can perform your best in life.

Talk to your doctor, and be sure to let him know about wanting to have kids soon (1 year or less).

[SEOINAGE]

OK I will come back with more questions after i hear about these next tests, and hopefully i can talk to my doctor rather than some receptionist calling and saying here is your script or something stupid like that. What other things cause low sex drive? I hear of people in the 350 test range in their 40s still wanting sex every day, but for me everything works but I just don't want it that bad, i mean going 3 weeks sometimes a month, and I don't even get the feeling like i am going to explode like I used to if i even went half a week.

[HRTstudent]

Low sex drive can be so many things including substance abuse, drug interactions, depression/low mood, and pretty much a million psychological reasons. There is no easy answer so I would urge you to have a candid discussion with a physician who can/should know a lot more about you, your history, and your body. The fact that you say you have "been falling apart" tells me that the likely cause of your problems has less to do with your T level (perhaps general health) and more to do with life issues.

[SEOINAGE]

I don't have any physicians that know me or my history. Not one to visit doctors all that often, and I moved a year and a half ago to a different state. I don't even smoke or drink let alone abuse substances prescriptions. I feel relatively happy and my life overall is going well compared to the last even 8 years, but my body feels like it can not recover. So although I don't think i am depressed now, but in the past I felt like my hormone levels dropped after psychological effecting events, so how do you deal with that? I went on anti depressants once in my life for a period over 6 months or so, and never felt any improvement from them, it wasn't until I stopped taking them, packed up and moved and completely changed my life that I started being able to function properly, but at that time my hormones still felt amazing, this was some 5 years ago.

[SEOINAGE]

Latest info

LH 2.5 MIU/ML 1.5-9.3
Prolactin 4.2 NG/ML 2-18
TSH, 3rd gen 3.26 MIU/L .4-4.5
FSH 4.5 MIU/ML 1.6-8
Thyroid Peroxidase AB <10 <35
Thyroglobulin AB 35 IU/ML <20

Doctors note is for them to have me come down and discuss thyroid and androgen therapy.

The thyroglubulin was the only one out of "normal" ranges, 35 is high when it is supposed to be <20 IU/ML

I was trying to see if he could discuss this over the phone as my drive is 2 hours to see him, and really busy with work, and the one appointment he had this week got filled while i was waiting for the fax. I don't exactly know what much of this means, but will start researching it.

[steroid.com 1]

Latest info

LH 2.5 MIU/ML 1.5-9.3
Prolactin 4.2 NG/ML 2-18
TSH, 3rd gen 3.26 MIU/L .4-4.5
FSH 4.5 MIU/ML 1.6-8
Thyroid Peroxidase AB <10 <35
Thyroglobulin AB 35 IU/ML <20

Doctors note is for them to have me come down and discuss thyroid and androgen therapy.

The thyroglubulin was the only one out of "normal" ranges, 35 is high when it is supposed to be <20 IU/ML

I was trying to see if he could discuss this over the phone as my drive is 2 hours to see him, and really busy with work, and the one appointment he had this week got filled while i was waiting for the fax. I don't exactly know what much of this means, but will start researching it.

Your a candidate for both thyroid and androgen therapy. It looks like your Thyroid is working hard with elevated TSH.

Did you get T4, T3, RT3?

LH is at the low end of normal as well.

Your symptoms could very well be attributed to both low normal Testosterone production and possibly Hypothyoridism.

BTW, low Prolactin can cause low libido as well.

[SEOINAGE]

Well he doesn't have another appointment till end of de***ber. And for some reason they weren't trying to reschedule me yet because she said the doctor was seeing if he could get some other test or something, i dunno what is going on, so basically just waiting.

As long as I get the right treatment I suppose.

[SEOINAGE]

He called me out of the blue tonight, after I fought to not call him during the day today.

[SEOINAGE]

Yeah I had blood work come back with elevated TSH twice. He basically gave me an option to a degree, since I want to get my wife pregnant soon I will be starting thyroid meds, and do blood work in a month, he wants to get my TSH down to a 1. And possibly TRT in the future, but if I start feeling fine with just this he would leave it at that, but he wanted things to be done separately, and not start both at once. When I asked him about an AI he said since I already have gyno and will need surgery that it wasn't a problem, and that your estrogen gets too low with an AI, which is bad for your bones. Asked about HCG and basically it was, we will see how you feel before starting that protocol. It would be interesting to see how the thyroid meds effects me, so at least we have a plan for now. Maybe if I keep losing weight my natural test levels will rise enough to make a difference, but I dunno, I hope the thyroid meds will help a bit, I'm down 35 lbs from my heaviest, although I feel like I have lost some muscle, every time I have ever lost weight I get that feeling, most likely I was just fatter than I thought. He also said after surgery the gyno won't come back, but I hear of other people claiming to get it again after surgery.

[Lemonada8]

Getting thyroid hormones under control could def help the other issues.
And peeps who get Gyno after surgery, it's cuz they went back on a cycle and it grew back. They don't remove the whole gland/tissue b/c it looks horrible and leaving some in there makes it look better but if u use aas it can def come back.

[SEOINAGE]

Its been a month on the thyroid medication, had my blood drawn today, not sure how long it takes for results, would be nice if it was fast as I have two pills left and don't want to refill if it gets changed. I thought it was odd though that the only thing ordered was TSH, no other thyroid levels. I know he wanted to get my TSH down close to a 1, but what about my actual thyroid levels? I don't think it was a mistake but I just thought it was odd, but of course I don't know much about this. Personally though I haven't noticed a difference in anything from the medication. But a good part of that could be the fact that I have been sick for more than half of the last four weeks, missed 5 days of work total so far, pretty bad. Going to work a few days over my vacation to make up for it if I can. I didn't want to get people sick like this before christmas either, of course I doubt they would grant anyone the same courtesy. No one will be there after today.

I really want to get started on test repla***ent therapy, but been trying for three months to get my wife pregnant and no luck yet. I have been losing weight but feel like a lot is muscle, i mean yeah my pants are looser around the waist, but every time i measure it reads 38", and i measured my arms, they are only 15.5" which is what they were when i weighed 177 lbs, and I am well over 15 lbs heavier than that, and my arms were up to 17.25" a year and a half ago. Other measurements are smaller as well. Could just be deflated from not eating much since I'm sick. I really haven't had near as much of an appetite as i did back in the day, and training heavy doesn't make me ridiculously hungry like it used to for days. I ordered some cheap skin fold calipers, going to start monitoring body fat so I can see if I am making real progress, and know what is going on. Last thing I need to do is keep losing weight if it isn't going to be body fat, nor go on a bulk and only gain fat. So soon as my wife gets pregnant, going to hopefully get my system going properly. The question is do I keep trying to get my bodyfat down to reasonable levels after starting TRT, or eat and gain back some muscle. My scale that lies says I am 17.5% bf, i'm 195 lbs ish, and i used to be 21% not long ago, and probably higher before that.

[SEOINAGE]

Alright on 25 mcg of synthroid generic. TSH came back even higher at 4.15, so they are bumping me up to 50 mcg. Honestly this past month has been the worst month of my life in the last few years. I have been sick 4 times now and just keep getting sick, I had to use up 80 hours of personal leave that i spent a year trying to aquire. Anyways I have not been doing good at all. I worked out twice in de***ber until last week i managed 3 training sessions, but so sick this week I am not going to bother trying till i feel better. I will keep with it for now, is doing this screwing me over though if i end up not wanting to take synthroid anymore? will my TSH settle back down in the 3s range if i stop medication?

[SEOINAGE]

Just read about some of hte side effects of synthroid, dunno if it is me being sick or exhibiting side effects as several of them are fitting. But i left a message with my doctor to talk to him about it, because this has been ridiculous.

[SEOINAGE]

Ok looking at blood work only other thing was FT4 which was 12.03 out of a range 9-20, at the time that was taken in october my tsh for the same blood draw was 3.57. I found some blood work from last april, where my TSH is only 2.71. Would calorie restriction affect the function of my thyroid? Or even over working myself? Starting to think I must have done something to cause my TSH to go up.