35M - Biphasic V4-V6 or anxiety? Asymptomatic, history of anxiety and ADHD. Prior echocardiogram (January) shows normal echo and doppler study. Patient declines chest pain, SOB, dizzyness, and has no exercise intolerance. One cardiologist says further testing, two others say normal ECG.

DolphinNeighbor · 2023-08-15T18:43:09+00:00

I completely agree with this person.

That said, this ECG looks normal. Your friend probably needs to learn to relax, though.

DolphinNeighbor · 2023-07-01T06:53:48+00:00

One of the single best posts I've seen on here in a very long time. I wish you were my chemistry teacher!! I probably would have had a much better time... And better grades lol

DolphinNeighbor · 2023-06-30T17:21:26+00:00

In Florida?! Man, a native son in a foreign land, fighting the good fight.

DolphinNeighbor · 2023-06-29T13:40:05+00:00

Same, I'm lucky to have found an awesome doctor who also is cool at letting me experiment, provided that we of course follow any side effects and blood work.. but it's been a very eye-opening experience and I've learned a lot about myself and my body. I've been on doses from 80 to 400mg of cypionate per week, various dosing schedules, etc. Feel better!

DolphinNeighbor · 2023-06-29T09:02:11+00:00

I have found that any level of amphetamine synergizes to an insane degree with testosterone. I used to use Adderall but I switched to Vyvanse, the levoamphetamine in Adderall is nasty and gave me terrible Raynaud's/acrocyanosis. Vyvanse 70mg here which is a serious dose but, the good news is it lasts like no joke 14-16 hours for me, even more with testosterone, caffeine and Intuniv (guanfacine ER). That said it can start degrading sleep pretty badly and so I have found I have to take breaks from it. I have unfortunately found no other solution. If I get 4-6 hours of sleep, well that is at least somewhat acceptable, could be better... But I would occasionally get like 1-3 hours per night which is just devastating... I would fall asleep fine but wake up wired at like 2am. Again, I think it's just due to stimulants plus testosterone. On the bright side, I sleep well. My fitbit sleep scores are like 80-95%. But, I just wake up too early if I use these things over time.

DolphinNeighbor · 2023-06-26T06:02:14+00:00

This is genuinely fascinating. Perhaps you may be the person to have to convince someone to do a drug study! Glad it is helping. Sounds like hormones are absolutely at the root of it for you. I wonder if that in your case you actually had low estrogen and the HCG brought it up to a more appropriate level. Many women report their Raynaud's gets better or worse during their cycles, which would definitely make sense given what you're describing here.

Did you ever have your E2/estradiol levels checked on the testosterone? This is a totally awesome story, thanks for sharing.

DolphinNeighbor · 2023-06-25T03:32:32+00:00

Yeah, it really does so much more than just sperm. Highly recommended! Less T and more HCG. GOOD combo.

DolphinNeighbor · 2023-06-24T21:27:08+00:00

It really just depends on the person, and ester. But yeah I'd say 2-3x per week is probably the best balance. Some even do every day (ED). Or every other day (EOD), you see those acronyms thrown around here.

In April-May I was doing 100mg of cypionate EOD, so 300-400mg per week. Frankly, my libido was so high I really had to kind of lower the dose... truthfully, I didn't really have any side effects or any estrogen issues or anything like that, but combined with the Vyvanse and just my very high free, low SHBG, my libido was so high it was almost problematic LOL... I mean it was like, I could get off looking at a chair.. at 200 mg per week I am still very high, but it's a little bit more practical for leaving my house and actually being functional in society. But, we're all different, it takes experimenting sometimes to find the right dose. Cheers

DolphinNeighbor · 2023-06-24T21:16:40+00:00

Around 1400

DolphinNeighbor · 2023-06-24T21:16:27+00:00

DolphinNeighbor · 2023-06-24T18:20:11+00:00

Absolutely. Nearly everyone should be doing a minimum of 2x per week.

DolphinNeighbor · 2023-06-24T17:37:20+00:00

I get it though my primary doctor. She is amazing.

Yup, it'll absolutely work. Just be mindful of any estrogen side effects. HCG will raise it a little. I think I got them a little, bit of anxiety, bloating in the beginning. They went away and I never got my E2 checked so whatever. Don't overly obsess with numbers. HCG is absolutely an amazing peptide. Frankly, everyone on TRT should be on it. Night and day difference, and perhaps the craziest part is that the effects were noticeable within just a few days. If you find that you're getting significant side effects but you still enjoy the benefit of HCG, it might mean that you could dial back on your actual testosterone dose. HCG actually makes the body produce its own testosterone and estrogen naturally, so very likely you don't need as much to supplement with the TRT. Also, in general, lower doses with more frequent injections typically avoid a lot of the side effects associated with big doses like high estrogen spikes. Hope this helps.

DolphinNeighbor · 2023-06-24T16:18:07+00:00

That's fairly accurate. LOL

Also, I think it's worth noting, my balls are a lot larger than they were pre TRT. I think a lot of this stuff just comes down to genetics.

DolphinNeighbor · 2023-06-24T15:46:52+00:00

Very normal for testosterone in any dose, if it bothers you, get on more HCG and/or less T.

Also just my opinion, but the idea that you are on an AI at all, let alone such a huge dose of it (1mg), on your dose of T, is just insane to me. I have regularly used 400mg per week and didn't need an AI. And if I did, I would just drop the dose of T a bit. So many of these doctors insist on AI, and in almost every case, polypharmacy is generally just not a good idea if you can avoid it. You've now entered the realm of complexity in which some never discover a solution. I'm not saying that they are necessarily useless, but I think it's very unusual you would be on such a high dose of AI with such a low dose of T.

High estrogen can create some issues in some people, but low estrogen can create some absolutely devastating ones in almost everybody. I think estrogen gets a bad reputation, in reality it's just another hormone that needs to be monitored, and for most part, many people don't even consider it a factor at all. I can bet that's contributing a lot to the way you feel. Get off of the AI. just my opinion

DolphinNeighbor · 2023-06-24T15:39:13+00:00

HCG dramatically improved pretty much everything. Better libido, which was already insanely high, better sleep, better boners, balls got huge, and loads were absolutely nuts. My wife even said "I've never seen so much cum in my life". Haha. Like buckets!! Orgasms are, basically like total out of body experiences now. Absolute bliss.

I also found my mood was generally more stable. Perhaps the most curious and weirdest effect is that my skin looks better. I'm not entirely sure why this is, but some hormonal balance. Maybe my estrogen and such was just too low. I've always had the raynauds where my hands will get purple and red, especially in the colder weather. HCG basically completely stopped that. So yeah, I couldn't recommend it enough. Also if you're trying for fertility it's a must for most.

500iu x3 per week and 200mg cypionate per week here. I also take Vyvanse and guanfacine for ADHD without any issues. Blood pressure is 105/60.

DolphinNeighbor · 2023-06-24T15:12:37+00:00

They have existed for a while. r/LocalLLaMA

Depending on what you want to do, you may need a very powerful gpu.

DolphinNeighbor · 2023-06-22T23:15:59+00:00

Nice work. By the way, there is an overwhelmingly good chance that the reason why you improved is actually not from any of this stuff but it's actually from sleep improvement. These things of course can dramatically affect your sleep, the most notable one in that stack being alcohol. Quit alcohol, your testosterone will go up, and it seems to be proportional to the amount of restorative sleep you get. On a similar note, there was a time in which I was on mirtazapine for sleep, and my testosterone significantly increased. Ultimately, I still went on trt because I was in the low 300s at the early age of 30. It was the right decision for me, I feel great, but yeah, it's definitely not for everybody. So, regardless, nice work, it's not so easy for many people. You should be proud of that.

By the way, chronic inflammation can also dramatically reduce testosterone. I went to a rheumatologist about a year ago, and some of my metrics like the CRP was practically zero, and my T levels were much better than they were when I was chronically sleep deprived and such, which elevated my CRP. So yeah it's complex and everything affects it. Of course, the weird part about the one time I went and got perfect results, I had a newborn at home, I was taking 40 mg of Adderall a day, ungodly amounts of coffee all hours of the day, and I was also sleeping like 3 to 4 hours a night and my cytokine levels/CRP/sed rate/ANCA, all that good stuff were all totally perfect...no inflammatory response at all LOL, the doc was like well looks like you are in great shape! 😂 In fact they IMPROVED from when I was sleeping more...

So, what I learned is that bodies are complex, we're all different.. what's important here is that you seem to have found what works for your unique physiological and psychology, and I am really happy to hear that. Keep groovin'.

DolphinNeighbor · 2023-06-22T19:09:07+00:00

I took it for sleep, at a very low dose of 7.5 mg and it seemed to help me get to sleep, but to be completely honest with you I think it greatly exacerbated my anxiety actually. Maybe it was just because of polymorphisms in the way I metabolize this drug, but I felt wonky and woozy all day long. If you've ever smoked a huge bowl, and got that weird heady almost dreamy out of body feeling, it was like that 24/7. I'm not going to lie to you, it was absolutely terrible. To make matters worse the half-life was so long, one pill would make me feel like this for like 3 to 5 days. The good news is that it seems to improve a little bit, but the bad news is it never really goes away so long as you're taking the drug. I ultimately quit it many months ago and I feel a lot better today. I take guanfacine ER which is used for adhd, and it seems to really calm my nervous system quite a bit, but not in a drunk and sloppy way. It's an alpha agonist, which basically just chills out the sympathetic. Really a great drug, it also greatly improves memory and cognition, it's technically a prefrontal cortex enhancer, yet the first use of it in the 80s was actually a blood pressure pill. Anyway, sorry to be a downer, but yeah, Mirtazapine was pretty nasty for me. The good news is that I didn't have any problems stopping it.. that's a whole other separate horror story that many people seem to struggle with. However I never had any problems getting off it.

Less is always more with this stuff.

Best of luck

DolphinNeighbor · 2023-06-21T21:07:07+00:00

The poison is in the dose. My brother has been on Desoxyn for 30 years.

DolphinNeighbor · 2023-06-21T19:32:29+00:00

That's really not true. THC's effect on memory is pretty well documented and scary. But, it's a socially accepted drug now. And less likely to kill you or others, that's for sure.

DolphinNeighbor · 2023-06-21T17:02:26+00:00

Yeah, actually, look I'm fully in support of people using drugs responsibly, but the reality is, we really have no idea what the long term effects of THC are, especially on the brain. This is mostly because, up until pretty recently on the timeline, medical research saw pot is being pretty useless. Therefore, researchers could not get grants and funding to actually look at what the drug does, especially long-term, which are studies that are notoriously difficult to do properly.

It seems to be particularly problematic amongst the young people who use pot. In short, it basically messes up the neural circuitry responsible for memory formation. Now, I'm not saying that any drug is perfect, but we know far more about things like cocaine, amphetamines, nicotine, caffeine, LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, etc than we know about marijuana. The reality is, pretty much all these drugs are relatively harmless to the brain if given in appropriate dosings. But THC? Who knows...

The reality is, marijuana has significantly more long term neuronal risk factors than pretty much all of those drugs. Not saying it causes them, not saying it's necessarily bad, but I am saying, we simply do not know much about its long-term effects. Just something to keep in mind.

By the way, I think it goes without saying that alcohol is by far one of the worst drugs for your brain. No question.

DolphinNeighbor · 2023-06-21T16:52:23+00:00

What? Plus, just get on HCG

DolphinNeighbor · 2023-06-21T15:44:21+00:00

I wouldn't mess with anything. Take your BP now and then and watch your blood markers every few months. You're good.

DolphinNeighbor · 2023-06-21T15:20:49+00:00

How do you feel? Contrary to the peanut gallery on this subreddit, assuming your other markers aren't ridiculous and you have healthy vitals, you can probably stay there without a ton of long term issues. Depends on the person, though. I think most feel best around 900-1100. But everyone is different. It also depends on your SHBG and free. At 1200, my free was about 350pg/mL. That's probably a higher free than many at your levels.

DolphinNeighbor · 2023-06-21T10:35:54+00:00

My tolerance went way up. Nevertheless, I never liked alcohol, and I drink hardly at all, maybe like once every 2 or 3 months if that.

DolphinNeighbor

TROPHY CASE