I agree on the dependency part, once your on it for more then a year or so, you probably can’t restore natural production fully. People should first try optimizing lifestyle and if that isn’t enough try dhea and clomid. Optimal zinc is also very important for good testosterone levels and muscle building
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Let’s hope so Desert. I’m 72 and I just started cycling again and I need to get my legs back. I’m going to start back up on testosterone. As I said to my old cycling buddy, if it’s good enough for Lance Armstrong, it’s good enough for me. I used to use bioidentical compounded cream but I just asked my PCP for regular pharmaceutical testosterone to inject. It took some time to find her but she is very good at hormones. She gets the standard testosterone estrogen and estradiol stuff but she also gets reverse T3 and she’s comfortable prescribing anastrozole. I’ve got SNPs that turn testosterone into estrogen and if I don’t take anastrozole which is an aromatase inhibitor, I can’t bring up testosterone anymore.
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Do you find any side effects from the HMB? I have a bottle of it and really need to start taking it for muscle wasting but I am a hard core insomniac and am afraid it will make it worse.
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Not that I have noticed. I take 1 tsp. in the morning with my protein shake.
If you have a “lagging body part”, you could use the timing of your injections for helping solve this problem. Injecting your testosteron the day before training legs and if you have trouble eating enough (protein), you could use MK677 25 mg in the morning on leg day. MK677 is also good growth hormone stimulant if you only use it for 1 day. This way your simulating muscle growth with the testosteron and the growth hormone pathways. And if you also want to stimulate the insuline pathway, you could drink a 100g dextrose + 20g essential amino acids + 6g creatine intra work out drink
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Thanks! I appreciate your feedback.
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Reply to Ryan McCarter:
I think the excitement about Sarms vs test or traditional roids is that sarms might work great for women. Lgd 4033 is much more anabolic than androgenic so your grandma will not grow a mustache. She might get stronger muscles, bones, and joints with training. I am not sure why lgd 4033 seems abandoned after promising initial trials.
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Interesting, didn’t know that.
I don’t find it messy. It dries quickly, in a minute or so. Plus, it costs only $30 a month.
Here’s a podcast I did with Jed Fahey and Lisa Curtis, Founder of Kuli Kuli Foods (Moringa). She offers a 20% discount with the code wiseathletes if you are interested in trying Moringa. It’s a multi-vitamin plus other benefits, according to Jed Fahey, who is a highly credible phytonutrient expert. It’s also a vegetable tree…which I find extraordinary.
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My T is on the low side, but certainly within the normal range for my age.
My doctor does not want to prescribe TRT, I will have to boost it myself.
There are many TRT specialists around me, but my insurance won’t pay for them.
My experiment is of course not just trying to maintain muscle mass in my 80’s, but to increase it.
Of course, resistance exercise is a given.
DHEA looks promising, but it takes a few months to show any results.
I will be trying 100mg daily and measure my T after 3 months.
I will get a new baseline test this week before starting.
My doctors (probably at the insistence of the insurance company) only prescribe the total T-test, not the free T, so I will have to pay for that myself.
Has anyone tried DHEA for a few months and then measured their free T to see if it gave a boost?
The downsides seem minimal.
“DHEA supplementation is effective for increasing testosterone levels, although the magnitude varies among different subgroups”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0531556520304587
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Thank you - good advanced information you shared. I need to call my doctor’s office and find out where my testosterone is,
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I take 50 mg Dhea (swanson) per day and this gives me 9,95 µmol/L Dhea sulfate on my blood analysis, the reference range is “1,20 - 8,98 µ mol/L”, so I am well above
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Glad I could help. Once you get your testosteron, training and nutrition in check, you could consider getting your IGF-1 checked. If you are eating enough calories and training hard enough to stimulate your growth hormone, you should be be above the reference range. On my blood work panel, the range is “65 - 195 ng/mL” . Personally I focus on strength for 3 months in a row and then eat healthy with focus on a protein consumption of 1g / pound bodyweight and eating enough fiber, but I don’t restrict calories. Then my IGF-1 is around 190 ng/mL. After those 3 months I focus on cardio / running and almost only eat carbs pre and post exercise and try to limit my calorie intake, then my IGF-1 is around 140 ng/mL.
$30/month for testosterone gel? I used compounded cream and it was about $100/month. I asked for T injections because they were cheaper than bioidentical compounded cream but $30 gel sounds good too.
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Thanks people for the SARMS information, that sounds interesting.
I have SNPs that convert testoserone to estrogen. When I first started using testosterone, it made estradiol and DHT go way up. I tried to use Dimm which did not do much. Now I use Anastrzole. When I was in my late 50’s, that plus some Dhea gave good T levels without increased estradiol
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I think he’s talking about the Indian pharmacy suppliers for this… lots of cheap options from the regular list of reliable providers:
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Enclomiphene according to the literature I have read has fewer side effects than clomid. Why didn’t you just adjust the dosage or the frequency that you were taking it?
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