Testosterone Replacement for Older Men

#227
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#228

Hmmm… And now this in the military.
Health experts warn of fertility risk over US military’s testosterone plan.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth announced earlier this week that all male troops aged 30 and older will be required to undergo routine testing for low testosterone.

Link: Health experts warn of fertility risk over US military's testosterone plan

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#229

There are at least three plausible explanations:

  • Low testosterone contributes to poorer health that increases cancer risk.
  • Undiagnosed cancers (or preclinical disease) suppress testosterone years before diagnosis.
  • Some third factor (obesity, chronic inflammation, illness, aging, smoking, frailty, insulin resistance, etc.) lowers testosterone and independently raises cancer risk.

The study cannot distinguish among these.

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#230

It looks like testosterone may become more accessible for those in the USA.

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#231

Anyone lower their TRT dosage and feel better?

#232

For some men, enclomiphene reliably raises total testosterone (TT), but free testosterone (FT) increases only slightly, or insignificantly, because of very high SHBG. Ostarine, on the other hand, lowers SHBG, although it also has the unfortunate tendency to suppress testosterone production.

Could there be a balance in which an adequate dose of enclomiphene keeps LH and FSH sufficiently elevated for the testes to continue producing testosterone despite ostarine’s suppressive effects?

If so, could ostarine’s SHBG-lowering effect, combined with enclomiphene’s ability to increase TT, allow TT to remain relatively stable while a significantly greater proportion of that testosterone becomes available as FT?

This is a complicated thought experiment, and the AIs I’ve consulted have generally considered it biologically plausible. However, I have not found any research on this combination.

Yes, the simple answer would be to use standard TRT or I could just try it and see what happens. But the question is for those of us who enjoy investigating these kinds of mechanisms: Could this combination actually work in practice, and if so, could it produce a meaningful increase in FT while maintaining endogenous testosterone production?

#233

Yes it’s certainly biologically plausible, and an alternative would be to use HCG instead of enclomiphene. The way I see it, it’s not so much the decreased testosterone you need to worry about from ostarine (enobosarm) since the ostarine substitutes androgenetically for the decrease in endogenous T, rather it’s the potential crash in estrogen since ostarine can’t be aromatized to estradiol. (Actually a 3rd theoretical option would be very low dose estrogen replacement). Any way you slice it, such a self-experiment would need rigorous blood testing using specifically the more expensive sensitive blood test for estradiol rather than the cheap one that is essentially useless for men. It’s possible someone has already done these experiments and posted them somewhere, maybe on Reddit for instance since the bodybuilding forums have a very strong anti-ostarine bias, (likely from idiots taking huge doses and crashing their estrogen because they don’t know what they’re doing), but even mentioning ostarine on those forums invites ridicule.
Also, like other oral androgenic compounds, ostarine tends to negatively affect standard lipid panels and can increase liver enzymes. And, gray market sources can be sketchy and potentially dangerous, etc etc.

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#234

Proviron lowers SHBG and has better human data.

Periodic use could probably keep it lower without needing to blast super high amounts all the time.

Boron supplementation is also an option, though I think not as effective as androgenic substances.

#235

Adiposity, not chronological aging, is the dominant determinant of circulating testosterone in US adult men

https://academic.oup.com/jes/article/10/9/bvag194/8766941

Article found via GetHealthspan:

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