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I never mentioned anything about 200mg/week or any numbers, not sure where you're coming from with those numbers. Not everyone's doctor is gonna prescribe them 200mg/week, or even 150mg/week. Good for you if your doc will, some don't have that luxury and can't afford private docs/clinics. For...

Do you not understand what I'm saying? I'm saying take less so you get a buffer, then take what you need to be optimal and keep the buffer. That's it.

"When your results come back below optimal". Thanks for confirming my point.

You completely missed what I was saying. I'm saying don't take more than what you need to be optimal, just get a buffer so you're never in a situation where you run out of T. You're putting words in my mouth.

Why?

Exactly. Alternatively, if your doc is not one of the sensible ones, one option is to take less than they initially prescribe and ask for more when your levels come back below optimal. Keep doing that until you get a prescription that includes a dose that makes you feel great/optimal + a good...

Get your doctor to prescribe you extra Test as a buffer. My doc prescribes me an extra 50% on top of what I'm taking as a buffer for traveling, so I don't have to refill as often, in case something goes wrong, etc...

I think I remember you saying somewhere you do 2x/week injections. Does that work subQ? It seems even at 60-70mg twice a week, that would be a lot for a subQ injection.

As far as the OP's question, my doctor has mentioned going up to 250 mg/week and didn't make it sound like it was anything crazy, so I'm pretty sure I could get him to go up to 300mg/week, maybe even more if I really wanted to.

When do you get tested? For ex if you inject Monday morning and Thursday evening, when do you draw blood to see 1000ng/dL?

Thanks Vince, that's definitely reassuring. I don't care about the blood but always worry about causing permanent internal damage.

Does the scar tissue go away eventually? If not, wouldn't it become a problem over time after decades of injecting, even with small 29G needles?

Is there a way to avoid those? Does it not matter? I don't care at all about the blood or the pain, I'm just concerned about avoiding long term damage to my muscles or tissue in general.

I started Shallow IM injections a week ago, alternating Delts for now to keep it simple. I use a 29G 1/2'' insulin syringe. Every day has been painless and bloodless until today, when it hurt more going in and when I pulled out some blood came out. Not much, just a drop that went down my...

This is anecdotal but someone I know started TRT with SHBG at 70 and it lowered to 35 after a year of daily subQ injections. Pretty high dosage at 25mg/day and he's using hCG so I'm not sure what the role, if any, of hCG is here. But in his case, daily injections of exogenous Test normalized...

Any reason you're sticking with the cream if you felt better with injections? Have you tried something like every day intramuscular of SubQ injections to see if you can reach stable levels you feel good at? I'm not anything close to a doctor but I can't imagine that having DHT at 600% the top...

Thanks for all the information, this is really helpful. I had no idea Labcorp only had the Direct method for Free T. I'm doing my labs through discountedlabs and I think they only use Quest Diagnostics, so that's good.

Before I forget, your DHT is at 500 out of a range of 30-85. That seems like it can't be a good thing. Are you on the cream? The labs aren't even close, it's very interesting. On Labcorp your TT is top of the range, but on Quest your TT is 1.5x the top of the range. Labcorp FT is 30% above the...

I didn't realize it took so long to stabilize. Steroidcalc shows close to full stabilization after about 14-15 days, so I went with that. Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate. I'll try to just be patient and ride it out.

Quest Diagnositcs' range is 35-155 pg/mL for Free Testosterone. That's 3.5-15.5 ng/dL. Labcorp's range is 9-25 ng/dL. That's a big difference. 3.5-15.5 and 9-25. My question is: If you tested at 25 ng/dL on a Labcorp test, does that mean you would've tested at 15.5 ng/dL on the Quest...

Can I ask what your levels are? I just got my test results and I'm very high. My TT is 1600 ng/dL (range: 250-1100), FT is 300 pg/mL (range: 35-155) and E2 is 40 (range: <29). FT is twice the normal range, so maybe I'm too high? At the same time, shouldn't I feel better being really high? I...

I understand but right now I feel even worse than I did pre-TRT, and I keep reading about guys who say they feel better than they did when they were 20yo.

Thanks, I just started my first daily injection shallow IM in delt and will stick with that for a while to see if it makes a significant difference with SubQ at the same injection frequency. Do you notice a drop in mood/libido/energy at the end of 3.5 days before your next shot on 2x/week...

You're taking 700mg/week, so you need 100mg/day, which if your Test C is dosed at 200mg/mL means you need 50 units/day, or 1/2 a syringe's worth every day.

Thanks for taking the time to type such detailed answers. Do you think there could be any downside to injecting IM daily even though my SHBG is very high (70)? I've been doing subQ daily with insulin syringes because I wanted to minimize side effects (I didn't go into this completely without...

That's really interesting, I've read similar stuff about subQ from others, which is why I want to give shallow IM a shot. Do you know what your SHBG was before TRT? Also do you think going from 2x/week to 3x/week could've been the difference and not subQ vs IM?

That's interesting. I don't want to change too many variables at once going from subQ to IM and also from daily to 2x/week, so I'm just going to switch from subQ to IM at first while staying on daily injections and see if that makes any difference.

(Crossposting from another thread because I'd be interested to hear some opinions on this topic in this thread) It seems to me that while you get to 2x the dose in your system after 40 days, you get to very close to 2x the dose much faster than that. The half life progression is essentially an...

Thanks for the link, that discussion is very interesting. But it seems to me that while you get to 2x the dose in your system after 40 days, you get to very close to 2x the dose much faster than that. The half life progression is essentially an infinite sum of the form 1 + 1/(2^n) = 1 + 1/2 +...

Really? But don't bodybuilders report feeling positive effects from Test very quickly? I know they're using more around 500mg/week as a beginner cycle, but shouldn't I start feeling good before 6-8 weeks at even a TRT dose?

I changed dosage about every 2 weeks. I could feel positive changes almost immediately after a few days (makes sense on daily injections) but then they would subside and I would go back to feeling terrible, so I just kept upping the dose from 100mg to 200mg/week, 25mg at a time. Finally I...