In this case the burden of proof is on those claiming that exogenous administration is so different that much larger amounts are required. What is the basis for this hypothesis?
And I would argue that this perception is skewed by the forums, and further that "successful" is probably only defined as feeling better than when hypogonadal, which is not a very high bar. Where is the evidence that physiological levels were given a chance?
The reason that forums, websites, and youtube channels like this exist in the first place is from poor protocols. Just as often as T mills overprescribing 200mg/wk with AI and HCG from the start, you have overly conservative or uneducated physicians severely underdosing their patients. You can scour any one of these sites and find dozens of threads on each where guys are prescribed things like 50mg cypionate per week and feel worse than before they started treatment.
Low dosing TRT is not uncharted territory, quite the contrary. People who feel better on those protocols are the exception, not the rule. Again you'll notice on the forums, its generally the same handful of people who keep the threads going, while the larger portion of the population falls in the range of what would be considered normal/moderate TRT dosing. (Not "high end trt" like 200, that causes issues for many as well).
Normally I'd say avoid Reddit at all costs because it is an absolute dumpster fire, but due to their high volume of posts alone, you can take a look at their TRT forums they have daily threads about doctors underdosing people who feel absolutely awful until they raise their dose.
This is where I feel its important to be open minded about what works in real life vs looking solely at scientific papers which have limitations, narrow scopes, and replication issues - nearly all men in real life are on amounts that would be larger than what is produced naturally in order to achieve symptom relief. Outside of the bubble of small niche internet forums, virtually nobody is going low enough to replicate exact natural production amounts and getting results.
Edit: I am not implying people need drastically high doses. Just that limiting one's self to a maximum of 10mg of testosterone per day is generally not enough to alleviate symptoms for most.
I respect your opinion, and acknowledge that I may be in the minority on this, but I view the 120-200 mg range as no longer TRT. Rather it is in a "testosterone optimization" gray area.
I respect your opinions greatly as well, which is why I'm looking at this as a discussion, not a debate or argument, and hope you feel the same. Minimum effective dose is a good mindset and in my opinion the correct mindset, but at the end of the day TRT is about restoring levels
and achieving symptom relief.
Its a semantic debate at this point, but I think most of us believe that TRT is about relieving the symptoms of HPTA deficiency, not just achieving a nice looking result on paper. If we only ever replicated what we could naturally, I would argue that taking a 5000iu capsule of Vitamin D (a hormone), 250mg capsule of magnesium before bed is , 50mg of zinc in a tablet without it being attached to food, are all "supraphysiological" or "optimization" as well.
If you get far enough in this you'll see that @RobRoy tends to run away when asked to support his positions.
I'm certainly not in support of everything he says, and believe it or not I align with your thinking more than his in more aspects than you might know based on our interactions so far, but I think gaining knowledge comes from having discussions like this rather than it being an echo chamber, so I appreciate the insight you've shared so far.
Also you mentioned I am alluding to your protocol, which I was not - as I honestly do not know what it is, other than a low dose protocol. However I would be interested to hear it if you don't mind sharing the details.
