My HPTA recovery log: I have reversed my type 2 diabetes (SHBG 31/glucose 80) and may have never had hypogonadism!!

[Systemlord]

I’ve made the decision to come off TRT and restore my natural hormone production and reverse my diabetes. I’ve identified my problems on TRT and they are as follows, Testosterone suppresses hepcidin, which is a peptide hormone that regulates iron absorption. When hepcidin is suppressed more iron is available for the body to use.

When I was on injections, I felt my absolute best shortly before running into iron deficiency and the same holds true on Jatenzo.

This is precisely my problem, every time I eat something with iron in it, I feel the symptoms of excess iron. Ribeye steaks, cause the symptoms to come out the most, chicken to a lesser extent and shrimp to an even lesser extent due to the lower iron content. The symptoms are as followed, headaches, nausea, muscle aches, and pains, dehydration, joint problems and significant spiking glucose simply eating a steak or any meat only meal.

My plan is already in play, my testicles are already starting to ache since stopping Jatenzo 5 days ago. I’ve feel perfectly fine ever since stopping, and as always, I feel even better once my HPTA is back up and running. There’s no guest work involved here because each time I feel it come back online, it feels similar to starting TRT.

I had a gradual decline stopping TRT in 2019, I had really good directions for the first month, strangely supplemented iron for only the first month and stopped, and the next seven months, lost the erections. My decline was very gradual and this tells me I don’t need very high testosterone or maybe not even midrange to feel good.

I want to try to maintain that and improve it from there. I thought about peptide injections to increase my natural production. I’m currently taking creatine, no vitamin D or vitamin C or iron supplements.

My endocrinologist strongly advised me not to stop my TRT. Now I want to do it even more.

I would appreciate any suggestions, supplements, or otherwise, that might help me in my journey to recover my natural hormone state and reverse, and possibly cure my diabetes.

Perhaps a partially fasted state during the day eating only dinner, a steak and maybe healthy carbs. I also wanted to ask would I be able to work out on a diet such as this in the morning having not eating anything?

 

[Melody68]

Systemlord, I've been on the board since starting my TRT journey (about 9 months) and you've always been there and very helpful with your many answers, a sincere thanks. I'm curious, how long have you been on TRT and how old are you? I'll be interested in your experience since I'm not completely sold on the benefits of TRT (yet) and might also consider coming off it some day. I hope it goes well for you . . .

 

[Systemlord]

I'm curious, how long have you been on TRT and how old are you?

I was on injections for 3 years, then took an 8 month break, started Jatenzo for a period of 4 years.

My HPTA restarted after 4.5 weeks after stopping injections, and 8 days after stopping Jatenzo, labs confirm it.

I’m 52 year old.

 

[RotnGun]

Can you tell us the medications and supplements that you are using to get your HPTA going again? And the dosages too?

 

[Systemlord]

Can you tell us the medications and supplements that you are using to get your HPTA going again?

No medications, just creatine. By day 8 I'll have my HPTA going again.

 

[RotnGun]

No medications, just creatine. By day 8 I'll have

No medications, just creatine. By day 8 I'll have my HPTA going again.

Are you saying that creatine can play a role in getting the HPTA going again? If so, how is that possible?

 

[Systemlord]

I woke up this morning feeling well. My testicles have a moving, rotating movement that wasn’t there yesterday.

Yesterday my testicles were lifeless.

 

[Systemlord]

I have been having some issues lately that are pointing to a vitamin D deficiency. My lymphocyte count is low putting me at risk for infection. I have been having sneezing spells lately, my immune system is going haywire last couple of days.

This usually happens when my vitamin D and calcium levels are low normal. If indeed my vitamin D levels are low, this doesn’t bode well for my total testosterone test.

My red blood cell count is at the higher end still and hemoglobin is 17 and hematocrit is 50.5%.

I still can’t tolerate 600 IU vitamin D3. I’m unable tolerate foods fortified with vitamin D, only a natural amount in food.

I’ve been drinking raw milk and eggs for my vitamin D/calcium. I seem to have an extreme sensitivity to salt which started after my third blood donation.

I believe after a week of consuming vitamin D rich foods I’ll be just fine.

My liver and kidney tests are great.

No loss of strength in the gym.

No shortage of energy.

Random glucose 116.

Scale shows me at 183 lbs

Total T = incoming.

 

[Systemlord]

So I took 400 IU D3 after my workout today and 30 minutes later my glucose was 80! I was never able to achieve these glucose values on the TRT at any dosage!! Eating anything with iron in it while on TRT, my glucose would spike high and high iron symptoms would ensue because on TRT I am Iron Man.

Three days with my natural testosterone production and look at what I’ve achieved!

This amount of vitamin D causes strange symptoms. Feeling high mentally, lower back pain, strange taste in mouth, muscle pain and aches, head fullness, kind of like an headache, tooth and jaw sensations.

The 400 IU vitamin D made me a little sleepy and a little weakness. Vitamin D supplements always murders any erections that I got going on. Vitamin D shuts down my erections.

Maybe hypoglycemia.

My muscles get really soft after taking a vitamin D supplement. If I refrain from taking vitamin D supplement for two days, my muscles go back to being harder and swell up during exercise. My muscles don’t swell up at all on the day that I take the vitamin D supplement, as in no pump feeling and muscles are flat and unresponsive to exercise.

I just bought some canned tuna with 32% and 60% vitamin D.

If I’m this sensitive to vitamin D, which has long been suspected, then maybe it’s not outside the realm of possibility that I’m also unusually sensitive to testosterone able to function very well on a lower than normal level.

I always felt my best after stopping TRT, whether on injections or oral testosterone.

I killed it in the gym today, no loss of strength or energy. In fact, I have more energy today than I ever did on TRT.

Whatever my Total T, diabetes in under control.

 

[Systemlord]

Hilarious! A total testosterone at 104 and an SHBG at 31. This isn’t something you see every day. Seven years ago total testosterone was 120 and 4 years ago 91. SHBG was 11 back then and type 2 diabetes is the smoking gun here.

What I don’t understand is how my total testosterone can be unchanged when SHBG is triple the level it was when I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Total testosterone is supposed to be a function of SHBG, the higher the SHBG, the higher the total testosterone should be, only in my case that is not true.

The carnivore diet is a success and for anyone out there with type 2 diabetes, unsure whether or not they can reverse the condition, I was easily able to reverse the condition at 52 years old after having diabetes for what must have been decades.

The symptoms of type 2 diabetes started in my late 20s and I was overweight right after high school.

 

[Systemlord]

This new result 95 glucose reading is 2 hours after eating a white breaded egg sandwich at work. So as long as I keep my vitamin D levels elevated, no type 2 diabetes and maybe in a couple of years I can cure it. If anyone can, it would be me.

I wouldn’t bet against me if I were you.

 

[Systemlord]

I feel like I am living in a dream and I need to pinch myself to make sure this is real. I woke up this morning with almost fully hard erections.

Total testosterone at 104, SHBG at 31, free testosterone at 1.89 ng/dL = 1.81 %, which we can all agree on that these are abysmally low levels and there’s not a forum member that wouldn’t recommend against TRT if you didn’t know my history and what I have discovered.

I will be more hesitant to recommend TRT to new members if the only thing I know about them is that they have low hormonal values. I will plead my case with them about my personal experience, that they must try to fix this naturally first, no matter how bad things are for them and I don’t think there’s another forum member that had it worse than I did as I am the example of the worst case scenario if my high thread count on all of my issues is any indication.

I wasted 7 years of my life on TRT, only to discover all my issues were related to the type 2 diabetes. What I needed to do was correct the diabetes through lifestyle changes which yielded the best outcome.

Tons of energy, more strength in the gym and almost fully hard erections after supplementing 400 IU D3 on the first dose after 4 weeks of no vitamin D supplements and not much time spent in the sunshine.

I had to restrict vitamin D from my diet because anytime I consumed food with vitamin D in it while on the TRT, I got intense hot flashes, strong palpitations all symptoms of excess iron -> hemoglobin -> hematocrit and the TRT was the cause of all of it.

My tolerance to vitamin D supplements decreased after stopping the beta-blocker (Bisoprolol). I found I could no longer tolerate 600 IU D3. While on the beta blocker, I had no major issues at 1200 units of vitamin D, even though I always felt nauseated, high mentally and had balancing issues while walking.

I was operating far outside my normal range for many biomarkers. Testosterone, estrogen and my hematocrit was more than 10% higher than baseline, 45% -> 55-58%.

Maybe I need to continue the 400 IU D3 supplement. If I can cure my diabetes in a few years, maybe I won’t even need the vitamin D supplement anymore.

The thought of living my life on no prescription medication, supplements is desirable to me. It would be nice to just be able to eat the food and live a healthy life.

 

[FunkOdyssey]

I feel like I am living in a dream and I need to pinch myself to make sure this is real. I woke up this morning with almost fully flaccid erections.

Tons of energy, more strength in the gym and almost fully flaccid erections after supplementing 400 IU D3 on the first dose after 4 weeks of no vitamin D supplements and not much time spent in the sunshine.

 

[Jerajera]

I will be more hesitant to recommend TRT to new members if the only thing I know about them is that they have low hormonal values. I will plead my case with them about my personal experience, that they must try to fix this naturally first, no matter how bad things are for them and I don’t think there’s another forum member that had it worse than I did as I am the example of the worst case scenario if my high thread count on all of my issues is any indication.

I'm glad you're feeling better, but the bolded doesn't make any sense. You go on to explain you're an outlier case yet you want to plead to everyone struggling to try to fix hormone imbalances naturally first, "no matter how bad things are for them".

In other words you see clearly that you're a statistical anomaly yet you want to apply your very specific circumstances to everyone, regardless of how badly they're suffering.

You're very emotionally driven in general and I think you'll (hopefully) agree with me, no genius either. There are two people on here who have the brain and the modelling skills to come up with relatively objective and granular models, and one of them just got banned again.

It doesn't mean no one else should be contributing, but please try to monitor your emotional state in general, and at least from experience now you should know how fragile your compulsively materialized and fanatically held theories are.

You've spent years making recommendations with absolute confidence that you now say were mistakes. But somehow you're immediately again in a state of absolute certainty about your new-found beliefs.

I don't know how that works. Personally if my understanding of something turns out to be completely wrong, I can't just apply the same emotional texture of absolute confidence I previously felt to the very next thing that pops in my mind.

I told you this in the past, and I single you out because you're (in quantity at least) probably the largest contributor to these forums, and you're typically the first to reply to many newcomers' threads.

As such, the impact you have on a lot of those people's lives is potentially very significant. And again, you just admitted to having preached completely wrong information for years, so sit down and take a moment to reflect on that.

Making mistakes is fine, but sweeping them under the rug and moving on without taking any responsibility for them and behaving the same exact way again is not.

Given your past experiences and behavior, the last thing you should feel is any certainty as to what to believe about this field in general and your own specific case. The overwhelming complexity we're dealing with here should have humbled you over the years, but somehow in mind-blowing fashion it hasn't at all.

So please, for the sake of all the people you're reaching and whose lives you're impacting with your incessant posting, take a minute to genuinely reflect on what I've said and your own experiences up to this point, and moving forward try to at least adopt a language that reflects some humility and uncertainty towards a complexity not a single human being is capable of grasping at this point.

 

[FunkOdyssey]

I'm glad you're feeling better, but the bolded doesn't make any sense. You go on to explain you're an outlier case yet you want to plead to everyone struggling to try to fix hormone imbalances naturally first, "no matter how bad things are for them".

In other words you see clearly that you're a statistical anomaly yet you want to apply your very specific circumstances to everyone, regardless of how badly they're suffering.

You're very emotionally driven in general and I think you'll (hopefully) agree with me, no genius either. There are two people on here who have the brain and the modelling skills to come up with relatively objective and granular models, and one of them just got banned again.

It doesn't mean no one else should be contributing, but please try to monitor your emotional state in general, and at least from experience now you should know how fragile your compulsively materialized and fanatically held theories are.

You've spent years making recommendations with absolute confidence that you now say were mistakes. But somehow you're immediately again in a state of absolute certainty about your new-found beliefs.

I don't know how that works. Personally if my understanding of something turns out to be completely wrong, I can't just apply the same emotional texture of absolute confidence I previously felt to the very next thing that pops in my mind.

I told you this in the past, and I single you out because you're (in quantity at least) probably the largest contributor to these forums, and you're typically the first to reply to many newcomers' threads.

As such, the impact you have on a lot of those people's lives is potentially very significant. And again, you just admitted to having preached completely wrong information for years, so sit down and take a moment to reflect on that.

Making mistakes is fine, but sweeping them under the rug and moving on without taking any responsibility for them and behaving the same exact way again is not.

Given your past experiences and behavior, the last thing you should feel is any certainty as to what to believe about this field in general and your own specific case. The overwhelming complexity we're dealing with here should have humbled you over the years, but somehow in mind-blowing fashion it hasn't at all.

So please, for the sake of all the people you're reaching and whose lives you're impacting with your incessant posting, take a minute to genuinely reflect on what I've said and your own experiences up to this point, and moving forward try to at least adopt a language that reflects some humility and uncertainty towards a complexity not a single human being is capable of grasping at this point.

+1 to everything Jerajera said here.

 

[Systemlord]

I just thought of something, if I ever needed TRT in the future, I would have to maintain a total testosterone level of 100 ng/dL to fully benefit from therapy.

Imagine trying to maintain a 100-200 ng/dL total testosterone on TRT without going too far outside my normal range in either direction.

This testosterone panel was taking at 3:25 pm, so that means my levels were likely higher in the early morning hours. They weren’t actually supposed to take my testosterone level that day. I was there for other testing.

I feel like a teenager at this total testosterone level and it just keeps getting better with every day that passes.

 

[Systemlord]

Today I noticed my muscles are getting noticeably harder and looking fuller. My calves are swollen and when I flex they are really hard. When I walk there's more spring in my step. None of this ever happened on the TRT.

I woke up this morning at 4 am with the strong urge to clean out my frig and ended up cleaning the entire kitchen top to bottom.

I can't stop long enough to rest without wanting to tackle another task. I can't remember the last time I felt like this, I just want to get sh** done!

 

[Systemlord]

You have not been at these low levels for long enough for their impact to be felt. Six months from now, if you have maintained a total T of 100 ng/dL and free T of 2 ng/dL, I strongly doubt you will still be reporting positive results in the gym.

Remember this paper: Onset of effects of testosterone treatment and time span until maximum effects are achieved

All of it works in reverse too: "Changes in fat mass, lean body mass, and muscle strength occur within 12–16 weeks, stabilize at 6–12 months, but can marginally continue over years."

You forget one thing, if I’m as sensitive to testosterone and vitamin D as I say I am, being an anomaly someone put it, having very short CAG repeats, the onset of effects and timeline to maximum benefits are achieved doesn’t apply to me.

My timeline would be drastically quicker. I’m already seeing results in a forward, not backwards trajectory. Day one I noticed I was feeling unusually well and every day since then has seen added benefits.

This morning is a perfect example detailed in post #17.

Also, back in 2019 I took an 8 month break from TRT and as my diabetes, glucose increasing got out of control, the common denominator was rising glucose and shrinking testicles and feeling worse.

My testosterone values remain largely unchanged throughout all of it, even as we tried treat the diabetes directly without TRT, and for awhile I had increased energy and felt great, testosterone unchanged, but the sides from the medicines forced me to stop.

 

[Systemlord]

Shockingly my ferritin is 140, this is after 5 blood donations within a 6 month period. Now I'm not on TRT and the beta-blocker ferritin can go where it wants.

I still carry myself like I got high testosterone, drive fast, aggressive even, that lane is open and I'm taking it and I'm not asking permission. I'm natural baby!

I have this abdominal pain that's constant and I strongly believe it's the higher end hemoglobin and hematocrit now that my testosterone levels are a mismatch for these blood parameters.

Iron rich foods make this abdominal pain worse for several hours. Aspirin is the only thing that gets rid of this abdominal pain. I also still get muscle aches when eating iron rich foods.

Blood testing, CT scan shows nothing.

I know that the half-life of a red blood cell is 120 days. In a week and a half my hematocrit has declined .4% and hemoglobin .4 (originally 50.5%) as well.

So how long would it take for my hematocrit to decline from 50.1% 45-46% and hemoglobin from 16.6 to 14.8, all of which are my baseline pre-TRT levels?

@madman

 

[Seagal]

Hey Ironman, that's really amazing that you are doing so well without TRT. It seems like following your intuition was the right choice.
Would it be an option for you to donate a bit of blood to accelerate the clearance of your hematocrit? Now that you are off TRT there shouldn't be this JoJo effect of ferritin - hematocrit.