For a couple of weeks I even added 20mg of Pregnenolone and DHEA daily along with HCG, but it still did nothing. My E2 is always good, you can see my updates and see that it's never even close to being high, some might even say it's a bit on the lower side compared to T. When I used standard doses of DHT derivatives or really low dose AI, I always felt low E2 symptoms, usually mood changes. I even tried increasing E2 and while levels increased I didn't get any negatives or positives, so I can handle it well, but gain nothing from it. HCG also doesn't increase my E2 too much, it seems to rise slightly, but proportionately with T. I have no blood flow issues, this has always been good, however I do have ED due to having completely 0 libido and arousal at all possible times. Can't really get an erection, or rather at the right time, if you're never aroused.
It seems I'm just one of the few people that on TRT doesn't get any libido benefits, or worse yet, some lose libido. I guess that's just how some of us are made and nobody really knows what's going on. That is not to say that TRT does nothing for me, I have roughly 15 symptoms resolved, some were present since I was a child, so quality of life is way up.
There are some theories floating around, but none can be proven, tested for or solved, so it's a moot point in any case. For my personal belief, I'd use Occam's razor, meaning that the simplest reason is usually the correct one, and, in my opinion, the simplest explanation is that having your hormonal system shutdown prevents you from getting full symptom relief. I'd say this is somewhat "proven" by HCG, as many report benefits which don't seem related to the minor increases in T and E2, hell some get benefits, but higher E2 brings some unrelated negatives. During my research in the last months, it seems people also use Kisspeptin, which is a hormone in the hypothalamus, and many report improvements to libido and other benefits. I was recently looking into
Enclomiphene and came across
@Cataceous experimentations with GnRH, which is another hormone in the hypothalamus, and he noted several improvements, including libido. He used really low dose TRT along with Enclo and multiple injections of GnRH spread throughout the day, a difficult experiment to say the least.
So Kisspeptin, GnRH, LH and FSH form the hormonal chain to the production of sex hormones. While their main function is to produce sex hormones it does seem like they play an additional role in the function of your body, that isn't truly understood and seems to be different for everyone. Maybe I get no libido benefits due to the shutdown, meanwhile another man might never fix his sleep issues. Based on the fact that many of us are on TRT with good results, after dialing in, it seems that having proper sex hormone levels is more imporant for general health, than having these hormones running, but they do seem to play some role. I think if we could prevent shutdown on any hormonal therapy we would see massive overall improvements. Many note improvements with just HCG, which mimics only LH. What if libido for me hides in one of the other ones or multiple ones? What if we could mimic any other of these four? What if we could mimic all of them on the same time? Some closing questions.