Author Topic: Hypo - Check out Test Results  (Read 3092 times)

Offline kindherb42

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This is what my hormonal test looked like after being on Tamoxifen for a little over 2 months.  I know there is no test for many hormones on this, which I dont know why the endo didnt test for them (including estraidol), but I noticed my free test is way high - out of range.

Here they are:

Total Testosterone: 902 ng/dl

Testosterone, Free Percent: 1.58%

Free Testosterone: (was out of range saying too high) 142.1 pg/mL

FSH: 1.6 MIU/ML

LH: 2.8 MIU/ML

Can anything be said about these results?

Offline Hypo-is-here

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What dose of Tamoxifen were you talking and how often?

Did the endo know about its use?

How do you feel in yourself (include anything even if its relevance seems questionable)?

Has it subjectively made any difference to your gynecomastia?

Offline kindherb42

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Tamoxifen Citrate 10mg Twice Daily so daily I take 20mg

Some days I feel like puffy or bloated, and other days I feel rock solid and dry not that bloated feeling.  Overall I feel good I guess.

While on Tamoxifen the itching and burning feeling of the gland has stopped.  Looks like it's getting a little bit better but nothing very significant, it's just really comforting knowing that I'm not getting that "growing feeling" where it itches and burns.

Endocrinologist is who prescribed it to me.

But for some reason I feel like my face looks kind of fat even though I have a pretty good body (iv been bodybuilding for about a year and a few months and am pretty cut which the endocrinologist says my gyne is barely any breast tissue at all and its mostly my muscle tissue because she said my pectorals are extremely developed and the thing thats making me think I have bad gyno is that my areolas are just naturally puffy, like it's just skin.  

Then I rememebered even when I was a little kid like 7 years old and what not, my nipples were puffy.  Not because there was a gland underneath pushing it out, BUT they were just naturally puffy and I think I took way more notice to it when I heard about gynecomastia.

But for the gland that IS there, the endo said Tamoxifen at 20mg a day has shown some pretty good results.  I'm going to be getting my blood taken approximately every 3-4 months to check up on things and monitor it and when I stop ill have it checked again and then a few months afterwards again.

Offline Hypo-is-here

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Regarding your blood tests, he hasn’t tested your DHT level but then few doctors do and he hasn’t tested your estradiol level (I presume he did prior to commencement of treatment/thought this was the reason to instigate this course of action) as that would be redundant on Tamoxifen given it is a SERM medication and invalidates estrogen blood testing.

Some good results have been seen with that dose in limited trials (in appropriate cases) as your endo has stated, but large scale controlled trials are still lacking.

If you develop a sore/aching throat and fatigue and or loss of libido/erections raise these issues with your endo as this is a sign of lowering estradiol actions too much, something that can happen on such a considerable dose.

If you are not feeling any ill effects (you haven't mentioned any of note) then it would seem reasonable to follow your endocrinologists guidance and complete the course.

How long did he state the course would be?

Offline kindherb42

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Approximately 3 to 6 months.  Depending on whether it suddenly regresses or does not I'm guessing.

Something I noticed with myself though is that I'm lean all over basically, but not to sound like a girl, my ass is big for the size of the rest of my body and my thighs too.  My glute muscles are big and so are thigh muscles but there is some stubborn fat there.  Is that from too much estrogen?  Or could it be cortisol from working out TOO much maybe?

Thanks hypo

Offline Hypo-is-here

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Quote
Approximately 3 to 6 months.  Depending on whether it suddenly regresses or does not I'm guessing.
Thanks hypo


Well that is something you should seek clarification on.

I guess that is reasonable if you are not experiencing any adverse affects, so long as your endo is happy with that.

Quote

Something I noticed with myself though is that I'm lean all over basically, but not to sound like a girl, my ass is big for the size of the rest of my body and my thighs too.  My glute muscles are big and so are thigh muscles but there is some stubborn fat there.  Is that from too much estrogen?  Or could it be cortisol from working out TOO much maybe?

Thanks hypo


You are well and you report no symptoms of ill health at all either prior to this treatment or on it.  

If any us over-analyze our bodies to the degree that you are currently (something that is all too easy to do, we have probably all done it at one time or another) then we are bound to find things that we question and that are different to our peers.  But it doesn’t mean or equate to ill health.  I think you are just worrying too much.

If you have symptoms of ill health then and only then would I push investigations further, at least that is my honest opinion.  



« Last Edit: April 20, 2006, 01:30:20 AM by Hypo-is-here »

Offline kindherb42

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Quote


Well that is something you should seek clarification on.

I guess that is reasonable if you are not experiencing any adverse affects, so long as your endo is happy with that.


You are well and you report no symptoms of ill health at all either prior to this treatment or on it.  

If any us over-analyze our bodies to the degree that you are currently (something that is all too easy to do, we have probably all done it at one time or another) then we are bound to find things that we question and that are different to our peers.  But it doesn’t mean or equate to ill health.  I think you are just worrying too much.

If you have symptoms of ill health then and only then would I push investigations further, at least that is my honest opinion.  






When you say I should seek clarification on the duration of tamoxifen use, are you suggesting that it should be a shorter amount of time? or longer?

Offline Hypo-is-here

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Quote



When you say I should seek clarification on the duration of tamoxifen use, are you suggesting that it should be a shorter amount of time? or longer?


Neither, I was implying that it is good to know all the relevant details of your prescription and in asking the question I was seeing if your endos thoughts matched what I have read regarding the drugs use in trials.

As long as the pathology originally indicated its use, you have no medical contraindication for its use , you are feeling no ill effects from the medication and it is being supervised then all is well and good.





Offline kindherb42

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oh ok Thanks.  

Something I found interesting was the fact that you said loss in libido/sex drive can be from lowering estrogen too much... I was always under the impression that if my sex drive was low then I had low testosterone.

Offline kindherb42

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Sorry Hypo but I have another question that maybe you'll know the answer to.

I always hear how Soy is bad for men and how that can cause gynecomastia, BUT i'm confused because the way I interpretted it is like the estrogen in Soy would actaully benefit men, because it seemed like the way I read about soy was that it kind of acted like a SERM competing for the estrogen receptors with estraidol which is a stronger estrogen... is this correct?  So wouldnt soy (not even just soy but flaxseed for example, etc.) be good for men?

Offline kindherb42

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Ok so I'm kind of getting paranoid over here.  I just read up on estrogen a lot and this link has a LOT of information that I didnt know.

http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2004/oct2004_report_estrogen_01.htm

Within the writings it mentions Tamoxifen and saying while it blocks some estrogen, it can cause cancers that are dependent on Tamoxifen and other stuff like that.  

I also realized I've been getting hotflashes mainly my upper body and face/head and I'm thinking this has to do with maybe too low of estrogen.

I told the endo I think I'd like to stop using Tamoxifen and let my natural hormones take over and am going to drink soymilk since it acts as a NATURAL SERM and the endo told me I can just stop the Tamoxifen.  We will get blood taken in approximately a month, then will get blood taken later down the road also to make sure everythings ok.

But this doesnt make sense to me, wouldnt just all of a sudden stopping the Tamoxifen cause an estrogen rebound ?  I would think i would be told to taper it off, like instead of just stopping, start taking only 10mg a day for 2+weeks then stop.

Offline Hypo-is-here

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A) Lowering estradiol or its effects at the receptor site too much and there are detrimental side effects as stated.  In fact low estradiol and low testosterone feel very similar symptomatically.

This is not just my anecdotal feeling but the feelings of many, many hypogonadal men who have had issues relating to the balancing of hormones.  The side effects I have stated are also detailed in many medical journals.

B)
Soy is of debatable interest, some hormone specialists think it is largely irrelevant, some see it as a weak SERM and others see it as a hazard.  In all honesty I disregard it entirely.  I think for someone with fairly well balanced hormones and little glandular gynecomastia like yourself that it is irrelevant IMHO, though I am sure people will pull up half baked studies stating otherwise.

C)
A rebound effect is due to a "significant" shift in the endocrine balance in favor of estrogens, with significant being the operative word.

This rebound effect is seen in men abusing anabolic steroids.  In such cases they have very high supraphysilogical levels of testosterone which in turn results in supraphisilogical levels of one of its main metabolites- estradiol.  With very high testosterone levels estradiol is not able to act unopposed (ordinarily/excluding poor genetics, liver conditions, other hormonal factors etc) in the endocrine system and much like a tug-of-war where each side is of equal strength homeostasis (balance) is maintained and estrogen related side effects such as gynecomastia are usually not seen.  

As soon as the steroid cycle is stopped such men find that their testosterone levels plummet.  While they have been abusing steroids their Hypothalamu/pituitary has recognized the excess testosterone and shutdown all production of LH/its own testosterone production and now without the external supply of testosterone they have to wait whilst their own hypothalamus/pituitary re-starts.  During this time estradiol is able to act unopposed and by a cruel qwerk of fate estradiol unlike testosterone takes a long time to return to normal levels and in fact hinders the hypothalamus/pituitary from kick-starting LH and testosterone production.  Think of that tug of war with two sides of equal strength, think of what happens if one side lets go of the rope.  If you don’t like the rope analogy, think of what happens on a set of scales when two items opposing each other are of equal weight and one is removed.  Both analogies are exactly the same, in both instances the forces of one side are able to act unopposed and unopposed estradiol causes gynecomastia.

There are many other ways this rebound effect can occur but they should not relate to your situation.


D)
In your situation unless your estradiol was VERY high prior to treatment or is VERY high now then a significant and adverse shift shouldn’t occur with treatment removal and certainly you do not have testicular shutdown judging by your LH and testosterone levels.  Couple this once again with the fact that you have little glandular mass and the fact that your gynecomastia is idiopathic (I recall you telling me that no cause for it was found) and most likely a temporary pubertal imbalance that no longer exists;

It all points to a situation where you wouldn’t really expect any issue with treatment removal.

Endocrine medicated intervention is about creating an ultra positive endocrine balance for a short period of time to try and resolve glandular gynecomastia and then taking away the powerful medications and returning to a normal endocrine balance (clearing up the after effects of pubertal imbalances).

E)
Tapering down Tamoxifen and stacking various drugs are things that bodybuilders are obsessed with and an quite honestly some of the time these factors are irrelevant and the individuals do not understand the mechanisms at play.  

As it stands every man and his dog reads crap on bodybuilding sites and gets hold of these terms and applies them to everything from creatine to Milk Thistle.   Everyone of these guys is an expert, but virtually none of them understand or get pathology and many of them end up here.

D)
You’re overanalyzing everything

It sounds very simple, but if you feel well and have no symptoms of ill health it is usually safe to say that you are in fact well and this is backed up by the fact that nothing has been found via endocrine investigations

If there is no evidence to say you are ill in any way, try and deal with the gynecomastia either via the prescribed course of medication or via surgery and then just get on with life.

If you are finding that difficult and still feel the need to over analyse the minutiae of your own health then you might need to see a therapist to talk through your concerns/issues and rule out BDD (which is as significant as condition as gynecomastia in its own right- and not to be underestimated).



Offline kindherb42

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Thank you very  much for you help Hypo.. Like usual, you take more time to explain things to me then any doctors I've been to.

Thanks again.


 

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