Health Problems

Unless you have trouble starting a family, TRT seems mostly like a hogwash from my point of view. Testosterone levels can vary a lot and stuffing somebody with pills based on how they subjectively feel and rather unspecific symptoms with mostly overlap with ageing is just too convenient, especially in a population that is famous for being about as healthy as ranch dressing. Like seriously, pick up a recreational sport and you will probably feel just as good if not better. I'm not saying all medicine is useless, but every single time somebody tried hormones in the past, it generally had nasty side effects.

A5150Ylee said:

To lower your heart rate, you need to breath deep. A fast heart rate is the body's response to get oxygen everywhere. When you have been running, the body is reacting to catch up to the lack of it. When you get scared, it's the body's proactive response to get you ready for a longer fight or flight time. I can generally slow my heart rate about 10-15 bpm by consciously breathing deep and slow. It freaks out the nurses when they are doing heart rate and blood pressure.

So the trick is oxygen. Start trying to hyperventilate before the test, and keep breathing deep during the stress even if "you don't need to". When I do any cardio, if I make an effort to keep breathing deep even if it's not needed, my heart rate is at a resting rate within minutes of me finishing. It's a matter of getting a jump on the oxygen and not waiting for your body to reactively try to catch up.

Good luck. A shot before might help if it can give you the 'don't give a fuck' attitude to help with stress about the test.

EDIT: If you want to see the effect, get some kind of digital BPM device, and change your breathing to see the impact it can have.

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I did almost wonder how effective huffing some o2 before hand would be.

You know what sucks? Suddenly coughing up stomach acid.

Sludig said:

I did almost wonder how effective huffing some o2 before hand would be.

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I might give that a try at my next Dr checkup. They do heart, pressure, and O2 saturation first thing. I'm generally pretty good, but maybe I'll take my beer wort oxygenating stone and the O2 tank and suck on the stone for about 5 minutes before I walk in the door.

A5150Ylee said:

I might give that a try at my next Dr checkup. They do heart, pressure, and O2 saturation first thing. I'm generally pretty good, but maybe I'll take my beer wort oxygenating stone and the O2 tank and suck on the stone for about 5 minutes before I walk in the door.

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Or just focus on your breathing when you work out, or even in general. Your belly should fill up before your chest does. Simple as that.

Sludig said:

On the T hormone stuff, aside from the BIOTE medical that Synj was pushing. (Leary of them just based on their scammy sounding radio commercials) Any other resources about what/where I should go to look into getting a T test done not by someone interested in selling me stuff? Also besides pellets, maybe from just this last page, self injections is an option? Maybe cheaper? My biggest thing is unless I'm actually super low, I'm nervous about what a few posters in another thread said about once I do it, stuck on it forever etc. I'm interested because while a lot of my problems I know is my laziness, even when I was more fit back in the army and how I feel now, some of the symptoms seem to fit maybe having an issue.

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If its by the book FDA approved TRT, no off-label "i feel like shit" bullshit, real FDA approved use will reject you if you are in your 30's I'd almost bank on it. You'd get that through a referral to your endocrinologist from your primary care doctor re: symptoms of low testosterone. No Endo is going to prescribe you any testosterone if you don't truly need it, so there is nothing to worry about as far as sales go. If you go to a clinic, they might weigh your symptons vs your levels and you might get prescribed a non-FDA sanctioned prescription to "bring you up to normal".

If you're in your 40's maybe you stand a chance. You aren't going to get a fully FDA approved and sanctioned Testosterone product prescription without being laughably low.

Sludig said:

My biggest thing is unless I'm actually super low, I'm nervous about what a few posters in another thread said about once I do it, stuck on it forever etc.

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False. And likely meritless in your presumed age group. It's just not possible to be "missing" any testosterone after requiring a legitimate FDA approved TRT script after your levels crash when you come off of it. What people are talking about is losing their mojo or juiced up bodies because their levels return to pre- TRT shithouse. No worse off than when you started-- maybe a hair lower. But if we are talking true FDA TRT, then absolutely not-- the levels will be roughly the same. Just back to square one with a nice fat high estrogen level to go with it.

Now if you are scamming TRT in your 20's, yeah be nervous about needing to take it to maintain a certain quality of life. If you are trying to scam TRT in any way, whether through clinics, complaining about symptoms at a level of 500ng -600ng, then yeah be nervous about making a commitment to TRT because you will be around 200-300ng after you come off it and may not be able to sustain 600ng naturally again. Its called endocrine crash. Most TRT is being done off-label, so you are not wrong to be nervous about finding a by the book doctor, or as you said avoiding "someone who is trying to sell something" or has an angle.

Some of these guys on this forum are likely scamming to some degree or skirting the FDA approved indications of what constitutes low testosterone warranting a prescription. That's what it sounds like to me if you've been reading about a lot of nervous people and dependence on testosterone.

So 10 days of an hour a day jog/sprint/walk to recover keeping heart rate 170-180, resting down to 150-60 via wrist monitor. Using a fairly deeply sloped parking lot and a gym treadmill a few of the days. No caffeine, no added salt diet, down 5lbs....... I tested WORSE than before. My max rate is 192 and 163 is like some safety cuttoff and I need to be making 144 or under for final seconds of the treadmill... How the fuck is my cardio seemingly going backwards? I ended first time 150-158 and now over 160.

Only observations to make would be I got to test twice today. I started morning test with only water and I took my aspirin I've taken all week to hopefully thin myself out a little, my allergy med which hopefully also helps keep me down a bit as well as my leftover prescribed valium which I saw widely recommended for those with test anxiety (despite J's strong hate for it.) After failing on that and mentioning I was doing it on an empty stomach they had me come back in 3 hours. So rest, banana/englishmuffin, peanut butter, and back at the test midday to get near identical results peaking 163 a minute in the jump to 7% grade.

My other gripe would be my resting on my dads pulse ox had me mid 60's, comparable to about 70 on the fitness watch and the gym treadmill sensor. But this place is reading me resting today at 85 ish, and the chest band monitor had me at 95 after having stepped onto the treadmill standing there waiting for it to sync. Seems odd for it to be so much higher than so many other decices even knowing they may not be perfectly accurate. The chest monitor they use looks like normal commercial off the shelf than any fancier medical office grade unit.

So currently looking at seeing a cardiologist asap to rule out any problems. Supervisor looking into if I can take it elsewhere to rule out something on their end since I'm paying for it anyways. (And he echo'd what others have said, a ton of guys suddenly struggling with this idiotic treadmill test lately) They had one .mil guy that was ripped and struggled. Heart doc gave him some meds, but also had advised him for this specific test better to train just walking the test at a slightly higher incline/speed was better than normal cardio building jogging etc.

November last year, I admitted myself to my local ER, with an infected big toe on my right foot. I had smashed it a couple months prior, helping my brother move a heavy dresser, and initially thought I was just gonna lose that toenail. I've had nerve damage in my toes ever since I was 18, I weighed close to 400lbs at the time, and worked 12 hour shifts, overnights at a convenience store, wasn't allowed to sit, and wore the worst shoes that have ever existed. After about six months of that job, my toes went permanently numb, worse in the big toe, getting better as you move into my smaller toes, so I didn't notice that what I thought was just a black toe nail, was actually a completely broken distal phalanx. When the toe nail finally fell off, I thought I had an ingrown toe nail that had formed underneath, kept it bandaged for awhile, until I noticed one day I had some red streaking and swelling in the foot. At the ER they confirmed a bone infection and admitted me for further tests and a likely amputation. A1C tests came back showing my blood glucose levels had been in the 240 range for at least the last 6 months. I spent a week in the hospital, had my right great toe removed, a picc line put in, and got sent home for six weeks of IV antibiotics.

I took the diabetes diagnosis to heart, immediately changed my diet, started exercising (as much as I could), and dropped from 270lbs, currently down to 225lbs. I'm on 500mg of Metformin twice daily, and haven't had to use insulin since I've been out of the hospital, and have successfully kept my blood sugar between 90 to 130 without much issue. Beginning of January, a follow up with my podiatrist showed that my second toe was starting to develop fractures, within a week I had a blister on it, which ultimately led to having it removed to the first joint. That partial toe, never looked right after, was red the entire time, and after they took stitches out, the right side of that toe just wouldn't heal, so I just had the rest of it removed towards the end of February.

So this whole time, maybe starting a month or two before me, one of my best friends dads has been undergoing the same process. They removed his big toe, second toe got messed up, and they did a partial amputation. His got worse, he bandaged his partial poorly, leading to his 3rd toe getting infected, and they took all the toes on his right foot off around the time they did my partial. Now, he's rubbed a blister on his foot, and they are working towards preventing infection of his metatarsals.

My podiatrist says my last 3 toes are good pink healthy toes, and that I shouldn't have to worry as much about running in to possible issues with them, but given whats happened to my friends dad, I'm paranoid. I've lost 2 toes and am on leave from work till at least April 23rd. I've talked extensively with my podiatrist, endocrinologist, and primary care providers, who all assure me that I'm doing great, and have no recommendations on what to do better or differently, but still feel like I'm just gonna wind up on a surgery table again until I don't have a foot.

Damn dude. A diabetics nightmare

Here I was coming to bitch about having to wait until Monday to deal with these grotesquely swollen lymph nodes in my neck because I don't want to go to the ER, and see some dude talking about missing digits.

dafuq

I know an ID doc that says the same thing about HIV but I don’t really think that applies to people already noncompliant since if you’re noncompliant with HIV meds you gonna lose a loooot more than a foot!

Kiroy said:

You already lost all that weight. I'd go hard and try for losing another 30-40lbs.... jesus that's rough.

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I already joined a gym, started going a bit after I got the stitches out when they did the half amputation, but will have to wait till the doc releases me to start going again. I'm actually super stoked about it, in the past when I've joined the gym, I had no idea what the hell I was doing with all the equipment, and would just wind up using the treadmill or an elliptical and leaving. This time, my work schedule lines up perfectly with a friend who goes Monday-Thursday right after I get off work. I usually have 2 or so free hours right then before I have to get my wife from work, on top of being one of my best friends, dude is a gym rat who has been showing me a solid routine, and how to use equipment. Hoping to get to start going again after the first week of May, will be focusing on building some muscle, until my foot is 100%, then I move into some low impact cardio to cut some of the extra weight, and start working keeping my heart healthy.

I'm super lucky, they think I've only been diabetic for about a year or so, my kidneys and liver are good, triglycerides were 140, blood pressure is good, cholesterol is good, and overall I have a perfect opportunity to get in front of this. My only other issue is that I have a high resting heart rate, usually sitting around 90-95, which my doc thinks I get down once I get more regular exercise in. The foot thing just freaks me out. I feel helpless, like nothing I've been doing seems to help, and I don't like slowly falling apart for obvious reasons.

That being said, I've kept my attitude in check, and my spirits high. Already have some interesting prank plans, like wearing sandals and using a ketchup packet to freak people out on an escalator, etc.

Had blood work and a sonogram/ultrasound (whatever they call it) of my abdomen last year. They contacted me and told me they would pay to have it retested elsewhere since they had an audit. Doesn't sound good. I realise they don't keep blood work around, but apparently the hospital doesn't keep anything, or they didn't cause the ultrasound can't be reviewed now either.