OK, here are the details for anyone that is interested.
I was feeling like crap. I had been out of the gym for six years with a back injury that left me functional, but unable to push myself physically. I had chronic muscle cramps in my back, shoulders and neck that my wife would dig her elbows into every night to get some relief and range of motion back. I was miserable. I realized I was making old man noises when I would get up off the couch. I was tired all the time.
On a fluke, I was referred to a doctor to redesign his website. He did medically supervised weight loss and TRT (Testosterone Replacement Therapy). I had heard about TRT years earlier, but dismissed it because it was lumped in with all the HGH (Human Growth Hormone) anti-ageing voodoo crap that cost a fortune and didn't make you immortal like they promise.
I told the doctor about my problems and he said I could at least get my Test levels tested. They came back low. They were not in the low part of the normal range, they were outside the range. REALLY low. He knew I was a skeptic (about everything, not just this) and said I could give the treatment a try and decide for myself it worked.
I have a bodybuilding past and have researched steroids since I was a kid, but never used them. I had no fear of testosterone injections so I figured, "what the hell." I bring this up because this is basically low dose steroids. If you were doing a cycle, you would take 600mg/wk or more of Test...but TRT is only replacing the Test that your body no longer produces on its own...100mg - 200mg/wk. The point is to get you back to the high part of the normal range. Basically they want you to have the Test levels of an 18 year old. They have creams if you think you cannot inject, but they don't work as well. Injections are the way to go, and it is only scary the first time.
I started the treatment and didn't change much of anything else in my life. After three weeks my energy levels seemed better, but it could have been the placebo effect. What WASN'T the placebo effect was the chronic pain started to lessen. After four of five weeks (it takes around four weeks for a long ester drug to get your blood levels up) my knots were gone and I was able to lift for the first time in over six years. I started really light to be safe. I started putting on muscle and losing fat quickly despite not working out hard or changing my diet much.
I had more energy and didn't feel as depressed.
The biggest changes were embarrassing. Morning wood. Increased libido. Noticing women again. I had basically lost interest in sex, which is not good when married to a woman ten years younger.
Feeling good again got me to slowly tighten my diet and start lifting heavier. Eventually I got back into my old bodybuilding habits. At the end of the year I had put on 25 pounds of muscle and lost 40 pounds of fat. In six months I should be back to the best shape of my life. This is not typical though as I eat a strict diet. Same things every day. And I spent four to six hours in the gym every week (including cardio). Doesn't seem like much, but that was hundreds of hours last year. I do it rather than watch TV.
Hudson - no, these are not supplements. It is prescription-only testosterone. It literally replaces the testosterone that your body is no longer making (assuming you have low test levels).
lastpushbutton - you are correct that my diet and exercise are doing a lot now. Not in the beginning though. You are right that there is a lot of crap...there are a lot of people running expensive clinics that don't care about health, just profits. They need to be avoided at all costs. You are also right that it isn't for anyone that has tests done and finds that they are in the normal range. There are a thousand things that can be wrong with the body - this is just one.
DOES200 - I think this is one of many things that people used to call "old age." And thyroid is something these docs will often look into as well. It isn't a magic bullet, but if someone has this specific problem, it is treatable. AND, the odds of us having this problem start to go up once we hit our 40s.
There is a website I did a bunch of reading at over a year ago before I started. I will try to find it.
That was a LOT of typing. Hopefully it isn't full of typos, no time to read through it.
