JN,
Congratulations- your recovery is fabulous news.
Any plans to have any new blood or urine tests done? It would be fascinating to see what has happened to your Adiol-G reading, for example.
Kind regards
Penguin
JN, I’m sure you will do so, but please do keep us posted on your story - even if (hopefully, and seemingly) your situation continues to be nothing but positive. Particularly as you are weaning off these meds, many of us are extremely interested to follow your story.
Many thanks in advance!
JN have you been stress dosing when excercising? How much extra do you take?
Excellent new JN, please keep is all posted. I myself am going to approach the route of Cortisol and Thyroid investigation.
JN,
Are you still taking TRT, HCG & HGH? It’s great news that you feel very close to normal.
I just can’t help wonder wonder role these other hormones have played or are still playing in the recovery process.
Hey chaps,
I have totally stopped T3 and hydrocortisone. I feel great. Just played an hour of highly competitive match tennis with my coach and wasn’t tired in the slightest. In fact, after typing this I’m going to go for a run.
Last week I was struggling to make it through the hour and had to stop 3 times! Now I feel superb.
I’m not taking HGH either and stopped that a week ago. I felt it was complicating my hydrocortisone issues and didn’t really help me feel that good (HGH also suppressed cortisol levels and didn’t seem to work as well as when I took it in 2008 (when cortisol levels were high).
My girlfriend knows I’m much better and remarked how I’m touchy feely (a good sign with me).
My temperature 3 days after stopping is 36.6C!! (English measurement)
Currently I’m taking the following:
T 80mg IM per week
HCG 150iu 3 times per week
pregnenolone 50mg tablet
Who knows, maybe I can get off these 3 meds in the future.
Take care of yourselves, I’ll keep you posted
JN
PS, The theory behind me stopping T3 and hydrocort is that all the reverse T3 is out of my system.
What pill form pregnenolone are you using?
i assume you’re gonna be doing blood tests after this as well?
anyways, great to hear your recovery, hopefully it will stick
please let us know what future rt3 bloodtests indicate
if your body can not cope and is stressed, certainly some rt3 will be made again
perhaps you can cycle t3 again and hc, and wean off? i believe this is wilsons protocol cycling t3
T 80mg IM per week
HCG 150iu 3 times per week
pregnenolone 50mg tablet
this is great to read that you are feeling better and better. Also I am happy that despite HCG you are not taking any anti-estrogen. Don’t you feel any astrogen activity with HCG and T? Most of the people can not handle HCG withoug taking an anti-estrogen.
JN, so you just up and quit taking HC cold turkey? Is that what I am understanding?
True recovery will be when you can function like you are when not taking hcg, testosterone and pregnonolone.
I dont understand why people say they have recovered when they are taking artificial hormones!
You said you have had a blood test that showed you are clear of rT3, however, there are SERIOUS problems with stopping T3 and HC as you have done. I hope I’m wrong, but there’s a good chance you’re going to feel terrible soon… You mentioned working with an anti ageing doc a while ago-- still true? I can’t imagine him/her going along with this…
You may not have rT3 now, but what was the problem to begin with? And far, far more importantly, the reason you don’t have rT3 is because you have no or very little T4-- I know you added back T4, but if I remember, it was a small dose-- what did your T4/FT4 labs look like when you did the rT3 measurement? Unless you’ve got good levels of T4, once you remove the exogenous T3 your body is going to be short of the raw materials it needs to make T3 and you’re going to be in a seriously hypothyroid state- likely within a few days. Even if your T4 is at a good level, simply removing T3 is a recipe for disaster-- adding some T3 helps promote conversion of T4 to T3, and I would think the opposite would also be true (just a guess), and that with no T3 and not much T4, you’re not going to be converting much T4 to T3. This is also the type of scenario (low t3, low t4, low cortisol) where your body favours conversion to rT3. I suppose it’s within the realm of possibility that your thyroid just kicks in and starts making proper amounts of T4 and T3 again, but this doesn’t seem to be the way most people’s bodies work… and you have been on high dose T3 for a while, so i’m guessing that the feedback loops that control thyroid production, and possibly the gland itself, are suppressed.
Same with HC-- there is no reason to think that the doses of hc you’ve been taking have caused any atrophy to your adrenal glands, BUT that doesn’t mean ACTH isn’t suppressed by these doses, which could mean when you stop HC that if the cortisol-crf-acth feedback loop isn’t intact, you’ll be low on cortisol. Low cortisol = more rT3. I’d be more concerned about your thyroid, though as you know they both work together and can’t really be separated.
I think it’s laudable that you actually try things rather than, like many on this site, just lamenting your misfortune, and you’ve come long way because of this. However, you seem like you would benefit from a bit more patience once you start something new, and a more gradual ramping on and off of new treatments. Why did you decide to stop taking T3 and HC, anyway? Are you seeing doc now?
This is the sort of idiocy that makes give this site a wide berth… these hormones are not artificial, and are present in both men’s and women’s bodies. This factual error is the least of the problems with this post though… i don’t even know where to begin… 
Growlingmadscientist,
Look buddy, thanks for your input; you make some very pertinent points which shows your knowledge and understanding of my (our) situation.
With regard to stopping T3 and T4. I take neither and have been off for 4 days now. I feel great, and am feeling better by the day. I tapered my dose down over 3 or 4 days and have suffered zero hypothyroid effects. Should I have done so, and with the theoretical risks you state above, I would immediately have taken a T3 tablet (which I feel work within minutes with me). I researched the hell out of stopping T3 on bodybuilding sites and the feeling is that T3 does not have to be tapered as one’s own production of T4 (and thence T3) reliably always seems to restart. I also read a good scientific literature piece which stated that T3 and T4 start in all people with 2 weeks. For me, I tapered slightly but felt great and saw no need to prolong my tapering.
I tapered hydrocortisone over 3 or 4 days as well. The proof of my recovery was that I played a very intense session of high quality tennis (I used to have a national rating as a kid) in the 35C scorching heat yesterday, and barely felt tired afterwards. I then went for a run and had sex. I feel better off hydrocortisone as I reckon replacing hydrocortisone exogenously does not mimic one’s body’s natural production adequately. I was ramped up for tennis and ramped up for sex like I haven’t been for years.
I am continuing to take pregnenolone as it is an adrenal mother hormone, and useful when one wants to cease hydrocortisone.
The main culprit for my symptoms over these years has been high reverse t3 levels. I never needed testosterone treatment but it in supraphysiological doses, it kept me alive to this day.
I am truly in the best mental and physical shape I’ve ever been since taking finasteride and can declare myself fully recovered. Obviously it is early days, and I hope this sticks like it is theorectically supposed to…
JN
Well, sounds good so far… I hope it stays this way. Sorry to sound alarmist… I guess everyone is different and/or these things aren’t as well as understood as we think (most likely.)
HC wasn’t ideal for me either, even though my tests/symptoms show i dont have enough cortisol. Something interesting happened a couple days ago… I started supplementing with biotin 5 mg 4 times per day, as well as progesterone cream ( which i’ve been on for a while) and noticed an immediate cortisol bump. There are some interesting threads over at allthingsmale about increasing cortisol by supplementing upstream hormones such as preg or prog, as well as things which increase various enzyme activities that are required for these conversions (NAD, biotin–in my case, supposedly, frequent high doses of biotin forces conversion of progesterone into 17a-hydroxy prog by increasing the amount of 17alpha-hydroxylase enzyme, and assuming other enzymes are also working, 17oh-prog will then convert to cortisol within a couple of steps.)
Anyway, hopefully your good luck will continue… if not, it might be something to research/experiment with.
Funny, with the added cortisol, i’m losing my motivation for posting on the internet 
Growlingmadscientist,
Good on you. Yes, I wonder if pregnenolone is an interesting addition to my life; it supposedly helps with the rigors of life, enhances memory, helps one through shift work etc…I’m not in a hurry to give it up soon. I have read that pregnenolone, being the parent hormone for DHEA, progesterone and cortisol, converts into one or all of them only when required.
My progesterone and DHEA was always high, and I found the supplement containing DHEA/progesterone/pregnenolone made me worse, so it’s one (or both) of DHEA or progesterone that was the culprit. (as pregnenolone alone is good for me).
One thing tho…I think pregnenolone increases my oestrogen and thus my requirement for arimidex.
I seem to reappear here monthly now, and am enjoying giving some positive updates on this site, as for a while I created some havoc. I can’t think of an alternative cause for our symptoms than the stated thyroid/adrenal dysfunction (except maybe low T levels), and I would be dumbfounded if there is an alternative explanation.
Good luck everyone, I’m leaving here for a month or so. Hopefully I can return in my current state. I’m so happy right now…
JN
Growing madscientis,
These hormones are natural???
So if you put testosterone in a womans body it would make her more masculine and viriliser, but is that natural?
How about if you put estadiol in a mans body and changed his body shape to a she, is that natural?
You dont understand my point, what JN is doing is what transgendered people do and this is not recovery. Recovery is when your body produces itsown hormones.
I hope you understand me now.
My point is that ALL of these hormones occur in both mens and womens bodies naturally, and replacing them when they are deficient is as natural as any form of medicine-- and something which is medically necessary for good health and well-being. If you choose not to, that is your decision, but to criticise other people for doing so reflects a serious lack of understanding of what the situation involves, is wrong, and frankly just silly. According to your reasoning, most forms of medicine are unnatural- but i don’t think you’ll find many people who are going to forego medical treatment on those grounds. By your reasoning, even ‘natural’ medicine (eg herbs and other natural substances) is unnatural, because it involves using substances which your body doesn’t make on its own.
Yes, you can and should put testosterone into women’s bodies and estradiol into men’s bodies in certain circumstances–eg when there is a disease state that prevents them from being there… women have and very much need testosterone, and men have and very much need estradiol… just not at the levels that you’re hinting at. No, we shouldn’t give women virilising amounts of testosterone, nor men feminising amounts of estradiol, but without the proper amounts of these in both women and men, there will be serious consequences for their health.
And come on, what JN or anyone else on any from of hormone modulation therapy is doing is in no way similar to what transgendered people do (nttawwt)… he is correcting his hormone levels to be those of normal, healthy male, not trying to turn his hormonal milieux in to that of a female. Comments like this make it hard to take your points seriously…
I am not criticising just pointing out that when he refers to recovery (He does this so many times and then changes his mind but that’s another post,) it is not really recovery. I could pop a pain killer and claim i have recovered from my migrane, however my migrane is still there, its just been masked! Proper recovery would be if his body reverted to healthy hormone levels without propping it up with injections of testosterone, thyroid hormones, HCG and pregnonolone tablets, and it has not, he has injected synthetic hormones made in a lab to feel recovered, similliar to what a diabetic does when they inject insulin and a diabetic does not say they have recovered, they say they ‘manage’ the diabetes with medication or insulin.
I made the point about the transgendered to point out that it is unnatural as it can be used to make women men!!!, If it is strong enough and makes women into men, it aint natural is it? he has used that to make himself feel like he used to! Big wow! I don’t call that recovery, i call that propping himself up and managing his condition.
My personal feelings are treating thyroid, testicles and adrenals are the key. Treating those can be done herbally (unani) or via HC and Armour thyroid or even T3 if reverse T3 is high. Of course sopmetimes just treating thyroids and adrenals boost testosterone and sexual functioning. This is what JN has now come to. Good for him, finally he may now actually recover.
JN, it is my understanding that Using TD preg may increase dhea which being endogenous will reduce your e2, not increase it…