Im 45. Started fin in my late twenties, took it for 5+ years.
The sides were mild at the time. Quit fin and started developing symptoms.
These slowly crept in year after year until they were very severe.
Symptoms at my worst, included
Severe brain fog. Adding 12 + 47 would take me several seconds of hard thinking.
Horrible memory
Extreme exercise intolerance
Severe D.O.M.S. - would get very very sore two days after exercising
Horrific endurance. Walking for 20 mins would destroy me, and would need to pass out.
Extreme fatigue
Zero energy
Insomia - would take an hour+ to fall asleep, would sleep 3 hours, and then could not fall back to sleep. So always sleep deprived.
Morning aches/pains
Zero morning wood
Zero spontanious wood
Softer erections
Morning aches/pains - zero restful sleep
Dropping T levels, but low normal.
Getting out of bed in the morning was nearly impossible. Showering was a very difficult chore to accomplish.
I saw many many doctors. Different ones every year, everyone told me I was fine, or depressed.
Finally, my T levels dropped below 200 and a GP put me on some T gel. The effect on brain fog was instant. Cleared my brain fog 80% in 24 hours and more after that. I knew right then, my body was starving for T. Ive kept a spreadsheet of all my blood work for years and upon review could see my T levels slowly inching down every year and symptoms getting worse.
The gel didnt bring my T up much so my Doc doubled it. This crashed my T levels further.
Eventually went on T injections. 100mg/week. This helped quite a bit, but still not normal.
Then after visiting stop the thyroid madness, I decided I was hypothyroid as well, and my TSH readings were complete garbage. I started to dose based on symptoms instead of blood tests. This drove my TSH down to nearly 0 but I felt a lot better, wasnt cold and achey all the time.
Had cortisol checked throughout the day, and it was very normal.
Now im on 140mgT/week and ADEX .20 every 3 days. I definitely start to develop gyno with no adex at all ( takes 2 months to build up), but feel like absolute shit if I lower my T dose.
DISCOVERIES, and HYPOTHESIS
After years of tracking my symptoms and adjusting dosages I came to a similar independent conclusion that I found Dr Crisler posting about.
People with PFS seem to have some strange immunity to testosterone replacement.
After I decided to ignore my blood tests because I was showing zero symptoms of any side effects, I slowly started raising my T dose and more benefits came. At 140mg/Week my total T is around 1500, and yet no acne, no back acne, no hairloss… nothing. The physical changes include more body hair, I had little after being on fin for so long. So I know my DHT has gone up finally. Im still no where near hairy though. It also put some muscle weight on me, but no one would suspect I was on T, im still below average weight.
I also added HCG using Dr Crislers latest protocol. 300iu(my dosage choice) on saturday and sunday and then do my T shot on monday. That closed the gap a bit more and enhanced sex drive. I get morning wood 30% of the time now, im still tuning the adex dose based on symptoms. I have finally experienced a raging morning boner after a decade of none.
Over all im about 70% recovered. I was a real bad case. If I dont exercise hard, I feel 100% recovered and can actually have above average energy and really good mental sharpness.
The remaining problem is, if I work out really hard, I crash and my symptoms come back for 3-5 days.
The interesting thing is, my hypothyroid symptoms as well as hypogonadism come back when I crash.
I dont know what fin does, but its almost like it screws up some metabolic mechanism that prevents your body from absorbing the drugs you put into it when you stress it. If I work out too hard, its like the T and thryoid meds turn off for a few days.
I plan to increase T until I get a side effect to see where my upper limit is and then back off from that.
Ive made great progress, and hope to close that final gap and get rid of my exercise intolerance completely. It would be nice to be able to work out hard more than 2x a week without crashing.
My advice to other sufferers is, do not trust blood test results at all. When you hear “you are in range”, run like the wind. Blood tests seem to mean virtually nothing with PFS. Dose based on your symptoms, and dont trust blood results.
Especially estradiol tests. They have been completely worthless and have no correlation to reality. Ive seen this in myself and ive seen people send in one sample and get it tested 3 times and have the numbers come out radically different.
Its good to be functional again. Crossing my fingers on a complete recovery in the future.