Maybe SWALE can tell us what he meant by his comments rather than this second guessing?
Also....
Both SWALE and Dr. Shippen seem to have a lot of clinical experiences in this area, but the fact is that their combined practices would account for a very, very small percentage of patients treated for hypogonadism worldwide. Additionally, only a very small fraction of a percent of hypogonadal patients post on the Internet support sites / informational sites. Finally, individuals who had successfully gone through a regimen where their HPA Axis (or HPAT Axis) was successfully re-started would very likely NOT be looking for boards like this to post on. If things are better and where you want them to be and life is good, then most people tend to move on and not continue to hawk board such as this.
I know that psychiatric researchers have found that many people with severe depression have highly elevated (well above maximum normal ranges) of cortisol levels (these being non Cushing's Disease individuals) and that the research indicated that their HPA Axis as related to cortisol production was out of kilter. Clinical studies have shown that short-term application of RU-486 (an extremely strong anti-cortisol drug originally developed in France for Cushing's Disease patients which then became infamous as the "abortion pill") not only relieved their severe depression but apparently "re-set" their HPA Axis and resulted in the return of normal cortisol secretions. The short-term applications in these trials were in the range of 4 - 7 days.
I show this example just to address the fact that - in at least the area of cortisol production - it seems that the HPA Axis can be "re-set" fairly readily.
I guess what I'm looking for if anyone has ever done any PubMed searches or other related medical / clinical trial studies to see if the HPAT Axis has been successfully re-started in appropriate cases (is it primary hypogonadism or secondary hypogonadism - and how does one tell the difference absed upon what
test result readings)? And whether or not other substances than simply
hCG have been looked in to???
In my situation, I have possibly a Pheo tumor which generates chronic secretion of adrenaline and its various co-factors. That then frequently causes - as appears to be the case in my situation - severe anxiety which then causes a simultaneous high production of cortisol. High levels of cortisol basically screw up all of your other hormones as well as your nervous system, etc. In going through Cushing's Support boards on the Internet, I find it very interesting that many of the male posters also report hypogonadal symptoms.
In my case, I was not hypogonadal for years nor did the hypogonadal state slowly appear. It literally appeared overnight within two weeks of a sudden onslaught of severe anxiety (caused possibly by this potential Pheo tumor) - along with several other unrelated physical symptoms (tinnitus, periphernal neuropathy type pains, flushing/itching symptoms of upper torso, a prostatitis type symptom - that actually seems more like an UTI - that comes and goes,
etc.).
So I wonder if the Pheo tumor has caused the "interference" with the HPA Axis and if surgical removal of the Pheo will "fix" the hypogonadal situation - or at least allow something like
hCG to "re-set" the HPA Axis....