Looked all over for this. Knew I had it somewhere but took a while to find the bookmark.
This is - unfortunately - an ancedotal story concerning use of progesterone as part of a
TRT therapy, but the involved individual did also perform salivary hormone testing all throughout the process of his experimentation (his background is chemical engineering):
http://smartlifeforum.org/toolatesch...a-vs-blood.htm
QUOTE
A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE SUPPLEMENTING WITH
TESTOSTERONE AND PROGESTERONE CREAMS
I began using
testosterone and progesterone creams in 1998 at age 69. I used approximately 1 mg/d of each for 3 days per week. I put them in the armpits where they could not readily be washed off. After a couple of years of trial and adjustment, I had reached a steady state with respect to saliva readings. My testosterone was about 300-400 pg/ml which was more than twice as high as a male in his 20's. I didn't even feel like I was in my 50's. The alternative doctor who was overseeing this situation said that I should not exceed the level of a male in his 20's. After a while, I began to realize that he feared the downside of too much testosterone, and therefore he was being very conservative.
So, I decided to take matters into my own hands. My background in chemical engineering provided the confidence for some experimentation. I increased the use of testosterone and progesterone to 4 times per week while keeping the dosage at 1 mg per application. I was more afraid of the potential pitfalls of higher dosage than I was of higher frequency of application. I steadied-out at 500-600 pg/ml for testosterone. I noted some improvement in sexual function, and I felt pretty good. Estradiol was kept at the lowest detectable level of 0.5 pg/ml.
On 10-01-01, I had surgery to totally replace my right hip. Thereafter, I began a more intensive campaign of supplemental nutrients and enzymes to rebuild everything. Part of that effort was to increase the frequency of application of the premier anabolic hormone to 7 times per week, still staying at 1 mg per day. Within two months of the operation, I was able to walk two miles, and after four months, I was back on the tennis courts playing old men's doubles three times per week. I felt great, and I guessed that my sexual function had improved to the 50-60 year old range. However, I was totally shocked to find that my saliva testosterone had gone up by a factor of six! Apparently, all the target cells became saturated with bioavailable testosterone and the excess was taken up by the red blood cells and eventually reflected in the saliva.
In any event, at that point, I stopped all supplementation of the testosterone and progesterone creams. Within three months (maybe sooner), the next saliva
test showed that my testosterone was equivalent to that of an 80-90-year-old man. To make matters worse, the estradiol had gone up instead of down.
The data for the preceding events are summarized in the following table:
(Please go to provided link to view table as it did not copy over very well)
It was necessary to develop a protocol that would balance all of the various factors to give a healthy outcome. My first concern was to minimize the estrogens. They were high when testosterone was low, and they were rising when testosterone was high. That meant that there must be a minimum somewhere. I plotted all of the saliva data from 1999 to 2003, inclusive and found that estrogens were minimized when testosterone was in the 800-1200 pg/ml range, as shown below:
My protocol now is to use testosterone and progesterone creams every day at a very small dose. I am aiming for testosterone at 1000 pg/ml in the saliva. That should make me feel great and minimize the estrogens. The protocol uses aromatase and 5-alpha reductase inhibitors, a wide variety of antioxidants and anti-inflammatory enzymes and herbs to maintain the testosterone concentration, to prevent further prostate enlargement and to minimize the probability of prostate cancer.
END QUOTE
Larry