Just When You Think You've Got The Perfect Maintenance Dosage...

[DavidZ]

Originally Posted by pmgamer18

I know this is what I am talking about I have lost a lot of weight this yr. total 65 lbs. so I would think the E2 problem would get better not worse. Or with the weight loss I don't need high levels anymore. But we did lower the dose of my HCG. When I added the HCG my levels doubled I am after 21 yrs. of being told I am primary getting an MRI tomorrow to see if I have a pituitary problem. I still feel dam good though.

Perhaps the most difficult part of hormone management is that just when you think you've got the perfect maintenance dosage, your body changes. It's happened to me a few times. Now I just accept it as a fact of life.

Apparently the body somehow adapts to the new equilibrium and then shifts. At first it's counterintuitive, but after it happens a few times, you start to get used to it.

The changes I'm talking about happen over months and years, not days and weeks. You first need to experience an extented period of status quo with a maintenance dosage to know what I'm talking about.

One needs to continually monitor their blood tests and clinical responses (i.e., how you feel) and adjust accordingly. Don't get stuck in the past. Listen to your body and follow its lead.

[chap]

I agree wholeheartedly, in endocrinology what worked once doesn't necessarily mean it will work the next time.

We've seen it so many times even on the steroid sections of boards, where someone will say "The last three cycles of testosterone I did, my libido was through the roof, why is this cycle no libido at all? I haven't changed anything in dosage or anything".

[Axl]

Originally Posted by DavidZ

Perhaps the most difficult part of hormone management is that just when you think you've got the perfect maintenance dosage, your body changes. It's happened to me a few times. Now I just accept it as a fact of life.

Apparently the body somehow adapts to the new equilibrium and then shifts. At first it's counterintuitive, but after it happens a few times, you start to get used to it.

The changes I'm talking about happen over months and years, not days and weeks. You first need to experience an extented period of status quo with a maintenance dosage to know what I'm talking about.

One needs to continually monitor their blood tests and clinical responses (i.e., how you feel) and adjust accordingly. Don't get stuck in the past. Listen to your body and follow its lead.

Great post! It almost philosophical...(i'm not kiddin'!). We shouldn't look at endocrinology like engineers look at a machine. It is indeed more an adaptive process, with complex time-delayed feedback mechanisms. Managing these processes looks a lot like econometry: our macro-economic system is also self-regulating, with multiple variables and multiple equilibria...It's strange that docs have never attempted to copy these principles in a model for the endocrine system and in their treatment and dosage schemes... Maybe they would find that a lot of unpredictable results will become predictable ones. Isn't Alan Greenspan retired? Call him and challenge him to do this!

[pmgamer18]

Originally Posted by DavidZ

Perhaps the most difficult part of hormone management is that just when you think you've got the perfect maintenance dosage, your body changes. It's happened to me a few times. Now I just accept it as a fact of life.

Apparently the body somehow adapts to the new equilibrium and then shifts. At first it's counterintuitive, but after it happens a few times, you start to get used to it.

The changes I'm talking about happen over months and years, not days and weeks. You first need to experience an extented period of status quo with a maintenance dosage to know what I'm talking about.

One needs to continually monitor their blood tests and clinical responses (i.e., how you feel) and adjust accordingly. Don't get stuck in the past. Listen to your body and follow its lead.

Thank you for that David you are a good friend and have helped me a lot some times we lose track of what we are doing and need to be put on the right track. Little changes and a lot of testing is what I am doing.

[Sunkist]

Well Said David Z. Not only are each of us different from each other, we also differ as to time ourselves. Chemical and hormonal mediation is so interactive, then throw in receptor changes, and the fact we are supplementing something we are producing naturally at always different levels and it gets really complex.

[DavidZ]

Originally Posted by Sunkist

Well Said David Z. Not only are each of us different from each other, we also differ as to time ourselves. Chemical and hormonal mediation is so interactive, then throw in receptor changes, and the fact we are supplementing something we are producing naturally at always different levels and it gets really complex.

Exactly.

My current view of HRT (when done properly) is this. Our bodies are deficient in certain hormones. When we address this deficiency (assuming we select the right hormone, this is, the one that is deficient and the right dosage), it's like our bodies take a nice long drink of water after a long thirst. When we feed this deficiency over an extended period of time, our body heals. With this new power of health, our body finds a new equilibrium and adjusts to it. But that new equilibrium often seems to us like disequilibrium, when in fact it's just a new set of parameters that we need to respond to. This process repeats itself at the next level and the next level. It's like peeling off layers of an onion.

Didn't some wise person once say that we either move ahead or fall behind? There's no standing still.