A buddy of mine at work has been singing the praises of his Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT) for some time now. At age 50, he’s few years older than my own 47. Like me, he’s been consistent with exercise for most of his adult life (although not as consistent as I’ve been).
Physically, we’re quite different. He’s about 5’9” and built like Gimili the dwarf; thick muscular neck, shoulders and chest with a wide, squat barrel-like build, like a power lifter or strong man. In contrast, I’m 6 feet tall, muscular, but much slimmer. When I graduated college 25 years ago, I weighted 155. He weighed more than that as a freshman in high school!
I don’t see him every day – he works at a different location – but I ran into him after not seeing him for a couple of months. The thick upper body was still there, but so was a now-noticeable waist. He wasn’t a barrel anymore and was developing a definite v-taper. I asked if he’d lost some weight and he said he was down about 15-20 pounds. He was back in the gym more regularly, had changed his diet (mainly cutting out bread and pasta), and had started Testosterone Replacement Therapy.
And that was what he mostly talked about. How much more energy he had, how much better he was sleeping, how his focus had increased, how much more motivation he had. He mentioned (ahem) increased relations with his long-time girlfriend. He was getting stronger in the gym again after years of no gains. And he credited it all to TRT.
He gave me a few numbers: His blood test has shown his free testosterone to be in the mid 200s, which he said was almost 100 below the accepted bottom of normal range of 348. (I’ve since learned the range of normal for free testosterone is pretty wide, from about 350 – 1100, but I’ll talk more about in another post). Based on his blood test, the doctor had prescribed once weekly shots of 100mg of testosterone cypionate. After 30 days, his free testosterone had almost tripled to the mid 700s.
So he’s feeling pretty good. And he’s looking pretty good too.
I was pretty interested in all this. I’ve been working out with weights regularly for over 30 years, having first gripped the bar at age 15 after reading too many Conan comic books. With few exceptions (vacations, moving, injuries) I hadn’t missed more than a week or two in the gym in all that time.
I was never big though, never bulky. Like most inexperienced lifters, it took me a long time to figure out what worked best for me. I did way too much for way too long, and I’ve got the joint pain and past injuries (partially torn triceps tendon, disc ruptures, muscle strains, bone spurs requiring elbow surgery) to show for it. I never did any chemical augmentation, and my natural weight seemed to top out around 185-190 with around 15% body fat. That’s what I weigh now and what I’ve weighed since I was around 30 years old.
A few years ago I sensed my impending decrepitude and went on a hardcore Madcow 5x5. I managed to gain a few pounds and my lifts went up. At 44, I competed in a power lifting meet, lifting raw, and totaled an even 1,000 pounds in the 181 weight class (I cut about 8 pounds for weigh in the day before, and showed up to the meet just over 187). My squats and dead lift were pretty much on par with where they were in my low 30s; my bench was down (and will probably remain so) due to the elbow surgery and inability to go as heavier as I'd like. Not long after the meet, I hit a personal best dead lift of 435.
I was feeling pretty good about my progress, and seeing gains after a long period of stagnation motivated me. It motivated me right to a severely ruptured disc. It was my third warm-up set where I pull 305 for 3 or 4 on my way up to a working set of 405+. The weights felt heavy that day, but, ignoring the wisdom of my years (or rather not having any despite my years), I saddled up, pulled two, and on the third felt something I can only describe as a cork going off in my lower back.
My right leg went numb. Well, a weird mixture of numb and painful tingling, like when you hit your funny bone. That burning-numb feeling… I knew it was a bad one.
Here’s what they do most of the time when you have a ruptured disc: nothing. Unless you can’t control your bowels or bladder, which would indicate a level of nerve compression that could result in permanent damage, in which case they do surgery. Otherwise, you wait. If it gets better over time, even a tiny bit, you keep waiting. If, after about 3 months (so the doc said) there’s no improvement at all, then it MIGHT be time to start looking at a surgical solution.
Fortunately, I did get better over time. It took a few months for all the numbness in my leg to go away and for it to return to full strength. I was still in the gym, but staying away from exercises that put stress on my back. I was doing light weight for most things, and using slow reps to maximize time under tension. It seemed to work for keeping my mass, in that my weight changed only a little (dropping back to around 185) and my appearance stayed pretty much the same.
I’ll shorten up this whole boring story. It was almost a year before I felt comfortable trying squats, dead lifts and standing military again. And when I started back, I went very slowly and very carefully. Even now, more than three years after the injury, I’m still cautious when it comes to squats and dead lifts. Gone are the days of pulling 405 for a triple, and the most I’ve squatted since was 275 for a set of 4… and that made me very nervous. I mainly stick to front squats now, and changed my dead lifts to sumo style to minimize stress on my lower back.
So the point of the wall of text above was to paint a picture of an individual to whom age was starting to grip and who didn’t want to go down without a fight. Was testosterone replacement therapy an alternative treatment that might help?
I had many of the same symptoms my buddy had complained of: fatigue, poor sleep, a feeling of malaise, dry skin (especially my lips), and a few others straight off the Do You Have Low T pamphlet.
Maybe aging didn't have to be a slow descent into infirmity. Maybe it could be a period of decent vitality followed by a sudden decline instead of a long drawn-out one.
I got the name of the clinic from him and decided to find out what it was all about.
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