AndyJ's Body Enhancement Thread

Good thing you’re a stickler for detailed notes.

I posted last year’s notes in #1136 through #1139.

It’s irrelevant for most people, but even though keeping track of it is a minor hassle, I find it encouraging to look at how my stats have changed over time. I track general health, not just PE.

A couple of days ago I tried pumping at 7"Hg instead of my usual 5 or 6. Some minor girth-stretching discomfort, but no damage, even continuing the pumping-clamping cycle.

Further experiments show that the clamp reliably controls edema for three pump-clamp sets at 5", most of the edema at 6", and some but acceptable short-term edema at 7". Note that’s a full 45 minutes of pumping and 25-45 minutes of clamping per session, depending on my boredom level.

That’s very interesting. Any insights as to correlations to EQ?

No difference I can tell. So far, anyway.

I got the labs from last week’s endo visit in this morning’s mail.

The endo used to send the labs out to a third party. Now she’s part of an "association" with some giant healthcare conglomerate, and the labs are run in-house with the clinic’s name on the masthead. Instead of a two or three page comprehensive lab, the previous lab was only half a dozen tests, and this time, only three - free and total testosterone, and SHBG.

Well, I guess I don’t have to worry about her fretting over my Red Blood Cell or CR-P results any more…

Last free testosterone was 1200-ish. This time it was 228; 20 days after my last shot. She griped about that, but I reminded her she was the one who specified at least a week since the last shot, and recommended the 1st and 15th.

Anyway, results were:

total T: 227.7 ng/dl
free T: 3.59 ng/dl
SHBG: 49.18 nmol/L

SHBG is smack in the middle of the reference range. The total and free T are barely on the chart. Allowing for some residual testosterone from the 03/01 injection, my unmedicated level is probably close to the 187(?) I was diagnosed with in 2021.

Ouch. Good thing you’re under expert care.

Yeah, my balls aren’t doing much as far as testosterone. I don’t know if it was the Great Staph Infection of 2018, or simple aging, or - probably - they never put out much testosterone to start with.

My blood pressure had climbed slowly after I had hernia surgery in late November, and wasn’t able to do much in the way of exercise. Instead of several times a day, I was checking maybe every other week.

Being able to resume exercise due to the freakin’ weather climbing above freezing, in two weeks it dropped from 135/75-ish to 106/64 this morning while sitting up, and 80/46 last night while laying down.

I had noticed that my blood pressure dropped when I started lifting again last spring. The year before that my joints were in such bad shape I couldn’t move much weight, so it was mostly stretches and bends, and didn’t affect anything as far as I noticed.

Still rolling along at 7" with no problems. Every previous step was in grudging 1/2"Hg increments, but I skipped right from 5 to 7 this time.

Lifts still aren’t quite up to where they were before the layoff in November, but I’m rapidly closing in on where I was before. I could push a bit harder, but I think I’ve learned that lesson enough times over the last few years.

Speaking of blood pressure….

Since I started T injections, every time I’ve had a Doc appt, my pressure has been on the high side (for me) but nothing has been said. For much of my life I’ve been in the 125-135/70-ish range.
Now I’m running into the mid-140s but staying in the 70s for diastolic. I plan on asking at my next Urologist appt.

I don’t know that TRT and BP are related. BP tends to go up with age, as the circulatory system becomes less flexible.

Over the years of testing many times a day, I’ve found that having to go to the bathroom can raise BP ten points over baseline, and a squats or deadlifts will temporarily lower BP by 15 or more.

140 - 70 gives a "pulse pressure" of 70; the difference between systolic and diastolic. My doc says a difference over 50 can indicate problems. Mine used to be 60 to 70 all the time, but now it’s 45 to 50; sometimes better. Below 40 can also indicate problems. (you can’t win…)

Starting early yesterday afternoon I started getting cramps in my right leg; my toes were trying to curl up, and the muscles on the front of my shin would knot up. It was very painful, and trying to walk it off didn’t help. I took a couple of potassium tablets, which didn’t help either. The only thing that helped was the heating pad, turned up to "roast." After a couple of hours my left leg started cramping too.

The cramps finally went away, and then in the evening I got hit with stomach cramps; my abdominal muscles knotted enough to feel them under the fat layer, not "gastric distress." I wandered around the house half doubled over for a while, decided to go to bed, and then started getting cramps in my right shoulder. Wonderful.

This morning everything seemed fine, other than some minor joint and muscle pain, basically everywhere.

Trying to figure out WTF happened, I realized that my carb count was way up yesterday. Yeah, I gave in to the siren call of ice cream again. [sigh] The leg cramps started a few hours after that. And then when they went away, I had some more that evening, when the abdominal and shoulder cramps started.

Not a big enough sample set for proof, but likely an indicator I need to stay away from the ice cream, and probably out to go back to carnivore.

Did you check the blood glucose after the ice cream? Maybe it spiked and then dropped off hard?

Fat blunts the ability for the body to take up fat. Making us insulin resistant.