Derek (More Plates More Dates)

But I also would do some due diligence to just assess what's happening.

And I think HCG for people who are secondary hypogonadal is...

sometimes a good middle ground of assessing like is this a testicle functionality problem or is it like my pituitary output is not sufficient because at that point you can kind of tell like which organ is it that's failing me here so there's that and then like upstream to that there's the actual hypothalamus and the GNRH output which is the thing that stimulates the pituitary to make the LH and the FSH and throughout that whole cascade you could have

insufficient signal from that insufficient response to that signal and then insufficient pituitary output from that weakened signal and the response to it like it's a deteriorating thing that by the end of it when it actually hits your testes may just be like suboptimal for your response to be adequate through often age-related decline but

It's a culmination of things.

So certainly back to the original question, like how do you make sense of all this and decide when is the appropriate time to be on hormones versus not?

That's where you have to work with like a really highly educated medical professional in general.

Like I would not try and cowboy this yourself.

Even trying to like learn it from...

you know, online content, whatever.

Like, I think it's good to learn how this stuff works mechanistically.

So you go in informed and don't end up putting on a haphazard regimen by a doctor who actually just wanted you on medications.

Because if you know this stuff, it's pretty easy to identify who's like,

a shitty clinic who just wants to like get you committed and stuck on lifelong hormone support and you can like weed it out really quick even if the doctor seems well intentioned he wants to help you he wants to you know support your quality of life says all the right things seems professional seems knowledgeable if you don't know this stuff it's kind of like you would be going in blind and assuming that's what you need to do and a lot of people just end up on hormones and

That's it.

And sometimes there's nothing wrong with that.

Sometimes that might be what you need, but sometimes people want to know what were the natural avenues I could have taken.

Could I have, you know, done something else?

Could I have maintained the signal from my brain to my testes this whole time and I'm just missing something?

Um, yeah, it would be in general, if you are satisfactory in your replacement of these hormones to a physiologic replacement level, like you should notice a amelioration of all symptoms.