[TibetanPrincess]

Just to be clear, I've decided that the only changes I'm going to make to my program are to take PC for a cycle or two, and focus on dieting and exercise. PC is just a "bandaid", and I'm hoping that the diet and exercise program will adress the root cause of my issue, but if my imbalance has some other root cause, I honestly don't what I'll do about it. If anyone says "take placenta" I'll scream

I wanted to take something to raise testosterone, but after researching, I found that there are only two "testosterone" supplements for which there's strong evidence are DHEA and actual testosterone patches. DHEA is a bad idea for the reasons Tibetan pointed out. Testosterone patches have the same issues as DHEA, plus the HUGE added problem of permanently severely impairing your own ability to produce T in only 4 to 6 weeks, to the point that anyone who uses them is advised to continue using them for the rest of her life.

I thought I could address low T from the opposite angle and inhibit aromatase, but the only aromatase inhibitors that have been shown to work in vivo are powerful cancer drugs, laden with side effects. Even if I were willing to take the risk, which I'm not, AI's are never prescribed to premenopausal women because our bodies just churn out enough extra aromatase to completely overwhelm the effects of the drug. After reading that even drugs like tamoxifen can't significantly lower estrogen in premenopausal women, I gave up on trying to find a natural alternative. There don't seem to be any effective natural alternatives anyway. The touted natural AI's, like grapeseed, work well enough on cell cultures, but don't seem to have any effect on estrogen in vivo.

I never said DHEA is a bad idea, its just that we don't know what YOUR body is going to do with it. The only way to find out is to try it and see how you feel. I can see this would be a little scary to do if you can't afford taking tests periodically to see how your body is responding with supplemental DHEA.

There is a reason for your low T, we just have to find out what's causing it. Its such a pain but sometimes we have to experiment and take notes.

I have low T too as a result from wonky adrenals yet I have higher androgens! Those nasty mandrogens, lol! Trying to figure that one out is just a losing battle until I restore my adrenals to full function again.


Also, I have read on other forums, menopausal women having much success with grapeseed extract to either buffer the effects of estrogen and to help with preventing an overabundant amount of estrogen spikes when doing forms of HRT. I believe E receptor postive (for cancer) women take this along with their estrogen supplementation. But then again as you are were probably questioning, does it have any real AI effects?