Too Scared to Stop Steroids
This Case of the Month from The Turek Clinic is in honor of Men’s Health Month.
He looked great. Ripped, tan and handsome, he appeared straight off the cover of Men’s Health magazine. But inside he wasn’t feeling as good as he looked. Something was missing…the desire to be a dad usurped his feeling for fine fettle.
Muscle Juice
“I was juicing by the book for years to bodybuild,” he started out. “I followed the best of them, cycling and stacking as precisely as possible, along with pct (post-cycle therapy) and really got shredded.” And I believed him when he said “by the book” as there is a pretty strict code to taking anabolic steroids. This is no less than a religion to the body monument.
But then, trouble came. “I wanted to stop, ‘cause I heard about all the heart and liver issues on steds, and shit like deca dick, and we were thinking of having kids. But I couldn’t just stop. I got scared of going off of a cliff, so I just kept on it.” What he did was to stay on a constant but lower-than-utterly-anabolic dose of injectable testosterone to avoid that deflated, almost lifeless feeling that comes with being entirely off of anabolics. But taking a constant dose of steroids wasn’t working for him, as he was still infertile. Knowing no easy way out, he sought help.
Deal with the Devil
Anabolic steroids are a two edged sword. They can make you feel and look great, but at a cost. We have published just how hard it can be to rescue hormone and sperm production from steroid-exposed testicles. It is also clear to me that there is a “point of no return” after which the cumulative exposure to anabolic steroids causes irreversible infertility and low testosterone. But it’s also true that in most men, testicles can be rescued from infertility and hypogonadism by getting a little creative with modern medicine. Not only that, it is now clear that testis function can be preserved while on steroids by combining them with low dose hCG therapy. Better living through chemistry.
Safe Landing
I put him on a regimen of slowly tapering testosterone supplements, along with oral clomid and hCG injections and we safely landed the plane on fertile ground. Having avoided the low T doldrums, he was very grateful. And he got his testicles back, full throttle. Now he feels at least as good as he looks.
