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Testosterone is Your Friend
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Chapter 4: How Do I Use It? ______________________________________________________
Basically the only safe, inexpensive and effective way to use natural testosterone is either a sublingual (under the tongue) solution or a transdermal cream or gel. (DMSO transdermal solutions are not approved by the FDA- DMSO is a solvent that transfers drugs through the skin.) “Natural” means free testosterone that is not in a synthetic salted ester form such as propionate, enanthate or undecanoate. Some demented, Dark Age physicians still use toxic methyl testosterone. In fact, the most common testosterone prescribed for American women is methyl testosterone! This is proof the medical profession walks in darkness. The very few medical doctors who do administer testosterone generally use oral (not sublingual) or i.m. (intramuscular) injected toxic ester salts. You do not want to take these dangerous and unnatural forms by mouth or by hypodermic needle. In the next chapter you’ll see that patches are very overpriced and have poor permeation. Surgically implanted pellets may be natural testosterone, but are expensive, very impractical and totally unnecessary. Oral testosterone salts are barely absorbed at all by the digestive system and produce over 97% unwanted and harmful metabolites. A testosterone nasal spray is not allowed by the FDA and cannot be purchased or even legally custom made by a compounding pharmacist (you could make your own, but this would be very difficult for the layman). Sublingual testosterone can be formulated in a vegetable oil solution by a compounding pharmacist to yield about 3-5 mg per drop to men and about 0.15 - 0.30 mg (150 to 300 mcg) per drop to women. Twenty milligram sublingual tablets are available on the Internet as well and can be quartered to make them five milligram (these are too strong for women) and then used only five days a week (i.e. 25 mg per week). Adding DMSO (dimethylsulfoxide) to testosterone is also not approved by the FDA and cannot legally be sold or custom compounded. DMSO is a naturally occuring solvent that transfers any drug dissolved in it through your skin with over a 95% effectiveness. You can, however, make up your own DMSO solution very easily. If you can get a water suspension of testosterone and evaporate it to powder, you would simply add 200 drops of DMSO to every gram (1,000 mg). This would give men 5 mg per day with about a 95% penetration. Adding 250 drops would give 4 mg per day, and adding 333 drops would give 3 mg a day. Women could use 100 mg of testosterone powder with 500 drops of DMSO to yield 0.2 mg (200 mcg) per day for almost a year and a half. Always keep these solutions refrigerated or frozen.
Please realize you are only going to raise your testosterone with real prescription testosterone, or possibly temporarily with a true biological precursor such as androstenedione or androstenediol. Every year you will find new scams offered, especially on the Internet and in body building magazines, that promise to raise your testosterone with non-prescription supple-ments. Tribulus terrestis (puncture vine), Muira puama, zinc com-pounds, Tongkat ali, Lepidium root, various herbal mixtures and other such garbage are being sold to gullible, uneducated people.
As of 2003 weak, overpriced one-percent natural testosterone gels have appeared in the chain pharmacies. You do not want to use them as they are 1) too weak (e.g. 1.0%) for men, 2) too strong for women, and 3) too expensive for anyone. You must find a compounding pharmacist in your state and can get your cream or gel by mail if there are none near where you live. You can find compounding pharmacists on the Internet, in the phone book or by contacting the International Association of Compounding Pharmacists on the Internet at www.iacprx.org.
Men can get a prescription for 100 grams of a 3% cream or gel for under $100. Shop around until you get this price. Women can get a prescription for 100 grams of a 0.3% cream or gel and should pay less than $50 even though this is only one tenth of what a man would need and should cost about $10 in an ideal world.
It may not be approved by the FDA, but you can add an equal amount of 99% DMSO to your cream or gel for much better absorption. If you add 100 grams of DMSO to 100 grams of testo-sterone cream or gel you would still use the same half gram or less (even though it has been diluted 50%) as it is now half the strength, but twice as effective. This will now last twice as long at the same price. Always monitor your levels for safety.
Foreign pharmacies, especially the Mexican ones, legally offer hormones over the Internet. Under federal law U.S. Code 21, Section 331 you can import prescription drugs for your own personal use without a prescription. Sublingual 20 mg tablets (not to be confused with oral testosterone salts such as undecanoate) and water suspensions are sold there. If you buy an aqueous suspension of natural testosterone (not a salt) you can simply evaporate this and dissolve it in oil for sublingual use. If you evaporate 500 mg (10 ml X 50 mg per ml) just add 100 drops of vegetable oil to get 5 mg per drop (or 125 drops to get 4 mg, or 166 drops to get 3 mg). Women can add 1,600 drops of vegetable oil to get 0.3 mg (300 mcg) per drop and have a four year supply. Keep this refrigerated. You can also use the same amount of 99% DMSO to dissolve the testosterone and you can use one drop per day on thin skin such as the inner wrist. Again, no doctor or pharmacist can legally prescribe DMSO solutions for transdermal use, but you can make your own.
How much transdermal creams or gels should you use? If a man (3%) or woman (0.3%) uses a quarter gram a day, their 100 gram tube will last over a year. A quarter gram is a good benchmark to start with. If you need more you can always use a half gram. Since you probably don’t have a chemist’s scale in your house how do you know what a quarter gram is? A quarter teaspoon of most creams or gels (or plain water or oil) weighs about one gram. Therefore you want to use one fourth of a quarter teaspoon - which comes out to one sixteenth of a teaspoon. Be clear that we are talking about one sixteenth of a teaspoon or sixteen daily doses per teaspoon. Take a level quarter teaspoon of cream or gel and divide it into four portions to see what a quarter gram dab looks like. This is what you’ll be starting out with as a benchmark to see if this is what you need. A half gram would therefore be one eighth of a teaspoon.
It will be repeated over and over in this book that while natural hormones are a vital cornerstone of our health, that they are very powerful and cannot be used casually. Before using any hormone you must test your levels to see if you are deficient and need supplementation. If you have an excessive level only diet and lifestyle will normalize this. Do not take toxic prescription drugs to lower your hormones as the side effects will outweigh the benefits. If you find you are low in a hormone and take a supplement you cannot assume or guess a correct dose. Only monitoring your free blood or saliva level will tell you if the dose you are taking is the correct one for your individual and unique biological makeup. Further, after taking any hormone and finding the correct dose you must monitor this at least once a year since your body will be changing as you age. You cannot assume that the dose you are taking will have the same exact effect year after year as obviously it won’t.
If you are over the age of 50 you might just assume you are low in testosterone, DHEA, pregnenolone, melatonin, growth hormone and other such hormones. This is not necessarily true. The scientific way to use natural hormones is to 1) test your natural level to see if you need supplementation, 2) take a rational dose for 30 to 60 days and then test your level again, and 3) monitor your level at least once a year. If you cause excessive levels you will have a mirror image metabolic imbalance no different than with having deficient levels. Always remember you are looking for the youthful level you enjoyed at about the age of 30 years old. Hyper levels are pathological levels and cause serious harm much of which we have no clear understanding of yet.
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