Testosterone replacement treatments, the time scales for it to work?

Reading Time: 9 minutes

Play

Stop

Testosterone: How long does it take to see benefits?

Frequently some of the most common questions our endocrinologists get asked by our new patients about testosterone cream, gel or shots are:

1. How long does testosterone therapy take to work?
2. When will I start feeling better?
3. How soon can I expect to see results?
4. How much time does testosterone take to see the benefits?

The short answer is most patients notice changes in how they feel on the inside within one or two weeks, but that doesn't always apply to everyone because of the physical differences in people.

The physiology of each patient is varied. Some patients start feeling better from day 1 or 2 of starting TRT. Others patients can take a much longer time, and that means it can take them about one or two months depending, but this long period tends to be rare.

The majority of people experience changes within days or weeks of starting TRT testosterone replacement therapy.

The best way to determine how long it is going to take before you start noticing differences are based on many factors.

What we have seen that has the most significant impact is exercise, even more so than diet changes.

Sleep, Sex and Testosterone Treatments

Factors such as being able to sleep better and having a higher sex drive should be something you notice right away in the first days and weeks. Problems with obesity can take longer, usually in the several-month range.

Incorporate a regiment of cardiovascular training to shed fat, and weight training to gain muscle. It should be noted that losing weight and increasing muscle mass are not approved reasons to go on testosterone therapy.

Speak with us so we can talk to you about how we can get you on a Testosterone protocol for legitimate purposes.

Obesity and Testosterone Replacement Therapy

Losing weight takes time because you have to control your caloric intake, change the way you eat, the frequency, and what you eat. More meals, smaller in size if you want to lose fat.

More protein and less fat in the diet do wonders when you increase your vegetable intake and lower your meat intake. The most critical factor when you go on a testosterone program is that you have to exercise, and you should exercise at least once per day, even if it is just cardio intensity for 20 minutes a day.

If you are taking other medications while on TRT, that can have a significant impact on how long it takes for you to start seeing and feeling changes. There are also internal physiological differences in people that can cause the variation in time to see results.

We will discuss some of the results you can expect to see and how long they might take.

Testosterone Dosage Protocol

To get the best results with your testosterone protocol ensure you follow the dosage and dosing we prescribe you very carefully.

Some patients start feeling great and think that if they up their dose that they will feel even better, and then start getting side effects because they have gone above their optimal zone range.

Stay committed to your testosterone protocol precisely and make significant lifestyle modifications to your diet and exercise routine to get the most immediate results starting from day one.

Exercise and Testosterone Benefits

It can not be said enough, that one of the most prominent elements of your TRT program needs to be fitness, especially in the beginning.

Whatever you do, try to never skip a day of exercise in the first month of your testosterone program. You don't need to overdo it either with training. In other words, this is not a call to blow your brains out in the gym. But to make the first month of your T program incorporate daily exercise.

You also need to get up more often and move around, go out of your way to break any form of the sedentary lifestyle that is all too common in the West.

Make sure you stretch before you work out, studies have shown that people who live longer have greater flexibility and therefore less stiffness than those who die younger.

After all, when you optimize your testosterone, you also need to look for opportunities to maximize your life!

A simple exercise you can do right now: please try it!

If you work at a desk, once an hour rise and do stretching for five minutes, then immediately after when you are sitting in your chair do twists.

In fact right now while you are reading this, do 20 twists in your chair. Here is how: make two fists and holding them together as if they are doing a head-on collision and stuck.

Now move them all the way to the left and all the way to the right. Do that 20 times. No, seriously try it. See how easy that is? Do that 20x, a few times over the day, because this is just one exercise of many you can do seated.

Clean a different part of your residence every day for 20 minutes, do little physical projects in your home that require you to move around and physically exert yourself, start getting the blood flowing more and more during the daytime.

The above said are just a few examples of what you need to do when you start a TRT program, don't make a mistake and think you don't have to do anything or all you need to do is just change your diet to make your Testosterone treatment program work.

Step it up the first month and make sure you break a sweat once a day before you take a shower.

Strive to take two showers a day. Before you shower march in place for 15 minutes, do some situps and pushups until you sweat, and also fire up your metabolism.

The necessity to increase the amount of exercise and stretching a new patient does is always going to be the most critical factor that most people overlook.

You can also do simple stretches all day wherever you are: Remember always to stretch no less than 2 to 3x a day.

Right now in your chair, find as many different ways to stretch your arms as you can think of in various positions of the clock.

Massage each joint and find creative ways to stretch different parts of the muscles, ligaments, and joints in your arm, forearm, and hands.

Spend some time on that and then roll your shoulders 20x and make sure to count. See how easy that is?

Make that behavioral modification, and you will see a big difference. In fact, while you are sitting there are some exercises you can do, lift your feet off the ground and push your heels under your chair, try that one, see how long you can hold it.

Consider this all just a mini warm-up.

How long does science say Testosterone takes to work? A look at mood, motivation, and sexual function in men.

Dr. Jockenhovel, Dr. Minnemann in the Aging Male, analyzed a Testosterone research study looking at the effects of hypogonadism (androgen deficiency syndrome, Low T, andropause, and hypotestosteronemia) and how administering testosterone to men affected libido and mental outlook.

Some 40 men with clinically diagnosed low testosterone were evaluated for variables such as mood, motivation, libido, and sexual function.

The goal of the study was to determine how testosterone replenishment and time influenced: erections, ejaculation, desire for sex, thoughts about sex, and sexual fantasies.

Also to determine overall how their desire for sex and satisfaction with their partners concerning sex and frequency had improved. And more.

Concerning Mental outlook, mood, and psychological variables, there were numerous parameters to study the degrees of aggression, agitation, depression, avoidance of activity (listlessness versus motivation), social ability, and one of the more exciting variables "activation."

Activation is the newest variable dealing with the seat of higher consciousness in humans, how generally alert, mentally sharp, and attentive one happens to be in an acutely awake sort of sense.

The study looked at patients every 21 days (3 weeks) during this evaluation so testosterone before and after changes could be evaluated in the broader context of the whole research project.

The first three weeks of testosterone therapy

The results were eyebrow-raising at first, in the first three weeks, depression, anxiety was diminished, and mood improved.

When the testosterone levels were optimal "aggression" and sociability showed real improvement. One thing that is well known is that too much testosterone can cause aggression levels to be too high, but these patients were given optimal and not body-builder doses.

Testosterone results level off at three months

Without going into long boring scientific details, the variables can be summed up as having continued improvement up to and beyond week 9, but they leveled off after three months in the 30-week study.

So it seemed that three months was where the full benefits became apparent. So in a testosterone program, you should be feeling great by 10 to 12 weeks, and then coasting along for the next three months thence.

Testosterone Supplementation and Aggression

Let's redefine aggression for our description of how Testosterone increases one's ability to take action, seize the day, get things done, and overall just improve general motivation.

From a behavioral standpoint, Testosterone supplementation has a unique ability to make people want to do things, get up and get out, explore and take risks.

Testosterone when optimized to healthy levels in a medical protocol, makes people have a newfound hunger for life.

Testosterone, Fearlessness and Risky Behavior

When we consider the testosterone levels of teens and young adults in their 20s, we see that they are bursting with energy, horny, want to go out and do things, can drink all night, and get up to take exams the next morning.

There is a sense that when you are in your teens and 20s that you have a fearlessness about embracing life, almost with reckless abandonment.

On the flip side, people with naturally extremely high testosterone are more prone to engage in dangerous sexual behavior, have anger management issues, and more prone to break the rules.

Does low Testosterone mean lost opportunities?

Let's redefine aggression as a scale of taking action, getting things done, lets not just look at aggression in the extreme sense of it being unfounded physical anger, threatening gestures, or attacking someone.

Let's look at aggression this way, without it, you can have a kind of listlessness where you miss opportunities, you don't seize opportunities when they come, and you have many regrets for lost opportunities.

Right this moment, look back in your life when an opportunity was there, a chance to make love, a chance to seize the day or a great business opportunity, but you wavered, you hesitated, you showed weakness, or irrational fear, illogical paranoia or indecisiveness, and you are now looking back shaking your head and saying, I should have done what I wanted to do, but didn't do for some reason - I hesitated.

Of course, hindsight is 20 / 20 vision, but at the time you had 20 / 20 vision, you just had a moment of doubt in yourself. This is often but not always a product of low testosterone.

Men with normal to above-average testosterone take risks, seize opportunities, they have a let's go for it attitude, they put fears, the paranoia of failure in the background, and take action.

Testosterone and Roid Rage: Anger Management Issues

Now let's look at aggression from the standpoint of testosterone levels on the high side or abuse.

Everyone has heard of "roid-rage" the explosion of anger associated with the abuse of illegal anabolic steroids, well it's possible to abuse legal testosterone replenishment treatments as well, by only increasing the dose above what a physician recommends.

Abuse of the androgen T happens far too often, here is how it happens: people start feeling awesome on testosterone replenishment and think that increasing the recommended dose will make them feel amazing, but testosterone works when your levels are in the optimum region, which means neither too high nor too low.

Too high is dangerous, too low is the reason why most men go on Low t treatment.

When testosterone is appropriately used, and levels are in their "goldy locks" zone of not too high or too low, you are less likely to experience anger management issues.

The goal of testosterone treatment is to take you from deficient levels to healthy levels, and not above that.

Depression and Anxiety Affected by Testosterone

Now back to the study we cited above involving 40 men with low t. In one month and a half, depression, anxiety, and listlessness were decreased significantly and remained relatively stable after that point.

And by two months and one week (9 weeks), there was a marked improvement in activity (as said above), staying relatively level till the plateau of 3 months.

Testosterone Affected Erection Frequency and Ejaculation

Sexual fantasies and random sexual thoughts rose dramatically by the 3rd week, basically double what they were at the baseline at the beginning of the study. And the steep rise in sexual desire stabilized by week nine.

In the first month of testosterone replacement, you should notice a significant increase in the number of erections, especially "morning wood."

If you were not waking up with rock-hard morning wood before TRT, you'll notice there will be a marked increase of these morning erections and necessary ejaculations because of a strong need for release.

You will also notice a random increase in spontaneous erections during the day. This increase continued until weeks 12 and 21 (3 months and five months) when the frequency stabilized according to the study cited.

Most importantly sexual satisfaction rose dramatically at the beginning of the first evaluation at three weeks after the start of the testosterone evaluation and continued to rise steadily for 30 weeks!

Excellent news, because as men get older sexual sensitivity dulls and satisfaction declines, so to see testosterone reverse that is a wow moment!

Testosterone replacement therapy is fantastic!

Testosterone treatments are very satisfying for men, treating low T, and the above symptoms/variables mentioned give you a rough idea of what to expect on a three-month or 6-month program.

Everyone is not a clone or cookie-cutter image of each other, so naturally, there is some variation, but this gives you a loose guideline of what to expect.

The above study only looked at a small snapshot of things that improved, there is a lot more to be gained from low T hormone replacement therapy, fill out the contact box, and we can talk to you about the other things that improve with TRT.