High E2, herb cycle pushes me over the edge. Endo recommends Adex monotherapy

Hey guys so i did the herbcycle but my symptoms exploded after stopping it. My sleep got super bad again after that and nipple pain came back up. My sexual sides got better during cycle which is nice. The reason i stopped was that my libido was to high and the cycle doses where to intense.

My endo saw in my bloods that my E2 was super high and prescribed me Anastrozol 1mg daily to reset my levels.
Is there any alternative to reduce my E2 without using AI?
I make crazy gains in the gym but testicle pain/shrinkage and ED is still there. Im borderline hypogondal.

June 2021
LH – 3,4 (2-10 U/I)
FSH – 1,9 (1-7 U/I)
Prolactin – 446 (<500 mU/I)
Testo. – 16,4 (>12 nmol/l)
SHBG – 35 (11-71 nmol/l)
free. T. – 333 (>250 pmol/l)
E2 – 37 (<250 pmol/l)
PSA – 0,3 (<4 ug/l)

January 2022
LH – 3,5 (2-10 U/I)
FSH – 1,8 (1-7 U/I)
Prolactin – 283 (<500 mU/I)
Testo. – 38,4 (>12 nmol/l)
SHBG – 50 (11-71 nmol/l)
free. T. – 743 (>250 pmol/l)
E2 – 141 (<250 pmol/l)
PSA – 0,4 (<4 ug/l)

Hi.
why not take andro hard? Prohormones can allow you to increase your DHT (therefore beneficial), which will have an anti-estrogen action.
There are probably fewer side effects. For me it's the opposite: very little estrogen unfortunately... difficult to bring up

Good luck

Have you tried megadosing pine pollen powder? 3 tablespoons a day?

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Originally Posted by isseo

Hi.
why not take andro hard? Prohormones can allow you to increase your DHT (therefore beneficial), which will have an anti-estrogen action.
There are probably fewer side effects. For me it's the opposite: very little estrogen unfortunately... difficult to bring up

Good luck

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Yes I would take them but I have no idea how, and if the increase in DHT wouldn't also increase my E2 when I run a cycle? The nipple pain just tells me there is something off in the ratio T:E2 currently.

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Originally Posted by lastnoirking87

Have you tried megadosing pine pollen powder? 3 tablespoons a day?

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No but I've tried pine pollen but never megadosed it. I always took one tablespoon of it per day. I did not feel the effects of it that much, maybe some slight increase in libido. I can definitely say tongkat ali and tribulus had an huge effect in libido but they gave me the nipple pain after I stopped taking them. When I implemented those two into my herb cycle, I experienced such an high libido that I never experienced before. It was exactly how CD described it on the TMO website were you are able to achieve erections only with thoughts and get daily strong morning woods.

My cholesterol was pretty high and Ive read somewhere in this forum that it might be due to thyroid not functioning properly and pooling the hormones.

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Originally Posted by Readytonut

No but I've tried pine pollen but never megadosed it. I always took one tablespoon of it per day. I did not feel the effects of it that much, maybe some slight increase in libido. I can definitely say tongkat ali and tribulus had an huge effect in libido but they gave me the nipple pain after I stopped taking them. When I implemented those two into my herb cycle, I experienced such an high libido that I never experienced before. It was exactly how CD described it on the TMO website were you are able to achieve erections only with thoughts and get daily strong morning woods.

My cholesterol was pretty high and Ive read somewhere in this forum that it might be due to thyroid not functioning properly and pooling the hormones.

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Ok. Yes the reason I asked about the pine pollen megadosing is because it is supposedly capable of flushing excess estrogen, so that may be something to look into.
I've also high total and LDL cholesterol, which is very odd considering I have always eaten extremely clean. Do you know if your LDL and/or HDL was high? This may be something to look at correcting, possibly with some iodine supplementation.

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Originally Posted by lastnoirking87

Ok. Yes the reason I asked about the pine pollen megadosing is because it is supposedly capable of flushing excess estrogen, so that may be something to look into.
I've also high total and LDL cholesterol, which is very odd considering I have always eaten extremely clean. Do you know if your LDL and/or HDL was high? This may be something to look at correcting, possibly with some iodine supplementation.

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Yup same here total and LDL is high and HDL was ok. I think I might need something stronger than pinepollen to get rid of E2. Developed some gyno after taking fin. After stopping herbrotation gyno started to grow again which is super bad. Balls still tiny but at least the pain seems to be gone after the cycle. I need to address E2 first before continuing herbs.
Really need advice.

Currently taking some creatine to raise my DHT but gyno is still growing. Someone recommended me to take high doses of vitamin K2 to reduce E2? Anybody got some experience with that?

I'm just trying to understand the timeline of events here. So, you took the herbs, noticed your libido was too high, then stopped all the herbs, and at that point your nipple pain and sleep issues flared up? Correct me if that's incorrect.
Questions I have are, was your ED resolved while on the herbs? And it's back now that you stopped?
Rough idea of how many herbs you were rotating?
How long were you taking the herbs before you stopped?
Was there no nipple pain or sleep issues while on the herbs?
Have you considered just lowering your dose of tribulus and tongkat if you think those are too strong and thus causing too much aromatisation, or maybe just leaving them out altogether?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lastnoirking87

I'm just trying to understand the timeline of events here. So, you took the herbs, noticed your libido was too high, then stopped all the herbs, and at that point your nipple pain and sleep issues flared up? Correct me if that's incorrect.
Questions I have are, was your ED resolved while on the herbs? And it's back now that you stopped?
Rough idea of how many herbs you were rotating?
How long were you taking the herbs before you stopped?
Was there no nipple pain or sleep issues while on the herbs?
Have you considered just lowering your dose of tribulus and tongkat if you think those are too strong and thus causing too much aromatisation, or maybe just leaving them out altogether?

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Yeah pretty much spot on. I waited almost a year for my sides to calm down. Libido was lowish,almost non existent morning wood, bad ED and the worst one of all testicle pain and shrinkage for months, I had a higher than usual level of anxiety, and my sleep was mostly bad and not refreshing. I did the blood test at the endocrinologist in January during that time.
After I got the report/results along with an ADEX monotheraphy recommendation, I started to ask for second opinions how to approach this.
I decided to give the herb rotation a try first, because it should be less risky than the Adex therapy. (At least that's what I think).
My rotation was like this: rhodiola, ashwaghanda, cordyceps, tongkat ali, tribulus, resveratol(added this for E2 control??). I basically did 3 cycles of this so maybe 12-14 days. From the 12-14 day i started to get crazy erections and libido. I had an boner almost throughout the whole night. I could get erect only with thoughts and could jerk of multiple times per day with crazy volume BUT i started to get those mood swings along with short tamper again and a slight brain fog which i really didn't like. I started to question the dosages and wanted take a break from all supps and see if there was any withdrawal effect.
After stopping everything my sides started to flare up again, even those that subsided months ago came back like trembling, panic, night sweats etc.
I took me 4-5 days to somewhat function again.
It's now almost 20-30 days since I stopped the cycle and I feel like some of the old sides disappeared and some didn't change. I would say libido is definitely better than before i started, sleep got a little better and anxiety less which is very good but my nipples hurt since stopping them and they still hurt to this day. My semen is less thick but not completely watery.

The tribulus dosages was 300mg per pill and the tongkat was in powder form which i took around one of those microspoons. I think 100mg and it was an 1:100 extract

Sleep on herbs was not consistent but I had days where I slept without waking up.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Readytonut

Yeah pretty much spot on. I waited almost a year for my sides to calm down. Libido was lowish,almost non existent morning wood, bad ED and the worst one of all testicle pain and shrinkage for months, I had a higher than usual level of anxiety, and my sleep was mostly bad and not refreshing. I did the blood test at the endocrinologist in January during that time.
After I got the report/results along with an ADEX monotheraphy recommendation, I started to ask for second opinions how to approach this.
I decided to give the herb rotation a try first, because it should be less risky than the Adex therapy. (At least that's what I think).
My rotation was like this: rhodiola, ashwaghanda, cordyceps, tongkat ali, tribulus, resveratol(added this for E2 control??). I basically did 3 cycles of this so maybe 12-14 days. From the 12-14 day i started to get crazy erections and libido. I had an boner almost throughout the whole night. I could get erect only with thoughts and could jerk of multiple times per day with crazy volume BUT i started to get those mood swings along with short tamper again and a slight brain fog which i really didn't like. I started to question the dosages and wanted take a break from all supps and see if there was any withdrawal effect.
After stopping everything my sides started to flare up again, even those that subsided months ago came back like trembling, panic, night sweats etc.
I took me 4-5 days to somewhat function again.
It's now almost 20-30 days since I stopped the cycle and I feel like some of the old sides disappeared and some didn't change. I would say libido is definitely better than before i started, sleep got a little better and anxiety less which is very good but my nipples hurt since stopping them and they still hurt to this day. My semen is less thick but not completely watery.

The tribulus dosages was 300mg per pill and the tongkat was in powder form which i took around one of those microspoons. I think 100mg and it was an 1:100 extract

Sleep on herbs was not consistent but I had days where I slept without waking up.

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Forgot to mention that I’m working out like crazy for around 3months now. Mostly heavy lifting 6x week. One sprinting workout once every two weeks.
I also have some daily supplements like creatine,whey, vitD and vitK2 and acetyl l carnetine that i take almost daily.

Wow, you hyper responded to the herbs in only about 2 weeks. I think your system is clearly extremely sensitive. I dont pretend to.know enough about everything here to offer truly sound advice, but I thought it would be helpful to have a clear timeline of events spelled out in the event that CD sees this and weighs in. I'd like to hear his input.
One thing that seems to stand out to me is that you didnt have a huge arsenal of herbs, BUT amongst the few that you WERE rotating were 2 of the strongest: tongkat and tribulus. It may be the case that you are very sensitive to begin with, and were then rotating these strong herbs in fairly close succession given your limited herb arsenal.
Hopefully someone with better knowledge here can give some solid advice.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lastnoirking87

One thing that seems to stand out to me is that you didnt have a huge arsenal of herbs, BUT amongst the few that you WERE rotating were 2 of the strongest: tongkat and tribulus. It may be the case that you are very sensitive to begin with, and were then rotating these strong herbs in fairly close succession given your limited herb arsenal.
Hopefully someone with better knowledge here can give some solid advice.

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Yeah. This was also one of the reasons why i stopped taking them. I dabbled with the other herbs here and there during the first year but tribulus and tongkat really made a difference when i added them. My cycle seemed to short for me. I can say for sure that the libido I experienced in the brief period opened my eyes. It seems like i was a lowish libido guy all my life and thought this was normal.
What I plan on doing next time is adding a couple herbs to rotation like iodine, and mostly stuff like goji berries that dont have an immediate libido effect and benefit more overall health and then spread tribulus and tongkat as far apart as possible.


You might be right with the hyperresponder. At the end of the day only one 0,5mg of finasterid pill fucked me up, and people thought i was bullshitting.
Maybe it could also be that the acnenormine that i took when i was a teenager shifted my hormones. I had severe acne when i grew up. There might be some kind of weakness in my body towards hormonal fluctuations?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Readytonut

Yup same here total and LDL is high and HDL was ok. I think I might need something stronger than pinepollen to get rid of E2. Developed some gyno after taking fin. After stopping herbrotation gyno started to grow again which is super bad. Balls still tiny but at least the pain seems to be gone after the cycle. I need to address E2 first before continuing herbs.
Really need advice.

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High E2 is a PFS symptom.

Properly using the herbs in conjunction with the REST of the protocol brings the estrogen down. I suffered high estrogen before starting the protocol. Many of these herbs not only raise test, but lower estrogen.

This is not the place for taking pharmaceutical drugs.

You're gonna send yourself into a tailspin.

Not too mention, you're not following directions.