1. Do you have a standard protocol that you start most women off with when they sign up with you? For example, my trt clinic seems to have their starting dose at 20mg 1x per week and then they go from there. I am curious what your method is. I was receiving 22.5mg of Test C once a week, and it was great until my testosterone levels go to be too high. When talking with the practitioner there, (who was new), he said that I may be a “slow metabolizer” of testosterone. Is that a thing? I also asked about splitting the dose into 2 times a week, since that is often recommended here, and he said that if I was a slow metabolizer, than that could actually be worse for me. I am wondering what your professional opinion on those two comments is.

8-20mg per week would be considered a pretty standard dosing protocol for most women. We typically approach each woman differently based on her symptoms and goals, so doses can sometimes be higher or lower than that. In our practice, most of our women start at 10mg/wk, as that allows us to either go up or down based on their response.

There is no such thing as a slow metabolizer. The half life for Test C is uniformly 7-8 days in men and women. There is what is known as hyper-responders, meaning that some people need lower doses to reach therapeutic levels than others. You are likely one of these people.

Because the half life of testosterone cypionate is 7-8 days, if you do one shot a week, your T level in your blood will be half what it was 7 days prior. This often means patients on once weekly injection cycles become symptomatic again on days 5, 6, or 7. To maintain levels above the symptomatic threshold, and to have less variability in the peaks and troughs of TT levels, standard dosing protocol for test cyp is no less than twice weekly. So no, doing two shots a week would not be a bad thing.

Lastly, as mentioned above, what matters most is how you feel. So long as you are relieving symptoms and not having masculinization effects, your level doesn't really matter. Your treatment needs to be individualized to you and your response to treatment, not to any numbers derived from population studies.