Guinea Pig, Day 5
Day 5 - 02-02-2007
I just realized I haven’t really described what’s involved in the experiment. Older men naturally have decreased levels of testosterone, just as women tend to have lower estrogen levels. So they’re looking into giving supplements to men with lowered levels, and this study looks at the effect of low levels of testosterone and the effect of supplementing it.
So they inject us every four weeks with Zolodex. This lowers the production of testosterone to the level of a young child (and also stops estrogen production in women) and is currently used by men with prostate cancer as testosterone aggravates it.
Then we’re assigned to one of five groups for testosterone replacement (AndroGel); in addition to a placebo group that gets none, there are four levels of AndroGel from very low to a near-normal amount.
The side effects include “hot flashes, breast enlargement, fatigue, loss of libido, decreased sperm count, and difficulty getting erections”. Less likely side effects include “anemia, mood swings, decrease in the size of the testicles and bone density loss”.
So anyway, I’m feeling pretty normal I guess. I’m still a little paranoid, attributing any weird feelings to the experiment. But I have definitely noticed a lowered sex drive. Few or no spontaneous erections (although erections do happen, just not, um, spontaneously …)
I’m tired, but not fatigued. But that’s pretty obviously a result of my absurd work and sleep habits, so I probably won’t see any direct effect of that even if it does happen as a side effect as I’ll just drink a ton of coffee as usual and keep plugging away.
