[tsdlts]

Even at replacement levels you'll shut down your natural production and risk never being able to naturally produce your own T. Needing to do intramuscular injections for the rest of your entire life is usually not a consolation prize people want to sign up for. Plus, in the U.S., should someone lose their health insurance and not be able to afford exogenous testosterone anymore they'd be in a pretty awful situation.

Also you'll likely end up infertile.

[PragmaticPulp]

Yes, the downsides of TRT are numerous, but rarely discussed online.

It's not as simple as "experimenting" with TRT. Exogenous testosterone will begin diminishing your natural testosterone production immediately. In theory there are ways to counteract this, but in practice it's not guaranteed that someone can ever discontinue TRT once they've started. Even those who rebound may not return to their original, pre-TRT levels.

Testosterone is also interconnected with other hormone systems, which will also be disrupted by TRT. For many, TRT turns into a game of adjusting various medications up or down to try to get back to how they felt pre-TRT.

[heyoni]

Generally speaking, if your testicles don’t shrink, your production stays the same right? That’s what I’ve seen people do; inject testosterone until they notice shrinkage, then stop.

[qes]

> Generally speaking, if your testicles don’t shrink, your production stays the same right?

No, absolutely not.

The size of your testicles is in no way indicative of your testosterone production.

While a shorter period of use generally has a higher chance of your natural production restarting after ceasing exogenous testosterone, your natural production of testosterone shuts down immediately with the introduction of exogenous testosterone.

[heyoni]

I’m sensing a very strong bias against testosterone use here.

Testicle shrinkage is unarguable a side effect of exogenous supplementation. How is that not a good marker for your production shutdown? If there’s a good explanation, you’re not being very clear about it at all.