Testosterone didn't budge on tesamorelin — expected?
97 posts
12 weeks of tesamorelin 2mg/day. Pulled labs week 0 and week 12.
- IGF-1: 198 -> 278 ng/mL (nice)
- Fasting glucose: 88 -> 95 (ok-ish)
- Visceral fat per DEXA: -14% (great)
- Total T: 612 -> 621 ng/dL (basically unchanged)
- Free T: 14.8 -> 15.1 pg/mL (unchanged)
- SHBG: 34 -> 36 (unchanged)
I'd sort of expected tesa to bump T at least modestly given the body comp improvement. Is that expectation wrong, or did my body just not respond that way?
- CJC-1295 no DAC · 100 mcg · pre-bed · sub-Q
- Ipamorelin · 200 mcg · pre-bed · sub-Q
- BPC-157 · 250 mcg · 2x/day · sub-Q
9 Replies
73 posts
Expectation is wrong — tesa is a GHRH analog, its effects are on GH/IGF-1 axis, not HPTA. Some people get a tiny T nudge from body comp changes but the effect is small and inconsistent. Your data looks textbook for a good tesa response: IGF-1 up, visceral fat down, T unchanged.
- BPC-157 · 500 mcg · 2x/day · sub-Q
- GHK-Cu · 2 mg · nightly topical · topical
212 posts
My T also didn't move on tesa. Free T was actually slightly lower at retest (small, probably noise). The fat loss gets attributed to better T in the fitness press but in reality it's the direct lipolytic effect of GH pulses on visceral adipose.
- CJC-1295 no DAC · 100 mcg · pre-bed · sub-Q
- Ipamorelin · 200 mcg · pre-bed · sub-Q
- BPC-157 · 500 mcg · 2x/day · sub-Q
97 posts
Makes sense. So anyone thinking tesa is going to shift their T numbers is probably barking up the wrong tree.
- CJC-1295 no DAC · 100 mcg · pre-bed · sub-Q
- Ipamorelin · 200 mcg · pre-bed · sub-Q
- BPC-157 · 250 mcg · 2x/day · sub-Q
51 posts
Right. For T-specific moves you're looking at clomid/enclomiphene, HCG, or actual TRT. Tesa is a body comp / IGF-1 tool, not an HPTA tool.
14 posts
Also — your IGF-1 response (198 -> 278) is a solid respondent profile. That matters more for the 'am I getting value from this' question than whether T moved.
117 posts
The tesamorelin HIV-lipodystrophy trials explicitly reported no meaningful testosterone changes. So your data is aligned with the published record.
32 posts
Yeah but those HIV trials were on lipodystrophic patients with genuinely broken metabolisms, so I'm not sure that data maps 1:1 to a healthy person's HPTA. That said, you're probably right that tesa just doesn't move T in any meaningful way. The real question is whether your IGF-1 bump actually translated to anything you could feel or see beyond the DEXA numbers, cause a 80 point jump sounds nice on paper but that doesn't always mean much in practice.
45 posts
Honestly the IGF-1 bump is kind of whatever if you're not feeling it. 80 points sounds good until you realize most of that could just be from the body comp improvement alone, which means tesa might just be expensive GLP-1 with extra steps. The real test is whether you're getting better recovery, stronger in the gym, or actually leaning out faster than you would on diet + training. If the answer is "not really," then you're basically paying for a number on a lab sheet.