@rodgardner87's blood work claims about TRT, fact-checked

What did @rodgardner87 actually say?

Rod Gardner opens by disclosing he personally injects 350 milligrams of testosterone per week, then pivots to promoting Dynamic Three Health, a telehealth platform. He walks viewers through the kit they receive after signing up: a vial of testosterone, a 20-gauge needle to draw, and a 25-gauge needle to inject. He says he goes "intramuscular into the glue" (gluteal muscle) and invites anyone interested to comment "TRT" to receive a booking link for a physician appointment.

The video is clearly a paid or affiliate promotion. The hashtags include both #steroids and #trt, which is a telling combination. TRT is a legitimate medical treatment. Steroids is a bodybuilding term. Framing them as interchangeable is not an accident, and it matters.

Does the science back this up?

Some of what he describes is clinically accurate. The draw-and-switch needle technique is standard practice, and intramuscular gluteal injection is a legitimate administration route. The problem is the dose he casually discloses.

Clinical TRT guidelines from the American Urological Association (Mulhall et al., 2018, Journal of Urology) typically support doses in the range of 100 to 200 milligrams per week of testosterone cypionate or enanthate to restore physiological testosterone levels in hypogonadal men. The Endocrine Society's clinical practice guidelines (Bhasin et al., 2018, Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism) align with this range, targeting mid-normal serum testosterone levels.

350 milligrams per week is not a therapeutic TRT dose by any clinical standard. It sits firmly in the range used in performance-enhancing and bodybuilding contexts. A study by Basaria et al. (2010, New England Journal of Medicine) found that supraphysiological testosterone doses were associated with increased cardiovascular adverse events. That is not a footnote risk.

What did they get wrong (or right)?

Credit where it is due: the needle gauge advice is correct. Drawing with a 20-gauge and injecting with a 25-gauge is standard technique that reduces injection site trauma. Gluteal IM injection is also a medically accepted route. And recommending blood work before starting is genuinely good advice, one of the few things in this video that belongs in a clinical conversation.

What is wrong, and plainly so, is the casual disclosure of a 350mg weekly dose as if it is a personal benchmark that incoming patients might reasonably expect. He says "I will document you the recommended dosage for you" based on blood work, but he has already anchored the audience to his own 350mg habit. That framing is misleading at best and dangerous at worst. There is no therapeutic justification for presenting a supraphysiological dose as a relatable starting point in a promotional video targeting people who have not yet been evaluated.

The caption's use of #steroids alongside #trt also blurs a line that regulated telehealth is supposed to maintain.

What should you actually know?

If you are considering TRT for symptoms of low testosterone, the actual clinical process looks like this: a physician orders serum testosterone levels (ideally measured on two separate mornings), evaluates symptoms, rules out secondary causes, and if treatment is warranted, starts at a conservative dose with follow-up labs in 6 to 12 weeks. The Endocrine Society defines hypogonadism as a consistent serum total testosterone below roughly 300 ng/dL alongside symptoms.

A dose of 350mg per week will almost certainly push testosterone levels far above the normal physiological range. Consequences of sustained supraphysiological testosterone include erythrocytosis (dangerously elevated red blood cell count), suppression of natural testosterone and sperm production, elevated estradiol, and cardiovascular strain. These are not rare edge cases. They show up routinely in lab work at those doses.

Getting blood work done before starting is the right first step. What you do with those results, and the dose you are prescribed, should come from a licensed physician reviewing your specific labs, not from a social media creator's personal injection habit.