If you are doing actually medically followed TRT, the purpose is to maintain a physiologically normal amount of testosterone. So there should be no major effect on collagen production or structure whatsoever.
For reference I am in my early 30s, generally get a good diet, weigh about 70kg, give or take, and take 80mg testosterone cypionate, once a week, IM in the thigh. Initially I was on 100mg but the dose was determined to be too high with blood testing. This was initiated when my blood testosterone was shown to be normal...
for a prepubescent girl. Contributing factors could be genetics (my father was also on TRT), my long term methadone use, or a spinal injury resulting in paraplegia,) I could never gain weight from exercise or overeating, and could sleep all day quite easily, but mentally I was fine and had a sex drive.
A couple weeks of therapy later I felt I had more energy and an even more elevated sex drive. As of now (~3 years later) I have no side effects to report.
Admittedly, I have on occasion taken up to 200mg as a dose, but I do not notice any major differences (mind you, as a paraplegic I am not in a position to pursue gainz in the gym), and avoid it as such.
Any good TRT program will, especially in initial titrations, monitor testosterone levels (esp. peak/trough values) with the intent being to keep the dose at a physiologically reasonable value, neither too high nor too low, and blood tests done semi-regularly to ensure the levels are appropriate.
Now if you are using TRT as an excuse to use elevated levels of anabolic agents to promote muscle growth... that's a different story. I would assume that any effects are dose related though. I.e. moderately elevated levels will produce less acne, collagen issues, and so forth, compared to heavy overuse (like taking >100mg a day of test enanthate/cypionate IM).
Is there like a precursor to testosterone, instead of adding T perhaps using the thing that actually creates and accelerates testosterone?
The immediate precursors are
androstenedione and
androstenediol.
Dehydroepiandrosterone or DHEA is one step further removed.
I believe that unfortunately only androstenedione has studies showing it increase testosterone levels (when used orally) and at high doses. But other studies show no effect at all. And it is illegal in the US.
Androstenediol does not seem to have anabolic activity (was tested in monkeys for protection vs radiation - they would no doubt notice steroid effects) and instead has some estrogenic activity, but
its methylated analogue is active.
DHEA is basically totally useless to increase testosterone in practice.
And in medical practice, none of these are used with any regularity. For testosterone deficiency the usual treatment is exclusively testosterone.
If any of them worked as effective prodrugs it would have been documented by now and they would probably be more widely (ab)used, even in medicine and also even in veterinary medicine..
