Height: 5"8’ (173 cm)
Weight: 65kg (143 pounds) - fairly slim with slight pot belly possibly due to low T. low fat elsewhere.
Total Testosterone: 291 ng/dL
Free Testosterone: 7.98 pg/mL
Thyroid function and LH/FSH within normal ranges.
Kidney function good. Liver has very slight elevated bilirubin (1.26 where 1.2 is upper normal limit) and albumin:globulin ratio of 2.03
Complete blood count and lipid profile also within normal range. Diabetes related tests also within normal range.
Did not test E2 levels because the lab only does immunoassay tests and not sensitive.
Sex life: can get and maintain erection. No drastic decrease in ejaculate volume. Although erections aren’t as intense as they were a year or two ago.
Lifestyle: used to be athletic during high school and ran multiple track events state level. Shit gradually degraded. Lived very sedentary life for the last 2 years. Started working out 3 months ago. Did not make much progress even though I was carefully monitoring my diet, except for slightly lower water intake, diet was pretty good. I run my own business so stress levels are higher than the average Joe, but by no means stressed enough to warrant such a drastic drop in T levels. Who isn’t stressed these days?
I thought the sedentary lifestyle was to blame for the slow progress so decided to use either SARMs or a simple testosterone cycle to push through the initial rut. This why I ran blood tests and discovered the low T levels.
Doctor said my total T is within normal range and free T will improve with gradual diet and exercise. I am from India, doctors here aren’t very understanding of these issues I have found.
Going forward: I am thinking about dosing 250iu HCG every 3 days for a month and check my T levels at the end. Increase consumption of good quality fat + ZMA + fish oil supplements.
If I don’t recover I might start self-administering TRT. I can get my hands on pharma grade T (enanthate and undecanoate, both from billion dollar pharma companies) and AI/other medicines that are needed, so that’s not an issue.
there are a few things that could lower your test that much that you should look into before starting a protocol.
Overtraining
Under sleeping
Sleep apnea
Alcohol consumption
Diet too low in fat.
You also don’t need an AI on your t replacement protocol when/if you start out. My advice would be to only try one medication at a time and give it a good 6-8 weeks before changing anything.
Under sleeping - likely. I am trying to fix it. I stop using phone/laptop two hours before going to bed and use l-theanine and melatonin to improve sleep. This
Sleep apnea - no.
Alcohol - no. I drink maybe once in six months. I do smoke 4-5 cancer sticks a day. Plan to quit before 2020.
Dietary fat - I used to consume a lot of organic buffalo milk. Yep, that’s a thing in this part of the planet. That milk is higher in fat and protein and tastes “sweeter/better” and less “milky” than regular cow milk. In the last three months, I have cut down on milk and started eating at least half a dozen eggs everyday with the yolk, so fat and cholesterol consumption shouldn’t be too low.
EDIT: it’s not clear in my original post, but I would much rather improve my testosterone levels naturally than go on TRT. That being said, I immensely value my time and quality of life. I would much rather risk the sides and start TRT than suffer from low T.
My biggest fear about TRT is the potential for infertility. I am researching about this specific issue. I would like to be fertile for the next 7-8 years. Lots of great info on this forum.
We see this happening worldwide, it seems most doctors just don’t get it. Testosterone is highest in our 20’s, peaking at 30 our levels start declining 1% every year beyond 30 and by the time we are elderly, our testosterone is on the bottom of the ranges.
So one must consider age when looking at the testosterone reference ranges, except doctors are taught in range is normal, and while that may true for iron, it’s not for testosterone because who feels young and energetic scoring at a levels seen in 90 year old men?
These normal ranges are no guarantee that you won’t experience symptoms in the low normal ranges, these reference ranges seen to be narrowed every so often and change because we get wiser as time goes on.
I often see men with LH within normal ranges (1-3) and are experiencing a testosterone deficiency because symptoms are all gone after beginning TRT. So when you say levels are within the normal, low normal is no good for the majority of men. Your levels are normal, for an elderly man.
Take athletes an an example, you don’t think they would be able to compete with testosterone at a level seen in elderly men do you?
Just recently a women (Caster Semenya) attempting to compete in the olympics was told she may have to take a pill to lower her testosterone because it was abnormally high for a women and according the those in charge, they want to level the playing field so they everyone is more closely matched and have an equal chance at competing.
To this I say you are risking cardiovascular disease at these levels, wait too long and… There are many ways to deal with fertility, HCG, FSH injection and clomid.
The locally weighted regression showed that total testosterone levels of 440 and 480 ng/dL were associated with increased Framingham CVD risk and an increased probability of increased hsCRP, respectively. Men with sexual dysfunction (poor sexual performance, decreased morning erection, and loss of libido) had significantly greater CVD risk.
LH was 4.8 (ref 1.50 to 9.30)
FSH was 5.2 (ref 1.40 to 18.10)
Unit: mIU/mL
TSH - 2.58 (ref 0.35 to 5.50)
T4 total - 7.40 (ref 5.01 to 12.45)
T3 total 1.32 (ref 0.60 to 1.81)
I am going to keep running blood tests every two weeks. If there are no signs of improvement, TRT will be my final option. I don’t plan to mess around with SERMs with the hopes of boosting my T.
Again, thank you everyone who is reading this and taking the time to respond. Appreciate all the help and support .
I would like to suggest you scap plans to test T3 in the future and test fT3 instead, testing free hormones is best because this is how much thyroid hormone is making it into your cells, T3 is not the end result.
I have LH close to your levels, testosterone is 97 ng/dL, it more than likely means a combination of secondary hypogonadism and poor testicle response to stimulation.
I would also like to add a few symptoms am noticing. Not sure if low T has anything to do with it.
General muscle weakness - the muscles around my collar bone feel weird. If my stretch my hands above my head and join the palms in a “namaste” pose, the muscles around my collar bone feel achy and super weak.
Similarly, I have felt weird cramp like sensations in the scalp. Muscle #5 in the graphic below.
Also, muscle cramps on the small muscle where the last ribcage starts from, below the right pec. It’s mostly the super small/thin muscles that give out and feel like cramping up when working out.
Posture and back pain - I also have slight anterior pelvic tilt. Possibly from sitting in front of a computer and coding for long hours. I have been streching and working my hipflexors, abs and glutes to fix it. It has improved but not by much. I work from home so I have the luxury of working from my bed as well when I feel tired of sitting or standing.
In the last couple of months my back issues have compounded. The back pain is concentrated in the psoas muscles and if I have to spend even 4-5 hours on my feet during a social event am tired and achy through the entire thing.
Enthusiasm - my income is tied to my time. I work as an independent consultant of sorts. I barely work 2-3 hours a day and spend the rest of the day lounging and only working out for 25-30 minutes. I get lethargic/unmotivated and I have to stop, even if I have muscle power to continue working out. Earlier I used to chalk all this up to me being a lazy POS. However, I wasn’t always like this and I feel the low T might have something to do with my new found lethargy. If I put in 8 hours a day, I can make 4x my current income and even that thought isn’t enticing enough to push me to work just an hour or two more, let alone 8 hours a day.
Past trauma - roughly 3-4 years ago something happened which caused me a great deal of mental stress, anxiety and depression. I barely slept for weeks, waking up after every 30-40 minutes, and even when I was asleep my mind wouldn’t be resting. I would shut my eyes and force myself to sleep just to get away from all my thoughts. Things improved gradually over a year. This was very taxing psychologically and I am sure it must’ve been the trigger which caused all the hormonal problems. That same year also witnessed episodes of binge drinking and general lack of care for my body or my diet.
Dude, this entire post describes me to a T. From past trauma - sleep issues, to psoas pain. I worked from home for years. Same as you, worked from bed etc.
I just started TRT about 6 weeks ago. I’m only on 125mg/week, and I haven’t seen improvement in energy and motivation yet.
I’m not sure what my deal is. I did quit my job and get a more active job at the beginning of the year. But I’m still dealing with sleep issues.
Who’s to say the hormonal problems weren’t the first domino to fall leading to the stressful situations and an inability to cope. Low T men have a more difficult time with normal every day stress, high testosterone can have a calming effect and strengthens your mental ability to deal with stress.
Low T men lack confidence and are mentally compromised.
And instead of being prescribe TRT, they are put on antidepressants and ED meds. This doubt just numbs the pain and doesn’t address the problem which is what sick care does, treats the symptoms with DRUGS.
After much deliberation, I have decided to give SERM restart a try in a last ditch effort to boost my T.
I have hcg, nolvadex, aromasin and 24 weeks worth of test E if all else fails. Based on my reading of the HPTA restart thread, am going to start with nolvadex alone and not bother with HCG.
I tried to make sense of the thread, but couldn’t understand whether usage of AI is recommended for natural guys trying to boost their T levels using nolvadex 20mg eod. Would really appreciate if someone could shed some light on this.
I have been only doing light exercises for two weeks and making sure am not over training. I wasn’t over training before either. Good diet too. Did another blood test to see if there is any marginal improvement. Even just 1%.
Total Testosterone 14 days ago: 291 ng/dl
Current Testosterone Total: 85 ng/dl
This is depressing.
I don’t think I have patience to wait for natural production and am going to inject 70mg Testosterone enanthate E3.5D.
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