Mitochondria in your cells cholesterol–>pregnenolone, however the testes do make a large contribution to this.
Adrenals: pregnenolone → progesterone → cortisol, pregnenolone —> DHEA
Testes: DHEA —> T
DHEA-S should be peaking at your age. See if you can get 25mg DHEA prescribed. [In USA, DHEA is sold as a dietary supplement. DHEA will help you IF DHEA–>T is rate limited by low T.
FSH is decent. FSH is often a better indicator of LH status than LH itself as LH is released in pulses with a short half-life.
Your T levels are not been held down by elevated E2 or prolactin.
IGF-1 is looking a bit low for your age. This indicates GH status. Do not test GH directly.
?fT3? is midrange and should support good oral body temps, which you can test, see last paragraph in this post. Explain your history of using iodized salt. Do you eat commercially baked bread [not] or consume milk and cheese? Eggs?
Is your T3=4.9 free or total.
T4 suggests that iodine intake may be low.
Please post TSH!
Your diet may be creating issues. And your absorption of nutrients and minerals may be poor. What supplements do you take and for how long?
Need to see complete blood work: hematocrit, hemoglobin, ferritin, RBC, albumin, globulin and total proteins.
With your gut issues, we need to be concerned with blood loss in your gut.
Do you ever get leg cramps or foot cramps? If yes, you need a good magnesium supplement, often combined with 15mg zinc. With your digestive issue, perhaps you need high bio-availability products with minerals bound to amino acids instead of simple mineral oxides or sulfates.
A free T [FT] in absolute units is much more useful than %
Same for bio-available.
SHBG: ADULTS
Males: 10-57 nmol/L
you are SHBG=55.6
Your high SHBG is not from elevated E2. Your FT is probably a lot lower than you think and higher SHBG+T inflates your TT and SHBG+T is not bio-available. SHBG is produced in the liver to pickup sex hormones in the blood to be metabolized. Higher E2 can promote higher SHBG and higher TT, FT reduces SHBG. But in your case, there maybe something bothering your liver and AST/ALT liver lab data may be useful. Liv er disease can do this too.
Please read the stickies found here: About the T Replacement Category - #2 by KSman
- advice for new guys - need more info about you
- things that damage your hormones
- protocol for injections
- finding a TRT doc
Evaluate your overall thyroid function by checking oral body temperatures as per the thyroid basics sticky. Thyroid hormone fT3 is what gets the job done and it regulates mitochondrial activity, the source of ATP which is the universal currency of cellular energy. This is part of the body’s temperature control loop. This can get messed up if you are iodine deficient. In many countries, you need to be using iodized salt. Other countries add iodine to dairy or bread.