Sort of a related story here. This week a friend of mine asked for my doctor’s information for a former-steroid-user friend of his whose T level he said is in the 190’s.
The convo went something like this.
He asked, “Is he gonna be a d—k about it?,” to which I replied, “There is a reason I’ve stuck with him for 20 years”.
“I mean, is he gonna be a dick because the guy used roids in the past.”
“No, he’s a doctor with bedside manners. Your friend should go to him for healthcare—that’s it! No gym talk, no muscle talk, no talk about bodybuilding, “optimization”, etc., etc.”
This ties in with what I’ve been saying regarding TRT being something one “looks into” or “gets on” or T being taken in ever-increasing amounts until one’s desired feelings or physical appearance and strength is reached.
All my markers (liver, thyroid, total T) looked fine except for free T (low) and SHBG (very high).
I was consistently IF and low carb and exercise and my metabolic markers (inflammation and insulin sensitivity) looked good. My strong preference was to just lower SHBG rather than boosting T.
I tried Boron, Magnesium, Zinc, Nettle, boosting carbs, boosting calories for months. Nothing budged my SHBG.
Finally (reluctantly) got on TRT two weeks ago. I’ve spent days researching SHBG over the last year. It’s so under-researched as an independent marker and there are so few things that independently lower it without other undesirable ripple effects. My GP and endo don’t even know much about cases like mine.
I would have tried Proviron before TRT if it was available legally in the US. Interested to see how TRT works.
In some cases high SHBG is a result of low T, since hormones have a suppressive effect on SHBG. Then if you have elevated estrogen in some cases, which further increases SHBG.
You’re about to see your SHBG decrease substantially on TRT, well at least in the majority of cases.
A diabetic is the only exception as SHBG tends to increase on TRT once metabolic parameters are corrected.
Yeah seems to be clear that for most, exogenous T lowers SHBG.
The irony is that once you’re on exogenous T, it doesn’t really matter what your SHBG is since you can just increase T as much as necessary to get on top of even-high SHBG.