Hi, so I have been suspecting that I have low T for a few months now, have quite a few of the symptoms, finally went in for a blood test last week.
Got the results back today (currently in Japan, so results are in Japanese). The doctor only speaks basic English, so I had a hard time communicating with him, but from I can tell he didn’t even test for total testosterone, only free test which I pointed at with an arrow in the picture.
He says everything is normal, and prescribed me some medication to help me get better sleep?
Any insight would be appreciated, AAS are legal in japan, thinking of self admistering TRT, but worried about messing up the injection.
There’s a few ways for a lab to process free T. It depends on the method they used, and what their reference range is for it. Doesn’t look like the lab provided a range, which makes things extremely difficult to tell where your levels are at.
Here is where you should be focusing, sleep problems, sleep apnea can cause low testosterone or make it seem like you have low testosterone affecting libido most of all. Starting TRT with sleep problems is ill advised without further investigation.
A sleep study is needed, or this quick fix you call TRT could turn into a nightmare of worsening sleep problems if you actually do have sleep apnea which TRT can worsen.
I will say without a doubt these sleep problems are affecting your testosterone levels and other hormones as well because hormones can’t regenerate unless you get good sleep.
Do you have anyone who can confirm whether or not you make noises while sleeping?
Cheers for the feedback, I had no idea poor sleep mimicked low T symptoms, I’ll try the medication tonight and ask my girlfriend to check for noises, what noise specifically am I looking for ? Just general snoring ?
Poor sleep doesn’t exactly mimic low T symptoms, it literally lowers T. Although some symptoms might overlap.
You don’t necessarily need to make noise sleeping to have sleep apnea. Apnea is a point durning sleep where you stop breathing. Some people will stop breathing, then violently gasp for air. They could stop while snoring and you’ll hear a pause in breathing. Or in my case, I slowly take shallower and shallower breaths, stop breathing for a while, then slowly pick up breathing again without making any extra sounds.
Symptoms you might experience if you have apnea are waking up in the middle of the night with a racing heart, waken up with a headache, waking up lethargic after sleeping all night, and waking up to go the the restroom multiple times a night.
Ah I see, I’ll still try to have my girlfriend stay up and take a listen, my sleep related symptoms were trouble falling asleep, waking up sweating during the night and in the morning even on cold days and having brain fog even after sleeping all night.
Non sleep related symptoms were very low libido, ED, really low energy all the time, irritability and poor focus.
It’s abit rough here in Japan not speaking the language, few clinics speak English, this blood test was covered under insurance so it was relatively cheap.
Their is an anti ageing clinic that definitely would offer a more thorough test, but the cost was about 10-15x higher. I’ll have to keep looking or find a native speaker to help me out at a regular clinic.
