High Estradiol, High SHBG

Hi guys,

My problem is that I have high estrogen. I think that might be the cause of my low libido.

My stats are

estradiol 39.8 ng/l (7,63-42.6)
total T 23.6 nmol/l (8.64-29.0)
free t 437 pmol/l (163 - 619 pmol/L)
shgb 45.2 nmol/L (14,5 - 48,4 nmol/L)

Before my estradiol was double that. Then for some reason it dropped to this value.
When i took the other hormones LH FSH they were in mid (i didn’t show them because it was 10 months ago).

I am working out 3 times a week, no cardio though am I bit fat (6 foot 4, 231 pounds) but not too much.

Could my shgb be high due to high estrogen?

Also free T is in middle although they told me that total T is little bit high (although i see here that is is actually normal value)

If you could help me out I would appreciate it.

Need more info. Post all your labs you have available. Post health history according to the stickies.

Would like to see your liver #s specifically. (ALT/AST).

High E2 could be from poor liver. Do you drink heavily? Drugs?

Yes, having extra fat will aromatize T to E2 more. Losing weight/improving diet would help some.

Yes, high E will push up your SHBG which then inflates your total T #s. However your free T seems solid despite that. If no issues with liver I think you’d benefit greatly from a low dose Arimidex alone.

Also, how are your energy levels?

The fact that something is in a normal range does not mean its a healthy level. Doctors often misunderstand that.

Please read these stickies: - a lot of reading!

  • advice for new guys, note first paragraph
    – need more info about you, then we can be more specific
  • things that damage your hormones

IGS made very good point above.

Where are you located? - affects your diagnostic and treatment options

Energy levels are preety good. I have CPPS (chronic pelvic pain syndome) but I don’t know if that has anything to do with it.

Apart from that I have allergies and I had astma whole my life but not for the past 5-6 years.

Libido is weak.

I do drink heavily once per week. Sometimes i smoke weed

I found some older results (april 2014)
alt 20 u/l (12-48)
ast 23 u/l (11-38)

also interesting here i wasnt exercising for some time (a month and a half) and the results were normal (im not sure if exercise was important or not)
estradiol 93 pmol/l (20-240) (this was in different measure, that would mean 25 ng/l vs todays 40)
total test 15 nmol/l (10-28)
test free 298.1 pmol/l (174-729)
shgb 42 nmol/l (15-100, interestly these guys have a much larger upper limit, todays was 48 vs theirs 100, maybe they didn’t measure male vs female as females have it more)

so it seems when my T was low so was my E. shgb was the same approximately. when i had a higher scale T my E shot up.

may 2015
tsh 2.25 mu/l (0.27-4.20)
t4 90.29 nmol/l (66-181)
t3 1.81 nmol/l (1.3-3.1)
ft3 4.44 pmol/l (3.95 - 6.8)
ft4 16.30 pmol/l (12-22)

also my worst E results from january 2014
estradiol 251 pmol/l (28-156)
test total 21.9 nmol/l (8.64 - 29)
ft free 0.427 nmol/l (0.091-0.579)
progesteron 3.17 nmol/l (0.7-4.30)
shgb 37.4 nmol/l (16.5-55,90)
insulin 44 pmol/l (17.8-173)

so here shgb was lower but e was very big (almost twice over the max)

dont know what to make of all of this.

what about eating white button mushrooms with eggs (omelette with mushrooms). They said that white button mushroom is the strongest natural AI. Not sure how much it works if you make an omelette with it

[quote]KSman wrote:
The fact that something is in a normal range does not mean its a healthy level. Doctors often misunderstand that.

Please read these stickies: - a lot of reading!

  • advice for new guys, note first paragraph
    – need more info about you, then we can be more specific
  • things that damage your hormones

IGS made very good point above.

Where are you located? - affects your diagnostic and treatment options[/quote]

I added almost all information except that I live in europe/croatia

I also forgot to add todays test for

prolactin 326 mu/l (86-324).
previous results for prolactin were the same

Your numbers move quite a bit from one test to another. It makes it more difficult to make sense of things. Did you take your tests in the morning or later? Your levels will peak after your wake up or so and decline slowly over the day. I’d recommend you take your tests between 8-10am from now on, for consistency.

Liver is fine.

Your thyroid levels are a problem. fT3 and fT4 are well bellow optimal range, naturally making your TSH high. Your brain is telling your thyroid to make more hormones and the thyroid isn’t responding well. You need to find out why. This should be the first thing to address with your doctor. This very well could be the problem that is cascading into other issues.

Again:

*Read EVERY sticky. Re-read if needed.
*Provide more info as requested by the stickies. We don’t even know your age.
*Measure body temperatures, upon waking before getting up and in the afternoon, for 3-5 days.

KSman will tell you to report iodine intake but I am pretty sure it isn’t needed in this case. I originate from same place and I know that bread is big part of daily diet there. Iodized bread is required by law in most Balkan countries, including Croatia. If your diet differs greatly from what I remember growing up there (lots of bread), report it.

Once again, I recommend you start looking into fixing your thyroid first then move on from there if even needed.

Ok I will read all stickies now

I didn’t add that I have 31 years and will monitor my body temp for the next 4 days and will post them
I don’t each much bread really or too salty food. Is there a way to see if I lack iodide? I do eat fish though (is there alot of iodide in it?)

Ofcourse i brought this up to my doctor and she said it was fine (because its in the range).

Do you have some advice on how to fix my thyriod?

Hi guys,

I’ve just read all the stickies

so I would like to add this to my info:
waist around 100 cm (39 inches)
height 6 foot 4 (193 cm)
weight 105 kg (231 pounds)
facial hair little
body hair little
age 31
i grew fast as a teen
testes dont hurt maybe sometimes a little due to my CPPS condition for the last 10 years
mood varies not so good
depression yes kinda
libido not good
i usually don’t get cold easily but sometimes i do very easily. it really varies
skin maybe a little bit dry
not too much salt
i eat canned tuna, like seafood but eat it maybe 2x per week
no chemicals exposed to me as far as i know
no hair loss drugs (good set of hair)
no drugs used

also i would like to add some other hormone values:
dheas 8.3 micromol/l (3-11)
crp 1.5 mg/l (0-5)
Anti-TPO 15.85 kIU/L ( < 34)
Anti-Tg 10.32 kIU/L (< 115.0 kIU/L)
vitamin d 53.3 nmol/l (>50 is ok). was 39.9 before but i was taking some vit d pills

kortisol 29th april 2014
kortisol 8am 555 nmol/l (138-690)
kortisol 3 pm 363 (55-248)

kortisol 14th march 2014
10 am 400 nmol/l (171-536)
6 pm 175.2 nmol/l (64-340)

I think i showed everything this time.

So what do you guys think? that it is a thyroid issue?

Also just to add I always take my measurements in the morning (8-10 am) except for afternoon kortisol which i take in the afternoon.

Cortisol is following expected daily pattern. DHEA-s looks good. Both indicating decent adrenals. That’s good.

I think the thyroid is where your problems stem from. Finding the missing link to fixing it will be the toughest part.

If your body temps are low, it will confirm hypothyroidism (willing to bet they are low). If that’s the case you can:

*Find a doctor that knows optimal thyroid function thoroughly and doesn’t simply read the labs for red flags. Not easy.

Or

*Research and look for that missing link yourself. Could be iodine/selenium or some other mineral deficiency. This also not easy.

Or

*Try thyroid medication. This is easy but I am sure that you’d rarher find a solution than go on life time of meds.

Also, are you eating low carb in attempt to lose weight by any chance? Low carb diets are known to lower thyroid hormones.

Thank you very much for your help!!

what about prolactin levels? They are a little bit above chart or?

About thyroid

  • very hard to find a decent doctor (already 2 of them said its fine)
  • I don’t want to take medication if not possible

so i guess that leaves me with
3) figure out the deal your self
I am going to monitor my temperature for the next couple of days and will post it here.

Do you know if there is a way to figure out if you have a deficiency in some mineral? Is there some kind of test of something?

Prolactin levels are above range. If they are consistently that high then it’s not good. Your lab result might be higher if you ejaculated night before or the morning of your test. If that’s not the case and you prolactin levels are consistently high then you may have a microprolactinoma. That’s a benign tumor (non-cancerous) on your pituitary that is secreting more prolactin than needed.

You could try low dose of Cabergoline. This will lower your prolactin. You will notice a bump in mood, libido and sexual performance. Also, losing weight will be easier as you will be less prone to binge eating. From what I’ve read, it’s very effective and fairly safe, even long term.

My thyroid knowledge extends only as far as my health issues are concerned. My thyroid is fairly decent so I haven’t spend much time hunting info on it. You may ask KSman about iodine replenishment. There could be something there.

Also, high Estrogen has negative effect on thyroid. You have high E2. Start looking into relationship between the two. You could try low dose Arimidex to bring your E2 to optimal range and see how you feel and respond. I am on low dose Arimidex myself for 5 months now and it’s pretty safe. My liver readings haven’t moved from the baseline. It won’t hurt to try.

ok thank you for your answers. I will first start off with temperature test (which i will post) and then figure out what to do.

Also another question for estradiol - I read that eating white button mushrooms will help reduce it. Although they are not certain if actual food vs the extract has any effect.

Do you have some knowledge of it (or have tried it)?

I had another thyroid test

these are the new results (after the results i posted the previous ones):

t3 1.7 nmol/l (1.3-3.1) pr. 1.81
t4 92 nmol/l (66-181) pr. 90.29
ft3 5.8 pmol/l (3.1-6.8) pr. 4.4
ft4 15 pmol/l (12-22) pr. 16.30
anti tpo 15 kiu/l (<23) pr. 15.85
tsh 1.99 mu/l (0.27-4.2) pr. 2.24

so the results look compareable (and 6 months passed). Would you say that they are improving? Still measuring temperature - will post it in 2 days

fT3 seemed to improve. fT3 is the mcdaddy of them all, so thats good. Body temps will complete the picture more.

ok these are my results. I made it at 10 am and 5 pm. I noted measurements in mouth (using thermometer under tongue) and thermometer under armpit. I think even under mouth was not accurate because they varied more. Maybe i was doing it wrong i don’t know i don’t usually do it like that.

mon
mouth armpit
ce fah ce fah
10 36.5 97.7
5 36.8 98.24 36.7 98.06

tue
mouth armpit
ce fah ce fah
10 36.2 97.16 36.45 97.61
5 36.7 98.06 36.7 98.06

wed
mouth armpit
ce fah ce fah
10 36.4 97.52 36.4 97.52
5 36.2 97.16 36.9 98.42

thur
mouth armpit
ce fah ce fah
10 36.5 97.7 36.50 97.7
5 36.95 98.51 37.05 98.69

fri
mouth armpit
ce fah ce fah
10 36.7 98.06 36.8 98.24
5 36.7 98.06 37.1 98.78

It seems like it was kinda low in the beginning but later on it got better. But I am not feeling too good now sort of like a little bit sick so maybe that is why my temperature rose a little bit.

Anyway I have no clue about what all this means I hope you can help me out.

About iodine supplementation - i bought some kelp and selenium 100mcg pills to use. The problem is i don’t know the dosage of kelp and how much time i can use it.

For instance (i gave this link also on thyroid forum)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...les/PMC1924637/

Some people got poisoned by kelp usage (and iodine usage in general).

Is there some way to test iodine content and is it accurate?

Thank you in advance for your help!

I got my bloodwork for RT3 and iodine and selenium content in blood

RT3 259.2 pg/ml (borderline 380-613, < 614)

iodine (from blood) 55 mcg/l (40-80)
selenium (from blood) 100 mcg/l (50-120)

Now I’m not sure if iodine and selenium levels from blood are accurate but I seem to be fine. Selenium is even high.

Also i started with kelp selenium 100mcg and every time i have a sore throat and some weird feeling in head. Some people say its bromine detox but some say it is iodine poisioning.

not sure what do to next…

started all this discussion because of high prolactin and high estrogen

Good job on being proactive with your health. Most just blindly follow doctors protocols.

Well, you can rule out elevated RT3.

I am not 100% sure that you are not iodine deficient. Knowing where you grew up and eating seafood (Dalmatia?) I am confident that iodine is not your problem.

I know it sucks that it still leaves a question but at least you can rule some things out.

Perhaps attack your prolactin next. If it is on high end consistently. You could try low dose cabergoline and see how you feel.

Or you can tackle high E2 with low dose Adex.

I would try one at a time, that way you have less moving parts while you assess.