Your SHBG levels are actually abnormally high if we go by Labcorps ranges which top out at 54 nmol/L, managed health goes strictly by the number and ignore the symptoms. The only thing we should pay attention to is TT, SHBG, FT percentage and ignore directly measured FT because the latter is inaccurate.
Let’s take what we know about SHBG’s function, it binds androgens so the higher the SHBG, the lower the free hormones and the more is deactivated and bound to SHBG. Sure high SHBG is healthy, but not if we let it run wild binding up too much testosterone.
The truth is I have never to date seen a guy feeling awesome with TT high normal and SHBG abnormally high, has never happened in the 3 years I’ve been visiting T-Nation and Excelmale 6 days a week for hours per day.
You can have a look at other members threads and see a trend, guys are having problems with lower TT and SHBG in the 40’s which is when SHBG starts negatively affecting FT. Also there is a variability in the binding force of SHBG between individuals, some men have SHBG that binds androgen weakly and other very strongly.
I once saw a guy with an SHBG at 32 and his FT percentage was dreadfully low, it was as if his SHBG was triple the stated value when compared with other members. If you were to take a single blood sample and send it to more than one laboratory for testing, you would get different results on each test, this is where we are today, lab testing has a lot of room for improvement.
Challenges in Testosterone Measurement, Data Interpretation, and Methodological Appraisal of Interventional Trials
Several factors impact measured T levels including aging, circadian rhythms, geography, genetics, lifestyle choices, comorbid conditions, and intra-individual daily variability. The utility of free T (fT) over total T is debatable and must be compared using appropriate threshold levels. Among various assay techniques, mass spectrometry and equilibrium dialysis are gold standards. Calculated empirical estimates of fT are also commonly utilized and accepted. Hypogonadism-specific questionnaires have limited utility in screening for hypogonadism, and their role as objective end-points for quantifying symptoms remains unclear. Numerous aspects of study methodology may directly or indirectly impact reported outcomes including design (randomized, prospective, retrospective), duration, populations studied (age, comorbid conditions), low T threshold, therapeutic agent utilized, objective measures/end-points selected, and statistical interpretation.
