Testosterone and Mood

I’m wondering if any of you tend to feel an improvement in mood when your testosterone is high normal compared to normal. When I started TRT, my test was coming back 1200 ng/dl to >1500. This lasted for about a year in part due to a liberal Dr. who himself had a history of steroid use.

When my Dr. retired, I found a new one who had a good reputation. He was not very happy about the higher levels and lowered my dose to target a level of 800ng/dl. This made sense to me at the time because I didn’t think the pros of having a few hundred points in testosterone outweighed the cons.

For the past year with “normal testosterone” I’ve been able to maintain overall great health, muscle mass, and sex drive with this range, but recently I have been struggling with some minor depression at night. My Dr. does not think it relates to testosterone and suggests I see a psychiatrist.

Any thoughts on this?

I would agree with your doctor that it is unlikely to be related to your testosterone. Your level is already somewhat higher than would be average for a young man in the morning, and much higher than that of the average young man in the evening.

But just in case have your E2 levels checked as well. IME non-optimal estrogen levels affect mood more than testosterone. Both high and low E2 levels can cause mood problems.

It’s probably time for me to check E2 again. I’m well aware of dealing with low E2, having had libido issues when I sank it to virtually zero unintentionally with Adex. That was over a year ago, however, and it seemed to normalize to the 20’s. I’ve never had issues with high E2.

Another thought is to get all the tests done that are typically recommended in the stickies in addition to getting all my vitamin levels checked that I can possibly think of.

As to having higher than normal T in the evening, there is no way to know that my levels don’t sink at night. I take Androgel ED in the morning and have never tested in the PM.

Oh sorry I thought you were on injections.