One thing in the book that I saw was the levels he recommended for free T.
Free Testosterone
What to Shoot For: 100+ ng/dL
Danger Zone: Under 60 ng/dL
I’m seeing a ridiculous spread of what is recommended across endocrinology books, labs, and online. Free T is only 1-3% of total T, some people get this confused with Bioavailable T which includes testosterone weakly bound to albumin + free T.
From Labrix saliva results that I just got tested:
30.1-142.5 pg/ml reference range for male
if my math is right? 100 pg/ml should be 10 ng/dl? (which means that the recommendation is 5x higher than the high range)
Lef.org has the free T listed as,
Free Testosterone: 20-25 pg/mL
which seems awful low to me…
I checked 3 or 4 other sites with completely crazy numbers that didn’t correlate, so what is the actual levels of free T that are normal?!
You cannot compare saliva levels to serum levels and you can often not compare FT levels from different labs. Tucker made a big mistake by not addressing that issue. Top of range for Quest FT is around 4-5 time higher than many other labs.
LEF has a lot of LABCORP data that they draw upon. They cannot be seen as promoting high levels of T as they are poking the FDA in the eye quite often.
So it all depends on the lab and you want to be high-normal.
The use of the lower cut off for a statistical norm is a terrible thing. The population of men used to develop the statistical norm includes those men who are suffering from low T levels. So you need to be even worse than that group to get treated. Basically the system is setup so only a tiny fraction of men qualify from the group of those who are suffering from symptoms of low T. Same problem with thyroid levels. The range includes people with hypothyroid symptoms. The ranges should be from people who are healthy.
The use of the lower cut off for a statistical norm is a terrible thing. The population of men used to develop the statistical norm includes those men who are suffering from low T levels. So you need to be even worse than that group to get treated. Basically the system is setup so only a tiny fraction of men qualify from the group of those who are suffering from symptoms of low T. Same problem with thyroid levels. The range includes people with hypothyroid symptoms. The ranges should be from people who are healthy.
Recommendation of FT=100 only makes sense in the limited context of Quest Diagnostics lab work.
FT is measured in serum [blood]. I was differentiating from saliva lab work and T in saliva is always free as there is no SHBG there to bind to the T. And saliva T numbers cannot be compared to any serum numbers.
What are you worried about? There are good recommendations here. The biggest problem will be with doctors.
got it. No, overall his recommendations are solid and the book is a good read and he does a good job at upleveling the major things people can do to increase testosterone.
I think I understand what you are saying, that you can calculate free T from blood also if you measure SHBG and Albumin, which should not be correlated with free T measured directly from saliva.
There still is the units though. Do you think he means ng/dL or pg/mL for free testosterone? I have seen even some major sites mess this up. 100 pg/mL would make more sense to me.
I read the book as well. Not a bad read, I like Tucker Max and the fact he took his health in his own hands like we all should. I would like to know at 35 how he went from 317 TT to over 800 with diet and exercise and what the time frame for this was. While not impossible I guess, having a hard time believing this to be honest, its like most of his books, maybe 70% truth. Diet stuff is good but well known data.