Hi! I have been suffering from symptoms relatively recently that could be associated with low T. Equally, they could be associated with other mental health conditions, such as stress and depression. I would like to get my T levels checked, as this is a much easier diagnosis than dealing with mental health i.e. they are either low or they’re not as opposed to weeks/months of therapy to get a diagnosis.
I live in a country with a very poor health system, in terms of infrastructure and capacity amongst staff, but there are private foreign labs here with good infrastructure and staff that offer tests. If I went to the lab, what tests should I be asking for? I will of course need help interpreting the results after, but that can come later. For now, I need to know what to ask for. I would ideally like to use some of the ones in the States that I have found online, but you need to be a resident there and I am neither resident nor citizen of the US. If anybody also knows any good literature or sources of information for this, please let me know. Any help or guidance on this would be much appreciated. Thank you in advance.
Thanks for the quick reply and the list! Can I ask, which of these are the most important would you say? I am not convinced I will be able to get all those tests done here.
If Total T and Free T are low normal and you want to know if you are secondary (pituitary failure) or primary (testicular failure), LH and FSH would need to be tested. There are men with low-T that don’t have either secondary or primary and in these cases SHBG (made in liver) is high binding up the active T.
So, of those tests mentioned by @highpull, the ones that are not available are:
SHBG
DHEA-S
IGF-1
lipids
CMP
CBC
The ones that are available are:
estradiol
FSH
LH
prolactin
PSA
vitD
TSH
freeT4
freeT3
For total and free testosterone, I am not sure. There is one test that is called “Testosterone” so I don’t know if this is the total T, free T or both. It is a relatively expensive test though so I think/hope it may be both. My question now is, assuming it is both free and total T, would it be worth doing the bloodwork with what is available?
Testosterone is the Total T. I’m afraid without the Free T or SHBG you’ll never know your Free T which is going to leave a lot of questions unanswered.
It depends on the lab. For example, Quest has a “Testosterone” test, which includes both free and total. Given that it cost more, it is likely both.
Hard to believe you cannot get a CBC. Regardless, even if you can get total testosterone only, I’d go ahead. If it is low, your free testosterone would be lower as well. Good luck.