hey mate! thanks for the reply… Over here in Croatia I have had free t tested quite a bit however it is given in some kind of percentage value where it always seems high… However I google Tru T calculator and noticed that it also asked for Albumin!!! So with an average T of about 550, SHBG around 22 I left out the fact that my albumin is ELEVATED.
ALBUMIN 54.3 (42-50) g/L
Could you possibly try to figure out my Free T for me now that I added albumin, as I am having trouble doing so, “could not parse the input data, please check your values”…ok got it working, free t came back at 15.53ng/dl with the albumin added…
1, I cant seem to find a free testosterone range for ng/dl… Is my free t low, or is it okay?
2. Should I get my total t, free t, shbg, and e2 checked one last time? Or try another endocrinologist?
Dealing with the medical community can be horribly frustrating. Tho, I see great hope for you. You have labs that confirm a diagnosis that exactly accounts for the symptoms you have! And its treatable! Worst case you might have to be on HRT. Best case you can fix this naturally. Where are you on your bodyfat percentage and eating? Are you still training?
Thanks @blizzardtest
I was a pretty big, after “natural body building” I would do hundreds of pushups a day etc, high protein diet, and got “huge” with about 14 percent body fat… This muscle I packed on was a bit too much for a “soccer player”, and thats why I went on this crash diet… In hopes of slimming my frame down, and get my body fat low. It worked and I got ripped for the first time in my life, and eventually would say it turned to an eating disorder…
Now Im the heaviest I ever been, at 80kg 5’10" however I do not feel big… I just feel soo flat and empty, with waist fat concentration… I can’t even get a pump anymore…
It almost feels like some kind of “androgen resistance” as I do not feel like I have low t , it feels like I have no T. I read somewhere that it is actually low e2 that is the cause of most hypogonadal symptoms. Basically feels like my penis’ only function is as a faucet for urine to spill out of…
To do a true comparison I used your TT 455, SHBG at 22 to get FT 15.83 ng/dL. Using the 54.3 albumin (5.43 g/dL) using the same lab values FT is now 12.87 ng/dL!
Your averages show you below 500 ng/dL which is why I used the lower value. These levels are low given your age when looking at the averages of the population.
The average TT for someone 65-74 → 47 participants is 524 ng/dL.
You more than likely don’t have access to Equilibrium Dialysis or Ultrafiltration which is more accurate than Direct Immunoassay. Of course even using accurate testing and using the calculating method assumes everyone binds androgen the same which cannot be true.
Prevailing calculators are inaccurate
It has been demonstrated that the calculated free testosterone derived using commonly available online calculators, which are based on simpler models assuming simple 1:1 binding of testosterone and SHBG [1,2], deviate from measurements obtained by equilibrium dialysis by as much as 40% [3-9].
Current methods for measuring free testosterone (fT) are technically challenging and not accurate. The widely used direct immunoassay and tracer analog techniques for measuring fT have been shown to be inaccurate. Equilibrium dialysis, the reference method against which other methods are compared, is labor-intensive and cumbersome, and therefore has had limited clinical adoption. Recently, Endocrine Society’s Expert Panel acknowledged the experimental problems in fT measurements and concluded that "…the calculation of free testosterone is the most useful estimate of free testosterone in plasma…
How I understood is SHBG, and ALBUMIN are bad to have high? As they bind testosterone and the more you have of them , the less free t? So my albumin that is flagged high at 54.3 (42-50) is really bad for my poor total t of 500?
I think I will get new bloods this week just to see where things stand! Thanks again guys, I really appreciate it. Gives me hope when there seems like there is none.
Hey @blizzardtest how would I go about fixing this naturally… For the last 3 years I have gained all the weight back, do my pushups, workout out, eat my 4-5 eggs a day, meat, etc… sleep is 9-10 hours a day. 0 stress , sunlight exposure etc.
Something is just not right… I noticed that when I gained the weight back it was very feminine looking at the beggining (cortisol like, puffy cheeks, buffalo hump, hips etc) Now its better looking but still feel like my testicles arent working, and skin is numb…
@joeviv10 I forget, and dont want to read through the whole post, which supplements you are currently taking. But i would do something like this in your shoes.
I would do a short run of high dose Iodine in the morning. 1-2 weeks of at least 2000mcg and then taper it down to less than 500 and keep it there. 200mcg selenium. High dose 10g carnitine per day split doses before meals. B complex. at night Zinc/Copper/Magnesium Citrate/Calcium Citrate (25mg/1mg/400mg/600mg). 5-10mg sublingual DHEA. Fit in a long walk every day if you arent on your feet all day. If fhat doesnt work, then add in Cialis. Id include Cialis from the start but its not natural. Thats up to you and your ability to source it.
now listen, I do not claim to me smart, and could use all the help/advice I can get. However I looked at the hormone “flowchart”
I have elevated Cholesterol-> Elevated Dhea-s → Testosterone is decent → e2 is low → DHT is low . Can it mean something like testosterone for some reason is going back to dhea-s instead of towards e2 and dht?
DHEA is made in the adrenals. It’s counter intuitive to think to take it when your levels are high. But, there are direct pathways from DHEA to both estrogen and DHT that bypass testosterone. Your DHEA is high in the labs but it’s a symptom of some dysfunction. I’m just a weekend warrior with this but I think you want to pull the stress off the adrenals. Keep your DHEA up. Experiment with sublingual and topical DHEA to see if there is some site specific conversion to DHT and Estrogen that is beneficial to you
