My personal experience, having had low testosterone for much of my life and then now being on testosterone replacement therapy:
- It’s obvious to me that I (n=1) gained a ton of muscle and lost a ton of fat very quickly without having done dramatic changes in workouts at first
- It also made it waaaay easier to work out. I used to hate it bc I was exhausted all the time, and now I don’t really mind, and sometimes even enjoy it. In actual practice pulling these variables apart is hard
PSA:
T levels have declined markedly over the past generation or two. But when one tests for low T, the goalposts move bc every time a new population is studied for setting benchmarks (generally every decade or two), the definition of clinically “low” is moved to the new 2.5%ile of that study, such that someone in the current 3rd %ile (considered A-okay by most doctors) would have been in maybe 2.4th %ile (considered red alert by most doctors) using the previous benchmarks (made up numbers but roughly right).
(This is a dumb approach, the binary magic of the 2.5%ile (2 standard deviations), and it frustrates me greatly bc i was denied care bc my first test was 2.4%ile and 2nd was 2.6%ile and thus i was told i was fine bc of the 2nd result and offered anti-depressants instead).
Fixing this is not about muscles, it’s about having energy to live life fully and not be cranky.
So if you’re constantly tired, consider testing for this. And use a functional doc, as in my experience from shepherding 5-10 other folks through this process, the standard doc knows little about this stuff and thinks that having a condition like this is binary
Sorry, a bit off-topic, but no change in my life has been more important besides kids, so I try to spread the word where even somewhat appropriate
> no change in my life has been more important besides kids
Quick note to add: if you're reading the above comment and you still want kids, it's important to note that loss of fertility is one of the most significant side effects of testosterone (or any steroid). There are additional medications that can reduce the risk (and possibly reverse it after fertility is already lost), but it's not guaranteed.
Yeah. A lot of the warnings on the side of the box are based on really suspect data from a very long time ago (Abraham Morgentaler at Harvard is my go-to for this) but the point cj raises is legit.
When a man takes exogenous testosterone, their endogenous production (in the testicles) plummets. This is largely fine, but the production in the testicles also leads to sperm production, and that gets lost.
The solution to this is HCG, which stimulates some testicular production. But it is not a perfect solution, and recently CA has made it much harder to use HCG for this purpose (which was always off-label).
- It’s obvious to me that I (n=1) gained a ton of muscle and lost a ton of fat very quickly without having done dramatic changes in workouts at first
- It also made it waaaay easier to work out. I used to hate it bc I was exhausted all the time, and now I don’t really mind, and sometimes even enjoy it. In actual practice pulling these variables apart is hard
PSA: T levels have declined markedly over the past generation or two. But when one tests for low T, the goalposts move bc every time a new population is studied for setting benchmarks (generally every decade or two), the definition of clinically “low” is moved to the new 2.5%ile of that study, such that someone in the current 3rd %ile (considered A-okay by most doctors) would have been in maybe 2.4th %ile (considered red alert by most doctors) using the previous benchmarks (made up numbers but roughly right).
(This is a dumb approach, the binary magic of the 2.5%ile (2 standard deviations), and it frustrates me greatly bc i was denied care bc my first test was 2.4%ile and 2nd was 2.6%ile and thus i was told i was fine bc of the 2nd result and offered anti-depressants instead).
Fixing this is not about muscles, it’s about having energy to live life fully and not be cranky.
So if you’re constantly tired, consider testing for this. And use a functional doc, as in my experience from shepherding 5-10 other folks through this process, the standard doc knows little about this stuff and thinks that having a condition like this is binary
Sorry, a bit off-topic, but no change in my life has been more important besides kids, so I try to spread the word where even somewhat appropriate