I am 36 years old and just found out I ha e low testosterone 327 and low free t after 3 yyears of trying to figure out why I was tired and not recovering from workouts.
my dr wants to put me on replacement but can’t tell me why its low. I feel like I am too young for this.
I have been under lots if stress for years as well as being.g diagnosed with neurological lyme disease.
nothing I have seen online mentions stress or lyme as possible causes if low t.
my question is would you take the replacement? and can this just happen in your 30’snot for no reason??
this is all really affecting my training! any workouts o er an hour and it takes data to recover
how much sleep do you get? There are natural solutions available, but they are typically recommended to be cycled. also what does your estrogen look like?
I’m in the same boat, except mine was much much lower. Suffice it to say, most low T problems in younger men are caused by something going wrong in the pituitary tumor. For me it was/is a tumor that will need to be removed. Your cause may be different, but an endocrinologist should do a full workup including MRI of the skull.
As to whether you take HRT, that’s a personal decision and one that must be made with your doctor and significant other in mind. The upside to normal HRT (exogenous testosterone) ? It makes you feel normal. The downside? It pretty much kills your chance of having kids unless you’re weened off.
Whatever people say about people abusing HRT, having a true case of low-testosterone is a true pain in the ass.
This is where going to an internet forum is really a bad idea…You’re imploring people to give you answers and, well, there aren’t many healthcare providers here.
Having gone through this I can tell you that your doc needs to check cortisol (24 hour test), LTH, and other hormone levels and work backwards to the root cause. It’s really as simple as that. If you aren;t getting an answer you like or, hell, an answer at all, get a second opinion…or a third…or a fourth.
shoot, you are lucky whoever is seeing you is calling that level truly hypogonadal. I’m at 330 and my endocrinologist doesn’t consider it low until you have multiple readings under 300. FYI overtraining, heavy drinking (alcohol), and STRESS are all considered to cause low test. that is from my doc and also i found the same info online. you can go to pubmed and search for clomiphene and testosterone. Clomiphene (clomid) has been successfully used to jump start normal test production in some men. it is cheap and since it is short-term has less side effects than test. of course test is widely used (and abused) so there is lots out there on the health effects. regardless, no matter what method you use to improve your test (proper rest, nutrition, etc); clomid, or just test patch or shots you will feel better with it higher than the low 300s. I also know of a guy who raised his effective test by taking nettle root supplement–not nettle leaves, but root, it supposedly displaces bound test so it is free to be active (not sure if you had your “free test” level done as well)
good luck
if your skin can handle it, consider spending more time in the sun, sans sunscreen. Vitamin D (the being out in the sun kind of Vitamin D) has steroidal like properties in raising testosterone levels. You can google it if you do not believe me. And don’t believe all of that skin cancer bullshit about too much time in the sun. It is a fact that spending less time in the sun creates way more problems than it solves, And, on a personal note, the best protection against sunburn is a good tan.
Don’t know if it affects testosterone levels, but I did some research on saddles after noticing that I couldn’t get comfortable on mine. Turns out a lot of research has been done on how cycling can cause damage down there, and they can actually measure blood flow decrease 80-90% on traditional saddles. Not good. Most saddles with cutouts don’t help – the cutouts just collapse in under weight or are shaped wrong.
There seem to be three companies actively using blood-flow testing to design their saddles: Specialized (the BG Romin seems to be their best in this regard), ISM Adamo, and Cobb V-flow max. I just got an Adamo, and could immediately feel the difference.
My opinion on this aint worth shit, but I know first hand that prolonged stress will fuck just about everything up. If your health is being affected by it, you may have to make some hard decisions and draw the line between your health and the factors that are stressing you out. The transition between having a really stressed out lifestyle and a much more manageable one can be REALLY TOUGH at first, but once things settle down, you will look back and wonder how you could have put up with the stress for so long. It doesn’t matter if it’s a job or a woman, your health and happiness should always come first.
Don’t take this the wrong way at all…just asking cause I’m too lazy to dig for the answer myself, but how does test treatment considered for age group doping?
mojo makes a great point. that was my issue–i have some defect in D absorption/production which may be part of my sub-optimal test level. i have to take huge amounts of Vit D3 and try to get 20 min of shirt of sun exposure daily… this got my Vit D 25 hydroxy level to normal range and i am much healthier, can train harder (still not like i used to) and recover, don’t feel like crap, etc.
cheddar, i am absolutely not suggesting taking test or clomid without research and doctor eval. just saying he should look into the pubmed info–i remember when i was going through this that there were at least 3 published articles where they used clomid to raise test levels and the doses were reasonable. I am sure it can be abused by bodybuilders etc just like test and the various synthetic test analogs. obviously he is seeing doctors with mri and cat scan results, but having seen endocrinology etc myself I don’t think many doctors appreciate how a struggling endurance athlete feels, and they tend to use their lab normal range more than how the patient feels, and that an endurance athlete may need more Vit D, test, etc
agreed I just was unsure if you were urging him to go use that or not. There are other natural options to exhaust though. I’m not sure of the legality of them among USAT though.
I got my test results back today and I am at 232. That’s low. I don’t know what to do though because I am pretty sure the testosterone is banned for an age grouper. I have been feeling pretty crappy over the past few months and my doc suggested I get it checked. I am sure I will feel better but don’t want to be a “cheater” either. I have upped my zinc and iron to try and help but it hasn’t worked.
I have no idea what I’m talking about, but I thought that training will lower your testosterone levels… Is that true??? If so, will lowering training volume help to increase testosterone to normal levels?
I have heard that endurance training over one hour on a regular basis will lower your test levels. It would be pretty hard to lower your training volume below one hour sessions and still race, I would imagine