I’m glad to find a forum with some really knowledgeable people, and I have a couple questions, but let me give you my scenario and introduction first.
I’m an otherwise healthy male, 39-years-old, who discovered this year I have low testosterone. I discovered this when I had to change health plans and went in for a physical. They ran a blood test and I noticed my T levels were sitting at 405 ng/dL (lab paper said reference levels were 348-1197).
The physician’s assistant who saw me said they were in the “normal” range, so I shouldn’t be worried. In fact, he didn’t even point it out…I had to bring it to his attention.
I had mentioned things I was worried about in general, and didn’t even know these were symptoms of Low T when I was telling him this (before the blood tests came back):
- My testes had shrunk…they had been pretty large before so unfortunately I know it would be hard for a third party to believe they were smaller
- I usually would have sex 3 times a night with a partner to ejaculation (bedtime, waking up in middle of the night, morning) but after a period of over a year without meeting a woman I finally started going out again and found I wasn’t even able to ejaculate approximately 70%-80% of the time. The sensation of being touched went away as well. I thought this was a huge drop-off since I literally had sex 5 times one night a year-and-a-half before the point I couldn’t even get it up with my current girlfriend (during our first time) and from what I read the drop-off in sexual performance shouldn’t be so sudden in a normal person
- I wasn’t able to sleep throughout the night. I would wake up a couple hours into sleeping and just lie there for hours on end
- I had little to no energy during the day and would constantly be in a state of drifting off to sleep. For the first time in my life I needed coffee a couple times a day in order to stay awake at work.
- I would get occasional night sweats, but not all the time
- I really had no desire to have sex. I may even go over a month without masturbating, and actually had trouble masturbating to completion.
- I had already finished 3 rounds of P90X, and 2 rounds of a pretty intense weight lifting routine…with my diet dialed in…(I’m now in the middle of round 5 of the 12-week weight lifting cycle) and I was barely seeing any results in putting on muscle mass during weight lifting, or fat loss was extremely lower than what it should have been when I was being strict in diet combined with the amount of calories burned
- I no longer had morning erections (or many erections much at all…sorry to be so sex-heavy about all this)
Anyway, I don’t want to go on and on, but these were the symptoms I told him about before the test, and after contacting him, he wrote back: “Thanks for reaching out. The testosterone is on the lower end of normal and may contribute to your symptoms. However there can be many other factors that can cause you symptoms. I do think it is reasonable to have you see an endocrinologist…”.
So luckily I headed over to see her (the Endocronologist).
She took a blood test (she wants to be conservative in treatment since she told me TRT is usually for life) and found my level was no longer 405 ng/dL, it was 285. So she did a third test at a different time of day to make sure I needed TRT, and it came back 319 ng/dL, with 5.7 pg/mL Free Testosterone.
She prescribed me Androgel 1.62% with two pumps. I had high expectations after reading all the reviews online, and was even nervous that might be too much for me…would I start having Roid Rage?...but I felt no difference. No positive benefits, no negative side effects. (actually, let me edit this, I did start to be able to sleep throughout the night. That is one huge positive benefit of being on T)
Three months afterwards was my follow-up, and I told her I felt no different (other than being able to sleep through the night...still low energy and sleepy during the day). She said something to the effect of, “If we raised your levels and you’re still experiencing symptoms, we may have to send you to someone else to figure out what’s wrong.” This had me worried, but sure enough I was in touch with my body enough and I was right…my levels had barely risen. The results came back with 7.2 pg/mL Free Testosterone. She said she didn’t order the total T levels because Free T is more accurate.
Anyway, she upped me to 3 pumps instead of two…and I’m honestly still not noticing anything. This was 9/23 of this year…today is 12/4 (I put the gel on everyday in the morning, right after the shower on my shoulder and upper arm, just like the directions say). I don’t have an appointment to see her for another month.
She also recommended me to a urologist, who said he would see me again after we saw how this round of 3 pumps a day went, but prescribed me Cialis in the meantime. I took it once and my back was sore for half a week. I thought it may have been due to a heavy back workout, so I tried it again and got one of the worst headaches I’ve had in years (don’t normally get headaches) and was sore as well. So I haven’t tried it again. Also, it seemed like it only had minimal help…still had trouble ejaculating if at all.
Anyway, I’m sooooo sorry for the long post. Even if no one responds, it’s helped me organize my thoughts here. Here are the questions:
- What levels should I have as a target for my Free T or Total T? I feel like she wants me to barely hit “normal” for my levels, when I would rather be in the mid to upper range of what a person has. If I’m at 7.3 pg/mL…is she going to cut me off when I get up to 8.7, or should I be aiming higher since the range is 8.7-25.1?
- Do you think she should continue to barely increase my dosage of Androgel until I start to feel something (in which case, I might not know that even more could help me revert to the old me)…or lean more towards gambling to give me enough I might feel negative side effects and then pull back (which she’s probably adverse to, and could cause other problems)?
- Should I see if there is something else I can use besides Androgel? Either another topical, or switch to injectable…or spend another 3-months trying to tweak levels of something that hasn’t had any benefit to me so far? She seemed to be pro-topical because shots will taper T off near the end of the week…but since I’m not feeling any benefit, I’d rather get at least some feeling for some part of the week.
- Since my T levels were low, is it possible that has that kept me from achieving results when working out? I feel like I’m putting in 80% more effort than a normal person to achieve average results.
- Is there any course of action you would recommend next time I see my doctor? (topics I should bring up, way of handling it I haven’t done so far, etc.) I’m worried she is going to think I’m some hypochondriac testosterone-addict (do those even exist) that just wants more and more, thinking it will be a miracle cure.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, for any advice you could give me, and for having a forum for people to get information about this.
I’m an otherwise healthy male, 39-years-old, who discovered this year I have low testosterone. I discovered this when I had to change health plans and went in for a physical. They ran a blood test and I noticed my T levels were sitting at 405 ng/dL (lab paper said reference levels were 348-1197).
The physician’s assistant who saw me said they were in the “normal” range, so I shouldn’t be worried. In fact, he didn’t even point it out…I had to bring it to his attention.
I had mentioned things I was worried about in general, and didn’t even know these were symptoms of Low T when I was telling him this (before the blood tests came back):
- My testes had shrunk…they had been pretty large before so unfortunately I know it would be hard for a third party to believe they were smaller
- I usually would have sex 3 times a night with a partner to ejaculation (bedtime, waking up in middle of the night, morning) but after a period of over a year without meeting a woman I finally started going out again and found I wasn’t even able to ejaculate approximately 70%-80% of the time. The sensation of being touched went away as well. I thought this was a huge drop-off since I literally had sex 5 times one night a year-and-a-half before the point I couldn’t even get it up with my current girlfriend (during our first time) and from what I read the drop-off in sexual performance shouldn’t be so sudden in a normal person
- I wasn’t able to sleep throughout the night. I would wake up a couple hours into sleeping and just lie there for hours on end
- I had little to no energy during the day and would constantly be in a state of drifting off to sleep. For the first time in my life I needed coffee a couple times a day in order to stay awake at work.
- I would get occasional night sweats, but not all the time
- I really had no desire to have sex. I may even go over a month without masturbating, and actually had trouble masturbating to completion.
- I had already finished 3 rounds of P90X, and 2 rounds of a pretty intense weight lifting routine…with my diet dialed in…(I’m now in the middle of round 5 of the 12-week weight lifting cycle) and I was barely seeing any results in putting on muscle mass during weight lifting, or fat loss was extremely lower than what it should have been when I was being strict in diet combined with the amount of calories burned
- I no longer had morning erections (or many erections much at all…sorry to be so sex-heavy about all this)
Anyway, I don’t want to go on and on, but these were the symptoms I told him about before the test, and after contacting him, he wrote back: “Thanks for reaching out. The testosterone is on the lower end of normal and may contribute to your symptoms. However there can be many other factors that can cause you symptoms. I do think it is reasonable to have you see an endocrinologist…”.
So luckily I headed over to see her (the Endocronologist).
She took a blood test (she wants to be conservative in treatment since she told me TRT is usually for life) and found my level was no longer 405 ng/dL, it was 285. So she did a third test at a different time of day to make sure I needed TRT, and it came back 319 ng/dL, with 5.7 pg/mL Free Testosterone.
She prescribed me Androgel 1.62% with two pumps. I had high expectations after reading all the reviews online, and was even nervous that might be too much for me…would I start having Roid Rage?...but I felt no difference. No positive benefits, no negative side effects. (actually, let me edit this, I did start to be able to sleep throughout the night. That is one huge positive benefit of being on T)
Three months afterwards was my follow-up, and I told her I felt no different (other than being able to sleep through the night...still low energy and sleepy during the day). She said something to the effect of, “If we raised your levels and you’re still experiencing symptoms, we may have to send you to someone else to figure out what’s wrong.” This had me worried, but sure enough I was in touch with my body enough and I was right…my levels had barely risen. The results came back with 7.2 pg/mL Free Testosterone. She said she didn’t order the total T levels because Free T is more accurate.
Anyway, she upped me to 3 pumps instead of two…and I’m honestly still not noticing anything. This was 9/23 of this year…today is 12/4 (I put the gel on everyday in the morning, right after the shower on my shoulder and upper arm, just like the directions say). I don’t have an appointment to see her for another month.
She also recommended me to a urologist, who said he would see me again after we saw how this round of 3 pumps a day went, but prescribed me Cialis in the meantime. I took it once and my back was sore for half a week. I thought it may have been due to a heavy back workout, so I tried it again and got one of the worst headaches I’ve had in years (don’t normally get headaches) and was sore as well. So I haven’t tried it again. Also, it seemed like it only had minimal help…still had trouble ejaculating if at all.
Anyway, I’m sooooo sorry for the long post. Even if no one responds, it’s helped me organize my thoughts here. Here are the questions:
- What levels should I have as a target for my Free T or Total T? I feel like she wants me to barely hit “normal” for my levels, when I would rather be in the mid to upper range of what a person has. If I’m at 7.3 pg/mL…is she going to cut me off when I get up to 8.7, or should I be aiming higher since the range is 8.7-25.1?
- Do you think she should continue to barely increase my dosage of Androgel until I start to feel something (in which case, I might not know that even more could help me revert to the old me)…or lean more towards gambling to give me enough I might feel negative side effects and then pull back (which she’s probably adverse to, and could cause other problems)?
- Should I see if there is something else I can use besides Androgel? Either another topical, or switch to injectable…or spend another 3-months trying to tweak levels of something that hasn’t had any benefit to me so far? She seemed to be pro-topical because shots will taper T off near the end of the week…but since I’m not feeling any benefit, I’d rather get at least some feeling for some part of the week.
- Since my T levels were low, is it possible that has that kept me from achieving results when working out? I feel like I’m putting in 80% more effort than a normal person to achieve average results.
- Is there any course of action you would recommend next time I see my doctor? (topics I should bring up, way of handling it I haven’t done so far, etc.) I’m worried she is going to think I’m some hypochondriac testosterone-addict (do those even exist) that just wants more and more, thinking it will be a miracle cure.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, for any advice you could give me, and for having a forum for people to get information about this.
