Interpreting my free testosterone

[Tommy Wall]

Hi,
I can´t understand the measurement and ranges of my free testosterone (“Testosterona livre”) on my last blood work.
6,28 Pg/mL ref: 3,38—34,17. Haven´t seen these funny range numbers before on this Forum. Do I have low free testosterone or?
If too low, what to do to increase them?

Thx!

 

[Vettester Chris]

Tommy, free & bio available test is the "actual" amount of testosterone that is available to be used by the body. It's usually a small amount, usually ranging from 1% to 4% of the total serum amount. Imagine if you had a bucket of water for drinking. However, we are only going to give you a small cup and you get 1 fill per day. Well testosterone is similar. All that test is in the body, but only a small amount is available to be used. Unfortunately, none of this is equal for each guy. Depending on variables like SHBG and Albumin, some guys have 1%, and some will have 3.2% like myself. So when someone asks, "What's the best testosterone level to have?", it's an irrelevant question! Two guys can have 800ng/dl of testosterone, yet one of those guys can easily have twice the amount of actual testosterone than the other guy.

In your case, if I'm reading it right, your free test % is at 1.11%. I'm a little perplexed with this, because your SHBG level is in a real good place. Using a free test calculator, it "should" be more in the 2.4% range, unless something ultra crazy is going on with your albumin (I don't think it is). My opinion is that you might want to retest this at some point to make sure there wasn't any lab errors (they do happen sometimes).

Now, the one thing that really caught my eye was your thyroid results. Chief, your FT4 is below the lab reference range. Again, either an error, or we have some other things to talk about. We need to see the whole picture with the thyroid labs .. Free T3, Reverse T3, Antibodies (TPO & TgAb). I would have expected to probably see your TSH much higher than 2.86, but this could be accurate if T3 is elevated, which could offset some of the demand with the feedback loop on TSH. Again, without labs, I can only speculate. See what you can find out ...

Also, let us know how you are feeling (energy, libido, fatigue, sleep patterns, body temperature, etc.).

 

[Tommy Wall]

Hi Vettester Chris,

Thank´s for your answer my question so well!
Woh what a great forum this is with so much "know how" and briljant info etc..

Regarding my Albumin it has been between 4,8—5,3 g/dl since some years.
My GP called me up regarding my concern of my low FT4 and my question - if my values would justify orderin a more complete labs including FT3 etc.. and she just said “oh nothing to worry about the levels is OK”. I´ll guess one should be half dead before she would be bothered. So I´ll guess I will have to order those labs by myself (costly though) but if you think it would be worth it, I will definitely ask for them.

I am 53 years old, 172cm and weight +/- 88-90kg (I´ll guess +/-10 kg overweight) but otherwise in pretty good shape. My lipids have always been high and I´ve been on statins for 12 years (genetic familial hypercholesterolemia). I don´t panic though because I believe that half of those who drop stone dead due to infarcts have normal values so why worry so much.
After I started with TRT I do feel warmer and have more of a red face but it dramatically got better after changing from 3w to 1w testo injections. What a difference! I am happy to have learnt that from this forum! Before I almost had a purple face—I can imagine the hematocrit/hemoglobin etc. must have been sky high the first 5 days after 250mg test injection. My Libido is OK but I do still have some fatigue. Recently suffer from Hematospermia -first red and brown semen) hopefully it is nothing to worry about. Prostatitis or some side effect from Cialis or some other supplements. freaks me out though.


Next year will post a better and more complete labs and post something that might be of concern to others as well.

THx!

 

[Vettester Chris]

Tommy, did your physician run a PSA lab, and give you a proper prostate exam? I don't like the sounds of the discolored semen. I had a prostate infection when I was younger, and experienced some similar results. IMO it needs to be addressed.

On thyroid response from your doctor ... Her comments are just absurd!! Seriously, what's the point of running the damn labs if she isn't going to use them as a tool to evaluate your health? The results are not even within the reference range and she is just discounting it as normal. She's wasting your time, money, and blood if she doesn't provide you with an accurate interpretation of these results, and she is not able to see the need to probe further with additional labs.

Will look forward to additional labs. On your albumin, it's a tad bit higher than what I might expect to see, but again, a "tad", nothing alarming. Would still expect to see your free testosterone over 2% based on your SHBG. Maybe just look at running these labs again when you post everything up after the 1st.

You can research all of this in our forum ... Enjoy the holidays!

 

[Tommy Wall]

Thx Vettester!

Yes your are right what a physician and even told her that my mom and my sister suffers from thyroid problems and are medicated for that.

My PSA is at 0,5 ng/ml so it should be OK. I think that I might be overstimulated by everything I take beside Testosterone and HCG, like Maca, Mura prurience (dopa), Citrulline, Zinc etc....all that and together very little sex life due to bad relationship with my wife. (Once a month, really what´s the point to be a superman then lol). So when I finally get to ejaculate it becomes extremely strong and maybe something might have burst when I was pushing it out to hard. First it was really red and now after another 3 times, it is more brownish. No pain though.
This is very personal and I feel a bit reluctant to post this, but I hope someone out there also has experienced something like this as well.
Happy Holiday!