Wildly fluctuating levels in young male

[Ctz2847]

I'm a young male in my early 20's but am experiencing lethargy, irritability and mood issues, difficulty losing weight (but easily gaining it), difficulty putting on muscle, brain fog, etc. I visited my doc about 1.5 years ago and asked him to check Thyroid and Testosterone. Result came back with Thyroid all good but Total T was at 229ng with lab range of 241-827 and low vitamin D. The Doc wasn't worried about the T and just had me supplement Vitamin D.

I started doing reading of my own about how to boost levels and made sure I was eating healthy, working out and lifting heavy, sleeping well, and taking it easy on the alcohol. Over the past 1.5 years I've done more bloods and my numbers fluctuate pretty dramatically.

For example, I've had total T of 229ng, 555ng, 363ng, 263ng. The last 3 had ref range of 348-1197ng. In addition, free T has been anywhere from 1.5pg/mL to 23.4pg/mL with a ref range of 5.1-41.5.

I did a few bloods just recently and over the course of 3 months Total T came out at 263 in June (E2 at 6.1pg/mL), 346 on Aug 1 (E2 at 12.7pg/mL) , and 515 on Aug 15 (free T 15.1).

Are these fluctuations normal?

 

[kyle]

Have you ever tried nootropics? They help regulate my mood and help me feel more aware and focused...could be worth a shot

 

[Vince Carter]

To eliminate any variables, I would test at the same time on the same day with the same lab. For instance if some of your tests one was at 8 one was at noon, and one was at 6pm...your Testosterone is going to be all over the place as it's naturally higher in the AM and tapers thru the day.

 

[Ctz2847]

Have you ever tried nootropics? They help regulate my mood and help me feel more aware and focused...could be worth a shot

What do you recommend? I've tried ZMA, Magnesium, and Ashwagandha without much success.

To eliminate any variables, I would test at the same time on the same day with the same lab. For instance if some of your tests one was at 8 one was at noon, and one was at 6pm...your Testosterone is going to be all over the place as it's naturally higher in the AM and tapers thru the day.

All my bloods were taken in the morning within an hour or two of waking up.

 

[johndoesmith]

LH and FSH along with a few others, thyroid, SHBG would help.

It's hard to make sense of the data that you posted. It helps to organize the data, so all the results from each day you went to the lab, are next to each other.

Did you happen to have more tests ran that you didn't include here?

E2 range would be helpful.
Even without the E2 range, that is pretty damn low. That causes a lot of problems being low.

When you have 3 tests all pretty close to eachother, and one test that is significantly different, it's easiest to just assume it was an error. It may be accurate, or it may not be. This is assuming you took them all at the same time of day! If there's variance in the time of day, it will change it a bit. For the most part you wanna do about 8-10AM.
You can also average all the results. That comes to 352. Still painfully low, and with low E2, definitely warrants treatment in my opinion.

You'd need LH and FSH to know how to treat.