Age:46
Weight: 96kg, was 110kg 2 years ago. I’m a pretty thickset guy, I was at peak fitness while in the army about 18 years ago, and weighed 88kg very lean even then. less worried about weight than body composition really.
Body fat: about 20% (was 28% by Dexa scan 2 years ago). Limbs are very lean, and have lost a lot of weight while building muscle over the last 2 years, but the last residual is around the middle and seems impossible to shift.
Diet: clean eating last 2.5 years, mostly paleo but some dairy. very infrequent alcohol.
Exercise: lifting 2xwk, cardio about 1-2/wk. Doing Tough Mudder in Oct, so I am happy with both strength and conditioning (except the love handles!)
Other health: diagnoses sleep apnea a few years ago via sleep study, but no treatment at the moment = snoring.
Symptoms: Loss of libido, fat in “woman places”, no morning wood for years. Getting moody.
So in the UK, its hard to get the health system to even look at this issue, so i privately tested and the following results came back today. If anyone could recommend further test required it would be great, as well as any feedback and advice on what these numbers might be saying. Initially I was concerned that I might have lowT and high Estradiol, given the fat deposit locations, and worried that the fat deposits were creating more E2 in a cycle hard to break - 2 years of clean eating and solid exercise have helped but I seem to be plateauing.
My initial reading is that T is not so bad, but E2 is quite low, probably because of quite high SHBG.
Results are as follows:
FSH 7.8 IU/L Range 1.5-12.4
LH 4.9 IU/L range 1.7-8.6
Test 21.7 nmol/L (equal to 625 ng/dL) range 7.6-31.4 (219-904) so this seems OK for a 46yo.
SHBG 81 nmol/L range 16-55 so this seems very high
DHEA Sulphante 6.6 umil/L range 0.44-13.4
17Beta Estradiol 54 pmolL range 44-156. I think this converts to 14.7 pg/ml which seem low.
My reading would suggest that high SHBG is more a baromoter of what is going on elswher and is hard to adjust directly. WHat would you guys recommend?
Many thanks