Need Opinions If This Test Result is Low T

Pharma / TRT Testosterone Replacement
1

So I was walking down the road a week ago and a sign said “come in for a free evaluation.” Didn’t know what they did, but I walked in and they were a testosterone clinic. They offered to send in my blood work to LabCorp for free test, and would let me know about my results. My results are below, keep in mind I’m 28, almost 29.

  • Albumin, 5.0 g/dL
  • SHBG, 36.1 nmol/L
  • Estradiol, <5.0 pg/mL (undetected)
  • Testosterone, 449 ng/dL
  • Free test (provided by them, not in the test results), 8.8 ng/dL
  • Free test (provided by this calculator), 8.16 ng/dL (1.86%)

The clinic said that this would qualify me for receiving TRT. I’m hessitant on this for a few reasons.

  1. Am I within the normal ranges? From what I can see online, I mostly am though I am on the low range for my age (also estrogen is low). I’m wondering if they said I’m available for treatment because they want more money, they are a national testosterone place though.
  2. While I do have some of the symptoms of low T, I’m unsure if it’s actually the issue. I did used to lift weights 3-5 times/week, but don’t currently, however I do cycle for 2 hours 3-4 times/week. When I would lift, I would stall out pretty regularly. In fact, I couldn’t break beyond the 150 lbs bench. This is after training for a while I hit that plateau, then after I stopped for a year, I got back to that point and hit the same. I also have a lot of abdominal fat that I could never seem to get rid of now matter how clean I ate.
2

No, but that doesn’t mean you can’t feel fine and go without TRT. Clinics make money by prescribing you drugs. If you feel fine I would abstain from TRT until you are older.

Is your sex drive normal? What is the status of your mental health…? I wouldn’t hop on TRT for strictly ‘gym gainz’. Yes you would see results in the gym but you’re married to the needle of the REST OF YOUR LIFE.

3

You have average results. Some people feel fine with these levels, others not. Depends whether you have low t symptoms and how many and how strong they are

4

I started with same calculated free t, I had slightly higher total t and a but higher shbg but also most of the symptoms

5

Could go either way. Unless you have clear symptoms I’d try to steer clear, unless you just like giving yourself shots for a few decades.

If you NEED it then it’s a different story. That low e2 reading is kind of weird though.

6

Even with high TT, I crashed my e2 like this and felt like death. Did you take anything that would lower it?

7

I had to make a new account because my replies have been disabled due to me posting a link in my post, with messaging the moderators being disabled.

My drive for sex is pretty low tbh. I only usually have 1-2 partners a year, and I’m on a 1 year dry spell right now. However, I do jack it at least twice a week. This is probably due to low confidence issues (another sign of low T from what I read). Never been in a serious committed relationship, though have slept with 10-15 women. The longest “relationship” I was in was about 1.5 months, and we would have sex multiple times a week, sometimes multiple times a day.

My mental health is, improving? I do struggle with issues with anxiety and depression, but I have been working on that. COVID + moving across the country by myself recently has not been making it easy. Of course it was messed up pre-COVID

I wasn’t hoping to get on TRT for gym gains, but me plateauing at such a low bench I thought was an indicator of low T, which is why I brought it up.

8

I have not taken anything for it. I used to take finasteride for hair loss, but stopped after 3 months. This was about a year ago, and I feel mostly the same as I used to pre-finasteride.

9

I had 450 total T years ago when I first tested and I felt terrible. Tired, anxious, didn’t want to do anything. Everything was overwhelming.

I went on testosterone pellets and it brought total T up to 1600(peak level after 6 weeks) it was like I woke up out of a coma. Incredible!!!

But like someone else said, it’s different for everybody. Some people feel fine at different levels.

1 Like
10

How old were you when you had 450?

Because my level is only just barely inside one standard deviation of the mean for my age group.

11

I was 36 yrs old when I got tested and I started testosterone pellets shortly after. I’m 42 now. I switched to injections after 3 years of pellets because the pellets would occasionally fall out…meaning they would work their way up to the surface of the skin and eventually pop through. I didn’t have enough fat on my butt so they wouldn’t stay in as good as they would on other people. The pellets are a little bigger than a grain of rice. Smaller than a tic tac.

12

Testosterone is in range, estrogen is not and can cause mental sides effects, depression and anxiety are common. At this E2 level osteoporosis is assured.

In the last couple of months I have seen men with decent testosterone numbers and extremely low E2 and all of these men have one thing in common, they had all been on finasteride.

Finasteride affects the conversion rates of T->DHT and this can have consequences elsewhere.

You may very well need HCG to get your estrogen to a healthy level because I doubt TRT alone will be enough to increase it.

2 Likes
13

E2 is oddly low. Aromatase deficiency?

You could always try some preg/dhea and see if it improves things. That’s where i’d start over TRT.

14

My e2 was single digits pre TRT. Same story. Total T wasn’t horrendous but free sure was. I took fin and dut for probably 5 years total? Everything came up with TRT so I always assumed there just wasn’t enough free T to make much e2 with.

15

Did they happen to make a full recovery on HCG?

I am trying to get in contact with an endocrinologist right now to set up an appointment. I haven’t been on finasteride for a year, I figured this would have corrected itself by now.

16

It was recent that these men started threads that not enough time has passed to report a positive or negative outcome. I’m talking in the span of a couple of weeks, so it should be that hard to locate their threads.

There is no guarantee anything will correct by itself, that’s the issue with finasteride is that some men have not recovered.

Don’t expect your endo to know anything about sex hormones, most are forced to seek out a private TRT doc to get treatment because your average doc just isn’t well versed in the sex hormones and just dismisses your concerns.