Testosterone Deficiency

[pnico]

Hi,

I was recently diagnosed with low testerone. My primary care took blood work in the am and saw that my total testerone levels were at 190 and 210 of 2 blood tests.
He then send me to a urologist who took blood work. His office never told me what the number was but he did say that the number was low and go see an endocrinologist.

Im a 31 yr old male that has virtually no sex drive, concentration problems, sleep issues, bad memory and lacks energy.

Im confused as to the difference between total and free. After doing all this reading online, it would appear that free is what is more important but having low total is not good either..
but I also have come to the conclusion that I could have some other hormonal imbalance as well that is killing my sex drive and not allowing me to feel that energy that people with good testeorne do have!

What are your thoughts?
thank you
phil

[forrest_and_trees]

It would sound to me like you need to begin treatment. Haven't any of your physicians prescribed anything yet? For the record, I would not wait as things will only become more difficult over time. I'm 41 and only found out about my deficiencies a few months back; I sure wish I new about this 10 years ago. The good news is the treatment does work, however it takes time so you will need to be patient. Good luck and keep us posted with how things progress.

[pnico]

thanks for the reply.
My primary care was going to prescribe androgel but I decided to get a second opiion and see an endocrinologist.
Shes the one that took the blood test and found the slightly higher free testerone in the am, around 8 BUT that is when testerone is naturally higher. So that doesnt surprise me.
what has me confused is that I have low TOTAL testerone hovering between 190-250 out of what I was told should be, for a healthy 31 yr old male near 1000.

This cant be good. I spoke to a friend who had the same problem. His free test was high, but his total test was REALLY low. He went on androgel and felt better within a couple of weeks.
the thing he said to be aware of is that since my TOTAL levels are THAT low, that even if my free levels were high, they CANT be that high because my totals are low. Its like what is 2% of 190? As opposed to 2% of like 1000??

So do you thinnk, based on the information I have you I should go back to my primary and try the androgel as he oversees it?

Thank you for the reply. Its is appreciated. This is all new to me and im trying to make sense of something that is complicated in my mind.

[forrest_and_trees]

I'm not a professional so I can't really make any recommendations; however I can offer you my opinion based on my own personal experience. In which case I would say to begin the gel treatment. I can't really comment on the *free* levels however, I was diagnosed with a total level of 174 and they say anything below 300 is low and yes, it does go as high as 1000+ for someone your age. There is practically no risk involved in trying out the treatment short term, i.e. 90 days or so; so why not give it a try and see how you respond. The truth is, what really matters are the symptoms and not so much the actual levels. What you should be asking yourself is: what are your symptoms and what are the concerns you have as to how they are effecting your life and then go from there.

[pennypincher]

You definitely need to be on the androgel. Have you had a bone density test? Low testosterone can also cause osteoporosis. Androgel will help your body restore its bone density if it is low. My husband has a similar problem and had to start androgel in his late 30's. When he started his bone density was
-1.6. After being on androgel for a year his bone density was back into the positive numbers.