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Comment by hu3 | Hacker News Reader

Last week I got told by an endocrinologist that the current suggested average testosterone levels are too low and that he recommended almost doubling the average to his healthy patients.

Mine is currently hovering around 350. I'll gradually increase it to 600 and see how it feels and how my body reacts.

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What treatments for this does he recommend short of direct exogenous hormone therapy (androgen shots/pills)?

Probably blasting your balls with UV light?

I think the clinical evidence for this is… limited, and no doctor is going to recommend a tanning bed or exposure to more sunlight. They should do a hormone panel to see why the T is low - could be an underlying thyroid issue or overproduction of something like aromatase which is converting too much T into estrogen or SHBG which prevents T from being utilized.

Treatments like HCG mono therapy to increase upstream hormone production might be used, but usually the easiest, most effective and simplest thing is exogenous injectable testosterone cypionate or test entheanate, injected once or twice weekly.

I know it's not allowed here, but I was joking.

> Mine is currently hovering around 350. I'll gradually increase it to 600

What units are this? Free or total testosterone?

Sorry I should have used international notation.

My blood tested as having 350 Nanograms per decilitre. Or 350 Nanograms per 100mL.

350 ng/100mL equals 12.1351 nmol/L

See: https://balancemyhormones.co.uk/testosterone-units-conversio...

How does it work to increase testoterone? Just medication?

Things that increase testosterone levels that I know of: medication, reducing excess body fat (but not too much), frequent exercises and reducing stress.

But realistically, significant increase in testosterone levels is only achievable with medication. And that's REALLY not something you want to do without a doctor monitoring your frequent blood tests. Because there is always a price to pay when we intervene with medication. And you want that price to be the lowest possible.

Not sure why this was downvoted, TRT patients need to keep an eye on a few different blood levels - particularly hematocrit and lipids.

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