Low free testosterone
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I have free testosterone below the healthy range and haven’t discovered any methods to improve it greatly. All the symptoms are there, including low energy, low libido, erectile dysfunction, difficulty handling stress, aversion to risk, and so on. Getting more protein and fat-soluble vitamins, exercising, sleep, supplements (including cynomel + cynoplus), etc do not seem to help. To clarify, I need to actually raise testosterone and not just lower estrogen.
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@Conundrum How long have you been incorporating the bioenergetic efforts? In my experience, it can easily take a year or more to heal the liver with the best methods like t3, aspirin, niacinamide, red light, lowish fat, pufa elimination, juices, etc. As metabolic rate improves, adding higher vitamin A consumption will help. in the mean time I'd not be worried about it if you are doing all these things.
Meanwhile, symptom relief via things like prog/dhea/vit E/aspirin could be helpful if you're not already doing those things.
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@LetTheRedeemed I haven’t been taking thyroid for a full year but I’ve been doing things like high sugar and more calcium than phosphorous for at least a year. Have mostly avoided the worst sources of pufa for many years. I might have to become more regimental with some of these things again like taking thyroid and eating liver/oysters consistently as well as sun/exercise. I have become fatigued with health-focused routines, nothing has cured any of my issues anyway (and I have done some drastic things like raw organs and bulbs of raw garlic before), though I don’t mean to complain. I guess the one thing that did ever help me in the aspect of low libido/low T was full-body sunning but I don’t the privacy to do that. I wouldn’t want to take progesterone because it is anti-androgenic but I would possibly try DHEA.
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@Conundrum Following. From my observations, low libido and erectile dysfunction are often caused by low free testosterone.
I have an online friend, he has been dealing with low libido and ED for ages. He has good Total Testosterone levels (in the 600 ng/dL range), yet his free T is in the lower half.
The only measure that made his libido return was taking HCG injections.Seems like free Testosterone has to be in the upper half of the normal range, for libido to work as it should.
I also managed to increase my Total T (up to 590 ng/dL), yet my free T remains low (10 pg/mL).
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Do you have any of these numbers?
Total Testosterone
Free Testosterone
SHBG
Estradiol
DHT -
Have you been supplementing k2 mk4 and an E complex?
What’s your body composition? Are you fat? Lean and continuously in a caloric deficit?
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@Conundrum said in Low free testosterone:
I might have to become more regimental with some of these things again like taking thyroid and eating liver/oysters consistently as well as sun/exercise. I have become fatigued with health-focused routines, nothing has cured any of my issues anyway...
I definitely understand. I found that many people at end-stage-health (who usually find Peat after everything else, and in the most extreme health scenario) have non-health problems that are actually impacting their health in very real ways - hopelessness. Where is hopelessness manifesting in your life? Hopelessness is a killer. Of course, you may still want to back off of some regiments for a few weeks to get a heart reset for the struggle...
The few "regimental" things I consider the most significant, are whatever you're doing to increase gut motility, and taking thyroid, if you've done the adequate research:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIF3-A7lGGw(and I have done some drastic things like raw organs and bulbs of raw garlic before), though I don’t mean to complain. I guess the one thing that did ever help me in the aspect of low libido/low T was full-body sunning but I don’t the privacy to do that. I wouldn’t want to take progesterone because it is anti-androgenic but I would possibly try DHEA.
Was this for bacterial overgrowth?
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@GreekDemiGod have not heard of HCG injections but read a healthline article on it. could you tell me more? mostly concerned about side effects with things like this
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@Crypt-Keeper
this was from august 26, 2022
F Dihydrotestosterone 42 (ng/dL)
F Testosterone 525 /reference range 264-916(ng/dL)
F Free Testosterone(Direct) 9.0 /reference range 9.3-26.5(pg/mL)
F Sex Hormone Binding Globulin 29.6(nmol/L)
F Estradiol 21.1 /reference range 7.6-42.6(pg/mL)May 12, 2020
Free testosterone 10.1
Testosterone, Serum 593Even though the last test I got was two years ago it's been bad for several years and seems to have been on a downward trend (I have not since experienced relief of symptoms so I doubt it has reversed).
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@RawGoatMilk88 I supplement both, not everyday but enough. I am on the lean side (always been) but not usually in a deficit, sort of skinny fat right now but I just haven't lifted in months. I know it helps to lift and I've done it consistently in the past but when I was lifting last my energy levels were just so low and I thought it might be a stressor. I think it was but always planned to do so again (probably soon).
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@LetTheRedeemed you are right about hopelessness and it is definitely manifest in my life. It's something I have to deal with on a spiritual level. I've known about Peat for about seven years but never took a deep dive into all his thought until about a year and a half ago. I think the main thing that kept me away was the pro-sugar thing, but learning more about the thyroid and how pufa disupts sugar metabolism helped me warm up to it. I have candida and sugar makes it worse, even with flowers of sulfur, so that's part of why I didn't like it, even though I always trusted natural sugar in moderation over alternative sweeteners. It was lab-tested and confirmed in 2018 but I've had candida symptoms (such as thrush) since I was around 12-13 which was '09-10. I think it was caused by stress in childhood. The thrush is not just white tongue but on areas of my body, I can use clotrimazole and betamethasone dipropionate (a steroid cream) to manage it on occasion when needed. I think my gut is likely related to my low testosterone but I haven't solved that yet either despite my best efforts with natural remedies and even some medications like fluconazole (which did nothing discernible). As for thyroid I usually take daily one cynomel and one cynoplus, crush them within the folds of some parchment paper using a mortar and pestle and put the powder in a mug to spoon out from on the tip of a teaspoon, just eyeballing it in proportion to how much I'm eating with it. Besides raw carrots / endotoxin clearers and going for walks I don't recall what else works for gut motility.
