Should I Get My Hormone Levels Tested?

43 year old male. Been exercising for the past 15+ years including powerlifting and powerbuilding style training for most of it. Typically lift 4 days per week. I also typically get 1-2 general/cardio style workouts in per week. I typically eat healthy with good amounts of vegetables and fruits and lean meats. I am pretty flexible with my diet and do eat some junk food/desserts because i lack self control with sweets :wink: but i have weighed ~190-193lbs for the past couple years. My waist is 34-35 inches (i have a large waist in general). Id guess my bodyfat between 12-15%. I don’t take any medications and only supplement I take is creatine. Have never taken any test/TRT or any other “steroid”. Don’t smoke/vape/nicotine and drink maybe 1-3 beers a week. I sleep between 6.5 and 7 hours a night with about 7 hours average per week with weekends. I tape my mouth so i breathe through my nose and don’t have any sleep apnea that i can tell and my watch (for what its worth) says I’m getting good/great sleep most nights. Generally I’m not tired throughout the day. I do work at a desk all day (engineer) and my job is somewhat stressful and mentally tedious. The gym is after work for me and usually makes me feel like a new person when i leave. Because I’m at a desk I’m certainly more sedentary than i would prefer, but it is what it is. I have had some anxiety/stress issues the past year between job stress, one child going off to college, two other children and generally just a lot of stuff to manage (busy time in life).

Ive been noticing the past ~3 years that i have less morning erections, less libido and sometimes have slight issues getting it up (I’ve never had actual failure to achieve an erection). My wife and I are still active in that area, but i don’t have the same drive that i did a few years ago. Its been quite frustrating for me personally, even though I attribute most of it to normal aging.

I’m not sure what to do because I don’t have any doctors in my area that i really trust. Its clinic after clinic but i don’t really want to start TRT (unless its truly necessary), and i don’t trust them to not just throw that at me day 1. I’m sure that sleep is small part of the issue, and I’m going to work on increasing my sleep time to at least 7 hours per night. I will have weeks where i feel “younger” again and then weeks where i feel lower libido, so it changes.

I’m wondering what you guys would recommend that I do? Ive had my testosterone tested two times in the past ~4 years. Once it was around 450 and once around 600. But its been probably 2 years since the last test.

Thanks!

Howdy. Any chance your screen name has anything to do with the Mars rover? Anyway…

I will be clear: we cannot give you medical advice via the forum. To direct you appropriately, we need even more information and be able to have a back and forth. That is best-served via a consultation with us. Connecting with a local provider is also an option, one that you’ll need in the future outside of this specific issue.

In a situation like this, checking an initial total testosterone may be reasonable, but it would not be done in isolation. In other words, pending more information, there would almost certainly be an additional workup to include other lab testing and information gathering vs. focusing only on testosterone before a diagnosis has been made.

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Ok thanks and understood. I will consider it!