Hi,
Writing with a question about my fiance's blood work results. He went to his doctor recently to address some concerns regarding chronic fatigue, low sex drive, and erectile problems. He's 30, 5'7, 160 lbs, works a physically demanding job.
His blood work results came back as 240 ng/dL, with 241-827 as the listed range (I don't personally have the rest of the lab results, but everything else was checked as in-range, except for a Vitamin D deficiency). His doctor seems to be steering him away from testosterone therapy, because she said it's so close to the normal level that it's not a problem--and then listed all the side effects that could occur with the therapy and apparently discouraged him from it. I normally wouldn't question that, but since he had so many symptoms of low T, I did. And from what I've read, that would barely in the "normal" range for my grandfather, let alone for a 30 year old.
Without going into too much detail, our sex life seems to particularly be suffering. He has initiated sex once in the past few weeks and that went fine, but the three recent times that I have been the initiator, he's struggled with maintaining an erection and we were actually only able to finish--with a lot of difficulty--one of those times. This is about average for us, though he likes to claim that the amount of sex we have is "normal". Obviously the fact that I am frequently turned down/that he's unable to perform is not great for my self-esteem but I can push that aside for the sake of unbiased judgement, and it still seems like this frequent of a problem is unusual for someone of his age and health?
His doctor seems so against it, but looking at the symptoms: He wants to sleep/nap more than anyone else I know, he can maybe have non-problematic sex once a week unless he's taking male enhancement supplements (and sometimes those don't even help), and deals with depression and regularly describes his mental state as "foggy". Since his doctor is kind of steering him away from it, he's not feeling like it's the right path, but he's also asking for my opinion....
From people who are more experienced than I am, I'm asking for opinions: Are his levels too low? Am I right in thinking these are symptoms of the low testosterone? Should he ask another doctor? Or is this one right in saying he's close enough to the normal range to just ignore it? I'm worried that even though I'm trying not to, I'm projecting our sex problems onto this number and naming testosterone therapy as a solution.
Any help/thoughts/opinions are appreciated. I really don't know what to tell him or what advice to give.
Writing with a question about my fiance's blood work results. He went to his doctor recently to address some concerns regarding chronic fatigue, low sex drive, and erectile problems. He's 30, 5'7, 160 lbs, works a physically demanding job.
His blood work results came back as 240 ng/dL, with 241-827 as the listed range (I don't personally have the rest of the lab results, but everything else was checked as in-range, except for a Vitamin D deficiency). His doctor seems to be steering him away from testosterone therapy, because she said it's so close to the normal level that it's not a problem--and then listed all the side effects that could occur with the therapy and apparently discouraged him from it. I normally wouldn't question that, but since he had so many symptoms of low T, I did. And from what I've read, that would barely in the "normal" range for my grandfather, let alone for a 30 year old.
Without going into too much detail, our sex life seems to particularly be suffering. He has initiated sex once in the past few weeks and that went fine, but the three recent times that I have been the initiator, he's struggled with maintaining an erection and we were actually only able to finish--with a lot of difficulty--one of those times. This is about average for us, though he likes to claim that the amount of sex we have is "normal". Obviously the fact that I am frequently turned down/that he's unable to perform is not great for my self-esteem but I can push that aside for the sake of unbiased judgement, and it still seems like this frequent of a problem is unusual for someone of his age and health?
His doctor seems so against it, but looking at the symptoms: He wants to sleep/nap more than anyone else I know, he can maybe have non-problematic sex once a week unless he's taking male enhancement supplements (and sometimes those don't even help), and deals with depression and regularly describes his mental state as "foggy". Since his doctor is kind of steering him away from it, he's not feeling like it's the right path, but he's also asking for my opinion....
From people who are more experienced than I am, I'm asking for opinions: Are his levels too low? Am I right in thinking these are symptoms of the low testosterone? Should he ask another doctor? Or is this one right in saying he's close enough to the normal range to just ignore it? I'm worried that even though I'm trying not to, I'm projecting our sex problems onto this number and naming testosterone therapy as a solution.
Any help/thoughts/opinions are appreciated. I really don't know what to tell him or what advice to give.
