Testosterone tested, questions about results

[Steve Cox]

Hi all,

I recently had my annual checkup at the VA and overall, except for my neck and having to finally give in and start taking BP medication, I'm in to be in pretty good health for a nearly 62yo male. At my checkup, I asked the doctor to submit instructions to the lab to check my Testosterone and PSA levels. They came back as follows:

Result Reference Range
TESTOSTERONE (FV) 2.62 ng/mL 1.75-7.81 ng/mL
PSA (FV) 1.71 ng/mL 0.0-4.0 ng/mL

My two questions here are first, what are the figures saying, other than I appear to be on the low side of "normal"? Specifically, when I try to convert or equate these figures (which I'm guessing represent the Free Value), they don't correspond to figures I've seen elsewhere. Other sites, discussions here included either give no value or are in different values such as mg/dL and such, and so far I've not been able to convert these where they make sense with other articles. Second, once converted, how does the VA's "reference range" value compare to ideal for my age group?

Thanks all for any insight here as it will help me decide my course of action.
Steve

[Mark Rippetoe]

Your testosterone is low. Your PSA is irrelevant. Surely you do not intend to rely on the VA for TRT.

[Steve Cox]

No, I don't intend to use the VA for this, especially since they haven't been in contact to say it needs correction. Thanks for the quick reply coach. Sorry about how the results posted above, I was hoping the tabs would've carried over making it easier to read. How does their reference range of 1.75-7.81 ng/mL compare to what is ideal or optimum? That's what I'm struggling to understand is where I should target.

[Mark Rippetoe]

You are at the bottom of their reference range. We have discussed this at length on the podcast 4 times. The reference range is the data obtained from a sample of maybe 1000 men. You are at the bottom. Is that where you want to be? Optimum is as high as you can get it.

[Steve Cox]

Thanks again, and your hint on no upper range optimum is kind of what I suspected. Since I don't do podcasts, I wasn't aware of the coverage on this there, so I'll go look them up.