23 Year-Old with Low Testosterone

[Yngvi]

Has anyone personally ever seen a positive outcome from prescription anti-depressants???
These are for the terminally ill and bored housewives who have decided they want to take drugs while pretending they are pious paragons of virtue.

Depression is normal if you are in a situation that should be making you depressed (Such as the multi-year Covid lockdown fiasco and the resulting irreparable physical, financial and psychological damage to young people)
You don't want to be the smiling fool, praised for your drug-induced ability to accept the unacceptable.

This will likely be a long, tough road back, regardless of T levels.
Good luck.

[TheChubbyViking]

I don't know, but it sounds plausible. Look it up. I do know that SSRIs are no better than placebo for depression, and that your"doctor" put a 20-year-old kid on the goddamn things, without even thinking about your sex hormone levels.



What difference does it make? You can always repeat the test.



Other than getting outside, training, eating correctly, having a nasty girlfriend, and getting healthy, the only way to increase testosterone is to add testosterone. If you actually believe that adding testosterone will sterilize you, don't do it. I guess your "doctor" told you this too.

Thank you--I appreciate all the feedback.

Regarding the idea of going on TRT potentially sterilizing me, you are correct that my doctor said that (although not quite in such drastic terms). He said that it would decrease sperm count, as well as increase the # of abnormal sperm, thus decreasing my chance of reproducing and increasing my chance that, if I do reproduce, my offspring will have a defect.

Toward the 25-30 minute mark of your podcast with Jay Campbell, Jay acknowledges that TRT does decrease sperm count, but that you can go on HCG (Human chorionic gonadotropin) to combat the effects. He states that if you use TRT intelligently you don't become infertile.

If you have any other thoughts on this matter, I am all ears. Thank you for your time and feedback.

[TheChubbyViking]

I'm not trained in the medical field, but I've researched anti depressants; my opinion is they cause more harm than good, and can adversely affect hormones. Also, they're highly addictive to neurotransmitters and withdrawal is a bitch.

Eat more grass fed steaks, and cut out the sugar and refined processed poisons; and as Coach said, get some sunshine.

I agree that cleaning up my diet will be key--thank you for the specific examples!

[Jovan Dragisic]

I have been on the anti-depressant from May 2021-present.

I was very depressed. Thankfully I've been able to do some significant work mentally and thus feel comfortable with weaning off, and that process has gone well enough. The depressive symptoms aren't gone, but they are somewhat improved and I am much better at handling them now.

How did the depression manifest? Were you just feeling bad or were you unable to get out of bed for days on end?

[smokeyjones]

I'm not trained in the medical field, but I've researched anti depressants; my opinion is they cause more harm than good, and can adversely affect hormones. Also, they're highly addictive to neurotransmitters and withdrawal is a bitch.

The big issue with withdrawal is that they increase the available serotonin in the bloodstream. Which the body adapts to. Then, you stop & there's suddenly nothing slowing the natural reabsorption. It drops below what the body has accustomed to believing is homeostatic and your body protests.

Whether or not it's an effective treatment is another argument. One thing for sure is they rarely, if ever, measure the serotonin levels in your blood before prescribing it. Infact, I know someone who got prescribed Prozac solely after a 5minute questionnaire. Which is the equivalent of prescribing testosterone to someone because they told their doctor they feel tired sometimes.

Rip,
I am not asking you about my training, because I don't feel like discussions of my training are worth your time at this point since I am not currently doing the program.

My goal in this post was simply to ask about my testosterone levels.

3. Any other recommendations for increasing test?

As someone in IT, that's a big pet peeve of mine. When you're asking someone for advice & they ask you a question. Answer the question. Don't make your own assumptions as to why they've asked & decide whether or not you believe answering it is relevant.

Cause there you go - the last thing you asked is recommendations for increasing it naturally. Which you do by sleeping, eating, training & living properly.

Fix the obvious and reassess. It may well be that replacement is something you'll need to consider at some point. However, being on the lower side of the average range is not the reason your squats have maxed out at 255.

[TheChubbyViking]

CV, are you in the US?

Yessir

How did the depression manifest? Were you just feeling bad or were you unable to get out of bed for days on end?

Both. Hardly getting out of bed for a week was the precipitating event that led to me getting help.

As someone in IT, that's a big pet peeve of mine. When you're asking someone for advice & they ask you a question. Answer the question. Don't make your own assumptions as to why they've asked & decide whether or not you believe answering it is relevant.

Cause there you go - the last thing you asked is recommendations for increasing it naturally. Which you do by sleeping, eating, training & living properly.

Fix the obvious and reassess. It may well be that replacement is something you'll need to consider at some point. However, being on the lower side of the average range is not the reason your squats have maxed out at 255.

Thanks for your input--all fair points for sure!

[Mark Rippetoe]

Both. Hardly getting out of bed for a week was the precipitating event that led to me getting help.

Who allowed you to stay in bed all day? Sounds like a lack of supervision to me.

[TheChubbyViking]

Who allowed you to stay in bed all day? Sounds like a lack of supervision to me.

I was a college student and my roommate was gone for most of the day. I went from a straight-A student to skipping all my classes for a week. Definitely was an awful week, but thankfully I reached out to a professor eventually. Thankfully I am much past that point!

[Jason Donaldson]

Yessir
...
Hardly getting out of bed for a week was the precipitating event that led to me getting help.

GPs are generally not the folks to talk to about testosterone. Providers like Wittmer Rejuvenation Clinic and Tier 1 Health and Wellness are what you're looking for. They are equipped to discuss all the associated issues with you, including fertility and such. In my experiences with Wittmer's folks, they're not just a revolving TRT mill - they deal with you as a whole patient.

As someone who's dealt with depression most of my life, let me preface this next bit with a caveat: I am NOT saying "just suck it up and stop being depressed." As the analogy is sometimes given, that can be like telling an asthmatic "just breathe better." Rather, what I'm about to tell you is HOW to get better at functioning, even in spite of being depressed.

Structure and responsibility have always been major factors for me. As Rip's question about staying in bed gets at, I had a much harder time fighting it when I had more options to stay put, a long time ago. As many intense situations and environments teach us, it's amazing what you can do when you have no choice - military training, emergency response, having people depending on you, positive peer pressure, not having the option to bail on a hard set...these are all instructive, and help to build the mental capacity to deal with depression and stress. This is where a lot of advice here is coming from, like doing BJJ or similar - there's a liberation to the urgent, and practicing being in such situations can be very therapeutic. The external forming builds internal strength to turn intention into action.

This ties into my experience with TRT. The symptoms of low T crept up on me slowly - and I was hitting PRs during that time, too - but I was increasingly aware of depression-like symptoms growing. The big thing it gave me back was agency, and amazingly quickly. Agency is vital to dealing with...well, everything, and depression in particular. It may or may not be part of your solution, and that may change over time, but Dr. Wittmer's / Dr. Nichols's clinics can help you figure that out. The more you seize agency, the better you get at it, and the more you can function, then thrive, even in the dark.

Standard disclaimer: I am not a medical professional, etc., these are just my experiences...

But I know I'm right.

[Jovan Dragisic]

Both. Hardly getting out of bed for a week was the precipitating event that led to me getting help.

But was it hardly getting out of bed or not getting out of bed at all?