Experience with Testosterone Replacement Therapy in the UK

PropaneFitness Podcast

This is a guest post from a current Propane Athlete and Performance coach about his experience with Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT). People are usually pretty cloak and dagger talking about this kind of stuff, so it’s an honour to see such a candid account here. It's a shame that we have had to anonymise the guest, but unfortunately this topic is still stigmatised. We hope that this can change over the coming years and that TRT & male hypogonadism can be eventually recognised with an equal footing to female HRT. If you’ve considered TRT in the past, or worried that you had low testosterone, read on. This guy has in transformed his body, and discovered while losing 26kg, during the process that he had low Testosterone. He discusses how Testosterone affects you physically, emotionally and psychologically and how TRT has radically transformed his body and his life. He has become an ‘accidental expert’ on TRT as result of his own diagnosis, research and therapy and also just by diving in and really figuring out some of the pitfalls and some of the stigma that are associated with TRT, particularly in the UK. Before my fat-loss journey and diagnosis, I was a typical sedentary office worker working in the IT sector for over 27 years. Arriving in midlife, 40-something and overweight, I sensed that a lot of things needed to change in my life, culminating in a revelation while on holiday in the Canaries at 47 years old: I had a lot of good things going on in my life, but my body was that of a decrepit old man. At that moment, I set myself the 3 year goal of getting into the shape of my life. The thought I had on the beach was: ‘How much longer do I have in which I can reverse this trend of being sedentary and overweight?’ Nothing like the ruthless sense of time running out to get you going. I subsequently lost over 26kgs, dropping from 30% bodyfat to 10%. I instantly felt a whole load better. Energy levels increased, confidence increased and for the first time in a long time in my life, I felt confident about taking his shirt off on the beach. Unfortunately, the 26kg weight loss had inevitably resulted in a degree of muscle loss too. Now I was just skinny. Here was the true challenge: Building some lean mass and strength, the physique I had always dreamed about. Despite my nutrition being on point, working consistently with a personal trainer and staying in a moderate caloric surplus, I just couldn't gain any muscle: I simply regained fat. I resisted the first gentle prompt from my trainer, who suggested I should look into whether I had low testosterone. Fuck you dude, don’t question my masculinity. The seed had been planted though. It didn’t take me long to observe the consistent relationship in the evidence that aggressive fat loss can have a detrimental (and poorly reversible) effect on testosterone. In addition to the inability to gain muscle, I was feeling increasingly depressed, anxious and brain-foggy with libido through the floor - all of which I had simply attributed to old age. I thought.. maybe this is just what happens when you get older? Your libido drops off, and your brain doesn't work? After eventually convincing my doctor to test my serum testosterone, it flagged up 7 nanomoles per litre of testosterone. To put this in perspective, the NHS standard for "normal" range testosterone is between 12 and 30, with the level for the average 80 year old male being 11. A healthy adult male between the ages of 25 to 35 would have a testosterone level of around 20. I had the testosterone levels of a fucking octogenarian. I think if you are a male of a certain age profile, you’ve come from being fat, and you're experiencing some of these symptoms, it’s worth pushing back a bit with your doctor and just explore whether they could be down to low testosterone. It is strange to think that if you are a woman and you go into a GP and describe certain symptoms, they will automatically be having a conversation with you ab...