Surprised by high testosterone blood test (34M) - how to take advantage?

[crebzaki]

Hey all - I’ve been struggling with some mental health issues for a while and was in a long term toxic relationship, just in a bad place in general. So through much of Covid, I didn’t work out at all. Started taking Adderall for diagnosed adult adhd, but otherwise just ate like crap, lots of sugar, didn’t exercise, terrible sleep (3hrs a night on average for weeks), etc.

Started having some ED issues after the Adderall which was a bit of a shock, but other than that just had a lot of general anxiety and overwhelm, basically worthlessly distracted and unmotivated without the Adderall.

Fast forward to now: I recently got out of the relationship and feeling much much better already, still struggling with focus and drive. I looked into low testosterone levels and it all clicked, like that’s what I was experiencing.

I decided to do two hormone blood tests, before and after, to see what the levels were. The “before” test was after a week of low sleep, junk food, etc.

In the following 30 days (currently day 5) I’m flipping everything on:

• Lifting again or doing HIIT 4 days per week
• 7.5 + hours of sleep per night
• Waking up with sunrise
• 5000iu of vitamin D
• (Good) mens Multi
• Greens + reds powder
• Icelandic cod liver oil
• creatine + beta alanine
• black maca
• fenugreek
• Fadogia agrestis 600mg
• Tongkat Ali 600mg
• Ashwaganda 600mg
• EAAs
• Caloric surplus based on 50/25/25 of carbs / pro / fat (currently 158lbs so aiming for around that level of protein grams)
• diet of salmon, red meat, potatoes, rice, some nuts, oils, eggs, etc

Here’s the “issue”

Did a blood test through LetsGetChecked and spoke to the nurse about my results. I had assumed my test levels had been really low, and the whole experiment of the above changes was to see if I could fix it before considering TRT.

But here were the results:

Testosterone: 1150ng/dl (abnormally high)

SHBG: 72.01 nmoL/L (abnormally high)

Prolactin: 19.5 ng/mL (high)

Estradiol: normal range

Free Androgen Index: 55.35

Needless to say I’m not sure what to do now. If anything I’ll use the rest of the 30 days to lower Prolactin levels and SHBG to get a higher Androgen Index but even then - does this mean I should be working in the gym WAY heavier because my test levels are high enough to take advantage of it? (Closer to what I would imagine a low cycle would do?)

Thanks for any help here!

 

[alex440]

@crebzaki Bro you’ll never get TRT with 1150 levels lol but honestly workout sleep and eat. People think you need to do different workouts on gear (or have high/low test levels). You don’t. Lift the same. You don’t need to do Instagram HARDCORE ANABLOLIC BLAST WORKOUTS to maximize gains with higher t levels. you’ll recover faster and strength increases faster on gear/ higher t levels. Natty is slower but you don’t need to do more or less sets/reps based of test levels. Bulking? Toss in a couple more reps or sets bc you’re tryin to add mass and you’re in a surplus. But just live man. Lift eat sleep fuck.

 

[crebzaki]

@alex440 Oh I don’t want TRT haha, i was afraid I’d have to because I thought my levels were gutter low. Now that I know they’re not, just want to make sure I’m approaching things correctly, if I should focus on lowering prolactin instead, etc

 

[kschooley]

@crebzaki Same boat. Turned 40, got tested just because. No chance I'll ever get TRT.. but now I know why I feel good typically despite long hours and very minimal sleep.

 

[mormarw]

@crebzaki Congrats dude, just keep doing what you're doing, sounds like you just need to maintain a healthy lifestyle and by doing so you are taking advantage.

 

[daniel77791]

@crebzaki If your test is high and your nutrition plan is working at 34 i’d go for the upper limit of 15-20 sets per muscle group per week

 

[crebzaki]

@daniel77791 Thanks for the thoughts! Dumb question: how would this be tweaked in variable full body workouts 2-3x per week? At my most productive back in the day I usually would do one warmup set and 3 working sets at higher rep ranges (eg in reps 12, 10, 10, 8+ to failure, raising weight each set).

Should I be doing more working sets per workout, or lift more days per week with less recovery in between?

 

[daniel77791]

@crebzaki If i were you i’d go for 4 sets per muscle group x 3 days a week minimum (12 sets) and make sure to hit every muscle.

If you’re doing 6-9 sets per week there’s that little push to 10+ that will improve gains by a good percentage, 15-20 might be an excessive push if you’re not used to it and won’t be a significant difference, i’d prioritise consistency and see how your body reacts to the slight increase in volume.

There’s a lot of hype these days about not going to full failure on each set but instead having 1-2 reps still in the tank, this is because you can exhaust your muscles too quickly with failure and the last 70-90% of the set is more or less just as good as the last 90-100%, this should reduce the intensity which will allow you to increase weekly volume.