Shouldn’t this forum join forces with a Hypogonadism forum. If you surf those you’ll notice many of the libido sufferers have low normal T levels.
Maybe together a change to the ‘normal ranges’ of Testosterone can finally be addressed?
Jack
It isn’t nearly as simply as that I am afraid.
many of us in the hypogonadal community have been fighting tooth and nail over the reference ranges and the interpreting thereof for many years.
International medical politics, vested interests, medical budgets, insurance and many other issues abound.
For instance in the UK we have raised the issue of the lack of any clinical guidelines on hypogonadism and the inherent problems therein with a petition to our national parliament. That is something that has happened in the last month in the UK and something that relates to the definition of the condition.
The Center for Disease Control in the USA has launched a study into refining the Serum Testosterone assay fiasco. They are aware that the existing system is heavily flawed, the Center, together with the Endocrine Society has set out to standardise assays for clinical practise.
But that is in the US and carries no significance for patients outside of the US where the such issues are not being addressed. In fact it also fails to address the whole of the US as there are multiple guidelines and societies that deal with hypogonadism and the interpretation thereof and differing doctor have differing affiliations and respectively differing interpretations of what represents hypogonadism in terms of levels.
We also have entirely differing positions in Europe, in Australia and in all other counties.
Most of the world lags behind the US on the clinical definition of hypogoandism and in fact I do not know of a single country that is anywhere near as up-to-date or as correct in dealing with hypogonsim as the US and their AACE guidelines of 2002- five year old guidelines now!!!
In fact I would argue that the US and Australia’s official position of the definition, diagnosis and treatment of the condition is over ten years behind that of the United States.
All of this is without getting into the dozens of issues that about regarding means/average levels, differing levels according to age, log normal transformation of the reference ranges and many, many, many more issues involved.
Unfortunately I could write a 40 page essay on the issues involved with interpretation of reference ranges and the problem involved.
The problems on this subject matter are not going to simply be addressed and rectified, if it were that simple we would have dealt with this matter a long time ago.
As it stands there is a political war on the matter that has slowly been raging across the globe and people fighting this issue on many fronts. That will continue to be the case.
The forum could of course try to links itself with the hypogondal community and I am sure that there would be some benefit to memeber here in doing just that. Also I do not wish to sound a pesemistic- I am not I have been fighting in the trenches on this one for years, so I am being a prgamatist in outlining the issues. People who are here at the forum are of couse welcome to join debate and try and improve the lot of people with hypogonadim and in doing so many well help themselves- given that so many men post finasteride use end up with hypogondism.
People in the UK can sign the petition being sent to the house of commons if it is still open- I will look for it and see if I can link it too this thread.