What you do if a deficiency exists is going to depend on what the problem is. T is a good example. If John’s T had been at or below 241 ng/dl (low end of the reference range of 241 – 827 ng/dl), then he’d likely be a candidate for hormone replacement therapy. Needless to state, there would almost certainly be symptoms too: a man presenting with a healthy libido and active sex life with a T in the gutter would probably be a candidate for a retest vs. a prescription for Androgel or Testim.

The bigger problem is where values are suboptimal – that is, you may be in the normal range, but not up to snuff. Medically, you may be SOL…in this day of “managed care,” “you’ll manage” is often the way it falls out. But there may be lifestyle adjustments that can be made (such as weight loss or diet/exercise) or supplements that could help (such as DHEA if DHEA-S is low) – depends on what it is.

There’s a pretty thorough article here: http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2004/may2004_report_blood_01.htm that’s a decent place to start on the subject.

You mention all those items above, but if there is a defiency in any of them how does a person know what to do next about it? I know a little about the subject but not enough at this time. Can you recommend something or someplace (unbiased of course) that laymen can get educated on this matter?

The second was actually doing a sort of “average guy in the trenches” test. While I don’t hang around on the various forums, I’ve read enough to know just how common tribulus, etc. is in people’s supp stacks – esp. when they’re doing PCT. It’s frustrating to get any decent info: it’s all of the “I’ve got more wood so I know my T is up” kind of stuff. Well, we got more wood too ( ) – but T was definitely not affected. It’s an n=1 observation, for sure, but this is as much reliable clinical data as I’ve ever seen – lol.

So all in all, it was an interesting experiment.