I'm not sure if you've ever tried asking your medical provider where your testosterone levels should be based on your age. They probably didn't have a good answer.
It's not their fault. There is no set of age-adjusted guidelines for testosterone levels and age. There is one range, for all men, for all ages. The range is shockingly wide: 150 ng/dL to >900 ng/dL. That would be the answer to the question posited above.
Anecdotally, men who have low testosterone under 400 ng/dL usually start to have symptoms of fatigue, low energy, reduced motivation, lower libido, and reduced gym gains with adipose weight gain.
When mother nature says you've done your job, served your time (started a family, sewed your wild oats), as you get older, the testes--much like a woman's ovaries--start to hypofunction. That is, produce less and less testosterone.
Though it's much more gradual than a woman who suddenly experiences menopause, "andropause" is a real occurrence that can happen at any age (due, in part, to environmental toxins, estrogenic compounds, plastics, and food quality, to name but some).
Physiologically speaking, your free testosterone, or "free T," levels matter WAY more--this is the amount of T available in your body for use, not bound up to proteins like sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG) or albumin--than your total testosterone level.
Here's a rough estimate of Total and Free T levels by age. Again, this is from years of anecdotal reports, scientific research, expert opinion, and plain ol' subjective experiences.
These are ideal--the higher end of the reference range. If someone is on Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT), these data would closely correlate to those men starting and maintaining feeling better.
Table 1: Age-Adjusted Total & Free Testosterone (Optimized) Levels
(*+/-100-200 ng/dL by age)
Age | Total T (ng/dL) | Free T (ng/dL) |
20-29 | 800-1200 | 9-27 |
30-39 | 700-1100 | 8-26 |
40-49 | 700-1000 | 7-26 |
50-59 | 600-900 | 7-25 |
60-69 | 5/600-900 | 6-23 |
70-79 | 400-800 | 5/6-20 |
80-89 | 300-700 | 5-18 |
(%Free T range is 2-3.5% for most men but ideally is 2.5-3.5%)
At Vitali-T Men's Health, we shoot for the higher end of the reference range, weighing subjective--how you actually feel, the improvements you have--with the numbers as a guide. We compare those to lab values to ensure safety is maintained. If a 50-year-old, for example, feels great at 1000 ng/dL and a free T of 27 ng/dL (and his labs are within the normal safety range), then that's our target. We individualize the care to fit each man, and, each man is different.
At Vitali-T Men's Health, we practice modern, unrestricted, progressive cutting-edge medical therapies.
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