Are You Suffering From Testosterone Deficiency? 5 Possible Signs of Low-T

As you age, you feel less and less like your old self. You feel like a new self, without your old energy, sex drive, and full head of hair. Is this your new normal? Or do you need more testosterone?

Now you know why grumpy old men are grumpy. Every passing year seems to bring less of what you used to love and more of what you don’t. 

Do you need an attitude adjustment? Is it something else? If you’re a man who feels like he’s left his prime behind, you may be suffering from a deficiency in the androgen testosterone (low T).

At Addison Pain + Regenerative Medicine in Addison, Texas, Dr. John East offers male hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to men who fear their best days may be behind them. Through comprehensive testing, Dr. East determines what hormones have dropped enough to cause your symptoms and then designs a customized plan to enhance them.

Have your testosterone levels dipped below normal? Following are five signs that could indicate you’d benefit from HRT with supplemental testosterone.

1. Your muscles are weaker

Your workouts seem harder. You can’t bench press what you used to. Your grip feels less … gripping.

You’re not being lazy if you’re not lifting weights with the ease you did a few years ago. Your muscles need testosterone to stay firm and replenish worn-out cells. When your testosterone goes too low, you can’t lift heavy.

With HRT, you can add back lost muscle again. Your renewed muscle tissue turns up your metabolism so you can take care of the next sign of low T.

2. Your waist is flabbier

Without high-quality, healthy muscle tissue burning up all the energy you feed your body, you start to put on weight. And this isn’t the good kind of weight (i.e., muscle); it’s the bad kind of weight (i.e., fat).

To add insult to injury, that new fatty tissue does a good job of keeping your testosterone at suboptimal levels. Fat produces more estrogen — a hormone that’s more associated with females (though males have it too). 

Extra fat makes it extra hard to add on muscle tissue to burn off the flab. When you raise your testosterone to normal levels, you more easily shed the fat and build strength again. That new muscle tissue helps keep your metabolism high so the fat doesn’t come back.

3. You’re losing hair … all over

Testosterone is associated with male-pattern baldness, so when you lose your scalp hair, you might not worry about your testosterone levels. However, when your testosterone dips too low, it affects the follicles all over your body. Yes, even down there.

Not sure whether your thinning air is caused by low T? Survey where your losses are. If they’re in areas that first sprouted lushly when you hit adolescence (think armpits, legs, arms, and groin), chances are you need more testosterone.

4. You’re losing your cool too

These days, everyone seems to act crazy. You read your news feed: craziness. Turn on the TV: More craziness. And at work? Nonstop craziness.

If you frequently feel irritable, it may not be that the craziness has multiplied. It’s just that your testosterone has dipped. When you have low T, it’s harder to regulate your emotions and maintain your cool while everyone else loses theirs.

 5. Sex feels like (and is) too much trouble

Just as a surge in testosterone kickstarted your body-hair growth, it also kickstarted your kickstand. While you used to sweat over an expected and potentially embarrassing erection in your youth, now the lack of them makes you sweat even more.

You keep losing your erection mid-act. Even worse than trying to get it up (and keep it up) is getting up the energy to have sex at all. Your libido has flagged too.

Add more testosterone to your life and suddenly sex seems exciting and achievable again. And, with a healthy sex life, you don’t have as much to feel grumpy about.

You might lack more than testosterone

While optimal testosterone levels can completely transform your life, if you have symptoms of low T, there may be other factors at work. You may need other therapies that stimulate human growth hormone. Or, you could have too much or too little thyroid hormone. 

At Addison Pain + Regenerative Medicine, we test all your hormones and develop an HRT treatment plan just for you. Do you want to get back in the swing of things and feel like a new version of your old self? Call our office at 972-380-0000 today, or use the book online button to schedule an appointment anytime.