Somewhere you may have read that simply having enough testosterone in your body is a key factor in getting better performance in bed, and this is essentially true. But, there are a few “buts.”
Think of it in this way. Just because you have a full tank of gas in your sports car (or let’s be ecologically friendly here, and say you have a fully-charged battery in your electric car), it doesn’t guarantee anything when it comes to actual performance. If your engine needs a tune-up or the air filters are dirty, the engine will perform poorly no matter how much gas you pump into the carburetor.
Understanding what testosterone is and does.
Testosterone is an androgen – a hormone that promotes development of male features. In men, testosterone is primarily made in the testes. In women, it is made in the ovaries and in both, a small volume is also made in the adrenal glands.
Testosterone produces the changes that occur in boys during puberty, stimulating face and body hair, muscle, penis and testicle growth. It helps make production of sperm and boosts the sex drive. Testosterone also causes the voice to deepen.
Men with low levels of testosterone and women can have health problems known as hypogonadism. These can include:
Erectile dysfunction – inability to achieve or sustain and erection or have an orgasm
- Loss of sex drive
- Low energy
- Bone loss
- Infertility
- Anemia
- Depression
- Decreased bone density
- Lack of energy or fatigue
- Loss of muscle mass
- Poor concentration
Testosterone levels usually start to drop in most men beyond the age of thirty. This is not considered to be the condition known as hypogonadism, and the FDA currently advises against treating men with low testosterone levels that are only the consequence of aging.
Men continue to make testosterone from puberty throughout the rest of their lives. The pituitary gland in the brain triggers the production of testosterone.
Testosterone comes in two “flavors”
Most testosterone attaches to specific proteins – albumin and sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG). Some testosterone is unattached (also referred to as bioavailable testosterone), which means it is not linked to these proteins. It is these molecules that are easily used by the body in regular metabolism.
What’s important to know is that there are actually two types of testosterone circulating in the bloodstream – free testosterone and bound testosterone. Free testosterone is the amount of testosterone that the body can metabolize quickly. Bound testosterone is not available without undergoing a metabolic process releasing it from SHBG and albumin. As explained in Wikipedia, only the free amount of testosterone can bind to an androgenic receptor, which means only they can have biological activity.
As men age, total production of testosterone decreases and SHBG levels increase. This could reduce the ratio of free testosterone to total testosterone, leading to symptoms of low testosterone even though you have the normal range of total testosterone in the blood.
Usually, when doctors suspect that symptoms may be caused by low testosterone, they may recommend to get a laboratory test for total testosterone, which is the combination of free and bound levels.
Typically, the level of free testosterone is only between 2% to 5% of the total testosterone. Low free testosterone levels will show up in symptoms of testosterone deficiency but may not be detected in the standard tests because there may be normal total testosterone levels.
This is generally caused by an increase in the blood’s ratio of SHBG to testosterone. A study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism showed that men with normal total testosterone but low free testosterone experienced sexual dysfunction, low libido, worse general health, and diminished physical function.
Now for the good news – whether it’s low total testosterone or low free testosterone, the advanced cream AndroForte® can help relieve your symptoms. The main advantage of AndroForte is that it is absorbed 5-7 times better than regular testosterone supplements, making it the ideal choice when the problem is not with total testosterone levels, but with free testosterone. This is because testosterone has a very short “shelf life” of 2 – 3 hours in the bloodstream, and the first penalty that is paid when the levels drop is a fall-off of the levels of free testosterone in the blood. Keeping total testosterone levels at the maximum will ensure that free testosterone will be released whenever the levels drop. The end result is maximizing the availability of the version of the hormone that is actually effective in restoring the main purposes of testosterone: stimulating sexual performance, eliminating erectile dysfunction and raising the libido.