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[Music] hello my name is aana and I'm the
clinical lead for E surgery Welcome to our ealth matters podcast today I'm
introducing co-founder of E surgery Dr Oscar hello Oscar how are you today
hello I'm very well thank you thanks for having me on the podcast I'm very excited so my name is Oscar I have a PhD
in medical research and I'm also a registered pharmacist my my area of interest is actually studying the role
of hormones on aging and I've published several articles on this as well amazing
um it's great to have an expert to shed some light on a very popular topic which is trt so let's start by what is trt
yeah sure so trt stands for testostrone replacement therapy so that means
putting external testosterone into someone's body so that could be in the
form of tablets it can be in the form of injections or most commonly it's going to be in the form of a gel the gel is
applied on the skin usually in the morning um now I think we do need to make the distinction between
testosterone replacement which is putting you know external testosterone into some body and testosterone boosters
because this is a question that we get quite often and what I mean by that is if you go on Google for example and you
type in testosterone you're going to get a lot of herbal products and you're going to get a lot of supplements
so there's a ton of herbal products that claim to booster to stop strong and there's also pharmaceutical prescription
drugs that do so now I think people need to realize that the herbal products
while they might work uh don't have the same amount of clinical evidence behind them as the prescription medication so
things like HCG and anti-estrogens have been proven conclusively that they're
going to increase testosterone that's really interesting so from what my understanding um what
you're trying to say is that it's not so much that these her products are proven
that's going to add anything to your testosterone levels they're nothing they're not replacing your testosterone
but it is going to um enhance your existing testosterone release levels
potentially so they work through various ways uh and there are some studies but
the problem is they're quite small MH um and the issue with herbal products is they're not actually standardized so
when you a lot of these products aren't at least so you don't really know exactly what you might be getting and
you don't know whether it's actually going to be working um it's always best if you actually think that you might
have an issue to get your testosterone check and then go with a product that we know is going to work for sure and we
know going to we know the side effect profile and we know if it's not going to interact with any other medications you're taking which is another issue
with herbal products absolutely so for the purpose of this podcast we are are just going to focus on the testosterone
replacement therapy which is the prescription only medication um usually prescribed by a clinician so not what
you buy off the internet so is low testosterone common in men to my
understanding it would be uh the older you get the lower your testosterone testosterone levels will be um it's a
very hard word to pronounce so that's true and what a lot of people don't
realize it actually starts quite early mhm so at the age of 25 is when we see
conclusively that your test option levels will go down uh and this is a pretty much a linear draw so if we can
get a graph up I can kind of show you or the viewers exactly what that looks like um between the ages of 30 and 40 is when
we see the most steepest decline right so a man that's 35 for instance is going
to have about 76% of what they would normally have in terms of testosterone when they were 25
now that doesn't mean that that they're necessarily going to see any symptoms of low testosterone but it certainly means
that they do have LS in their bloodstream and how would that be presented would they experience
symptoms yes um so someone that does actually get symptoms the most common
symptoms would be uh sexual symptoms so things like erectile dysfunction uh and low sex drive okay um
so one of the earliest signs or kind of earliest ways to tell is uh morning
erections so what happens with testosterone if you look at a graph during the day the peak generally
happens in the morning and basically that's why men get erection they wake up with an erection in the morning now if
that's something that's normal for you and then all of a sudden you're seeing less and less of that yeah that's pretty
good sign that your testosterone levels will drop in okay um and I suppose it's
fair to say that it for example if you're experiencing difficulties with um
maintaining an erection it's not necessarily to do with a testosterone so always do follow up with your general
practitioner because there could be a variety of different conditions that could be contributing to that no
absolutely so a lot of people come uh come into forums or they go to a
doctor and say okay um you know I think I might have low testosterone uh but in
reality you know they have a very bad diet they drink a lot they don't they don't go to the gym they don't exercise
enough and then think that this is going to be you know a magic solution but the
reality is that those things the healthy lifestyle things that you need to do need to come before that so whenever you
diagnosing someone with lot sterone they need to get those basics in mind so they need to make sure that they're having a
healthy lifestyle which is they're going to be having 150 minutes of moderate exercise or 70 5 minutes of
high-intensity exercise every week uh their diet is going to be good they're not going to consume a lot of alcohol
and they're not going to smoke yeah okay so if you have those things in order you
know it's kind of like low hanging fruit really yeah um then you can go ahead and get your testosterone checked okay which
brings us to our next question how do we do that so let's say I'm a male patient and I do everything right in terms of
um the kind of Lifestyle measures and I still am experiencing symptoms what would be the next
steps yes so what we want to do is what's called a Venus blood test so
basically we taking blood from a vein it's it's not something like a finger prick one the issue is that the finger
prick blood tests uh they've proven to be unreliable so when you want to
diagnose someone we want to be 100% sure that this person has low testosterone so
when I whenever anyone asked I would recommend you know go get a Venus blood test you can get a fotus and get that
done uh and that's something that's going to that's going to contain your whole hormone profile yeah so we want to
see things like testosterone pre testosterone lutenizing hormone follicle
stimulating hormone and estrogen yeah and you also want to look at your cholesterol and we want to look at your
liver values as well and the generally a full blood count so we want to have a whole workout full picture what's going
on really before that that clinician can make that decision absolutely now that's really really useful um I'm sure um a
lot of um as you said um you you come across you type in Google you go into
lots of different forums um or in my cases there's so many situation where I've been into the gym and I could just
hear very young men you know talking to each other about oh yeah you know I just did a finger flood test and you know my
lo I have a l testosterone and they kind of just um almost prescribe testosterone
for each other within a gym setting which is definitely not advisable so please if you do have symptoms um we
cannot emphasize on the fact that you do need to go and see a clinician have a full blood test as Oscar mentioned and
to make sure that you establish a diagnosis before taking any sort of treatment no absolutely no I completely
agree with you and there's a dis I think there's a stigma as well with testostrone replacement therapy
connecting it to to bodybuilding and abuse use y uh which really is really
not the case uh because what we're doing is uh you know we're giving someone a gel that's going to bring their
testosterone levels within the normal range um if you look at the blood levels
for a bodybuilder for instance they might have 10 times the normal testosterone and that testosterone might
not be the natural hormone it might actually be synthetic anabolic steroids as well which are much more powerful so
it's completely different and yes the stigma and I think it's um it's something that we need to change and kind of have a different view about to
stockr replacement therapy this is really interesting because and I know this is not the topic that we we're
talking about however um going back maybe 10 20 years I feel like we were
here for female hrts yeah and I'm sure you would agree with me there's been a
lot of awareness around female um hormon replacement therapy and I feel like
that's where where we are and hopefully from this part CL onward we will be raising awareness about how important
and under recognized and under diagnosed um this whole field of um male
testosterone uh levels have been as well so um hopefully we could um absolutely
so when we looking at some of the data on this um we were seeing that there were 13 million female HRT prescriptions
issued just last year alone so that's actually serving 2.6 million patients
um now that's a whole lot um but we the the the amount of actual people on the
trt of men on trt is not even 1% of that um and when we're looking some of the
studies we see that the prevailance of trt or low to St drone is actually quite
high it's a lot higher than we think um so in men over the age of 45 the study
showing that up to 40% of men are below the normal threshold and they should be
on so when I I did the maps on this uh the other day actually um so when you work
out the demographics it was just over 5 million P patients and that's just
that's just meant over the age of 45 that would actually should be on trt and it it's interesting that we
don't treat them because of this whole stigma around okay we shouldn't be we shouldn't be using to stop Strom uh but
in reality there was actually another study that showed that by doing so so this was an economic study basically
saying okay if we if we treat these people or how much money are we going to send uh and it was about 3,000 per
patient per year that we would save the NHS if we treated these patients with
trt and why is that yeah and that's because you're reducing um weight so
there's a lot of health risks associated with weight okay uh and we're also improving mental health oh wow so these
two massive things that um a lot of men struggle with that's really CH a lot of issues that
that it's not spoken about as well especially with mental health um there's a whole again stigma that men don't
intend to speak about it and it kind of just spirals exactly and I think you
have to consider the fact that especially with the sexual side effects uh if someone has a Rec dysfunction if
they have really low sex drive uh it's not going to translate to very good mental health you know if someone's got
a rect this now that be a very happy person um so it's something that that
can be tackled but should be tackled more absolutely and I do to in my
day-to-day practice as well I come across um many many scenarios with a lot of patients as well where they kind of
voice that they don't feel comfortable talking about this with their family members or even with their GP um I know
that R GP is as a family friend as well so I suppose you know just if you don't
feel comfortable with the regular GP that you have please don't feel like you can't reach out to someone else so there
there's a vast amount of help absolutely and I think the problem is or a big part of the problem is that GPS um simply
don't have the kind of expertise that's that's needed to initiate therapy or I
kind of know exactly what the level should be um and and it's funny that you mentioned this so I was in in America
not too long ago and we just had like kind of meeting with a few men we were about between the ages of 35 and 40 uh
and then we were just saying you know which which one of you guys is on trt and almost half the guys there you know
out of out of 10 men said uh yeah we I'm I'm a trt and I think that's something
that you just wouldn't see in this country because one like not a lot of people know it's available and two
there's because of that stigma all L people are embarrassed they're going to think that people are going to judge them because they're on to your
yeah and at the end of the day it is again another I wouldn't I mean would you call it it's it's an illness would
you categorize it as an illness this is really interesting you know when I was doing my research and there's this whole
push for how do we view aging and a lot
of people don't view aging as a disease or a disease state so a lot of GPS will
Pro to say well you've got erectile dysfunction but it's kind of normal because you getting old yeah well is it
or should we consider that kind of something that we can treat if we have the means and the treatment that's
available it's something that we should be treating because ultimately it's going to improve someone's mental health
they it's going to reduce their chances of um cardiovascular evence yeah and it's going to improve their quality of
life okay I mean that these sounds are all amazing and thank you so much for all the information You' provided right
so askcar um there's a big question about who is it not suitable for so who cannot
take trt treatment so the first thing that comes to mind for me is men that
really want to have children so we're going again into this concept of
fertility when you get someone external testosterone basically reduces their sperm production now a lot of the
studies actually show that that's reversible but not 100% of the cases so
if someone is if that's a priority for someone yeah I would say don't start trt
okay it's safer for you to take something like a testosterone booster like HCG yeah that's going to increase
your testosterone up to some up to a certain extent and it's going to increase your
fertility um so that would be the better option for those mad okay now I do want to get this right so people with certain
blood disorders uh prostate and breast cancer cardiac or liver disease also shouldn't
be taken t uh if they have a history of clots Strokes heart attacks or very high
cholesterol it's a big danger sign to a clinician okay it is a it's not necessarily a no no but it means that
that's going to be a decision between that clinician and the patient uh everything is obviously going to be a a
risk and benefit scenario you got to have to weigh the risk versus the benefits right I mean even on things like um contraceptive pill it's going to
increase your chances of certain um Strokes card vular vents or cancers but
it's going to give you another benefit so this is a discussion that needs to be had uh with the clinician okay the other
thing is men that don't like doing blood tests when you're on trt you're going to
have to get you know a Venus test and you're going to have to have routine tests just to make sure that we're
having a look at what your Bloods are looking like um as we said before testosterone can increase red blood
cells which can actually then put you at higher risk of strokes and heart attacks is it because sorry is it because it
makes it more sticky your blood essentially yeah yeah let's put it simply yeah yeah so I mean you know
personally I don't like needles as well of course um but it's just something that you have to it's just something you
have to overcome if you want to be on trt is just part of that so unfortunately if you're if you're not
going to be doing regular blood tests you really shouldn't be looking at TR okay so I have a question here and with
the monitoring that's required with testosterone therapy does it have to be a Venus so draw blood from or can they
just do it like a finger prick test the initial diagnosis should be the Venus blood Prest because you want to make
sure that you're actually keeping them in that range absolutely and you're on the ma uh the optimum uh dose that
because there's not one fits all there's different types of I think it's really worth mentioning as well that um don't
listen to you know Tom down at the gym and I'm sorry that I keep going back to the gym it has to come from a um heal
professional and it's really really important that you know you don't say oh my friend just told me to do two pumps
of testosterone on my arm yeah without any testing without any testing it's this like gy BR mentality absolutely
yeah so it really does have to be based on your blood test results and an appropriate do absolutely I mean and
just going back to the testing as well not only for the testost rep placement therapy if you're testing regularly if
there's something wrong with your blood you're going to be uh going to stay on top of that much sooner so testing
regularly is actually a really healthy thing for you to be doing anyway okay that's good to know if you like needles
days yeah and like it just stick to the bare minimum to be honest we are getting
some um saliva test as well now uh and and the finger prick butt tests really aren't that that invasive you know I've
done one the other day it wasn't too bad okay that's amaz I bet you're going to
love the saliva test though yeah saliva test must be space for the saliva
testing of course um and just going back to the blood test as well what is the is there a specific uh range that that the
patient needs to be aware of to qualify for uh low testosterone treatment so
this is an interesting topic when when you talk about you know what's the actual threshold M um the normal range
typically is between 8 and 30 nanomer it depends on the lab and the problem is
when you do a lab test they give you a range that range typically doesn't take age into account some Labs do now
actually say okay we within this age range but most don't so the normal
standard is 12 so if you're below 12 that typically means that you're going
to qualify for testost from replacement therapy but we have to remember that
it's symptoms and blood test so if someone is showing symptoms of low
testosterone and having a low low testosterone level that is when you treat if they're not showing any
symptoms typically it's not something that that you would treat and just to add to to that as well um it must be
other condition must be rolled out before they go ahead with with the treatment with trt yeah what what you
mean by other U so by other conditions so let's say if they're having erical dysfunction and they borderline on let's
say that blood test comes back as 12 um and there is no other factors for the
ectal dysfunction to explain it then testosterone could be an explanation and treatment will be appropriate for that
yeah exactly but every or most clinicians will say you know get the LIF sta actors in place before you come and
get the blood test uh once you have the blood test you going to make a decision if something's borderline if you're just
over 12 for instance yeah you might have to rerun the test the thing with testosterone is quite variable so you
get like peak in the morning and then it just drops so you want to make sure that you've gotten accurate assessment that
we're taking that BL test and we're making sure testosterone placement is a commitment right so when you start
testosterone it's something that's going to be long term right uh and you're going to be doing the testing and you're
going to be you know taking that medication for a long time so before we
make that decision of saying oh you got low testosterone that diagnosis we really have to be true I see okay and um
could you explain a little bit more about the commitment so if you're seeking this privately as well there's
also the financial commitment to it the monitoring and you know just
following through with the treatment the compliance with the treatment as well so what is it is it a long-term you know I
mean you have to take it for many many years what happens if you suddenly stop it tell us more about that so we have to
consider the fact that if you taking testosterone your body wants to stay in a in a state of balance of equilibrium
right y so if you're putting in external testosterone and your body's going to say okay well we've got enough of that
I'm going to make even less of this natural testosterone okay so as you can imagine if you just abruptly stop you're
going to be in a worse position than you started so you're going to have even lower testosterone than before uh which
means that your symptoms are going to come back potentially even worse and it's just not going to be a
healthy position I see um so it's something it's something that's tend to be reversible so it means I mean you can
come off to Stu from replacement therapy but it really shouldn't be done aboly
and when it's done it's normally done long term and I'm talking years and years and years I see okay so have that
discussion with your clinician before you start committing to it absolutely so people just need to know what they're
getting into they need to know the side effects and they need to know the implications of doing something long ter
to your body and of course the financial implications it's not particularly going be cheap either of course absolutely um
you you mentioned it yourself side effect so as we know there's no medication out there even parasal has
like the longest list of side effects so tell us more about what to expect
initially um or longterm in terms of long-term side effects yeah absolutely so you I like you said you know I took a
box of iprof and the other day and and and I was looking at side effects and you know like 20 different side effects
there so with any medication anything that you're putting into your body can have side effect the thing is though
testosterone is something that you normally have in your body for men any on women as well but much less um so
putting in a natural hormone into your body is not the same as putting a a foreign pharmaceutical in so in theory
it's actually not as dangerous um there are side effects of course and generally
you see those side effects and bodybuilders you know you have aggression you have oily skin um you've
got high blood pressure increased cholesterol in the bloodstream those are things that you generally see in
bodybuilders because they've taken that those you know 10 times lot um typically
you don't really see that in people just on trt the things that you do have to be
mindful of are the red blood cell count yeah uh as we said before so this is why
testosterone is used in doping right and cycling and and swimming Etc what it does is increase your red blood cell
count that means you're going to have stronger endurance the problem is increasing red blood cell counter it
puts you in at a risk of stroke heart attack it makes your blood stick here as you said right um so that's something
that definitely you need to keep an eye on the other thing that I do want to mention as well people that are
genetically prone to hair loss okay um you're putting in testosterone that's
going to convert into DHT right which is a an even stronger anabolic and then that's going to actually potentially
make you lose your her faster um so it's one of those things that people should
probably consider taking uh anti-androgen like faside when they're
taking testosterone therapy is they're prone to a genetically if they have a family history of boldness ET it's
really really important okay um and in terms of um this the lifestyle support
that is required for trt what would you recommend we briefly touched up on doing
changing making those um lifestyle changes before we start trt but what do we do after we we've uh initiated the
treatment so it's very much the same as what you do before you know that healthy lifestyle that you should be leading
should be going after the testosterone as well is it not a magical treatment
you know taking your testostrone level to normal levels is not going to make you all of a sudden get very muscular
it's not going to make you someone like bronnie or Jak CER I don't know if you know who that is probably know this it's
it's not going to make you a bodybuilder right this is not a magic solution so what you still need to do is make sure
you get in the exercise and go to the gym you should be doing some some weight training yeah make sure you eat a
balanced diet you shouldn't be eating too much fat that can increase your cholesterol with with testosterone
therapy H and you you know you need to make sure that you're not drinking too much alcohol and you're not smoking as
well so this is notal routine stuff of course absolutely for any healthy lifestyle which I'm sure we have been
banging on about in every episode that we've done so far ex absolutely so Oscar
what are the treatment options out there for patients typically we're talking a gel
so it's a topical formulation or we have injections MH or um tablets so I'll show
you I've actually brought one of these so this is one kind of most common gels
uh and what you do here is you got a little pump dispenser and what happens is every morning you wake up do two
pumps of this put it on the shoulders this area here yeah and that's it so so
very easy to use very kind of user friendly amazing and that is also
available in sachche forms as well so sachche forms if you're traveling for instance are quite handy and you could
use the as a s well okay amazing um probably not the injections for yourself
the the injections are more common in the states the injections kind of are only used if you need to use more to St
Strom rather than the gels if someone for example has small children as well you don't want them actually touching
that gel you don't want have them to have access the injections can be done uh they don't have to be done every day
so you can do them less frequently as well so for some people it works better that's actually a really good point I
didn't even think about you know I know I have young children they're constantly you know crawling all over me if I was
to use a topical treatment yeah now of them be good yeah exactly so you have to be very careful if you're using a gel
just make sure you keep that away from children and and any women as well we shouldn't be touching that of course would that be
specifically pregnant woman to bearing yes exactly someone's pregnantly specifically don't want to be you know
taking external testosterone so you want to make sure you're putting that in the safe place away from from anymore okay
and how long does it take to absorb into your skin till it's safe to touch it's very um usually very quick so
when you put that on about you know 10 15 minutes and then you just put you know your shirt on and go about your day
um so after that it's not really going to be an issue it's quite sticky so the problem is if you're putting on your hands yeah you really want to wash your
hands very thoroughly because you'll be surprised how sticky it is and how much residue will remain on that so you don't
want to be putting it on not washing your hands and then you know handing your children of course so that's one
thing to keep in mind okay that's really really um useful to know uh thank you for that and are there any other
formulations that are available other than the most convenient ones which is
the pump dispenses there's um like I said we talked about the injections so you can
have the injections they're a bit less common um but they certainly are out there MH uh there was a gel so and a
soft the problem is when you're taking dyrone internally it's not really as
effective it gets broken down in your stomach basically so they're not really that effective there's also a what's
really exciting actually a nasal spray coming out um it's coming out I think it's come out in America but it's making
its way to the UK so this that's an interesting solution as well okay because it's obviously just going
systematically in your bloodstream rather than having yeah it's yeah it's bypassing it's bypassing your stomach
and your C hepatic metabolism so it's going straight into the bloodstream which is quite cool hope that sounds really exciting um and how long does it
take for these treatments to start working so steroids are the way that they work anyway is they actually
supposed to go into the cell nucleus so they have to bypass they have to go to the cell wall and into the on eus it
takes a while okay so to see the full effect of steroids uh it's on a basis of
days and weeks so normally between one and two weeks before you start noticing the benefits I see okay and what about
the long-term benefits from it so the long-term benefits are really interesting and and this is kind of what
I did what my research was based on so should be good get comfortable that so
when you take testosterone for a certain amount of time time U it starts affecting your skeletal muscle we talk
about skeletal muscle it's your muscle that kind of makes you move right see uh and when you do that when you look at
this the structure of a Skil muscle is very different their muscle cells are really cool and this is some ly stuff
well basically they're long strand they have multiple nuclei unlike most other cells and they will have what's called
satellite cells so on on the kind of the on the cell membrane you have these cells and they're really interesting
because are stem cells okay so what happens is they kind of go into action when the muscle is
damaged now different people have different amounts of satellite cells but
what we do know is when you take testostrone those satellite cell levels go up and we can actually see uh you
know a little diagram can see the difference between a normal muscle cell when that has testosterone you can see a
lot more satellites out there H and the important thing is when when you age yeah you're going to keep those
satellites s okay so what's what happens is a lot of elderly people develop
what's called sarcopenia and that means kind of a degeneration of muscle Y and this leads to um you know problem with
movement it makes them less active and it just it creates a lesser quality of
life uh when you have more satellite cells in your elderly years it means that you're going to be able to
regenerate that muscle and you're going to be able to St stay mobile for longer
and this is this is something that we really studied um quite furly and it's really exciting and that's kind of the
benefit of of taking testosterone because ultim aside from the you know the the immediate benefits you're going
to see that benefit when you get older so you're going to be able to you know stay active you're going to be able to
do things for longer uh and that I think is really important because your quality of life is going to be extended that is
really powerful stuff thank you for that um and I'm a little bit jealous because I feel like I also need testosterone not
to get is it such a thing for females as well well it's funny because I mean
females have much lower levels as testosterone but as you know there's also the kind of the the move to to give
them small amounts and this is mostly for you know sexual benefits I think you know having a like a low Lio incre sex
drive and things like that but certainly yeah because females have a much higher
sensitivity to testosterone so you don't actually have to give him a whole lot even that small amount in theory should
be giving you the same benefits as a man with you know much larger doses of course that's really and it still
affects the satellite cells as well in both genders that's that's really interesting so osar is weight gain a big
symptom of flow testosterone in men yes so weight gain is one of the first signs
uh that someone might be having lotr MH uh and it's actually a really
interesting phenomenon so what happens is when your testostrone levels go down your weight gain goes up your fat
gain goes up and what happens is in the fat tissue testosterone is converted
more into estrogen right so you're going to have more estrogen in your body and even less testosterone wow okay they see
what's happening so what's really happening is that this this vicious cycle of you having low low testosterone
gaining more weight and then having even lower just I see what you mean yeah U So
eventually what happens is you're going to get what's called metabolic syndrome and you're going to have a higher risk
of diabetes type two diabetes right and have a higher chance of heart attack and
strokes and ultimately it's it's also it's going to affect your mental um
mental health as well because you you're going to see a lot of people that I speak to you know they say I'm eating
the same that I have I'm still exercising and I'm you know I'm not
gaining muscle and I'm gaining a lot of fat you know my my waist size is increasing and what's happening here and
what's happening is is they're decreasing in testostrone and they're kind of uh starting this cycle right um
and it's it's something that's very unhealthy actually because it means that people are less active right they're having a higher
chance of all these cardiovascular events uh um and it's it's something
that can be easily reversed if you have the testosterone therapy before they
develop complications such as heart disease or stroke and yes exactly that's
kind of why we talked about the benefits right so we said you know it's actually it's actually really beneficial for
people to have the right and now talking about people that have well distr here so if you fix that then you can you can
kind of turn this cycle up you can go back to them being in a in the much
healthier weight and that's really important as you know you know people like in general being overweight is very
very unhealthy absolutely yeah and then I I just never thought about the the
Vicious Cycle of low Testo lower testosterone and then increased in estrogen yes it's really interesting
yeah so what happens in Pat tissue is actually that testosterone is converted
it's what we say aromatized into estrogen um so inevitably a person that
is heavier has higher estrogen levels as well okay um which is kind of plays back
into kind of the the need for blood test as well because if you say if you have someone that started on a high weight
and then all of a sudden or geing the testosterone and they also have high estrogen we' like to see that estrogen
drop okay so completely random question that just came into my mind as well and
I'm only saying this because we've been doing the mjara podcast and I don't want to shed light on on your uh expertise in
terms of testosterone but someone for example who is struggling with their weight and they have done the blood test
with the low test social would they still be able to use weight loss treatments alongside
testosterone that's an interesting question uh again when we talk about testosterone it's not a foreign drug MH
so you you know so the difference between someone having you know 12 nanomer and and 25 n it it's it's not
like they're having a different drug so there wouldn't be a different interaction you're having when you're taking for example a weight loss
treatment I see okay um I think it's still important to take to make sure you're doing the Bloods yeah and make
sure because I know with um some of the weight loss treatments it can affect some of your blood so I I would make
sure you know you're still staying on top of that but the thing is obviously the the weight loss treatments have their own contraindications of course so
always have to be sure that you're actually looking at those as well of course oh thank you so much for that because I didn't really want to bring up
another episode into this but I mean it is health and it is all kind of related
to each other so it's also good to be mindful whether um someone who struggling with their weight if if it is
to do with testosterone can benefit from a helping hand from another medication so yes exactly and I think it's just
making sure that we staying doing things systematically you know making sure that someone has got the healthy lifestyle in
place then they've got their testosterone levels corrected yeah then at that point you know are they still
struggling with white do we need to then add if we don't need to do if all it is
is a matter of you know correcting diet and going to the gym and we you know we should definitely go that route yeah and
then after that we can consider all the treatment of course absolutely and um we have been referring a lot in this
episode to going to the gym as well yeah so just to clarify you don't need to go to the gym as long as you are exercising
according to the stand yeah I know I've probably said this so many times through this whole episode as well just go to
the gym you know yeah of course I mean the guidance again what is it you know 150 minutes moderate exercise a week you
can do that you know jogging outside doesn't necessarily um you know it doesn't necessarily have to be in a gym
the reason I say that is because the St replacement um it can get that benefit that muscle benefit if you're also
adding weightlifting as well so you know two or three times a week weightlifting gives you a benefit to the to the skill
muscle okay to just strengthen the muscles yeah and and when you have you know when you have a higher amount of of
lean muscle that means your met base metabolic rate she goes up which means it's going to be easier for you to stay
a healthy weight thank you for sharing that absolutely learned so much every time I I have anyone on the guest but
this was super interesting thank you so much it's very exciting thank you hopefully everyone will get you know a benefit from this and um you know we
didn't we didn't really go into much kind of very specific things uh but I think that's kind of by Design but if
anyone wants to ask more specific spefic questions hopefully we'll get some questions in the comments that we can answer yeah no that would be absolutely
um amazing if anyone's got um any questions please reach out and I'm sure Oscar would be thrill to answer those
questions absolutely if I can I'll try yes thank you so much Oscar it really has been very um interesting to learn so
much about testosterone not something that I have a lot of knowledge about
when it comes to the science I know all about the prescribing of it but not so much the detail science and what happens
into um anat to me of it's been really fun thank you should definitely do it again 100% absolutely this brings us to
the end of the podcast thank you for joining us and once again thank you a thank you very much
Registered Pharmacy Number: 9012167
Superintendent Pharmacist: Justin Dicks 2038305
© Total Access Health LTD. All rights reserved.
Pharmacy Address: 42 Barnard Road, Norwich, NR5 9JB
Superintendent Pharmacist: Justin Dicks 2038305
© Total Access Health LTD. All rights reserved.
Pharmacy Address: 42 Barnard Road, Norwich, NR5 9JB