In this article:
- What does “normal” even mean when you’re talking about hormones?
- If you’re starting from zero, here are the hormones you should pay attention to
- The connection between anxiety, depression, and your hormones
- Non-hormonal factors can reflect your hormone health
- Finding your baseline is the first step in improving hormonal balance
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A standard hormone test can tell you whether or not your levels are above or below “average”, but they can’t determine where you stand with regards to your own unique hormonal baseline. In order to figure out what’s normal for you specifically, a better approach would be a combination of lab testing and looking at various factors such as lifestyle or diet.
Takeaways:
- Balanced hormones will usually fall within standard reference ranges, but these ranges won’t be able to tell you what your version of “normal” is.
- Stress and anxiety don’t often get blamed for hormonal imbalances, but they’re often a big factor.
- If you suspect an imbalance, you may have to approach the problem with more than a simple hormone test.
Before we dive in, a quick note: when Base uses gendered language we’re talking about physiological gender assigned at birth, not someone’s preferred pronouns.
What does “normal” even mean when you’re talking about hormones?
Modern medicine may have given us reference ranges for pretty much every hormone known to man, but these ranges can only tell you if you’re over or under the average level. You could be a couple of points above the minimum for key biomarkers and feel like a car that’s running on fumes, but a lab test wouldn’t flag it as an issue.
Here’s the thing about reference ranges - you shouldn’t ask them to be more than they’re meant to be. If you’re looking at some numbers on a page that are highlighted in green, this doesn’t necessarily mean that your hormone levels are fine and dandy; it just confirms that you fit within “normal” levels for your sex and age. This is why you can’t just look at what your hormones are doing on paper; you may have to dig a little deeper in order to understand the balance of your own body.
1. If you’re starting from zero, here are the hormones you should pay attention to
Any discussion about male hormones will typically focus on testosterone; according to research, this hormone is largely responsible for both physical and mental differences between men and women. Testosterone isn’t the only piece of the puzzle, though; in order to get the whole picture, you should also take a look at your levels of estrogen, T3 (a thyroid hormone), and cortisol (the stress hormone).
- Testosterone: Not the only important hormone for men, but one of the most important for sure. Testosterone is important not just for sexual wellness, strength, and bone density, but also for overall energy levels and mood. It’s also present in women, but in much smaller amounts. The generally accepted reference range for testosterone is 300 - 1050 ng/dl in adult males, with the average level peaking during young adulthood, and falling gradually with age.
- Estrogen: Believe it or not, men need estrogen just as much as women - they just need a lot less of it. In men, estrogen contributes to a healthy libido and sexual performance. Compared to testosterone, estrogen’s reference range for men is miniscule at just 1 - 4 ng/dl.
- T3: This hormone is produced by the thyroid, and both men and women have pretty similar reference ranges for T3. It’s important to have in the right amounts, since it influences things like heart rate, metabolism, and mental clarity. Adult males should have a total T3 level between 75 - 195 ng/dl, and a free T3 level between 0.2 - 0.5 ng/dl.
- Cortisol: Often unfairly villainized, the “stress hormone” does a lot more than just put you into a tizzy; it’s one of the major players in your daily sleep/wake cycle, and it helps your body get into gear when you need a burst of extra energy. As an adult, normal cortisol levels should be between 138 - 635 nmol/L in the morning, and 83 - 359 nmol/L in the evening.
2. The connection between anxiety, depression, and your hormones
In today’s fast-paced world, anxiety and depression often make themselves a part of everyday life. But what do they have to do with men’s hormone levels? As a matter of fact, they can actually be caused by imbalanced hormones, especially if that imbalance has led to low levels of sex or thyroid hormones, or high levels of cortisol.
Let’s zero in on the cortisol for a minute. If it’s too high, it can cause testosterone levels to tumble, resulting in things like reduced energy levels, brain fog, and a terrible mood. If this becomes chronic, it can definitely contribute to depression, especially if you start feeling discouraged because of decreased libido or sexual performance.
Cortisol acts more directly on your anxiety - it can literally cause panic attacks at extremely high levels. To complicate matters, there are all kinds of factors that could make your cortisol levels go off the charts. Stressful situations are an obvious culprit, but even something like having too much coffee can put your stress response into overdrive. Cortisol isn’t the only hormone that can make anxiety skyrocket, though; high T3 (as in, really high) can also cause similar symptoms.
3. Non-hormonal factors can reflect your hormone health
Have you ever noticed that you seem to age faster when you’re under a lot of stress? There’s a good reason for this - all that cortisol is impacting your hormones along with your skin and hair, which are where the first signs of aging often show up. If you’re starting to notice some extra wrinkles appearing overnight, it’s likely that your hormones are in trouble too.
With much of the world affected by COVID-related lockdowns and restrictions, more and more people are noticing the effects of long-term stress. While elevated cortisol is a well-known cause of erectile dysfunction, people are asking if COVID-19 itself could also play a part. For now, the general consensus is that it’s possible, but that chronic stress is a much more likely cause.
Blood pressure tends to be associated with lifestyle or dietary factors more than hormones, but there’s actually a link between testosterone and high blood pressure. It seems that the higher a man’s testosterone is, the higher his blood pressure will be. This is interesting, considering that most men are more concerned with raising their testosterone instead of simply getting to a reasonable level.
4. Finding your baseline is the first step in improving hormonal balance
If your hormones are imbalanced, getting back to whatever “normal” means for you will be easiest with a comprehensive approach. So the question is: when you’re formulating a plan to regain hormonal health, what should that plan look like?
The answer is best explained with integrated medicine. Unlike functional medicine, which looks for a disease, condition, or genetic trait that could be causing the problem, integrated medicine (a subset of holistic medicine) examines the patient’s mental and emotional state as well in order to gain insight into their overall needs.
What could that look like in a practical setting? Say for instance that a man has been struggling with brain fog, a low libido, and mild sexual dysfunction for the past several months. Watching the pandemic take its toll on normal life has been hard to deal with, so he hasn’t been sleeping as well - but that’s what coffee is for, right?
If this individual were to take the integrated medicine approach, he could start with at-home lab tests, such as the ones offered by Base. Using either saliva or finger-prick tests to determine key biomarker levels - like testosterone, cortisol, T3, and more - he could find out not only where his individual hormone levels were at, but whether any of them were off-balance in relation to the others. After completing the tests, he could view his results in the Base app, plus incorporate the personalized recommendations from the app into his daily routine. He could end up adding supplements or certain foods to his diet in order to boost sex hormone production, or he could reduce his coffee intake to help reduce his cortisol levels.
Base’s at-home lab tests aren’t just for people who are dealing with imbalanced sex hormones; they’re for anyone who wants to formulate their own personalized health plan with the help of trained experts. Whether you have a longstanding health problem to fix, or you’re just curious about getting a snapshot of your overall health, Base is here to assist you in reaching your goals!
