How Does Low Testosterone Affect Diabetes?
… Continued …
Furthermore, the risk of having the decline of this male hormone is also equivalent to the age – your risk increases as your get older. And in fact, the age is also one of diabetes risk factors. This may make it harder to find the correlation between low testosterone and diabetes.
However in general, men with diabetes (type-2 diabetes) are at higher risk (2 times higher) of developing low testosterone than men who don’t have diabetes – according to an article published on the American Diabetes Association.
Testosterone replacement therapy may help restore this male hormone back to the normal levels, but it’s also not clear whether this option can help effectively reduce the risk of diabetes. Overall, more research is required!
If you have diabetes, should you take a testosterone test? In general, doctors usually suggest men with diabetes to also take a testosterone test, particularly true if they have some symptoms associated with sexual dysfunction.
Your doctor may ask you to take the test as part of your basic medical care without needing to wait for the symptoms, because as noted before that there is no specific sign of the low level!
I can tell you by experience. I am a Type II diabetic. My A1C was about 7.7 when I was not on TRT and taking a fair amount of Jardiance as well as insulin and those medications did just about nothing for my A1C levels. I did get a slight improvement of about 0.3 points lower over 6 months. But I had improved my diet dramatically. When I got TRT, I dropped 85% of my Jardiance and all my insulin (I just stopped taking insulin). Within 7 weeks my A1C fell from 7.4 to 6.5. Now I can eat pancakes and not spike my blood sugar over 200 for 8 hours which nearly killed me before. Now It still goes up to about 200 but it drops back to 110 in at most 3 hours tops. So I know that the TRT has improved my insulin sensitivity so I can process sugar much better now. I would not be surprised if my A1C has fallen to below 6 ( And I haven’t lost any weight I’m 310 lbs with a BMI>40). I’m not saying I don’t need to lose weight but the TRT improved my type II diabetes dramatically and very quickly. [ Oh and when my Endocrinologist found out I got TRT, she fired me….guess she knew I wouldn’t be a very good Type II diabetic patient that would need massive treatment for the next 20 years while I was on TRT. I guess my numbers prove that TRT helps treat Type II diabetes a whole lot]