Now for the resistance training question, any of you decided to get TRT/hormone therapy yet?
No.
I actually enquired about it. It very quickly became clear that the doctor was going to prescribe me T jabs no matter what any test results said, I could have been a 240lb hairy muscle mountain lumberjack with a baritone voice from 1900, her primary concern wasn't my health but money - her husband's company supplied the drugs. So I dropped that and looked into other things, and it came good.
I think very very few people need it, much more commonly they just need to improve their sleep, food, exercise and overall stresses in life. The Art of Manliness guy shared how he
doubled his testosterone in 90 days with some simple changes, and
reported again 7 years later.
Ultimately then, the specific practices attendant to a healthy lifestyle matter less than the fact that you do them consistently. Keep your body fat down (with whatever diet suits you). Lift heavy weights (with the workout program you personally enjoy). Prioritize sleep and stress management (with the methods that work best for you). And you should be good.
As for,
My problem with the "normal range" is it is a huge fricking range.
This is like the issue of BMI vs bodyfat percentage, and so on. No single number is going to tell you everything you need to know about your health. For example, I have a higher saturated fat consumption than is recommended in Australia or the US (12-15% of daily calories vs Australia's max 10% and the USA's max 5%), so in principle I should have high blood cholesterol; but I also have decent fibre consumption (about 32g daily vs Oz rec 30) which brings it down to a decent range.
As a fun fact,
some elite athletes have below average testosterone levels. Now, this could be an effect of their doping - you take T to enhance performance, your body produces less by itself, you stop the jabs coming up to a competition so you won't get pinged, they test you, voila you're low today. But if nothing else it shows that your T levels don't necessarily affect your performance on a day-to-day basis - those doping athletes would be putting out personal bests on the day of their lowest testosterone.
Obviously all the muscle they've built before then helps them more than the depressed T hinders them. So again - it's about more than one number.
Thinking of other markers of health, we don't see 1:1 correlations of blood pressure, cholesterol, blood glucose or anything else with overall mortality. There are trends only. No single number will tell you everything about your health, and focusing just on that one number can actually make your health worse, I believe - I think this is a significant cause of iatrogenic deaths worldwide.
Seems strange regarding testosterone, almost like it is a "hated" hormone.......
Obviously there are cultural and not scientific reasons for the differences you laid out. Nonetheless I think it a good principle that we should not use a medical intervention where a non-medical intervention can do as well. The less shit we put in ourselves and the less poking about in our bodies with scalpels, the better for our long-term health and our wallets.
It's like the people I've had in the gym who had back pain and were awaiting surgery. "Well, your surgery isn't for six months. Whether you sit on the couch for six months or lift for six months, you're still going to have wait six months for the surgery. And after surgery, you will lose strength. All doctors agree that it's better to go into surgery strong than weak. So you may as well lift for these six months."
If you've done everything non-medical you possibly can to address whatever you think the issue is and it's not fixed, by all means jab away.
In the oggsmash case, food and exercise will be fine, I'm sure. So it'll be sleep and overall stress. Those things can fuck you up.