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Against the Grain with Dr. Chad Edwards | Oklahoma Prolotherapy | Podcast 4 – Part 2
Speaker 1: It’s story time.
Dr. Chad: I’m going to talk about this patient. It was a big deal for this patient. He was …
Brian Wilkes: Life changer.
Dr. Chad: … life changing, that’s correct. Lot going on. Lots of stress, multiple things going into the pot so to speak. Got a testosterone level. His testosterone level started at 220, which is definitely outside of the normal “Reference range” which we’ve talked about on previous podcasts.
Brian Wilkes: Say what the normal range is though.
Dr. Chad: Depending on the lab, 300 to 1,000. This was roughly 30% lower than what it should have been, definitely low. This patient was working out quite a bit and his performance was good. He was improving and all of those kinds of things. He said, “Well, let’s try and do this naturally.” I supported that. That’s appropriate.
He was just going to focus on trying to reduce stress, making sure he was sleeping well, those kinds of things. There’s actually a post on my podcast where I talk about how to get testosterone levels up naturally. There’s a post on my Web site, not on my podcast. There will be a podcast about this, but not this one.
We tried to do that naturally. It didn’t help. It was in the middle of a workout. He was, like I said, doing crossfit. It was a Friday evening. Halfway through his workout, he just crashed.
Brian Wilkes: Hit the wall.
Dr. Chad: Literally. Normal thing would be just finish the workout slow, but he literally stopped.
Brian Wilkes: He was done.
Dr. Chad: Couldn’t …
Brian Wilkes: Have you ever hit the wall before? They call it hitting the wall in endurance athletes.
Dr. Chad: Yes.
Brian Wilkes: It’s something.
Dr. Chad: Yeah.
Brian Wilkes: You’re done.
Dr. Chad: Exactly.
Brian Wilkes: You’re finished.
Dr. Chad: That’s what happened. This guy, on a Saturday evening, thought … or this was Friday night. Thought, “Maybe I need to eat. I need to get a good night’s sleep.” Did both of those things. Woke up Saturday. Still felt awful.
Engaged the medical system and got an injection of testosterone Saturday evening. It was 6:00 in the evening. Got an injection of testosterone. Woke up Sunday morning, a new man. The clouds went away. The birds were chirping. Like night and day different. The thing is that story is mine. That’s exactly what happened to me.
Brian Wilkes: That’s you.
Dr. Chad: That was me. It really drove home. When I got that first testosterone level, it was 220. I was like, “Well, that’s clearly too low, but I feel good. My performance is good. I’m working out. I’m making gains. I’m getting faster.” My times were better and all those things. I was like, “Well, I’m not too worried about it.”
The thing with low testosterone, I tell this to all of my patients. This has been shown to be true over decades. 1 study showed that men have a testosterone level of 1,000. That’s on that high end, versus men that have a testosterone of 300. The guys with the testosterone of 1,000 have a greater than 50% reduced annual mortality. They die half as often every year.
Brian Wilkes: And a lot happier.
Dr. Chad: Exactly.
Brian Wilkes: Let’s be honest.
Dr. Chad: That, without question. Real common stuff would be they come in. They sex drive’s low. Maybe their willy’s not working right. They’re having erectile dysfunction, all kinds of those kinds of things. Many people think that that’s testosterone. The reality is is that’s the last thing to show up.
The first things that often show is you’re fatigued. You’re tired in the evening, especially after dinner. You eat, sit down on the couch and you’re out. Motivation starts to decline.
Many people will think about steroid rage, being on testosterone and high levels of testosterone. You get this rage. That’s true, but I also see a lot of anger in low testosterone. I noticed that. You’ll just snap and it’s weird. It’s not ….
Brian Wilkes: It’s almost a different kind of rage. It’s a depressive rage …
Dr. Chad: It is.
Brian Wilkes: … rather than an aggressive rage.
Dr. Chad: It is, exactly, exactly. That’s not uncommon. I actually noticed that I was falling asleep at the wheel driving home in 5:00 traffic. Just noticing snap, all of a sudden, whoa. What just happened? It was only for a split second, but that was weird. I didn’t have those issues.
I was working on my clinic a lot. I was doing all kinds of things. I would sit down on the couch in the evening, open up my laptop and I couldn’t get anything done. I was like, “I just don’t care right now. I just need to go to bed.” That’s not me.
When I went on testosterone, it changed everything for me. That’s my story. Most people don’t have that black and white, night and day difference, but that was my story. For me, all those stressors that I was undergoing, of course, I deployed to Iraq, so I fall into that category of the guys coming home and all that stuff. I had a lot of stress. Our clinic had gone through an embezzlement. There was just a lot going on.
Brian Wilkes: A lot of life stuff going on.
Dr. Chad:It was and a lot of stress. I think that’s what contributed to it. You got to go back to that why. I checked my adrenals. I checked a bunch of things. They were all shot. Went on a lot stuff, some supplements, some rebel stuff. In 6 months, I was feeling substantially better. I just noticed that I don’t take testosterone because like a sex drive, erectile dysfunction problem, none of those kinds of things. It’s a fatigue issue.
I noticed that if I …. I take testosterone injections. That’s what my doc and I have decided is the most appropriate for me. There’s different ways that we can replace it. That’s what we decided was most appropriate for me. If I go …. I’m supposed to do them every week. Doctors make the worst patients. If I go too long, 10 days, if I skip a whole week and go to 2 weeks, I’m really starting to notice a decline again.
Of course, that could be life. Just got a lot going on. It could be those kinds of things. I notice a big difference.
