OK, let’s see if you can concentrate for long enough to finish this article…..
Low T has quite a few weird symptoms that most guys don’t really notice that they have until they fix them. A classic example of this is what I will call ‘brain fog‘. The scientific studies that have looked at this use the term ‘mental function’.
If you have suffered from low T you probably know exactly what I’m talking about here. You get halfway through a conversation and forget what you were talking about. You find yourself in the kitchen with absolutely no idea why you are there. For me it was like a detached, spaced out feeling – like I was observing life as opposed to participating in it.
The hard part here is that once you have felt like this for a while, it just feels ‘normal’ to you. You stop characterizing it as a problem – it’s just a characteristic of you.
Trouble Concentrating?
A few years ago, I found out that my T level was 355 ng/dL at 35 years old. It’s important to note that this is not a ‘rock bottom’ reading – check out the guide to ‘normal levels of testosterone’ on WebMD here. I wasn’t at the level of what would always be considered a ‘clinical’ problem, even though I had the T level of a 75 year old man!
Anyway, long story short (and I will get into the long story in later posts), by the time I got up to 500 ng/dL I felt like a different person. At 650 I felt like superman, but again I’ll tell that story later!
The first improvement that I noticed was my ‘mental function’. I don’t have a good way to describe it other than my brain just felt ‘quicker’. I could concentrate on one thing for long periods of time, I seemed to always have a witty comeback to any comment, I just generally felt more ‘connected’ to what was going on around me.
It’s hard to explain, but I really felt like I had just been observing the past few years as opposed to living them, and I didn’t even realize I had a problem until I fixed it. This prompted me to do some research – it turns out that my experience is fairly common (try googling testosterone and brain fog or concentration – it seems to be really common). There is also a growing body of medical research on this topic – the best summary I have found of the existing research can be found in the January 2008 issue of Harvard Men’s Health Watch (which you can get here for 5 bucks).
Anyway, the moral of the story is this – if you’re a guy aged 35+ and you feel ’spaced out’ all of the time, get your T level checked. If it turns out that it’s related to low T then you have options open to you – it’s a condition that can be managed to improve your quality of life.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi, good post. I have been wondering about this issue,so thanks for posting.
Hello
Great post,I worked at a local Battery plant for about four years till the lead levels in my blood went thur the roof.needless to say I HAD to quit,I had followed All the safty training took long showers before I left work.But since then my memory has been awful I have to write everything down or its just gone,my wife tells me things we did before and I just cant remember.Do you think its the after affects of the lead or something else?? . Its been about three or four years since I worked there I think.I work in maintenance and need my memory to be has sharp as it can be ! Any Ideals?? Thanks BDunn
Hi Bdunn,
Sorry to hear that you are having a bad time. If you haven’t already done this, you should get blood tests from your doctor – nobody will be able to provide you an accurate diagnosis based on your symptoms, you need to get a good quantitative measure of a couple of things:
– The levels of lead in your blood. There is a test for this, and your doctor can hook you up. The good news is that there is a treatment for lead poisoning called ‘chelation therapy’ with an extremely high success rate.
and Vinpocetine
every day, and they work well for me. Some people swear by Piracetam or Amiracetam (click on my products page and there is a link to a store that sells them). I have to say though – these are the ‘icing on the cake’ – start with the blood tests, and deal with any underlying physiological issues that are uncovered.
– It’s worth getting your ‘total testosterone’ and ‘free testosterone’ levels checked while you are there. Low T seems to be a common cause of brain fog.
– A lot of people find great success with so called ‘nootropics’ in helping with brain fog. I personally take Gingko Biloba
Let me know how you get on. Take care my friend…..
Thank you so much for this post. I recently got my testosterone tested due to sexual dysfunction related to me taking an SSRI. Well it turned out that I had testosterone of 338, which they told me is “normal”. I am 26 and after doing research I wouldn’t really call this normal.
Anyhow in addition to the sexual dysfunction I have had problems with and reduced libido, I have had this horrible brain fog for two years and have had problems describing it to others. It is exactly like what you are describing here.
So I have a question for you, were you able to find natural ways to fix this or did you need to take hormone replacement. I would prefer a natural solution so that I don’t have to be taking hormones the rest of my life. Is it possible to cure this thing and reset the body to normal? In my case I think the problem was caused by SSRIs. I read a clinical study recently saying that SSRIs can reduce testosterone. They definitely caused my sexual dysfunction. But I have been off for a year and a half now and still suffer from Post SSRI Sexual Dysfunction. But given my symptoms and testosterone results, I think testosterone may be the underlying cause. Any advice?