Testicular Shrinkage with Dr. Phillip W. Faler, ND
Video Transcription
Dr. Phillip W. Faler, ND: Good morning everyone. I’m Dr. Philip Faler with Anti-Aging Northwest. I thought we’d take a minute this morning to talk about something I’m seeing more and more often in clinic, which is younger and younger men with low testosterone, which brings testicular shrinkage forward as a much larger concern. Men who haven’t reproduced yet, we don’t want them to lose testicular function at all.
The Risks of Injectable Testosterone for Fertility
And one of the biggest downsides of taking injectable testosterone would be that spermatogenesis gets turned off, testicles begin to atrophy or shrink, and sometimes it can be brought back and sometimes it can’t. And it’s a big risk for a man under, say, 40 who may want to have children yet.
How Enclomiphene Supports Natural Testosterone Production
So one really great option we’ve got for that, I mean, obviously we’ve got the ground level stuff; improve your health, nutrition, exercise, diet, all those things help. Get the plastic out of your kitchen. But aside from that, what we can do is use a secretagogue drug that blocks estrogen receptors called enclomiphene. And the enclomiphene will turn up the natural production of LH and FSH, luteinizing and follicle stimulating hormones. And those in turn, those come from the pituitary head to the testicles and turn on the production of … I went to a comedy club this weekend … Turn on the natural production of testosterone. And I see it at least twice a week, I have a guy under the age of 30 comes to me, testosterone’s in the 200, 300s. Sometimes these guys are military. They’ve had concussive forces or they’ve encountered endured stress. Some of them are firemen, law enforcement guys who are working shift work, oil refinery, number of different fields. Sometimes none of those things. And 25, 30 year old guy and testosterone in the 200s. Five weeks, we do follow up lab testing.
Treatment Results
So we start them on enclomiphene. Five weeks later, we do follow up lab testing. Very strong percentage of the time, maybe 80% of the time, I see their testosterone go from the 200, 300s on up to 900, and they feel a whole lot better. With the younger guys in their 20s, I always at six months try to do, let’s take three weeks a month off and let’s see if maybe your endocrine system kicks back in. Maybe they’ve made some changes, lifestyle, nutrition wise, they’ve dropped some body fat. They’re using their muscles more, they’re exercising. In that younger population, the goal is always to maintain testicular function, as well as keep them on as few things as possible for as short a time as possible.
Who Should Consider Getting Tested?
Anyway, interesting stuff and really great medicine. And if you’re under 40 years old and you’re struggling with low energy, mood, motivation, libido, poor sleep, and you want to screen your testosterone, go ahead and reach out to us at antiagingnorthwest.com.
How to Get Started
You can text my assistant Melanie at (509) 474-0597. She’ll be happy to book you a free 10-minute consult. You and I will sit down by video. We will discuss your current symptoms, health history, and we’ll order some blood work, and then we can sit down together for about 45 minutes, go through all that, take a look at it, and see what might be a good course of action for you. We do everything via telemedicine. We also try to meet every patient in person. So if you’d rather in person or telemedicine, we’ve got both. Hope everybody’s doing great, and I look forward to seeing you soon. Thank you so much.