In this video famous fitness youtuber Scott Herman stated that you shouldn't jump on TRT before you're 35-40. Jump on TRT at the age of 29! How can you jump on TRT at the age of 29?
You shouldn't need TRT until you hit like your late 30s going into your 40s. Let's ask our personal TRT and hormone optimization expert Gil T. So I had a question from... A young guy in his early 20s, he asked, at what age could one start TRT?
And what's the youngest patient you have known to start TRT? And if a young guy like that starts, is there another approach to it? This is the TRT and Hormone Optimization YouTube channel.
And if you want to learn all about the science-based information on this topic, consider subscribing, hit that notification bell, and you'll be on your way. Yeah, good questions. I'm going to answer them. I'm going to answer the first two very bluntly and quickly, and then I'm going to get into the last one.
The answer is there is no age, okay? You're treating an individual to fix a deficiency. So the short answer is there is no right or wrong age.
Are you going to start a six-year-old? No, let's be serious. Can you start someone at 19, 20, 21?
Yeah, I have seen a 19-year-old get treated. He did come to us from another clinic. who already got him started.
And after looking over his initial assessment and where he was at now, we agreed to take him over and continue his treatment. This was a rare case. Am I going to tell all 19 year olds or 20 year olds out there to run out and get on charity? Absolutely not.
It is done for specific reasons and it's a medical condition that is being corrected. Now for the long answer, the younger you are, the more years, presumably we can all get hit by a bus tomorrow, but presumably if we look at the lifespan of an average male, The younger you are, the more years you're going to spend on therapy because the goal here is to fix a deficiency, not to kickstart a deficiency if you're getting on T. If you're getting on T, you're suppressing your own endogenous production. You're going to be dependent on this medication till the day you die.
Therefore, to get you on TRT younger means a lifetime of treatment. It is not ideal unless there is no other option. Now, there's other concerns for younger guys, such as fertility and other development that they may not have fully finalized, especially if they're very close to just going through puberty, like in their late teens.
Ideally, you do want to make sure their growth plates are fully closed. I mean, because you are going to impact their growth hormone levels, their IGF-1 levels. These are things that usually don't tend to mature until the early to mid-20s.
So you do have to be cautious with younger guys. The first approach for anyone in their 20s, let's say, should always be to diagnose whether your low T is a primary or secondary or tertiary, which means is it secondary or up in the brain or is it primary, which is a testicular issue, and then figure out why this occurred in the first place. Oftentimes with younger guys, low T you'll find is a lifestyle, whether they are using drugs, whether it's alcohol, whether it's poor sleep. whether it's a chronic state of stress, whether it's being obese, lack of physical activity, whatever the case may be, you have to first address the things that are tangibly controlled by this patient. Because before you go and medicate someone chemically to try to address the situation, let's give them every fighting chance to do this naturally.
Now that shifts completely when you're in your 40s or 50s. You have a family, you have a job, you have a life that, you know, you've maybe abused your body for the last 20 years. cause some damage that is now physiological and is unreversible. With a younger person, you really want to have a clear discussion and make sure that they understand this is not a shortcut.
They do have to address their deficiency every way they possibly can. And then if it is secondary, meaning that the gland or organ responsible for the production, which is primarily the testicles, is sufficiently working and they're not sending the signals, we would always want to try a kickstart protocol. And we do have a video on this channel for an HPTA. restart. And we spoke about the various serums and gonadotropins, secretagogues that we like, or mimickers that we like to try to use.
So HCG is an analog for LH, and then we like to use tamoxifen. I'm not a fan of Clomid. We have a whole nother video on that. But we do like to try that protocol.
We've had a number of patients that are successful at kickstarting, and they do report feeling better. So subjectively, their reevaluation comes back positive. And then the lab work confirms that we've had somewhat of a successful approach at elevating their natural T levels.
And if we can give those guys another 5, 10, 15 years of staying natural, why not? Why put a guy at 20? to 25 years old on therapy if he in fact can go ahead and get a you know two to three month treatment which then brings him back to where he would like to be so in short yes the treatment protocol is definitely going to be different the level of of cautiousness if lack for a better term lack of cautiousness and how you're going to approach that individual with a plan is going to differ the younger the individual is you're coming in at 45 years old and we've done our traditional assessment and you've been you know determined to have hypogonadism, chances are you're going to end up on TRT.
And if this is a matter of going on in a year or two or three, heck, why not start today, right? But that's not the same conversation you're going to have with someone who's younger. So again, the long answer is yes, age is going to play a role into which course of action we take in approaching your treatment, but it does not necessarily mean you're not a candidate for a treatment leading up to and including possibly TRT for loss fails. Okay. For everyone watching, I will link to the Clomid video and the HPTA restart video in the description of this one.
Thanks, Gild. Pleasure. And now, do this next. Click on one of these thumbnails to learn a ton more about TRT and hormone optimization.