Stephe: Oh, right, I'm sorry. I was disregarding spironolactone, which, if I remember well, doesn't reduce T levels all that much in some cases but still blocks its action. I take cyproterone and it destroyed all T in me, and my girlfriend on spiro had that too... Apparently, spiro varies in what it does. Unless it's a story of bio-available/total testosterone.
But still, since spiro sometimes lowers T significantly, sometimes doesn't, something remains: it has the potential to have most of the impact on T levels, the way I understand it. So it makes HRT management purely based upon T levels pretty bad if you ask me.
And anyway, even if it's of limited use, which I seriously doubt, why skip a test entirely? It's not true that it's entirely useless; no one can say that. And I'm pretty sure the expensive, long-analysis test is the testosterone one anyway, estradiol being common and fast.
And uhm, my endo prescribed me a blood test while I was only on transdermal HRT, while he knew my testosterone was already too low for even the average female. Pretty sure he was testing estradiol, and that it has a use in determining what dose I'm going to need.
This is all going by feeling, but all this sounds logical to me.
DaniStarr: I think you have the proof that your therapist doesn't know what he's talking about. Or was very, very tired when he called, and said some nonsense word instead of estrone.
