Briefs on male fertility, hormones, and reproductive health. Written or reviewed by physicians on our medical team.
Estradiol is treated like a women's hormone in mainstream medicine. In men, it's quietly essential, and both ends of the range cause problems. Here's how to read it on a panel.
Prolactin is a pituitary hormone most people associate with breastfeeding. In men, persistently elevated prolactin is one of the few reversible, treatable causes of low testosterone and low libido, and one of the most missed.
Two men with the same total testosterone can have very different lives, because SHBG decides how much of it actually works. Here's how to read it on a panel, and why it's quietly the most informative single number for many men.
Erectile dysfunction is rarely just about testosterone. Here is which hormones a panel measures, what each one means for ED, and when the result points at something fixable.
Roughly half of fertility cases involve male factors. Why the diagnostic path still starts with the woman by default, and what to do about it as a couple.
Semen analysis is the most important single test in male fertility workup. What WHO 2021 measures, the one parameter almost no clinic includes, and when the test is actually due.
When you're trying to conceive, talking to your partner about male testing can feel loaded. Four frames, three verbatim scripts, two mistakes to avoid.
Cannabis use is now common, often daily, often started early. The reproductive evidence base has caught up. Here is what regular use does to sperm parameters, hormones, and DNA integrity, and what reverses on stopping.
PFS is a contested clinical entity with very real symptoms for some patients. Here is the honest summary of the evidence, what hormone testing actually shows after stopping finasteride, and where the data ends.
An order-of-operations guide for reading a six-marker hormone panel. What to look at first, which combinations actually matter, and how to spot the patterns that warrant a follow-up.
Hormone reference ranges assume a particular sampling protocol. Get the protocol wrong and the most expensive number on your panel is the one you'll have to repeat. Here is the practical sample-timing guide for a Hormone Panel 01.
Reference ranges flatten the picture. Here is what testosterone actually does across the male lifespan, what 'normal' means at 30 vs. 50, and why the lower bound is more political than physiological.
Sperm regenerates roughly every 90 days. So do many of the hormonal patterns that drive male fertility. Here is what the data says about which lifestyle changes are worth the effort, and which are mostly noise.
FSH and LH are the two pituitary hormones that decide whether a low testosterone reading is a testicular problem or a brain-signal problem. Reading them together is the difference between a guess and a diagnosis.
Testosterone replacement suppresses sperm production within weeks. Here is what the HPTA axis does on TRT, what recovery actually looks like, and which markers to track at each stage.
If you ask a GP for a fertility-relevant blood panel, you'll usually walk out with one or two numbers, sometimes none. Here is what a typical primary-care order looks like, and why it tends to under-deliver.
A semen analysis is a different test from a hormone panel, with a different set of decisions attached. Here is when sperm-side testing earns its keep, and when hormones answer the question first.
Sperm parameters stay stable until the mid-30s, then shift in ways that matter for fertility, pregnancy outcomes, and child health. Here is what the evidence says and what you can do about it.
A single number on a blood panel is easy to fixate on. Here's how andrologists actually read testosterone results, and what men should ask for alongside the headline figure.