Dr. Betty Murray tried testosterone pellet therapy for low testosterone and gained eight pounds in three months, despite practitioners claiming testosterone causes weight loss. In women, testosterone acts as an anabolic hormone that raises IGF-1 and activates mTOR pathways, which can trigger insulin resistance and fat storage. Functional medicine often skips monitoring these metabolic effects.
This is when pellets and testosterone therapy starts ramping up in the functional medicine community. And we do some labs and, you know, my testosterone's low. Do we check all the other androgens? Not really. Because it was testosterone and free testosterone that was important. And I can tell you, my libido sucked. I was, you know, unmotivated. There was a lot going on. And so I get put on testosterone therapy and I get a pellet because at the time that was when they were popular. I was like, cool, I don't have to do anything for 3 months. Let's check it out. Well, I felt great. For the first time I had libido in a long time. Um, but I pack on another 8 pounds over the course of 3 months. All right. So now I'm at all, like all-time high. And of course the practitioners, you know, say, oh no, no, no, it's water weight gain. It's, you know, testosterone causes weight loss. That's not true in women. That's true in men in some cases, but it's also an anabolic hormone. So if you have other androgens that are high and it raises IGF-1, you have basically an insulin resistance coming and a fat storage coming from IGF-1 and mTOR, which are two pathways stimulated by protein and insulin-like growth factor that testosterone drives independent of insulin.
