Joy Kong, MDRegenerative Medicine Physician, Educator, and Entrepreneur

The Dangerous Myth of “Normal” Testosterone

7 Nov 2025 · 1 min

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Short excerpt from a YouTube video ("The Dangerous Myth of 'Normal' Testosterone") featuring a discussion between two speakers about misconceptions around laboratory "normal" testosterone ranges. The speakers argue clinicians often accept mid-range numeric cutoffs (e.g., ~300 ng/dL) as adequate, but that "normal" and "optimal" differ; speaker B emphasizes using symptoms and prior baseline (e.g., a 30-year-old baseline of ~1200 ng/dL) to judge whether higher readings at older ages are appropriate, and lists possible excess-testosterone symptoms (acne, oily skin, increased aggression).

Chapters

It's funny that even doctors these days still are looking at levels like testosterone in three hundreds and saying, you're fine. That's not a problem in your recommendation with patients. For males, what will be your target of testosterone for optimal health?
They're not checking a 30 year old male that has a testosterone level of 1200 or 1500, which happens. What's normal and what's optimal is two different things. So. So I believe in symptoms and history over what a normal level is. And if they had a baseline when they were in their 30s and their normal was 1200, then they're normal when they're 50. To not have symptoms is 1200. So I would not get worried of a testosterone level 1200, 1500 or even 1800 if they're not having symptoms. And the symptoms would be acne, oily skin, overly aggressive. Think about what our ancestors did. They had testosterone levels that were a lot higher than ours.