LabCorp Announces a Change to the Testosterone Reference Range

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LabCorp Announces a Change to the Testosterone Reference Range

When you receive the results of a blood test, the numerical result will come with an average range that consists of two numbers: one low and the other high.

The goal is to have your number fall in-between both figures, and place you in the “reference range,” also called the “normal range."

This figure is essential since your doctor will question anything outside of the normal range. Makes sense, right? So far, so good.

However, LabCorp, the largest clinical laboratory in America, recently lowered the testosterone reference range for men from 348-1,197 ng/dl to 264-916 ng/dl.

A quick glance will tell you the obvious: the range has shifted lower.

This Has Huge Implications for Men with Low Testosterone

The higher average range had been the standard measure of testosterone for decades. So why would LabCorp decide to lower the range?

The company gives two reasons for the reduced ranges.

First, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has standardized the method used for measuring testosterone. This change was due to several labs using a broad range of measuring techniques, which resulted in wildly differing results.

Second, and more telling, LabCorp stated that the new numbers “reflects a difference in average subjects with higher BMI’s.” This is chilling and needs to be explained in detail.

The theory and reasoning behind the standard ranges in blood testing are that 95% of folks considered healthy will fall between that range. And herein lies the rub.

This new standard for healthy testosterone levels uses that same reasoning. However, this leads to a controversial question: precisely what is considered “healthy?”

The Body Mass Index (BMI) is a widely-used measure of health computed by dividing your weight (either pounds or kilograms) by your height in either inches or centimeters. This will give a number, and here is a chart for interpreting this figure:

The BMI is not without its critics, who insist that it is far from being a perfect health metric.

For starters, it merely looks at weight and does not consider muscle mass.

This could result in both a bodybuilder and a couch potato both 6’ tall and weighing 225 pounds being classified as obese in spite of the bodybuilder having only 6% body fat, while the couch potato has 20% body fat!

Also, the BMI ignores ethnicity.

Folks with Asian or Native American genes are at a higher risk for a disease even if their BMI numbers are lower.

Still another problem with relying on the BMI index when considering what is low testosterone is this: the new lower range comes from a study titled Harmonized References Ranges for Circulating Testosterone Levels in Men of Four Cohort Studies in the United States and Europe.

The problem with that study?

Low testosterone (“Low-T”) is associated with fat men, so the study only measured non-obese men. However, just because a man is not obese does not automatically qualify him for the label “healthy.”

Look at the BMI chart.

Any number over 25 is considered overweight, and inactive men with a BMI in the so-called healthy range may still have high levels of body fat. This is the comparison measure for you and everyone else.

There’s no question that testosterone rates have cratered in the last several decades. Junk food, physical inactivity, environmental toxins -- the list of suspects goes on and on.

But regardless of the reasons for the explosive growth of the number of men suffering from Low-T, the bottom line is this: when your testosterone levels are measured, you are compared to a mob of men who break many, if not all, of the rules of good health. Regrettably, this is the new normal.

How This Directly Affects You

When it comes to blood testing, LabCorp’s influence is gigantic; the 800-pound gorilla, the big whale. What they say and do spills over to other labs, physicians, and insurance companies.

Therefore, unless your testosterone level is lower than a puny 264 ng/dl, you are not considered to need treatment for Low-T.

This gives your doctor a reason not to prescribe it and your insurance company a reason not to pay for it.

This is Why You Need Our Clinic

Our clinic DOES NOT accept these new numbers as the final determination of your healthy testosterone level.

We WILL NOT compare you to the vast number of men who have steadfastly refused to care for their bodies.

Your low testosterone diagnosis will be accurate, and only then will we proceed.

We will treat you like the individual you are, not just a number.

We will design a comprehensive program to restore your testosterone to its activity levels in a safe, efficient, and secure manner.

Our treatment for low testosterone is cutting-edge, and we will leave no stone unturned in renewing and maintaining your optimum health.

You must educate yourself, or be at the mercy of an authoritarian, paid-off, impersonal medical system that increasingly sees patients as walking dollar signs. Never, ever believe that merely not being sick is being healthy.

Just go out in public and look around. Ordinary people are overweight, unhealthy couch potatoes, just waiting for a severe disease to strike them like an asteroid hurtling toward the earth.

In contemporary America, ordinary means shoveling down junk food, swallowing anti-depressants like popcorn, plates of prescription drugs to deal with a broad range of health issues, sugar addiction, never working out and amusing themselves to death with television and constant texting.