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entirely inactive or like readily available to be dissociated but not yet fully active as well so you have you know shbg is the primary one sex hormone binding globulin produced by the liver this acts as a regulator of androgenicity in the body which is like how much androgen exposure systemically you would be exposed to and the body has this kind of regulating mechanism

to partly to make sure that you know females stay feminine males stay male and regulate which tissues get which hormones when and transport it around the body because these are hydrophobic like they're fat soluble and would not go through the blood to where you want them without some sort of carrier so they have a hydrophilic

similar to like how cholesterol will get moved around through its, you know, ApoB particles and whatnot.

And these binding proteins, SHBG and albumin, comprise the vast majority of testosterone.

I think SHBG is about 60% of your total T will be bound by SHBG.

And then like 38% is albumin.

And then 2% to 3% roughly, depending on how much

shbg produce and some other factors is actually free testosterone so the free testosterone number is just like freely circulating not bound to binding proteins and it's like ready and readily available to be used by target tissues should it bind to the androgen receptor and cause the transcriptional activity but

In general, the two numbers you care about the most are going to be the total testosterone, which is like total production reflection.

So like how much are you actually capable of making, which is important.

A lot of people will just say, look, you're free because that's like the number of the matters.

That's what's actually available to use.

And that's true.

But it still doesn't reflect total production capacity, which is important to assess the viability of the organ, response to the pituitary output, a myriad of things.

So total testosterone, total production, including that bound to binding proteins influenced by liver health, diet, a bunch of different factors, free testosterone, about 2% to 3% in an optimally healthy male typically.

That is just freely available to be used.

And then as far as measurement, kind of like best practices, typically in the morning is the best.

Testosterone is kind of it's like a pulsatile hormone.

secretion fashion so you would see in a diurnal rhythm chart showing the secretions of testosterone throughout the day it kind of pulses out in waves so you would have like the biggest pulse early in the morning and then it kind of like goes across ebbs and flows throughout the day until it reaches its low point later at night and then as you sleep it starts to ramp back up again so typically the best way to assess peak levels would be early in the morning

and ideally you would have um not taken certain confounding variable supplements like biotin that can cross detect as you know estrogens and whatnot and typically labs will provide kind of like a guideline of what not to do but in general the rule of thumb is you know go and fasted early in the morning avoid uh your multivitamin probably if it has biotin in our biotin containing supplements