I’m curious to know more about Free T compared to T which has binded with Albumin..
I read conflicting things, some say that T is binded and not easily available to the body whereas others say it dissociates easily from the Albumin.
I’ve been fighting cancer and went through chemo, I thought my T was bottomed out but after getting checked my Total T was in the high range of normal and my Free T pretty average.
That said I eat a very high protein diet and lots of nuts both of which is said to increase T binded with Albumin.
I’m kinda wondering if I should be dropping the nut intake since I eat a ton per day to increase my Free T count?
-GC
Here is an answer (to a similar question) Bill Roberts provided in a forum. I thought it was a good, concise explanation. You might find it interesting: "An exactly correct explanation is really not practical. The first part of being really correct, really has to be glossed over and presented by analogy.
A physical chemistry text or many analytical chemistry texts will present it rigorously, if interested. There is a concept and thing in physical chemistry called activity (which has very little to do with the ordinary meaning of the word) or chemical potential. It is in reference to energy of the system. When molecules are in solution and free to move, or free to move from the solid state into a liquid solution, they on average move in such a way as to yield equal chemical potential on both sides.
Kind of like how if you have two pools of water and run a hose between them, you may be sure that water will flow from the higher pool to the lower. And you may be sure that with time, assuming there's no issue of pools overflowing, they will, if water is free to flow from one to the other, that they will reach the same level.
Similarly, with solvents containing solutes (dissolved material), where the solutes are free to move from one solvent to the other, the chemical potential of the solutes in the solvents will equalize, and rapidly so if the solutes are reasonably free to exchange between the solvents.
A cruder but still fairly close way to look at this is "percent saturation" instead of chemical potential (the two are closely related.) If for example you have a container holding both chloroform and water (they don't mix) and some solute and you shake or stir them to give the solute the opportunity to move from one solvent to the other, if you find after this that the chloroform is say 50% saturated with the solute (that is, it could hold exactly twice as much before being unable to dissolve any more) then you would find that the water phase will also be almost exactly or maybe exactly 50% saturated.
Similarly if you have a solute -- say testosterone -- dissolved in the aqueous phase of the blood, that is, free in the water part of the blood, at some percentage of saturation, you would also find that 3 the fat in the body has testosterone dissolved in it at almost exactly or exactly the same percent saturation. Now, testosterone is probably at least 1000 times more soluble in fat than in water, so the concentration in the fat would be 1000 or more times higher, but not the percent saturation, which would be the same.
The same is true with regard to that which is bound by substances such as SHBG or serum albumin. They will be at the same percent of their saturation as the water is (or extremely close to it) but because their ability to solvate testosterone is vastly greater per milligram, the absolute quantity bound to such substances can be far beyond what is solvated free in the water.
So the reason free testosterone is a relatively small value while the amount bound to serum albumin is considerably higher, and the amount bound to SHBG is far higher, is because with testosterone being at the same chemical potential in each phase or substance (and it will be or extremely close to it at any time, as if it is not, it will rapidly move in such a manner as to equalize the chemical potential) the properties of serum albumin, SHBG, or for that matter fat, are such that the concentrations of testosterone in these or bound to these are far higher than what is the case in the aqueous phase of the blood.
In terms of evaluating the pharmacology of testosterone, or any other substance in the blood, every single equation for every single phenomenon related to receptor binding or rate of enzymatic conversion depends only on the free concentration.
The amounts sitting around in fat cells, or bound to SHBG, or serum albumin, aren't even in the equations. The chemical potential is what is relevant, and is fully known by the free testosterone figure.
Knowing how much T is bound to SHBG is no more important than knowing how much T is stored in fat cells or total in the body, for example.
That is to say, not important at all. (A fat person, for same free T, has far more testosterone stored in the body, by the way, but that fact does not result in more biological effect, though it likely has relevance to clearance of injected steroids.)
On knowing the free value, further information on total or "free and weakly bound" adds absolutely zero further useful knowledge. The exception is if one is interested in cellular signalling effects of SHBG itself, and one does know more about the amount of SHBG if knowing the amount of total testosterone after knowing the amount of free testosterone, as an indirect way of figuring amount of SHBG.
But the anabolic relevance is zero. Doctors, in general, do not understand this (or at least those that are not well versed in physical and/or analytical chemistry generally do not, and there are extremely few that are because they really don't need to know it) and there are countless examples in the medical literature, as well as other articles, that rely instead on what seems to be common sense. But what seems common sense just is completely off in this case."
