If you are concerned about testosterone balance, you’ll want to start by making sure any medication you take isn’t impacting your testosterone levels. Or, if it is, make sure you know that your hormone levels may not be able to be accurately measured because of it.
One common medication that can interfere with testosterone measurement (and hormone measurement in general) is oral birth control pills, so make sure you take that into account when looking at results from testosterone tests.
“The suppression of testosterone is often a downstream effect of birth control’s inhibition of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) from the hypothalamus and luteinizing hormone (LH) from the pituitary gland, which are hormones crucial for the natural production of testosterone,” Vinjamoori explains.
This mechanism may be beneficial at times, like when treating severe hormonal acne but may not be for everyone.
