Testosterone vs Antidepressant Medication

[HomeDog]

I am a 46 year old male, happily married with 3 high school age children and a great job. For most of my adult life I have suffered mild anxiety, and from the age of 40, mild depression. I have tried several different antidepressant medications and suffered lots of side effects only to feel just OK. I am wanting to feel great. In consultation with my GP and family, I stopped taking my medication just over 6 months ago and started heading down the natural route of eating well, exercising, resting and taking some vitamins. I am also seeing a Phycologist. For 6 months now I haven't got any closer. As a matter of fact I feel worse and not coping too well again. My doctor has run some more blood tests and has found low testosterone and a total cholesterol of 8.2. I also have elevated Liver enzymes indicating Fatty Liver.  My doctor wants to lower my cholesterol with statins, and has prescribed me another antidepressant. None of which I have taken yet fearing the side effects and what they do  to my Liver. My quest continues.

Question; Has anyone experienced any success with increasing their Testosterone and eliminating or reducing their Anxiety and Depression? 

 Cheers

[geoff]

dear HomeDog, welcome to the site.
Sometimes it's six of one or half a dozen of another when taking antidepressants (AD), because it is possible when taking them that they have little affect, but when and if you do overcome depression these AD's can keep your demons away, why well the doctors would be able to give you a reason why, but to the laymen it's rather confusing, because none of us ever want to have depression, 'period full stop' as the saying goes.
There are AD's which can reduce the sex drive from a person, that is loss of libido, but 'they' say that it's not by having a low testosterone, that maybe so, but try telling that to someone who has neither, and by saying this I can't give you an answer, however if I can say that one AD that I was given, did reduce my libido to nil, nothing at all, and when this happens to a male it takes away their man-hood, sorry ladies.
Even when I was taking this AD for two weeks or so, I did feel better, but then loss of libido then pulled me back down, so it's catch-22.
The trouble is when you stop taking your AD you do feel much better for a short time but then your depression will pull you back down after awhile.
I am still taking my AD even though I feel that I have overcome my depression, but if I happen to miss a dose or run out of scripts I then start to feel the pull back down into depression, so I will be taking them for a long time.
I hope there are other people who have a better answer than I do. Geoff.