Inositol and Testosterone relationship?

[Krock98]

Hi Lara thankyou for sharing your wisdom with so many people.
I do not have PCOS. I am 48 with regular periods. For the past year I have been taking 2g of myoinositol at bedtime for sleep and found "side effects" of better mood and less pms. Great! In the meantime/past 6months I have had growing issues of fatigue, headaches, low/no libido, weakness. In trying to figure out why, found my testosterone level is low at 4 (other labs all normal though estrogen and prog not tested).

Since myoinositol reduces high T in PCOS, could it be reducing my normal T to be too low? What is the relationship between testosterone and Myoinositol? My symptoms could also be from many other things... but the low T I can't figure out what would do that? Naturopath wants me to start Dhea but I think it is important to know what is causing the low T before trying to boost it.

[Lara]

Inositol will correc the situation of too much testosterone, but will not lower testosterone below normal, so it's fine to take.
As for a possible DHEA supplement during perimenopause, I think that can be a reasonable strategy. Androgens (including DHEA and testosterone) do gradually lower with age. Although some women (not you from the sounds of it) can enter a stage of relative androgen excess during perimenopause.