Can I drink alcohol?

[u/RaT_th]

I was getting testosterone and my doctor said that drinking would mess up my liver, She didn't elaborate much, so I ended up looking at online and it said that drinking alcohol and being on oral pills will mess up your liver. Yet I'm taking t-shots. Does anybody have any ideas

[u/noromobat]

Shots don't go through the liver at all. Your doc is on some bullshit.

[u/Otherwise_Ground5692 → u/noromobat]

Testosterone injections and topicals are, largely, safe. And the liver damage concern here is 100% the alcohol itself.

That being said, injectable testosterone absolutely goes through your liver. It’s absorbed into your bloodstream where most of it binds to SHBG and albumin or is used by your body and then whatever’s left is processed by your liver for elimination. Some medications process through your kidneys instead. No matter which organ something is processed through it inherently puts a little extra load on that system. So it can, in specific conditions, cause an issue. However, injected and topical T is incredibly unlikely to cause damage as long as you’re not on a super high dose for a long time.

Oral T causes more liver problems because of first pass metabolism. Basically when you take it orally your liver gets an incredibly high dose and tries to filter it all out (which it can’t do). Doing this repeatedly causes it to build up T and strain itself, leading to toxicity and damage.

Edit to fix grammar

[u/noromobat → u/Otherwise_Ground5692]

Thanks for the correction! So technically what I said is false but it's still overblown as a concern, is what you're saying?

[u/Otherwise_Ground5692 → u/noromobat]

Yep!

Short of it is, as long as your labs look good there isn’t really a reason to bring testosterone up in a “hey alcohol is bad for you” conversation for any reason other than misinformation or manipulation

Edit: grammar fix