@grayson.smith12's testosterone therapy claims fact-checked

What did @grayson.smith12 actually say?

She said she spent three to four years dealing with "extreme fatigue, brain fog, low energy, low motivation" before bloodwork revealed her testosterone was "super, super, super, super low." Her doctor then prescribed a low-dose topical testosterone gel applied to the inner arms. She's presenting this as day one of treatment and framing it as something other women might not know about.

That framing is fair. Testosterone deficiency in women is genuinely underdiagnosed, and the symptom cluster she describes, fatigue, cognitive fog, low motivation, maps reasonably well onto what the clinical literature associates with low androgen levels in women. She's not making wild claims. She's documenting a personal health experience that a lot of women likely share but haven't had named for them yet.

Does the science back this up?

Mostly, yes, with some important caveats. The evidence that testosterone matters for women's health is real, but it's messier than this video implies.

A 2019 consensus statement from the Global Consensus Position Statement on the Use of Testosterone Therapy for Women (Testosterone Consensus Group, Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism) confirmed that testosterone therapy has demonstrated benefit for hypoactive sexual desire disorder in women, but the evidence for fatigue, brain fog, and motivation is considerably weaker. Davis et al. (2019, same consensus statement) were explicit that testosterone should not currently be prescribed for these symptoms outside of clinical trials, because the data isn't strong enough yet.

That doesn't mean she's wrong that low testosterone caused her symptoms. It means the causal link is harder to prove than the video suggests. Her symptoms could also reflect thyroid dysfunction, iron deficiency, sleep disorders, or depression, all of which can coexist with low testosterone or explain symptoms independently.

What did they get wrong (or right)?

She got the basic biology right. Women do produce and need testosterone. Levels decline with age and can drop sharply around perimenopause, and low levels are associated with fatigue and cognitive complaints. Credit where it's due.

What she glossed over is that "low" testosterone in women doesn't have a universally agreed-upon clinical threshold. Unlike male hypogonadism, there is no established lower limit of normal for female testosterone that reliably predicts symptoms. The Endocrine Society has explicitly stated there is no validated cutoff. This means a lab flagging her levels as low is doing so against reference ranges that are contested in the medical community.

She also didn't mention that testosterone therapy for women in the U.S. is not FDA-approved for any indication in women as of 2024. What she's using is almost certainly a compounded product or an off-label prescription. That's legal, and many clinicians do prescribe it, but it's worth knowing. Compounded testosterone is not equivalent to an FDA-approved formulation, and patients should understand that distinction.

What should you actually know?

If you relate to her symptom list, getting bloodwork done is a reasonable first step. A full hormonal panel including free and total testosterone, SHBG, thyroid function, ferritin, and a CBC is a sensible starting point before attributing everything to testosterone.

If your results do show low testosterone and a clinician recommends therapy, topical gels like the one she's showing are one delivery method. Others include injections, pellets, and patches. Each has different absorption profiles and monitoring requirements. No format is universally superior.

Be skeptical of anyone who promises this will fix fatigue or brain fog definitively. The honest answer from the literature is that some women report significant improvement, others don't, and we don't yet have reliable predictors of who will respond. Glaser and Dimitrakakis (2013, Maturitas) reported quality-of-life improvements in women treated with testosterone pellets, but that study has methodological limitations.

Finally, monitoring matters. Testosterone therapy in women carries risks including acne, hair loss, voice changes, and, at higher doses, cardiovascular and liver effects. Anyone starting this treatment should have follow-up labs and shouldn't self-adjust based on how they feel without clinician input.