TRT in Canada
You can only get testosterone in Canada with a prescription. According to Health Canada, you can only get testosterone prescriptions for men in Canada. You will still need a prescription to buy OTC testosterone. Hence, it is not possible to buy testosterone without a proper prescription.
As with most other steroids, testosterone requires a prescription. Before starting testosterone therapy, your doctor will need to check your baseline levels of the sex hormones testosterone and estrogen so that you can take the appropriate dose of testosterone to achieve your desired level of masculinization. Monitoring testosterone levels is also important for transgender men and transmascolins who use HRT during the transition. As a result, Health Canada recommends against the use of TRT in men with non-specific symptoms, unless laboratory tests confirm low testosterone levels. A cardiovascular evaluation is required before testosterone therapy is started in any TRT clinic Canada.
TRT Medical Studies
A recent study showed that 1 in 90 men over 65 received testosterone replacement therapy, but only 6% of them were definitively diagnosed with low testosterone. Some men, about 2%, experience symptoms of low testosterone later in life, although severe testosterone deficiency occurs in less than 1%. Although older Canadian men are being treated for testosterone deficiency, many of them do not have a clinical diagnosis of deficiency. Health Canada reports that men aged 40 to 59 are more likely to be prescribed a testosterone replacement, followed by people aged 65 and older.
TRT Prescriptions in Canada
Data from Ontario showed that between 1997 and 2012, testosterone prescribing increased to the point that about 1 in 90 men over 65 were prescribed testosterone, but only 6% had a definitive diagnosis of hypogonadism, justifying the prescribing. The 550 can be compared to a 2013 US study that looked at prescriptions from a major health insurance company and found that 11 million men were being treated for testosterone-related problems. While it is not possible to narrow down precisely on the number of men suffering from a condition called hypogonadism in Canada due to a lack of specific statistics, the 2013 IMS Healths Testosterone Report found that there were 550,000 retail prescriptions for testosterone-containing drugs in Canada. Health Canada reports that testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) has increased by 310% in Ontario over the past 15 years, however only about 6% of men have actually been diagnosed with a condition requiring TRT.
Summary Introduction Prescribing of testosterone therapy (TT) has plummeted since the US Food and Drug Administration and Health Canada warned of potential cardiovascular morbidity in 2014. In response to warnings from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Health Canada suggesting an increased cardiovascular risk associated with TT.2, 3 Understanding and evaluation of TT prescription patterns is difficult for many reasons. If the cause of low testosterone is a condition called age-related hypogonadism, TRT makes sense in most situations. Health Canada has also stated that men with low testosterone levels should not be prescribed medication unless other possible causes have been ruled out.