Should I take testosterone boosters?

I've tried testosterone boosters. In my opinion, they don't work. There is also no scientific evidence that proves testosterone boosters increase testosterone.As an alternative, I've pasted an educational guest post on Testosterone Replacement Therapy (the real deal). Hopefully this better informs you on the most effective way of boosting testosterone:
The following is a guest post by Nathan Lewis of ironandtweed.com

I’ve never had an unhealthy relationship with porn.

Now, I don’t have anything against porn - it’s just never played a significant role in my life.

So I don’t have the same perspective as some of you who have struggled with porn dependency or addiction.

But we may have a few things in common.

In the spring of 2014, at 28 years old, I was diagnosed with dismally low testosterone levels.

Both porn addiction and low testosterone can result in low self-esteem, lack of motivation and competitive drive, erectile dysfunction, social anxiety, and failed or faltering relationships.

So while I’ve not grappled with porn addiction, I can definitely empathize with some of the symptoms.

The Low-T connection

Now, you may not have low testosterone.

But if you do, it can literally ruin your life.

And given the drastic, widespread decline of testosterone levels over the past few decades, I’d be willing to wager that some of you have undiagnosed low-T.

My driving goal in life is to strive for constant self-improvement for both myself and my readers.

And since you guys are reading Quit Porn Get Girls, I know you’re primed for change.

So for those of you who want to know more about testosterone and low T symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment, here’s a summary of my experience aimed to provide with tools to help yourself.

What does testosterone do for you?

Under the mainstream opinion, testosterone is an evil elixir that makes you overly aggressive and reckless.

It’s been associated with cheating athletes and middle-aged men trying in vain to recapture lost youth.

But little is said about the extreme importance of testosterone levels on a man’s mental health and physical well being.

Some of the many health benefits associated with optimal testosterone levels are:

• Low body fat
• Higher muscle mass
• Increased bone density
• Reduced risk of heart disease
• Improved insulin sensitivity
• Less depression
• Better sexual function
• Higher self esteem
• Healthy libido
• Improved concentration

In short, having optimal testosterone levels makes every aspect of your life better. It makes you feel more like a strong, capable man and less like an insecure boy.

Symptoms and causes of low testosterone
Having low testosterone feels a lot like being in poor health in general.

Low T can be the result of poor lifestyle choices, genetic predisposition, and/or an expression of other underlying medical conditions.

While improving lifestyle factors can sometimes reverse or greatly alleviate low T symptoms, in my case, lifestyle was not a factor in the low testosterone that plagued me my entire adult life.

The symptoms of low T are vast, but mostly commonly include:

• Mood swings
• Depression
• Erectile dysfunction
• Low libido
• Excess body fat
• Low muscle mass
• Brain fog
• Weak immune system
• Confidence issues
• Poor blood lipid levels

With this laundry list of symptoms, experts still can’t agree on any single identifiable cause of low testosterone.

Some say it’s the result of exposure to chemicals (like those that mimic estrogen in the body), others point to a poor diet and lack of exercise, while others still cite “less masculine behavior” as the culprit.

Without a clear cause, it’s most likely that a combination of many factors is behind the low testosterone epidemic.

And let’s face it, we simply aren’t living anything that resembles a natural life these days.

Almost everything we eat and touch is a synthetic compound of some kind.

We get our suntans from LCD monitors, nutrition from a can (or a cardboard box), and most of our activity involves walking from the front door, to the car, and then to a desk.

That’s not exactly life on the savannah.

The human body needs to be exposed to physical challenges, clean air, quality food, and to have a mind free of unnecessary/imaginary stress to be in prime shape.

Clearly it’s going to be an uphill battle.

My lifestyle before TRT
Long before TRT, I was a heavy drinker, pack-a-day smoker, and fast food addict who didn’t exercise any more than the average American.

But for the six consecutive years just prior to my diagnosis, I was living the life of a health guru.

To give you a glimpse of my life, I was:

• Lifting weights 3-5 days per week (always focusing on progression)
• Doing a moderate amount of cardio
• Eating a Paleo-esque diet
• Sleeping 8-10 hours per night
• Always consuming at least 1g protein per lb of bodyweight
• Not smoking (and hadn’t in almost a decade)
• Drinking alcohol only socially
• Not having any financial or family difficulties
• Using mostly all-natural, fragrance-free products, cleaners, etc. (at least 6 months prior to diagnosis)

But despite what should have been a nearly perfect high T lifestyle, I still felt like complete shit.

My signs before TRT
Physical

I was always injury prone. My joints, bones, and tendons just couldn’t handle heavy physical activity.

My shoulders and elbows would ache from lifting weights.

I herniated a disc and broke a vertebra while working in construction.

And the first time I ran a mile (at age 21), my feet, ankles, knees, and hips hurt so bad I limped around for weeks afterward.

Emotional

I used to have severely low periods in my life that would come out of nowhere.

If you’re familiar with the Harry Potter series, you’ll know what I mean when I say that I felt like Dementors were surrounding me at times.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just know that there were times where I’d be completely incapable of enjoying the good aspects of my life and felt overwhelmed with every bad thing that had ever happened to me.

And then there was the RAGE.

At the age of 28, I still felt like an angry teenager.

Some days, I would wake up and feel like screaming and throwing my coffee pot at the wall for literally no reason.

Nothing was bothering me me at the time, nothing weighing on my mind, and nothing even inconveniencing me at the moment. I would just feel like exploding without warning.

Sexual

On the sexual front, everything worked just fine, but grappling with my depression and emotional symptoms left me completely uninterested in sex.

Obviously, that’s a serious red flag for a supposedly healthy young man.

Mental

“Brain fog” was a constant reality for me.

Frequently, I would stare at my computer screen at work, not really thinking, just looking at it blankly.

It would take a long time for me to get “into the zone” and the slightest distraction would completely break my concentration.

I just didn’t feel “sharp”.

Changes on TRT

Okay, let’s nix all this downer talk - now for the good stuff!

Physical

This is one case where a picture is worth a thousand words.

In my before photo, you can see the result of living like a professional bodybuilder for over 6 years (minus the drugs).

Obviously, my results were subpar, but that was genuinely the best I could do with the testosterone levels of an 80 year old man.

In the first 6-8 months on TRT, I packed on 30 lbs, taking me from 170 lbs up to a much more natural 200 lbs.

I felt really good at that weight and people stopped looking at me like I had cancer.

But I wondered what I would look and feel like with less body fat, so I cut down to 185 lbs over the next several months (see my After photo).

In less than a year, I went from a somewhat lean/but still quite soft body to what many have said reminds them of an MMA fighter’s physique.

Needless to say, I’m extremely happy with these results.

For the first time in my life I feel like myself, physically.

I’m much less injury prone now. I can work the same muscle groups multiple times per week without any overuse issues (not indefinitely, of course).

My cardio is stellar as well.

Before TRT, it was all I could do to run a couple 10-minute miles despite being only about 170 lbs at 6’2’’.

After a year on TRT, I decided to go for a random run without working up my mileage, I ran 3-4 miles at a good pace and didn’t feel any more winded at the end than I did when I first started.

I felt like I could keep up a 10-minute mile pace indefinitely.

My heart is strong, my lungs feel like they’ve doubled in capacity, and my muscles finally have a respectable amount of endurance.

Emotional Changes

I have nearly zero rage now.

While I experience the normal anger and frustration with life’s little hurdles, there’s nothing that gets me down or causes me to see red.

My depression is almost entirely gone now. I have a day here and there where I feel less than motivated, but a good laugh and a black coffee can pull me out of it pretty quick.

In short, I have the emotional stability I’ve been craving my entire life.

Sexual Changes

I no longer have the libido of a 90-year old man with one foot in the grave.

I used to view once per month sex more as something that had to be done rather than something to look forward to, but now my sex drive rivals my wife’s.

Mental

TRT hasn’t actually made me more intelligent, but my mind is so much more clear these days that I can actually use the brains I have.

It isn’t uncommon for me find a groove and write for four hours straight.

I’m much less easily distracted and don’t feel like my entire life is surrounded by a haze anymore.

What now?

You guys are here at Quit Porn Get Girls because you’re interested in self-improvement and I commend you for that.

Putting honest effort into bettering yourself, pushing yourself to be a better man, is probably the most worthwhile thing you can do.

If you have any concerns about your own testosterone levels, I hope I’ve provided some insight.

Now, I hope I haven’t left too many plot holes in my story here, but really, this is just a summary of what I experienced.
I've written over 12,000 words on this topic in the form of a four-part series detailing everything from the basic physiology of testosterone, signs and symptoms of low T, my TRT results, and how to find optimal treatment.

But let me leave you with this.

If you’re suffering from low T, correcting this single issue could literally turn your entire life around.

Reversing low T can ease social anxiety and reduce anti-social behavior, help you find the motivation to participate in real life with, bolster your self-esteem and self-worth, increase your desire for real relationships, and (with the help of Quit Porn, Get Girls) regain healthy sexual function.

 

Testosterone boosters work but not for what you're looking for, unless by "testosterone boosters" you mean steroids, which come with a whole host of their own problems. If you want to see gains in the gym by elevating your testosterone you're really going to need to elevate it to more than 10x its normal level before you start seeing much of any difference that couldn't simply be chalked down to placebo/other healthy habits of yours.

However, I personally do take a testosterone booster myself called Tribulus, for an entirely different reason.

You know those lovely benefits we get from NoFap? Well many of them are androgen/testosterone related. Too frequent orgasm causes decreased expression of your androgen receptors, due to the beta-endorphin release (basically, you have less active receptors for testosterone to bind to, so even if your test levels are high, that testosterone is no longer as effective at doing its job) - and so when we abstain, we're allowing them to recover.

Tribulus also causes increased expression of androgen receptors (rather than boosting testosterone directly, as studies have found it does not appear to that in humans) and so I thought what better a way to help my body recover from my past PMO than with a supplement that treats one of the worst things PMO does to a guy.

I also take ZMA, another popular testosterone boosting supplement regimen, made up of three vitamins that play a vital role in testosterone production: Zinc, Magnesium, and B6.

They've both helped significantly accelerate the benefits I've gotten from NoFap, and so I could definitely give them the thumbs up for speeding up your recovery from your PMO. I will however add the warning that Tribulus is quite effective at what it does, and this means quite the boost in libido - if you're not good at controlling urges, I don't suggest it as that increased libido could make you reset/relapse.

If it's gym gains you're looking for though, aye ZMA is good to take regardless since Zinc, Magnesium, and B6 have a whole host of other useful roles in your body anyway - but really your best bet for gym supplementation is a good diet, creatine and of course whey to add some extra protein to your diet.

Tl;dr: For gains, look elsewhere, try Creatine, a good pre-workout, and a good diet with plenty of protein, plus a great gym routine. For mood/libido/energy/clearer thinking/accelerating recovery from PMO/ then yes test boosters can be great (provided you pick one that works, and get it from a reliable source).

 

It makes me sick that modern life bombards us with chemicals (through pesticides, plastics, medication) that reduces our T levels to that of an old man.

 

What ones are you taking? Not all T boosters are created equal, and some have immediate effects while others take a while to take effect.

Don't expect rapid changes overnight either way, especially if you've had a long PMO habit, for the reasons I mentioned above any testosterone we have is going to be less effective than for someone who hasn't spent such a long time with PMO. Similar to NoFap, the benefits will start off slow, but over time will grow to you getting that confidence, energy, libido etc back in a huge amount.

Also as mentioned above, don't expect T boosters to help your muscle growth unless they boost your T in the region of 1000%+ (10x normal levels), which basically only applies to Steroids or SARMs (selective androgen receptor modulators). They'll give the other effects, but the only real muscle growth benefits you'll get from a small boost to T is that you'll have more energy and be able to work out more intense, so you'll build more muscle that way.

 

Testosterone boosters, that boost your NATURAL test production, are gimmicky nonsense. If anything they will give you placebo and maybe increased sex drive. They won't give you any more muscle. If you want any noticeable muscle gain from that you will have to take real stuff. Either oral steroids or injectable steroids, like an actual testosterone in a bottle. Don't waste your money on those useless boosters if your goal is to build muscle.

Personally I find it stupid to take drugs just for some extra muscle. Be patient and with time you will build great body. Shortcuts come with consequences. Steroids might have all kinds of bad health consequences. You might shut your natural production forever in worst case, just from one cycle, and would be stuck on them for life. Grow gyno if you take them incorrectly. And of course all the unknown side effects that we don't know about yet, like maybe increased cancer risk. I rather would not risk my long term health for some more muscle faster. But that's me.

Your profile says that you are 51, Moogie? If that's true you should have no problem to go in testosterone replacement therapy. Go to your doctor and get stuff prescribed. With all the guidance on how to use it correctly. Get the real stuff, if you choose to go that route, instead of wasting your money on crap that doesn't work.

 

get on TRT if you want it to have some effect. Over the counter supplements do not work, you only piss them away.

There are other ways to boost your testosterone. However, one pill unless prescribed by your doctor will not make any significant difference.

 

Dude...You wrote a book lol. Longest Post ever seen. But good points haha

 

No, testosterone booster is real, they are scientifically proven that can enhanced with an estrogen blocker that packs the most potent mix of: Pro Tribulus, Zinc, laxosterone, D-aspartic acid, and Fenugreek. Feel unstoppable. Develop muscles of steel. Destroy plateaus. Ramp up workout intensity. Aids in improving energy, sex drive, and muscle growth.

For more information, just click this site, goo.gl/LqU581

 

I'll be honest I can really relate to you before T. Especially with the depression and no muscle/libido at all, skinny lanky body and lack of ability to run/do any real exercise for too long. I also have problems with brain fog and concentration. But I'm going the opposite route and doubling down by ordering anti-androgens for myself which will reduce testosterone further.

Hell my grandma who was a nurse even thinks I should take T-supplements to help me but let's just say that I think that they won't help me at all and may even make things worse. I'm not saying that they don't work but for me the result might be terrible. Like I might kill myself levels of terrible.

 

It definitely works! Testosterone boosters are actually a class of herbal supplements aimed at naturally increasing your testosterone levels. They can work by directly increasing testosterone, or by inhibiting hormones responsible for converting testosterone to estrogen. Either way, in the end these supplements are meant to help you recover faster and build bigger, stronger muscles. I use to be very thin and weak. Doctor prescribed to try this product. It really helped me.