Opinion Piece: Testosterone Optimization Is Speculation and a Suspect Practice
Last modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago.
Exogenous testosterone is being used by people, including fitness professionals, for health optimization, under questionable circumstances. Injecting testosterone into your body is a crapshoot.
But there is also a trend of believing that it is an optimal strategy to use natural means, as well, to manipulate a single hormone, like testosterone.
Testosterone is a hormone that exists within a complex milieu of chemicals and interactions. These interactions are highly involved, even to chemistry and biology professors. A fitness professional with no extensive training in biochemistry will have a superficial appreciation of these metabolic reactions. They are speculating. Taking a snapshot of your bloodwork, measuring your testosterone levels, then acting to specifically increase testosterone is a waste. If you do that, you are speculating, too.
There are even unqualified professionals who charge very-good money to review hormone-panel results and make recommendations. I would not pay anyone besides a medical doctor, or someone with bonafide expertise in biochemistry, to review bloodwork or hormone-panel results.
What does it matter if your testosterone levels increase, if you still don’t feel good, anyway?
The blood tests do not measure your happiness, energy, and wellness levels.
And again, testosterone exists within a universe of chemical interactions. When you are healthy, then your testosterone levels will be doing their job, along with the rest of the hormonal system, as well as the immune system (IS).
Our immune systems take a beating these days with poor diet, chronic stress, unhealthy lifestyle, and drug abuse (including caffeine and alcohol). With the logic of testosterone optimization, a person should be chasing better IS numbers, too, right? However, that would be tough to do, because measuring some IS molecules is difficult. Also, the same IS molecule can serve different functions within different contexts.
With chronic abuse, damage accumulates to our entire body. Since our hormones are part of our bodies, they take a beating, too.
I believe someone should try to optimize their health holistically (a systems perspective), rather than hormones, like testosterone.
It’s understandable that someone may get desperate and look for a lock-and-key fix. A person may get to the point like they feel they cannot recover, sustain their energy levels, or get through the day. Maybe they’re living off of coffee (and maybe alcohol, too). So, they decide that they want to start pulling the strings on a few molecules, like testosterone, to make things better. If they don’t go to a “drive-thru” hormone clinic right away, maybe they try an herbal supplement. Maybe the herbs have a few human studies to back up their efficacy? Maybe the supplement designer just tested it on themselves and a few associates, and thought that was good enough to start selling it to the public at large?
It’s all very suspect.
I have a lot of respect for the human metabolism and the opacity of its workings. I don’t want to mess around with it.
It’s easy to get lost, though, because major fitness influencers recommend herbal boosters. Some skipped the boosters, and are injecting exogenous testosterone. Then finally, some are skipping the herbs, and stopping the testosterone shots now, too. They didn’t like the side effects, like looking as ugly as a bulldog, or becoming red, like a tomato. (That’s even with lower doses).
My estimation is that fitness professionals who focus on hormone optimization or who inject testosterone do so, well...because they like it. They're enthusiastic about experimenting (or tinkering) that way. That's cool--I hope they do as they please. But, it's not about physiological erudition, nor do great results necessitate it.
Also, there are respectable physicians that prescribe testosterone to patients dealing with harrowing circumstances, like brain injury. However, if you learn about the stories of these patients, they commonly were abusing and binging on alcohol. Perhaps their brain injuries, and the associated hormonal disruptions, would have healed a lot better if they hadn’t been hitting the bottle so hard? I don’t know, but it’s something worth looking into.
As for health and fitness, the name of the game is to feel well, not chase testosterone levels.
Manipulating testosterone levels is arrogant and asinine. It’s a business angle for some fitness professionals. I’m all for it, too, because they should have a right to sell what they want. You should be able to buy what you want, too. But you won’t catch me wasting–I mean, spending, my money on these products or services.
I recommend having an awareness that hormones, like testosterone, exist. It would be stupid to ignore them.
However, it should not be the emphasis of one's health & fitness practice.
It is most important to master the fundamentals.
I’m going to keep working on the six pillars of health (thoughts, breathing, sleep, nutrition, hydration, and movement) and approach my health holistically.