Search ‘testosterone booster’ on Amazon and you’ll find dozens of options. Most have thousands of 5-star reviews. Most are also bullshit. 

Short on time? Skip ahead to the highlights here.

Chances are if you’re a guy currently under the age of thirty you’ve likely fallen victim to the promise of testosterone boosters.

You know the ones. The supplements that claim to be “The next best thing to steroids!”. 

“Take these two little capsules a day and you’ll put on twenty pounds of muscle in a month and have the best sex of your life!”

It sounds too good to be true, and it is, but no one could blame you for falling for it.

These companies spend the majority of their budgets on branding and advertising and then use fake reviews on Amazon to trick people into buying.

They throw a picture of a bull or lion on the bottle and use fancy sounding ingredients like ‘deer antler velvet’ and ‘horny goat weed’. Case in point:

This brand has thousands of reviews. It does next to nothing.

But you click BUY anyways because you want to be bigger and stronger and have sex like a porn star. 

What actually happens is you end up tricking yourself into a mild placebo effect and maybe feeling a little extra horny once and a while. Maybe.

And then at the end of the bottle you decide it’s probably not worth it to order another one.

But… there’s still hope for those of us who aren’t quite ready to take the easy way out and stick a needle in our ass (yet).

You may have heard of Andrew Huberman after his appearances on podcasts with Joe Rogan, Tim Ferriss, Derek from MPMD, and others. He’s also since started his own podcast Huberman Lab which quickly became one of our favorites.

If you’re not familiar with him yet, Andrew is a tenured Professor of Neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford University School of Medicine, and has a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UC Davis.

Those eyes really look into your soul…

He started gaining popularity in the biohacking world after his appearance on episode 1513 of the Joe Rogan Experience back in 2020, and then again on episode 1683 in July 2021, due in part to his mention of two supplements that he says are clinically proven to be effective testosterone boosters. 

Aside from the evidence he gives, he also points to his own self-experimentation where after he started taking these two supplements his total testosterone levels went from around 600ng/dl up about 200 points to the high 700/low 800 range.

That’s a significant boost and one that’s generally unattainable with anything other than exogenous testosterone or testosterone derivative injections. 

We tend to trust Stanford neuroscientists more than Amazon reviews, and our teams anecdotal experience so far after 8+ weeks of use has been far-and-away better than anything else on the market.

We’ve seen higher energy levels, had noticeable positive changes to body composition with no real change to diet or training (although we follow paleo-esque diets with regular training already), and we’ve seen PR’s on nearly every major lift.

Not by a huge margin, granted. And certainly not as much as we’ve gotten (err…some people get) from anabolics. But it’s still noticeable.

There is one rather odd side effect: almost everyone on our team that tried these supplements noticed that their balls felt bigger. Seriously.  It’s not like we’ve got two tennis balls down there now but it honestly seems like the supplements slightly-but-noticeably enlarge your testes.

Anyways… we’ve detailed those supplements below with links to buy the brands Andrew recommends.

And as a bonus we’ve also included a testosterone boosting protocol that Tim Ferriss included in his book The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide To Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, And Becoming Superhuman (available here).

Tim claims he was able to triple(!) his total testosterone from 244.8 to 653.3 ng/dl. Take that with a grain of salt, but we’ve used the protocol and found it to be noticeably effective in overall mood, energy, and muscle growth over time. Especially when paired with the supplements from Andrew.

We also have full supplement guides for both of these two if you’re interested in more than just testosterone: you can find the full list of what Tim Ferriss has reported to use here, and the full list for Andrew Huberman here. 

Andrew Huberman Supplements For Boosting Testosterone:

Tongkat Ali

Tongkat Ali powder is derived from a plant native to Southeast Asia and has been used in that part of the world for centuries in many different applications.

Andrew explains that a dose of 400mg per day of Tongkat Ali can have a significant effect on testosterone levels, suggesting that:

• Users should try to take it early in the day as it can have a mild stimulant effect.
• It’s fine to take on an empty stomach for most people.
• Taking it regularly on a daily basis is the most effective strategy as the effects seem to build up and increase into the second and third months of use.
• There is no need to cycle on and off of it (as with anabolics) since the compound is boosting your bodies natural production instead of supplementing it exogenously.

Our favorite brand of Tongkat Ali are these capsules from Double Wood supplements. One note – one capsule of these actually offers a slightly higher dose (510mg) than the 400mg Andrew notes, but we’ve seen no negative side effects to that after months of daily supplementation.

Fadogia Agrestis

Fadogia Agrestis is another plant based compound which Andrew has described has a noticeable effect on boosting testosterone. Native to Nigeria where it is used in herbal medicine, Fadogia Agrestis acts as a luteneizing hormone mimic, stimulating the testes to produce more testosterone (we guess that this is what causes the enlarging effect mentioned earlier).

Andrew also notes that he noticed no significant increase in estrogen after using the supplement, or any down-regulation in normal lutenizing hormone production. And, just as with Tongkat Ali, Fadogia needs no cycle-off period as it is only boosting your bodies natural production.

He has recommended a dose of 400-500mg per day as adequate, taken early in the day with the Tongkat (also fine on an empty stomach)

Andrew uses these capsules from Barlowe’s Elixirs as a great source.

Tim Ferriss Bonus Protocol

This is definitely one of the more odd-sounding supplements that we’ve come across, but it’s effective in boosting testosterone.

In the 4-Hour Body (available here) Tim claims he was able to triple(!) his total testosterone from 244.8 to 653.3 ng/dl, which later jumped to 835 with the addition of brazil nuts to the mix. If you’re familiar with hormone blood work this is an incredible result if true, especially considering he was reportedly able to more than double his free test and cut his estradiol (estrogen) in half.

The protocol that he uses to maintain long-term sustained high testosterone levels is as follows:

– Green Pasture Blue Ice Royal Butter Oil / Fermented Cod Liver Oil Blend – 2 capsules upon waking and before bed

– Vitamin D3 – 3,000-5,000 IU upon waking until you reach blood levels of around 55 ng/ml (this at-home Vitamin D test from Everlywell is our favorite for measuring your levels.)

– Short ice baths and/or cold showers – 10 minutes in the morning and before bed

– Brazil nuts – 3 nuts upon waking, 3 before bed

The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide To Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, And Becoming Superhuman (available here)

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