Testosterone boosters are one of the most sought-after types of supplements.
With testosterone affecting everything from mood to sexual health to sports performance, it’s clearly an important factor. Can any of the test-boosters on the market help with this?
Today we’re going to look through these products and the effect they have on your body and performance. We’re also going to look through some popular products on the market and how they stack up!
Contents
- Why Do Testosterone Levels Matter?
- What Affects Your Testosterone Levels? How Do You Improve Them?
- What Can a Testosterone Booster Really Do?
- Popular Testosterone Booster Supplement Reviews
- 1. Prime Labs PRIME TEST Testosterone Booster
- 2. AndroSurge Estrogen Blocker
- 3. Lean Nutraceuticals Natural Testosterone Booster
- 4. PrimaSurge Testosterone Booster
- 5. VINTAGE BOOST Testosterone Booster
- 6. ModernMan Thermogenic Testosterone Booster
- 7. EVLution ELVTEST Testosterone Booster
- 8. Animal Stak Natural Hormone Booster Supplement
- Final Thoughts
Why Do Testosterone Levels Matter?
Testosterone is one of the 4 most important hormones for improving muscle mass and strength – along with Insulin, IGF-1, and HGH. These all add up to determine your ability to repair and grow tissues.
Testosterone is also a key player in male sexual health and mood, which makes it even more desirable to have healthy testosterone levels. The combination of improved muscular recovery/growth and mental wellbeing make testosterone an important consideration.
Obviously, increasing the testosterone in your bloodstream is one of the key methods for improving these markers. This is what testosterone boosters claim/attempt to do, but there are other ways that you can adjust your testosterone levels.
What Affects Your Testosterone Levels? How Do You Improve Them?
Testosterone levels are closely related to what you do with your life. Lifestyle factors are the first place you should look for improving your testosterone levels – there’s no point taking a T-Booster if you’re not focusing on these simple factors.
You can affect testosterone levels more significantly with lifestyle than any supplement, so prioritize these factors!
Exercise: Neither Too Much nor Too Little
A balanced approach to exercise is key, with a good ratio of exercise to rest. Too much exercise can cause you to suppress your hormonal wellbeing and reduce the positive effects of testosterone. However, being inactive is a huge problem for hormonal health and overall wellbeing.
You should be sure to include effective rest days every so often to ensure proper recovery. This should also include occasional deload periods where you reduce the amount of volume you’re doing in training and allow the body to recover effectively.
Diet
A good diet is important for supporting hormonal health. This comes from the changes to your body fat, muscle mass, and nutrient intake. These are all key players in the way your body regulates testosterone and other hormones.
Deficiency in key vitamins and minerals, for example, can plummet your testosterone levels, make fat-loss difficult, or just produce serious fatigue/ poor-wellbeing. A diet that is rich in protein, fiber, and nutrient-dense foods (e.g. fish, plant foods, eggs and cultured dairy, etc.).
You can’t out-train an insufficient diet so you’re going to need to prioritize this aspect. It’s not easy, but it’s essential to put your diet together in a way that supports your fitness goals and overall health.
Sleep
You’re probably not getting the quality and quantity of sleep you need for your goals.
There’s no point taking a testosterone booster supplement if you’re sleep deprived (like 25-75% of Americans already are). This is a significant problem and will ruin your hormonal health so quickly that one poor night of sleep is enough to damage your results.
Equally, when you’re sleep-deprived a testosterone booster really isn’t going to be much use. There’s no point trying to smooth over a problem this big with a supplement.
Proper sleep quality requires a cool, dark, quiet room and 8-9 hours of sleep. Even one hour less than this can be a significant problem – it’s why elite athletes often take midday naps to top up on sleep.
You probably can’t slink off for a nap in the middle of the day, but you can maximize your sleep quality/quantity. This should be a top priority if you really want to boost your testosterone levels effectively.
What Can a Testosterone Booster Really Do?
This is an important question. There are a few ways that a testosterone booster can be a good choice for supporting your hormonal health and all the things that it can do for your performance/wellbeing.
Vitamin/Mineral Support
A nutritional supplement can be a big addition to your hormonal health, which can support testosterone levels and countless benefits.
There are a few common compounds – B vitamins, vitamin D, Magnesium, Zinc, etc. – all add up to better hormonal and energetic benefits. These are the best compounds for getting your testosterone up but they’re primarily useful to avoid deficiency.
You’re not going to see significant benefits just supplementing some extra vitamins/minerals. It’s not comparable to the testosterone level changes associated with performance-enhancing drugs or even consistently getting more sleep.
Temporary Alleviation of Problems
This is one of the most useful benefits – some testosterone boosters are great because they support short-term testosterone levels.
Compounds like D-Aspartic Acid (DAA) produce these kinds of changes. DAA supplementation supports better testosterone levels for a few weeks, but not long-term. This can be really helpful during a particularly intense period of training/life stress.
However, this needs to be taken with some measured expectations since it can potentially improve short-term wellbeing and performance. However, it’s not a huge bump to testosterone and is more protective than supplementary.
If everything else is going great, some of these compounds simply won’t be as beneficial. These are useful in short bursts, after which you take time off, and use them again the next time you need the support.
Minor Bumps
There are, however, some compounds that can support testosterone levels but it’s not clear how effective these are in supporting your fitness goals. You can make meaningful changes to your testosterone levels without producing an equal result in your muscle gains or performance.
These are pretty common, but there are so many that we’ll discuss them one by one in the review of some popular testosterone boosters…
Popular Testosterone Booster Supplement Reviews
1. Prime Labs PRIME TEST Testosterone Booster
We don’t like that this is a proprietary blend: it’s a crappy tactic seen in supplements to hide the dosages of ingredients. this really doesn’t help you decide if it is going to be an effective product and you can’t make an informed choice.
Beyond this, the vast majority of the ingredients in this product are either entirely un-researched, unresearched in humans, or just uninspiring.
For example, horny goat weed is confirmed for testosterone changes in lab animals but not humans. The vast majority of ingredients in this product are herbal extracts with very little positive benefit.
Overall, the most we can say for this product is that it may have some very small protective effects. This is true for those who are very stressed and have suppressed testosterone levels, but there are definitely better alternatives on the market.
- May confer some small protective effects to testosterone during stress
- Proprietary blends make it impossible to know what you’re getting from your supplements
- Many ingredients are unproven and don’t necessarily work in humans
- Doesn’t compare well to other products on the market
2. AndroSurge Estrogen Blocker
this is a good compound for nutritional support, offering a good dose of both Vitamin D and Zinc.
Grape seed extract is a reasonable choice for a testosterone booster since it counteracts some of the worse effects of free Estrogen. This combines with DIM, a broccoli extract that also reduces the aromatization of testosterone to Estrogen.
Meanwhile, compounds like Rhodiola are useful for combatting the stress-related suppression of hormonal health. As mentioned before, however, this is protective but does not boost testosterone by itself. Long Jack (Eurycoma Longifolia) is a totally unproven ingredient, so that’s also not amazing.
Overall, this is a decent short-term solution and it can be used to support wellbeing, but we’re not convinced of it as a method for boosting testosterone itself. We like the combo of grape seed and DIM, but it’s not setting the world on fire!
- DIM is a great ingredient to support optimal aromatization levels
- Grape seed extract is another great ingredient choice for combatting free Estrogen levels
- Rhodiola confers protection to testosterone levels under chronic stress
- Doesn’t actually improve testosterone levels, seemingly
- Some compounds are undereffective (long jack)
3. Lean Nutraceuticals Natural Testosterone Booster
This product has a significant variety of compounds so we’re going to need to list them and enter a quick-fire round! Here’s what you’re looking at:
- Niacin: a great energy-metabolism support vitamin (B6)
- Zinc: a classic mineral for supporting hormonal health and combatting deficiency
- Fenugreek: a useful compound for health, but boosts libido rather than testosterone
- DAA: a good short-term compound for supporting testosterone but not a long-term solution
- Mucuna Pruriens: Good for mood, but not going to boost your testosterone levels appreciably
- DHEA: this is a compound that can be turned into testosterone or Estrogen, which is limited in its testosterone-boosting benefits
- Boron: A trace mineral that you probably don’t need much of, but it’s not unhelpful
- Tribulus: another libido booster that doesn’t actually boost testosterone levels!
- Arginine: a low-quality alternative to citrulline and in tiny dosages in this product – not likely to have significant benefits
- Horny goat weed: could be effective for raising testosterone in humans but not confirmed, only in animal studies
- Maca: yet another aphrodisiac that has no proven relationship with testosterone levels
Overall, this product just contains a whole bunch of compounds that are limited in their benefits. The use of DAA/DHEA/Zinc are quite useful – but the overall results aren’t particularly impressive.
- Wide variety of compounds
- Some effective stuff like DAA
- Many ingredients are more focused on getting you horny than increasing testosterone
- DHEA without DIM is a sub-optimal combination and doesn’t boost T:E ratios as effectively
- Many compounds are underdosed or simply not proven to be effective
- Protective effects are possible, but not testosterone boosting
4. PrimaSurge Testosterone Booster
Ashwagandha is an interesting and popular compound that may actually be useful. It produces more luteinizing hormone, which supports testosterone production in the body, as well as improving male sexual health and mood. However, it only increases testosterone in infertile men, seemingly.
Equally, the use of Shilajit is proven in infertile men but unsupported in otherwise-healthy men as yet. This means there’s no confirmed benefit. The other ingredients are Longjack and Boron, which we’ve already discussed as being mediocre at best.
This product’s use of Ashwagandha is a good start, but everything else seems to be pretty uncertain. There’s a lot of reason to be skeptical (from a scientific perspective), especially when there is no other nutritional (vitamin or mineral) support.
We also love the use of piperine, which makes absorption through the gut more effective, but the stuff you’re absorbing just isn’t that effective!
- Ashwagandha is one of the most promising compounds on the market for testosterone protection/improvements
- Piperine is awesome and really would add value if the other compounds were better!
- There are no compounds in this product that are proven to actually improve testosterone
- More likely to support infertile men’s testosterone levels than healthy men’s
5. VINTAGE BOOST Testosterone Booster
Vintage gets off to a strong start for including 4 key nutrients for hormonal/metabolic support: vitamin D, B6, Magnesium, and Zinc. These are some of the most important but also some of the most commonly deficient micronutrients. Great start!
We also like the use of DAA since this is a good short-term testosterone protective/boosting supplement. Shilajit is far less exciting since we’ve already established that it is an unproven extract in healthy, fertile men.
Equally, the “androgenic hormone amplifier & energy group” is just Tribulus and Maca. This is legitimately just libido-boosting, and doesn’t have amazing benefits to androgenic hormones or energy at all.
Overall, this is a great protective testosterone supplement – especially during periods of stress and intense training – but doesn’t provide a direct boost to testosterone.
- Awesome nutritional support from the vitamin and mineral complex, supporting normal hormonal function
- DAA is a good short-term testosterone boosting/regulating compound
- One of the best products so far for maintaining testosterone/combatting significant stress-induced issues
- Some compounds are about libido, not testosterone – which isn’t the point of the product
- Doesn’t provide any long-term boost to testosterone
6. ModernMan Thermogenic Testosterone Booster
In trying to be a 2-in-1 supplement, this product manages to be woefully inept at both. There’s really no functional overlap or benefit to using a thermogenic testosterone booster.
The thermogenic side of this product is as underwhelming as fat burners tend to be – since it’s only likely to improve calorie use by a small amount, it doesn’t contain enough caffeine to be clinically significant, and it lacks other key compounds (like HMB).
As a testosterone booster, the use of ashwagandha is pretty promising, and forskolin is useful for testicular health, then long jack is unproven. The overall profile of effect is the best for ashwagandha so far, but doesn’t provide an amazing total testosterone change.
- We quite like Ashwagandha as a wellbeing/protective compound, especially for its effects on luteinizing hormone
- Combining thermogenic and T-boosting compounds just dilutes the actual effects of both
- Low quality as a fat-burner due to lack of HMB and other more-informed compounds
- Testosterone boosting approach relies on low-quality compounds like long jack and forskolin
7. EVLution ELVTEST Testosterone Booster
this is another product that combines B and D vitamins with magnesium and zinc. As before, we love seeing this since it provides the foundation for healthier testosterone and combats nutritional deficiencies that are widespread.
DAA is present here which is great since it optimizes on the main purpose a testosterone booster can actually have: short-term benefits. On the other hand, Tribulus and fenugreek are libido boosters, not testosterone boosters!
DIM is a pretty cool compound for reducing aromatization, but that only really works when combined with DHEA or similar compounds. Overall, this is just another example of a testosterone booster that is bought into the Tribulus/herbal extract hype without a clear direction or purpose!
- DIM is cool, even without DHEA
- Great vitamin/mineral makeup for better health and regular functioning
- DIM is better with DHEA
- Tribulus and fenugreek don’t actually do anything to your testosterone levels
- Lacks any clear direction, purpose, or thought-out mechanism for testosterone benefits
8. Animal Stak Natural Hormone Booster Supplement
This is another product that really goes in hard on the variety of ingredients, but still lacks a consistent idea of what it’s going to do. There are a number of unimpressive choices here and we’ll try to cover them all briefly.
The ‘pro testosterone complex’ doesn’t include anything proven to boost testosterone appreciably. Tribulus is all libido no testosterone, long jack doesn’t do much (even if its included twice in this product), fenugreek is also a libido booster, nettles are good for health but not testosterone, and Maca is another aphrodisiac with no effect on testosterone.
The aromatase combatting complex is actually pretty good. Resveratrol is useful and the inclusion of DIM legitimately makes for a better aromatization rate, supporting a better testosterone-to-Estrogen ratio.
The hormone amplifying blend really isn’t going to have much effect on the hormones. Most of the compounds are tremendously under-dosed, and even the selection of ingredients lacks any real oomph if you look at clinical research on them.
The restorative support complex is also pretty good, but many of these compounds aren’t really aligned with the stated goal. Ashwagandha is likely one of the most effective ingredients but is also underdosed, hidden in a proprietary blend, and surrounded by compounds that don’t affect testosterone!
This is a sad departure from other, high-quality animal products like their multivitamins. There are so many ingredients that they’re not likely to be effectively dosed, the proprietary blend hides what is in the product, and the choices of ingredient aren’t inspiring in the first place!
- Some useful ingredients like Ashwagandha and DIM (even without DHEA)
- The absolute range of ingredients does almost nothing when considering dosages
- Individual “matrices” and complexes don’t do what they say
- Majority of these compounds don’t actually benefit testosterone in either protective or boosting ways
- Inferior to other Animal products, which we’ve quite liked!
Final Thoughts
No testosterone booster is going to provide the same changes that you’d get from improving your lifestyle choices. The weight of sleep, diet, exercise, and de-stressing recovery are all so much greater than you can get from any supplement.
The problem is that the only real compounds you can take to significantly boost testosterone are testosterone and its derivatives. The negatives of significant testosterone boosting supplements are why they’re usually illegal!
Supplements can provide short-term support to nutritional, acute, reversible changes. They’re good to support your wellbeing when you’re dealing with some significant stress or an intense time with training.
When it comes to testosterone boosters, make sure you’re prioritizing the lifestyle factors and you have the right expectations about what a testosterone booster can do for you!
