What I Learned Doing 20 Testosterone Tests in 4 Months
Lifestyle Changes Worked, Supplements Didn't
Jeff Tang
July 04, 2023
What I Learned Doing 20 Testosterone Tests in 3 Months
“If you raise the price of the f*cking hot dog, I will kill you. Figure it out.”
Hey y’all, I’m experimenting with both the design and format of this newsletter. Feel free to hit reply and let me know what you like/dislike.
Trivia Question: Is it okay to cook with teflon, non-stick pans? Read to the end to find out.
Table of Contents
Deep Dive: What I learned doing 20 testosterone tests in 4 months 💡
I increased my T 300 ng/dL with sunlight, lower stress, more micronutrients, and more skin 😛
T Booster supplements didn’t do anything
35± ng/dL variance in 4 back-to-back tests
3 High T Links 🔗
Trivia Answer on Teflon ❓️
Deep Dive: What I learned doing 20 testosterone tests in 4 months 💡
Also checkout my earlier post, Notes on How to Increase T.
But first, the data —
Big Data Energy
With annotations on cities at the top and supplements at the bottom.
I increased my T 300 ng/dL with sunlight, lower stress, more micronutrients, and more skin 😛
Between February and April, I increased my T from 790 to 1096 ng/dL. The biggest thing was changing my environment from San Francisco to Costa Rica, which led to many downstream changes. Changes included:
More sun
Less stress
Change in diet — more fish, less chicken, way more tropical fruits and fresh veggies. Cleaner, less processed food overall
No change in supplements — Magnesium and Vitamin D
Sleep — slight improvements
In a surf town (Santa Teresa) — being around a lot of hot people wearing less clothes, and going on some dates
The 591 ng/dL test was in Utah. A few things: there was less sunlight, I slept poorly then, and I took a self-test prick. Overall, hard to know what the real factors were.
T Boosting Supplements Don’t Work
In Medellín, Colombia, I started taking most of the “T boosting” supplements:
Tongkat Ali
Maca Root
Shilajit
Fadogia Agretis
Cistanche
Ashwagandha
Boron
Supplement-Maxxing. The 80/20 and my stack is Magnesium, Vitamin D, and Zinc.
In that time, my T did not significantly increase or decrease. As a result, I do not take any of the T Boosting supplements anymore (except for Ashwagandha, for the calming effects). n=1 so it’s too early to write off all of the T boosting supplements. Perhaps T boosting supplements have a greater effect if T is already lower. Will have to try to replicate and get data from others!
That said, I did take cialis a few times. More on that in another post 😉
Zoomed in on the tests done in Medellín, Colombia. As you can see, supplements in this period did not have a significant effect.
I started training legs a lot more aggressively, and my leg girth increased noticeably. Wish I had measured the circumference. I also a few boxing sessions. I still believe there were positive effects from legs and boxing, but I am disappointed my T levels did not increase from it!
35± ng/dL variance in 4 back-to-back tests
One day I took multiple tests in a row to see how much variance comes from the laboratory testing itself rather than from me or normal fluctuations. Hypothetically, the numbers should all be the same if they were done back-to-back.
4 consecutive tests in the same hour
For tests 1, 2, and 3, they were all done literally within 30 seconds of one another. Same needle, same arm. All at once. 974.68, 900.51, 959.03.
When I got home 20 minutes later, I realized I had a mobile phlebotomist come that I forgot I had ordered. Result was 970.7.
Taking the average of this would get you 951. Overall, that’s reasonable variance I’d say, spanning from 900 to 975.
In the future, I’m planning on ordering a bunch of self-prick tests from different providers and doing all of them back-to-back. Subscribe if interested!
3 High T Links 🔗
[retracted, didn’t like this link]
“Polio vaccines are good
Testosterone replacement therapy is good
And raising awareness of TRT is particularly good
Because there's a secular decline in testosterone levels”
— Balji making a pro-TRT tweet. While I do not endorse TRT, especially for men under 35, glad he is aware of this issue. (link)“After three years of semen retention, I've finally gained a sex drive. Everything looks different now. I feel like I could penetrate anything”
— Shitpost on semen retention, which I do endorse. A good topic for a future post. (link)
Trivia Answer ❓️
Teflon is okay to cook with. The reason teflon gets hate is because the manufacturing process for Teflon pans used to use super harmful chemicals. (These chemicals ultimately f*cked up a lot of their employees and people who lived near those plants, and led to a lot of lawsuits.)
You can even scratch the teflon and eat it, without much negative effects. That said, overheating the teflon can lead to some negative, very temporary effects, but only if at > 500-600ºF, and cases are extremely rare. (video)
Liked this newsletter? Please share with a friend 🙏 I promise you it’ll boost your T, maybe.
Also, if you are in NYC, join our T Party on July 8th!
Happy Fourth of July!
Jeff “Big T” Tang
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