I Asked 15 Testosterone Experts the Same Two Questions. Here's Where They All Agreed.
Not what the research says. What the people who've actually fixed it say.
There are already hundreds of testosterone articles out there. Most of them pull studies. Almost all of them push supplements. A few of them tell you to sleep more and eat beef.
This one is different, and not because I haven’t done the research. I’ve been deep in testosterone and androgen optimization for over a decade. Close to a hundred blood tests over the years. Stool testing, OAT testing, daily biomarkers, hundreds of markers tracked over time. I’ve read the studies. I’ve run the protocols. I have my own framework and I’ll share it at the end.
But here’s what I’ve noticed: the most valuable knowledge in this space doesn’t live in studies. It lives in the heads of the people who work with men every day → researchers, clinicians, coaches, and practitioners who have collectively seen thousands of cases, noticed the patterns that don’t make it into papers, and developed strong opinions about what actually moves the needle versus what just sounds good in theory.
Every one of these people views the problem through a different lens.
A heavy metals researcher sees something a gut clinician doesn’t.
A behavioral philosopher sees something a bioenergetics researcher misses.
No single lens, including mine, captures the full picture. That’s the whole point of this article.
So I reached out to the people in this space whose thinking I respect most and asked each of them the same two questions:
What do you think are the 2–3 biggest causes of low testosterone and DHT in modern men?
And what are your top 2–3 ways to fix it?
Their answers are below, in their own words, without my editorial interference.
I haven’t cleaned them up to agree with each other. I haven’t filtered them through my own framework. What they’ve shared here is a fraction of what they actually know. This article is scratching the surface of the depth these people carry.
At the end, I’ll tell you what I see when I look at everything together…
the convergences, the disagreements, and how I personally apply this thinking. But the reason this article exists is simple: one guru’s framework, no matter how good, will always be incomplete. The synthesis of fifteen is not.
But first: them.
Before we get into it, a framing point that I think is more important than anything in the article itself.
The testosterone space has a guru problem. Not because the gurus are wrong (many of them are excellent) but because men tend to pick one, follow that one person’s framework exclusively, and optimize within that bubble indefinitely.
The problem is that every expert in this space has a primary lens shaped by their own experience. Someone had a life-changing result with high-dose thiamine and now sees B1 deficiency everywhere. Someone healed their gut and their hormones followed, so the gut is their answer to everything. Someone fixed their circadian rhythm and felt 80% better, so light and sleep are their primary framework. Someone used oral BPC-157 and it changed their recovery and brain function, so peptides became their specialty. None of them are wrong. They found what worked… for them, or for the subset of people whose root cause matched theirs, and they became a genuine authority on that thing.
But here’s the nuance most people miss: fixing something that was 75% fine to begin with will only get you so far. If your circadian rhythm is already decent, optimising it further might give you a 5–10% improvement. Meaningful, but not transformative. The 80% of what you’re doing that’s already broken is going to matter more than perfecting the last 20%. This is why someone can follow a carnivore guru to the letter, fix their diet completely, and still feel terrible, because their real root cause is heavy metals, or a pathogenic bacterial overgrowth, or a thyroid conversion problem that no amount of steak will resolve.
The mistake that compounds this is doubling down when something isn’t working. If a low-carb approach is making you worse, the community around it will tell you that you’re not doing it hard enough → cut more carbs, add more fat, start fasting, go longer. If a mineral protocol causes problems, it’s “detox.” If a diet makes you feel worse, it’s “healing crisis.” There is always a reason to go harder rather than reconsider. This is how smart, motivated men end up more depleted than when they started.
What actually works is identifying your specific root cause (through testing, through symptoms, through the process of elimination) and fixing it from that angle. That requires being able to see through multiple lenses simultaneously rather than committing to one. It requires knowing when carnivore is the answer and when it isn’t. When circadian optimization is the bottleneck and when it’s already good enough. When gut healing needs to come first and when something upstream of the gut is preventing it from healing at all.
This is what I’ve spent the last decade trying to get good at. Not finding the one answer, but finding the right sequence for a specific person. And what I’ve learned is that the foundation is almost always the same: lower inflammation, optimize micronutrient density, get digestion working. Once that foundation is in place, the body is in a much better position to address whatever the specific root cause is… whether that’s heavy metals, plastic exposure, a stubborn pathogenic overgrowth, circadian disruption, genetic mutations, or something else entirely.
The experts in this article are all doing the same thing from their own entry points. They are all, in their own way, trying to identify what is suppressing testosterone and remove it. The lenses are different. The destination is the same.
So don’t read this looking for one answer. Read it looking for the patterns and then ask which pattern matches your situation.
The Experts
Clark Engelbert | @MetalsBrah
Mineral balancing researcher and heavy metals specialist
On the biggest causes of low T:
“The two biggest contributors to low testosterone in the modern world are:
Aluminum toxicity
All the other heavy metals
Let us start with the fact that aluminum and the other most relevant toxic metals (lead, cadmium, nickel, mercury, arsenic) are in a class of toxicants we may refer to as “metalloestrogens.” Meaning these inorganic metal ions have the capacity to bind to the estrogen receptor themselves or affect gene expression of cells responding to estrogen.
The binding of these estrogen receptors by the metals produces estrogen agonist responses.
In the HPG (Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Gonadal) axis there is an elaborate feedback loop that signals the release and signaling of these sex hormones (including testosterone).
The critical point about the metals being able to bind estrogen receptors and elicit estrogen agonist responses is that in the brain, at the level of the pituitary and hypothalamus, estrogen is the primary negative feedback signal for testosterone. The brain, in these regions, is densely packed with estrogen receptors. So, when metelloestrogens bind to the ER here, the brain reads this as “estrogen levels are high, therefore testosterone production is adequate or excessive.” This suppresses gonadotropin-releasing hormone and luteinizing hormone. Leydig cells receive less stimulation, and testosterone output falls.
This ER agonist response is a subtype of the phenomenon called “molecular mimicry.”
Where these toxic metal ions mimic endogenous biomolecules, estrogen being one type of a molecular mimic for the metals.
To quickly give another example of this phenomenon of molecular mimicry we can look to methylmercury. Methylmercury, with its affinity for thiols, binds very readily to the amino acid cysteine. The complex of Methylmercury-Cysteine is similar in its physiochemical properties (A methyl group (CH₃) attached to a sulfur atom, sulfur is then connected to a –CH₂– carbon chain, which terminates in an amino acid backbone (–CH(NH₂)–COOH) to the amino acid methionine and uses methionine transport mechanisms to traverse and get into cellular compartments.
A big part of the toxic profile of metals is this capacity for molecular mimicry.
The above mechanism of metals being able to mimic estrogen receptors is only one of many that may occur parallel towards lowering testosterone.
They may also:
Upregulate Aromatase Directly – This converts testosterone directly into
estradiol in the peripheral tissues
Interference w/Leydig Cells in the Testes – This can occur when metals
accumulate in the testes and directly cause oxidative stress
SHBG Effects – Estrogen signaling increases liver production of SHBG, the
protein that binds testosterone in the bloodstream and renders it biologically
inactive
Inhibit absorption of essential elements like zinc, selenium, magnesium,
etc that are necessary for the synthesis of testosterone – Due to the toxic
metal’s similar physicochemical properties as the above listed minerals, they may compete for absorption in the gi tract and block their absorption. This is called ionic mimicry.
You might be saying to yourself, “ok, metals are not the only toxicants that effect estrogen, what about microplastics, or other synthetic or biotoxins?”
And you’d be right to ask this question, but metals are unique in several ways from these other toxicants.
They are not biodegradable, meaning we cannot create or destroy them, so when they accumulate in biological systems (including humans) they are very hard to process, break down and detoxify. The half-life for many of the metals in humans can be in the range of decades. Which means the effects that they have on estrogen receptors, and the other above-mentioned mechanisms, could be permanent.
They are also incredibly toxic. Very low doses of these metals can kill you. 200 milligrams of mercury has been shown to be lethal in humans. This also means, very low amounts initiate subtle biological effects. Mercury has also been shown to inhibit glutathione production at the 3.6 parts per TRILLION threshold.
The metals are used in industry ubiquitously, and humans have never been exposed to this amount of metals in the environment ever in our evolutionary history.
So, the metals are:
1. Not biodegradable
2. Toxic at low thresholds
3. We are exposed to them more now than at any other time in history due to industrialization
4. Their negative effects on testosterone are pleiotropic.
The final point I’ll make about them is that their characterized effects are well established for individual exposures.
Meaning we know about all the above mechanisms with respect to single exposures.
What’s not as well characterized is how these toxic elements behave when co-exposure occurs at the same time. Which is how we are all exposed to metals now in our everyday lives.
You are exposed to and have a body burden of all these metals.
Official government data from the agency ATSDR estimates the body burden for the
Average adult to be:
aluminum 30-50 milligrams
cadmium 9.5 – 50 milligrams
lead 50 – 150 milligrams
mercury 5 – 10 milligrams
no data for arsenic and nickel
There is evidence for what is called a “cocktail effect” of metals wherein low exposure thresholds that are below problematic limits for individual metals may be exponentially worse when multiple metals are in the exposure mixture.
This means the effects from the above-listed estimated body burden for each metal may be vastly undersold by public health authorities due to this cocktail effect of metals wherein they initiate exponentially worse toxic effects through a sort of toxic synergy.
SO, WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT THE METALS?
First, I will talk about a relatively simple solution to aluminum toxicity.
Silica rich mineral water. Waters like fiji, volvic, acilis and socosani are all rich in a specific form of silica (orthosilicic acid) that is highly soluble and binds avidly to aluminum in one’s bloodstream.
This avid binding of aluminum in the blood forms aluminosilicate complexes which are readily excreted by the kidneys.
As aluminum is bound and excreted, because the body tries to keep a steady state equilibrium of aluminum in the blood and tissues, there is an emptying mechanism that occurs at the tissue level to maintain this steady state.
Aluminum empties out of the tissues slowly over time. However, while a very documented solution according to the inimitable Chrisopher Exley, PhD, a complete solution to the aluminum problem it is not.
This has to do with the fact that aluminum does bind and interact with many other minerals in the body. It can substitute for iron, magnesium, calcium, phosphorous and interact with zinc as well.
Another solution, that is more complete and can affect all the other metals, is mineral balancing.
The tl:dr of this approach is this:
Mineral Balancing is an alternative healing modality that is concerned with balancing the entire system of minerals that exists inside you, at the tissue level, all at the same time.
This balancing process is achieved by first recognizing that the minerals exist in your body in the mineral system.
Then, we account for the specifics of those interactions in the mineral system, including all interactions between the minerals and toxic metals.
Then we measure this entire mineral system, at the tissue level, using a hair tissue mineral analysis. On the hair tissue mineral analysis, we can identify all the imbalances in the system and then use our knowledge of nutrient and mineral interactions to recommend nutrients strategically to balance the mineral system, all at one time. This is the actual process of mineral balancing.
The mineral balancing process then has a profoundly antagonistic effect on the body burden of the toxic metals because the metals and the minerals oscillate in the body antagonistically (and promiscuously) according to the principles of ionic mimicry and metal/mineral substitution.
For more on this approach see the article I’ve written here:
At the end of this article, and on my X profile more broadly, there are dozens of case reports demonstrating eliminations of heavy metals.”
Simmo | @yoursimmo11
Gut health and hormonal function practitioner
On the biggest causes of low T:
“I put the gut at the epicenter. Fix the gut and, to a large extent, T and DHT looks after itself.
Once the gut is fixed, if there are still issues, then I focus on the liver and nervous system as secondary mechanisms to help rebalance the biology.
The liver is where most T4 converts into T3, and also where SHBG and albumin have an intricate interplay that is critical for ensuring T is actually able to be used by the body. So if the liver’s not functioning properly, it can throw this dynamic off and cause all sorts of issues.
Same with the nervous system. If you’re not breathing properly (overbreathing) due to stress or anxiety, T will struggle because your body thinks it’s under constant threat as it’s in a constant hyper-aroused state.”
On how to fix it:
“Tips to fix the gut: no liquids around mealtimes, drink 2–4 cups of real bone broth throughout the day, and eat mainly eggs, meat, fruits, and cooked root vegetables. Avoid starches until the gut is healed and then re-introduce.
For the liver, address it as a secondary intervention once the gut is in better shape.
For the nervous system: focus on modalities that encourage better breathing and ribcage expansion and release. This can make an enormous difference to T and overall hormonal function.”
Jack | @jack_schroder_
Masculine physiology researcher
On the biggest causes of low T:
“Although poor nutrition, lack of sunlight, blue light/nnEMFs, gut dysbiosis, nervous system dysregulation, and many other factors can contribute to low androgen status — I believe there are bigger contributors that are sitting behind the scenes.
One of these is the ability of how a man actually shows up as a man, adapting the traits of what a male specimen actually encompasses. As men, we have been programmed to not to act and behave like men.
Modern men are shaped by the modern world, in which we are taught to be nice, avoid conflict, and lack true purpose. We also lack physical work which is what our biochemistry is engineered to do.
85% of teachers in primary school are women, and due to urbanization (where fathers worked 9-5s away from home) and world wars that have happened in the past — fathers were not there to pass on the baton of masculine energy
All of this is a huge downgrade to androgen architecture.
Start building shit, lift heavy things, do things for you whilst not putting others first, assert authority and direction, and take calculated risks. Your body is listening to your behaviour more than your supplements, protocol, diet, or exercise routine. No stack will ever compensate for a men who refuses to claim himself.
The book, ‘No More Mr. Nice Guy,’ is one of the most important reads for any modern man.”
On how to fix it:
“Start building things. Lift heavy things. Do things for yourself whilst not putting others first. Assert authority and direction, and take calculated risks. Your body is listening to your behaviour more than your supplements, protocol, diet, or exercise routine. No stack will ever compensate for a man who refuses to claim himself.
The book No More Mr. Nice Guy is one of the most important reads for any modern man.”
BlackcoffeeMD | @CoffeeBlackMD
Physician
On the biggest causes of low T:
“Obesity and stress. But if you’re a shift worker, regularly working nights, that’s probably worse.”
On how to fix it:
“Lose body fat. Strength training and bodybuilding, it’s same/same for the most part for new lifters. Improve circadian biology as much as possible. Get up in the morning and go to bed at night within a fairly regular band of not much variance. Leave the night work if you can and if you can’t, cluster shifts. Destress where able. Which often means simplifying life. Chase what is really important and remember most of it is ‘just stuff’, so why are you killing yourself for it.
Some of this can’t be avoided. And if you can’t reasonably change enough of this stuff to move the needle, talk to someone who knows how to get you started on replacement.”
@aestheticprimal
Mineral and androgen physiology specialist
On the biggest causes of low T:
“Killer number 1: Avoiding stress
Stress is accepted in this health niche as one of the main ‘testosterone-killers’, but when it comes to avoiding stress it’s important that there is a big distinction made in the type of stress you are actually avoid.
Avoiding stress is stressful, in the medical literature it’s called avoidance stress, which creates endless neuro-inflammation and reduces the HPG axis its activity (how testosterone is produced).
Avoidance stress happens when you are scared to take risks, or scared to deplete your energy and feel a little bit uncomfortable.
Avoiding a fight is more detrimental to your psyche and androgens than losing a fight.
We love to look at hormones and neurotransmitters in such a binary way in this space, hormone ‘x’ is ‘good’ and hormone ‘y’ is ‘bad’, but it doesn’t work that way.
When a domesticated pig gets released into the wild, it turns into a wild boar with thick fur and its tusks start growing, the environment and body requires adaptation to thrive, this change didn’t come from improved nutrient intake or lower Cortisol levels.
While Testosterone itself significantly reduces avoidance stress and risk averse behaviour, putting in a conscious effort in overriding your unconscious tendencies towards cowardice is key.
So what is the actionable step to take for this?
Start viewing every single bit of stress as hormetic stress you are exposed to as hormetic stress, obviously don’t actively seek stress for the sake of stress, but stop shying away from anything that can benefit you long term if it stresses you in the present moment.
Killer number 2: underestimating the importance of mineral balance
There’s too much info going around about Testosterone boosting herbs and various other supplements (even though a lot of them do a great job), that one of the highest ROi approaches tends to be forgotten often, because of how boring that sounds.
And that is simply managing the proper intake of minerals, getting enough of them first, and then making sure the intake is balanced and you’re not throwing your body off homeostasis.
Take in at least 5 grams of elemental Sodium daily, to prevent any rise in activity of the RAAS (renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system).
Get a total of 1 gram of elemental Magnesium for all bodily functions
Track the intake of Calcium in comparison to Phosphate; it should be at least 1:1
Boron is a mineral that should not be overlooked, 3mg daily supplementation is all that’s needed.
Zinc needs to be consumed a lot, preferably through Oysters.
Excrete Fluoride by drinking some Nettle tea.
It’s not necessarily about a certain mineral increasing the synthesis of testosterone, but rather about chasing optimal mineral metabolism in general which creates the perfect environment for your body to produce Testosterone.”
@BowTiedUM / BowTiedBiohacker
DHT and androgen optimization
On the biggest causes of low T:
“High estrogen and high cortisol lifestyle.”
On DHT specifically:
“Your hormones are a lagging reflection of your mindset, choices, environment. Therefore your hormones are a product of your consciousness, but they also influence your consciousness. They encourage the same thoughts, behaviors, and actions that created your hormonal signature in the first place. So changing them (whether for good or worse) will be met with entropy.
To be a master of your hormones, you must be a master of your mind. To have high DHT in your body, you must have high DHT in spirit first.”
From the Research Accounts: Additional Perspectives on Why T and DHT Drop
The guys above are the ones who directly responded to my question. Below I’ve added relevant and interesting content from other accounts as well. These aren’t curated responses to my question, they’re what these people post about unprompted, week after week. Which makes the convergences even more telling.
@haidut — Georgi Dinkov
Bioenergetics researcher, IdeaLabs
Haidut is the most mechanistically rigorous voice in this space. His framework is consistently bioenergetic: every hormonal problem traces back to mitochondrial function, metabolic rate, and the balance between pro-metabolic and anti-metabolic hormones. He posts daily research summaries at haidut.me and on X, each linking to the underlying study.
His model for why testosterone and DHT drop is built around four hormones that rise together under chronic stress and suppress androgens collectively: cortisol, estrogen, prolactin, and serotonin. These aren’t independent problems. They’re a stress cluster that activates as a package when the body is under metabolic load.
On cortisol as a direct androgen suppressor:
“The lethal condition ALS may be simply a symptom of severe stress (high cortisol, low androgens) and likely curable.”
“Blocking cortisol extends lifespan more than rapamycin, by improving mitochondrial function.”
Chronically elevated cortisol doesn’t just suppress testosterone through the well-known HPA-HPG axis competition. It does so by degrading the mitochondrial function that steroidogenesis depends on at every step. Lower cortisol, restore mitochondrial output, and androgen production follows.
On estrogen dominance suppressing testosterone:
“A reductive state (high GSH, NAC, high NADH/NAD+ ratio) activates the cortisol and estrogen pathways. Oxidizing, pro-metabolic agents block them.”
This is one of his most important mechanistic insights. When cells are in a reductive state, produced by mitochondrial dysfunction, high PUFA intake, chronic stress, or poor thyroid output, the conditions that upregulate estrogen and cortisol are automatically switched on. Restoring oxidative metabolism through thyroid support, adequate carbohydrate intake, lower PUFA, and pro-metabolic nutrition is therefore anti-estrogenic by default. You don’t fight estrogen by blocking it, you fight it by restoring the metabolic state that keeps it in check.
On prolactin as a direct testosterone and DHT suppressor:
Prolactin is the most underappreciated hormone in the low-T conversation. It rises with age, estrogen dominance, endotoxin load, chronic stress, and serotonin and it directly suppresses both testosterone production and DHT synthesis. His practical interventions to lower prolactin: vitamin B6 as P5P, aspirin (blocks the prostaglandin pathway that drives prolactin release), reducing endotoxin load through activated charcoal and carrot salad, and reducing serotonin, which is a primary stimulus for prolactin secretion.
On serotonin as a rarely discussed testosterone suppressor:
“High-fat diet ups cortisol and serotonin, hinders serotonin deactivation, causes leaky gut and systemic inflammation.”
Serotonin suppresses dopamine, stimulates prolactin release, and promotes the stress hormone cascade. It’s rarely named as a testosterone suppressor in mainstream content, but in the bioenergetic framework it’s a central player. High serotonin → high prolactin → low dopamine → suppressed testosterone and DHT. The practical levers: lower endotoxin (which drives gut serotonin production), lower PUFA intake, and support the liver’s ability to deactivate serotonin.
On thyroid as the metabolic gatekeeper of testosterone:
“Vitamin D is thyromimetic, it increases endogenous thyroid output/function.”
Low T3 is low testosterone. Without adequate thyroid output, Leydig cells cannot respond properly to LH, metabolic rate drops, and the entire steroidogenic cascade slows. Haidut frames thyroid restoration, through adequate carbohydrates, protein for tyrosine (the T4 precursor), and nutrients like selenium and copper, as upstream of everything else.
The synthesis: testosterone doesn’t drop randomly. It drops because cortisol, estrogen, prolactin, and serotonin rise together as a stress cluster, driven by poor mitochondrial function, endotoxin, PUFA, and chronic physiological load. The fix is not to target testosterone directly. It is to restore the metabolic rate and oxidative capacity that keeps that hormone cluster suppressed naturally.
@theholisticnick
Gut health and hormonal function
On the full gut-to-testosterone mechanism, the most complete breakdown of how leaky gut suppresses androgens:
“LPS endotoxins entering circulation drive systemic inflammation that suppresses reproductive hormones. HPA axis activation from chronic immune stimulation increases cortisol, which suppresses testosterone. Inflammatory cytokines, TNF-alpha, IL-6, disrupt androgen production in the Leydig cells directly. Neuroinflammation suppresses dopamine, which impacts motivation, reward, and desire. Disrupted absorption of nutrients like zinc, magnesium, selenium, and vitamin D further impairs testosterone production. Mitochondrial dysfunction from inflammation and oxidative stress reduces cellular energy, which the reproductive system depends on.”
“Fix the dysbiosis, intestinal permeability, and HPA dysregulation that’s tanking hormones and libido before you worry about boosters or hormone replacement. What I’ve seen repeatedly is that when the gut issues are resolved, the hormones follow.”
The chain: leaky gut → endotoxin in blood → systemic inflammation → cortisol elevation → Leydig cell suppression → nutrient malabsorption → mitochondrial dysfunction → impaired steroidogenesis. Every link maps directly to what the direct submission contributors are describing from their own angles. Simmo calls it “gut at the epicenter.” @theholisticnick gives you the full mechanistic map of why.
@matthew_labosco
Health and performance optimization
On cortisol as the most direct practical lever on testosterone:
“High cortisol is the real reason you wake up at 3–4 AM. It also shaves 5 years off your life — tanks testosterone, locks belly fat, literally shrinks your brain.”
His eight practical interventions to lower cortisol: no food in the three hours before bed (prevents the blood sugar crash that triggers a cortisol spike at 2–3 AM), delay caffeine 90 minutes after waking (prevents adenosine clearance disruption that causes afternoon crashes and night waking), morning sunlight within 30 minutes of rising (sets the cortisol curve properly for the rest of the day), close one open cognitive loop before 10 AM (persistent unresolved tasks are a chronic low-grade cortisol stimulus).
@aestheticprimal
Mineral and androgen physiology
On exactly why the standard zinc/magnesium/D3 stack works, the chain most people never get explained:
“Magnesium, zinc, vitamin D and K2 work really well for increasing testosterone in part because they improve and restore calcium metabolism. When your body doesn’t get the amount of calcium it needs, it cranks up PTH. Elevated PTH causes calcium to rise excessively in the serum. Excess calcium then enters the mitochondria and suppresses oxidative phosphorylation. The conversion of cholesterol into steroid hormones, starting with pregnenolone, is then impaired, because the rate-limiting step of steroidogenesis is literally the transport of cholesterol from the outer to the inner membrane of the mitochondria through the StAR protein. StAR protein is dependent on mitochondrial respiration. Zinc, magnesium, K2, D3, and boron are important cofactors in calcium metabolism and prevent this cascade, allowing for more efficient steroidogenesis and thus testosterone.”
This is why mineral balance gives a higher ROI than most testosterone supplements. It’s not that zinc “boosts” testosterone directly. These minerals together restore the calcium metabolism that protects mitochondrial function, which is the rate-limiting step for all steroidogenesis. You’re not pushing testosterone up. You’re removing the block that was holding it down.
@DocAbirHealth
TRT and hormonal health clinician
On what most men on TRT are missing → the neurosteroid argument for hCG:
“Exogenous androgens will shut down your HPG axis. The first step of testosterone synthesis is to force cholesterol into the mitochondria and create pregnenolone, the mother hormone. Pregnenolone gets converted into progesterone or DHEA, the latter eventually becoming testosterone. Progesterone has a massive role in regulating your CNS.
Low pregnenolone means lower dopamine; linked to fatigue, brain fog, depression, and reduced drive, including libido. Progesterone helps dopamine tone and increases NOS for better blood flow and faster arousal. There’s also a lot of DHEA in the CNS, involved in the raw feeling of vitality, assertiveness, and being a man. All of these are severely lacking when on exogenous T without hCG.”
This matters for anyone on TRT or considering it. Shutting down the HPG axis without hCG doesn’t just stop sperm production, it stops the entire neurosteroid cascade that produces pregnenolone, progesterone, and DHEA inside the testes and brain. Men on TRT who feel flat, unmotivated, or low-libido despite good testosterone numbers are often missing exactly this.
Dosing from his breakdown: 150 IU daily maintains intratesticular testosterone at baseline. 200 IU daily puts it approximately 12% above baseline. 500 IU every other day puts it 25% above baseline but with significant aromatization risk.
@PathOfMen_
Men’s health and lifestyle
On deficiency as the primary suppressor:
“Zinc. Magnesium. Vitamin D. These three alone will fix your sleep, your testosterone, your mood, and your focus. Most men are deficient in all three and have no idea. Start there before you buy anything else.”
“The male mental health crisis isn’t complicated at all. Porn, bad food, no sunlight, no purpose, no movement, a desk job that slowly kills your soul, low testosterone, terrible sleep, and zero genuine human connection. It’s just a generation of men living completely against their nature and wondering why they feel like they’re dying inside.”
@nicknorwitz
Metabolic health researcher
On sunlight as a direct testosterone input, documented with a self-experiment:
“You can increase your attractiveness and change your sex hormones with light. This light-testosterone effect appears consistently in humans. Moving testosterone like a yo-yo with a black hoodie: hoodie on, testosterone down; shirt off, testosterone up.”
Direct skin exposure to sunlight raises testosterone measurably. The mechanism runs through nitric oxide release in the skin, circadian entrainment, and potentially direct photobiomodulation of testicular function. One of the most accessible interventions available and one of the most consistently skipped.
@Helios_Movement
Thyroid and metabolic health
On hypothyroidism as a direct cause of low DHT:
“The thyroid gland affects more processes than we could imagine and its dysfunction could lead to severe fatigue, hair loss, SIBO, high LDL, impaired detoxification, low levels of DHT and more.”
Thyroid output controls the metabolic rate at which every cell operates, including Leydig cells. Low T3 means impaired 5-alpha reductase activity, which means low DHT even when total testosterone is acceptable. Many men have normal testosterone numbers but low DHT, and this is often a hypothyroid picture rather than a conversion problem per se.
@MagnusVigso
Ancestral health
On the highest-testosterone population ever measured and what they ate:
“Mongolia is the country with the highest levels of testosterone with almost 700 ng/dL. The Mongols consumed a lot of meat from their herds — mutton, goat, beef, horse, and camel. Their diet consisted of dried meat, curds, and fermented milk. The original high testosterone diet.”
No supplements, no protocols, no optimization stack, just animal protein, animal fat, and fermented dairy, combined with a physically demanding outdoor life. It won’t tell you how to fix a broken system, but it shows what a system that was never broken looked like.
@AbudBakri
Circadian medicine, peptides, and steroidogenesis clinician
Abud’s lens is distinct from everyone else in this article. He sits at the intersection of circadian biology, steroidogenesis, and clinical peptide medicine and his framing of why testosterone and DHT drop brings in angles that nobody else here covers.
On low T as a deliberate biological response, not a malfunction:
“Low T is a feature not a bug in modern men. Until health is re-established.”
This is one of the most important reframes in the entire article. The body is not broken when it produces low testosterone under chronic stress, poor sleep, circadian disruption, and metabolic dysfunction. It is making a calculated decision to redirect resources away from reproduction and toward survival. Low testosterone in a sick man is the correct output of a correctly functioning system. The job is not to override that signal… it is to restore the conditions that make high testosterone the appropriate output again.
On the backdoor synthesis pathway → the cause of low DHT most people have never heard of:
“The androgen backdoor synthesis pathway was only recently discovered and acknowledged to be important in humans. Progesterone → DHT. The fact that a pathway exists that takes progesterone to androsterone and DHT should not be ignored, especially when this pathway likely falters before the main delta4/delta5 testosterone synthesis pathway, and greatly influences regulation of the hypothalamus-pituitary-gonadal axis.”
This is genuinely novel content. The mainstream model of DHT synthesis runs: cholesterol → pregnenolone → DHEA → androstenedione → testosterone → DHT via 5-alpha reductase. But there is a backdoor pathway that converts progesterone directly to DHT without going through testosterone at all. Abud’s clinical observation is that this pathway (which is less well understood and less frequently measured) likely becomes impaired before the main pathway does. Which means men can have acceptable testosterone levels and still have low DHT because the backdoor route is failing silently. Nobody is testing for this. Nobody is talking about it.
On TRT, the irony most men starting it don’t see:
“The irony of TRT is that it works way better when you’re healthy, but the reason most end up needing it is because of their cumulative unhealthy lifestyle. Although it’s not indicated, the healthy, lean male who supplements with exogenous androgens becomes an even more lethal machine. This is the harsh reality they realize once starting TRT, they still need to do all the healthy things.”
And separately, on the cascade of variables TRT introduces that most men aren’t prepared for:
“Once you introduce androgens, you change all the other systems, especially the ones gated by steroid receptors (mineralocorticoid, glucocorticoid, estrogen). Then you have to see where aromatase and 5AR start and go. Then you have to be mindful of the liver. Then you have to be mindful of TBG going down, thyroid labs changing, IGF-1 going up or down.”
On tissue-level DHT versus serum DHT, why the number on your lab report misses the point:
“The right hormone in the right tissue at the right time. Low DHT in penile tissue is misplaced, as is high DHT in scalp tissue. Serum labs miss a lot. Tissue levels can be seen in signs and symptoms. Try talking to a patient before ordering $1,500 of labs.”
On circadian disruption as a primary driver:
“Your circadian habits in your 20s lead to the sleep issues in your 40s and your chronic disease in your 60s. Few put together that being a night owl for a decade and their rising A1c 30 years later are connected. But as more data comes about melanopsin, we need to put 2+2 together. Melanopsin damage in the eye at a young age speeds up the aging process.”
The mechanism he’s pointing at: melanopsin is the photoreceptor protein that governs circadian entrainment in the eye and skin. Chronic blue light exposure at night (and insufficient long-wavelength red and infrared light during the day) damages melanopsin photoreceptors over years. This degrades the quality of circadian signaling, which disrupts the nocturnal testosterone pulse, growth hormone release, and the entire hormonal recovery architecture that depends on properly timed deep sleep.
On stress as the direct killer of testicular output:
“Stress is the killer of men… and of testicular output.”
And on what that stress cascade looks like biologically:
“As you stress out about all the unhealthy things in your life, you are hypertrophying the adrenal glands, involuting lymph tissue including the thymus, and damaging the gut lining, which will kill you faster than the thing you are stressing out about.”
The synthesis from Abud’s account: testosterone and DHT are downstream outputs of a system that is highly sensitive to circadian rhythm, steroidogenic pathway integrity (including the underappreciated backdoor route), tissue-level hormone distribution, and the cumulative load of chronic stress on the HPG axis. His most distinctive contribution is the backdoor progesterone-to-DHT pathway, a cause of low DHT that sits entirely outside the framework most practitioners and content creators are working within.
Where They Converge
This is where it gets interesting.
These contributors come from completely different entry points. A heavy metals researcher. A gut practitioner. A physician. A behavioral philosopher. A bioenergetics guy. A TRT clinician. And yet, when you lay their answers side by side, the same themes emerge over and over.
1. The problem is rarely the hormone. It’s the environment that produces the hormone.
This is the most consistent thread across every contributor. @MetalsBrah frames it as metalloestrogens mimicking estrogen receptors and suppressing the HPG axis. Simmo frames it as gut dysfunction creating systemic inflammation that prevents Leydig cells from doing their job. @theholisticnick documents the same Leydig cell mechanism from the gut angle. @metabolic_print argues that a follicle in a poor bioenergetic environment responds to DHT differently than a healthy one. Same trigger, completely different outcome. @DocAbirHealth shows that neurosteroid precursors like pregnenolone, which depend on the same mitochondrial machinery, vanish when the system is suppressed. Nobody is arguing that testosterone is a broken number that needs to be pushed. They’re all arguing that the system producing testosterone is being blocked, and the fix is to unblock it.
2. Mitochondrial function is upstream of everything.
This one is implicit in most of the answers and explicit in a few. @aestheticprimal traces the mineral mechanism all the way to the StAR protein, which depends on mitochondrial respiration to transport cholesterol into the inner mitochondrial membrane. @metabolic_print explains local DHT elevation in stressed tissue as a consequence of the pentose phosphate pathway being upregulated in response to mitochondrial breakdown. @MetabolicUncle connects low testosterone, low thyroid, and low energy to a single upstream cause: mitochondrial decline. The implication is important: if your mitochondria are impaired, no amount of downstream supplementation will hold.
3. Mineral balance is the highest-ROI intervention most men skip.
@PathOfMen_ calls zinc, magnesium, and vitamin D the non-negotiable starting point. @aestheticprimal builds out the full mechanism — calcium metabolism, PTH, StAR protein, steroidogenesis. @MetalsBrah approaches it from the opposite direction: toxic metals deplete these same minerals through ionic mimicry, so restoration of mineral status and removal of metals are two sides of the same coin. Simmo’s gut protocol indirectly addresses this too — a dysfunctional gut absorbs zinc, magnesium, and selenium poorly, creating deficiencies that suppress testosterone from below.
4. Prolactin and estrogen, not DHT, are the real villains being ignored.
@haidut presents research showing prolactin receptor antagonism reverses hair loss and graying. @jack_schroder_ notes that prolactin directly blocks DHT synthesis. @oxidativestate argues that lowering prolactin and estrogen would do more for hair and metabolism than blocking DHT. @metabolic_print explains the bioenergetic conditions that allow DHT to become a problem locally. @dannyroddy reframes scalp DHT as a compensatory response to hypothyroidism, not a root cause. The mainstream is treating a downstream marker while the real drivers accumulate.
5. Behavior and psychology are not soft variables.
This is the most underrepresented angle in typical testosterone content — and two contributors landed on it independently. @jack_schroder_ frames avoidance behavior as a direct suppressor of HPG axis activity through chronic neuroinflammation. @aestheticprimal calls it “avoidance stress” — the medical literature term for the chronic low-grade inflammation that comes from risk aversion. @BowTiedUM argues that hormones are a lagging indicator of behavior, not the other way around. These are not motivational arguments. They are physiological ones.
Where They Converge
This is where it gets interesting.
These contributors come from completely different entry points (a heavy metals researcher, a gut practitioner, a physician, a behavioral philosopher, a bioenergetics researcher, a TRT clinician, a mineral specialist). None of them were talking to each other when they answered my questions. And yet when you lay their answers side by side, the same themes surface again and again from completely different directions.
That’s signal. When independent experts arrive at the same conclusion from different methodologies, you stop needing a study to tell you it’s real. The convergence is the evidence.
Here are the patterns I see.
1. The problem is almost never the hormone itself. It’s the environment that produces the hormone.
This is the single most consistent thread across every contributor, and it runs counter to how most men think about low testosterone. The conventional mental model is: testosterone is low → find something to raise it. Every expert here rejects that framing entirely.
@MetalsBrah frames it as metalloestrogens occupying the estrogen receptors in the hypothalamus and pituitary, tricking the brain into reading high estrogen and shutting down the hormonal signal chain before testosterone is ever produced.
Simmo frames it as gut dysfunction creating systemic inflammation that prevents Leydig cells from responding to LH even when the signal is present.
@theholisticnick maps the exact same Leydig cell suppression from the same gut-inflammation angle, independently.
@DocAbirHealth shows that when the HPG axis is suppressed (even intentionally through TRT) the neurosteroid precursors that depend on the same intratesticular machinery simply disappear, leaving men with testosterone numbers but without the full masculine chemistry those numbers are supposed to represent.
@haidut frames the whole thing as a metabolic problem: when oxidative metabolism degrades, the stress hormone cluster (cortisol, estrogen, prolactin, serotonin) rises together and suppresses androgen production as a package deal.
Nobody in this article is arguing that testosterone is a number to be pushed. They are all, without exception, arguing that testosterone is an output of a system that is being blocked and the job is to unblock it.
2. Mitochondrial function is upstream of everything.
This one is mostly implicit across the submissions, but once you see it you can’t unsee it. Every pathway that leads to low testosterone eventually runs through the mitochondria.
@aestheticprimal traces the mineral mechanism all the way to the StAR protein (the rate-limiting enzyme that transports cholesterol from the outer to the inner mitochondrial membrane to begin steroidogenesis). Without mitochondrial respiration, StAR doesn’t work. Without StAR, cholesterol never becomes pregnenolone. Without pregnenolone, nothing downstream works either. The whole cascade stalls before testosterone is ever made.
@haidut’s reductive stress argument is the same observation from a different angle: when mitochondria underperform, the cell shifts into a reductive state (high NADH, high glutathione) and that state directly activates cortisol and estrogen pathways while suppressing the oxidative metabolism that androgens depend on.
Simmo’s gut protocol,
@theholisticnick’s leaky gut mechanism, and
@MetalsBrah’s heavy metals case all converge on the same endpoint: impaired mitochondrial function in the Leydig cells. The gut floods the body with endotoxin, which drives inflammation, which drives mitochondrial dysfunction in steroidogenic tissue. The metals accumulate in the testes and directly cause oxidative stress in the same cells. The outcome is identical regardless of the input, Leydig cells that can’t do their job.
The implication is critical and underappreciated: if your mitochondria are impaired, no supplement designed to raise testosterone will hold. You are adding load to a generator that is already failing. The work has to start upstream.
3. Mineral balance is the highest-ROI intervention that most men skip entirely.
It comes up in every submission, from every angle.
@PathOfMen_ calls zinc, magnesium, and vitamin D the non-negotiable starting point, the three deficiencies most men have and don’t know about. @aestheticprimal builds out the full chain from first principles: these minerals work not by directly stimulating testosterone production but by restoring the calcium metabolism that keeps PTH under control, which protects mitochondrial function, which allows the StAR protein to function, which allows steroidogenesis to proceed.
@MetalsBrah arrives at the same minerals from the opposite direction, toxic metals deplete zinc, selenium, and magnesium through ionic mimicry in the gut, so restoring mineral status and removing metals are two sides of the same coin.
Simmo’s gut protocol addresses it indirectly: a dysfunctional gut absorbs zinc, magnesium, and selenium poorly, creating the deficiency that suppresses testosterone from below even when dietary intake looks adequate.
@CoffeeBlackMD doesn’t name specific minerals but his clinical picture (body fat, stress, poor sleep) is one that depletes magnesium and zinc consistently. Everyone is pointing at the same pool of resources from different directions.
What makes mineral balance underappreciated is that it’s unglamorous. There’s no mechanism for it to go viral. You can’t sell a magnesium protocol as aggressively as you can sell a peptide stack. But the ROI is consistently higher than almost anything else in the first-line intervention category, because you’re removing a biological block rather than adding a stimulus to a blocked system.
4. The cortisol problem is universal and underestimated in its scope.
Every single contributor names chronic stress and cortisol elevation as a primary driver of low testosterone, but the depth of that connection goes well beyond “stress is bad for hormones.”
@matthew_labosco connects it to the 3 AM waking pattern that millions of men experience… the blood sugar crash that triggers a cortisol spike that shuts down the hormonal recovery that should happen during deep sleep.
@haidut connects it to mitochondrial function, showing that blocking cortisol extends lifespan more than rapamycin by restoring cellular energy metabolism.
@CoffeeBlackMD connects it to shift work, probably the single most damaging lifestyle pattern for testosterone because it dismantles circadian biology entirely, destroying the diurnal testosterone rhythm that depends on proper sleep architecture.
Simmo connects it to overbreathing, the chronically elevated sympathetic state that comes from anxiety and poor breathing mechanics keeping the body in a constant low-level threat response.
@jack_schroder_ connects it to avoidance behavior, the neuroinflammation that comes from chronic risk aversion, which is a psychological cortisol generator that no supplement addresses.
The practical takeaway is that cortisol management is not a secondary concern. It is a primary intervention. And it has to be addressed from multiple angles simultaneously because it has multiple inputs: sleep quality, blood sugar stability, circadian rhythm, breathing mechanics, psychological load, and physical training volume all feed it independently.
5. Prolactin and serotonin are the most underrepresented suppressors in the mainstream conversation.
Almost nobody in mainstream health content talks about prolactin as a testosterone suppressor. The space is dominated by cortisol and estrogen as the villains, with prolactin occasionally mentioned in the context of TRT protocols. But across this group of contributors, prolactin emerges as a central player and the mechanism is direct, not indirect.
@haidut links serotonin as a primary driver of prolactin release, with a chain that runs from endotoxin → gut serotonin production → prolactin release → testosterone and DHT suppression. This is why high-endotoxin states (leaky gut, poor gut motility, high PUFA diet) suppress testosterone through multiple routes simultaneously. They drive both the inflammatory pathway and the serotonin-prolactin pathway in parallel.
@DocAbirHealth’s TRT discussion touches prolactin from a different angle: men who shut down their HPG axis lose the intratesticular hormonal environment that keeps prolactin in check, which is part of why testosterone-plus-hCG protocols tend to feel better than testosterone alone. The practical levers for prolactin (vitamin B6 as P5P, aspirin, reducing endotoxin, reducing serotonin) are simple, accessible, and almost entirely absent from popular testosterone content.
6. Thyroid is the missing link between nutrition and testosterone.
@Helios_Movement states it directly: hypothyroidism drives low DHT.
@haidut frames thyroid output as the metabolic gatekeeper, without adequate T3, Leydig cells cannot respond properly to LH, and the entire steroidogenic cascade slows regardless of how good the upstream signal is.
Simmo’s liver emphasis is partly a thyroid argument: the liver is where T4 converts to the active T3, so liver dysfunction means functional hypothyroidism even when thyroid panels look acceptable.
@aestheticprimal’s mineral protocol supports thyroid indirectly → selenium is the cofactor for the deiodinase enzymes that convert T4 to T3, and magnesium is essential for thyroid hormone receptor sensitivity.
What makes the thyroid connection particularly important is that many men with low DHT have normal or acceptable total testosterone. DHT is the more thyroid-sensitive androgen because it depends on 5-alpha reductase activity, which is metabolically expensive and one of the first enzymatic processes to slow when the metabolic rate drops. A man with a T of 600 and a DHT of 25 is almost certainly dealing with a thyroid or metabolic rate problem, not a testosterone production problem.
7. The gut is the chokepoint that every other system feeds through.
Simmo puts the gut at the epicenter explicitly. @theholisticnick documents the mechanism: leaky gut → endotoxin in blood → systemic inflammation → cortisol elevation → Leydig cell suppression → nutrient malabsorption → mitochondrial dysfunction → impaired steroidogenesis.
@haidut identifies endotoxin as the driver of serotonin production in the gut wall, adding another downstream suppressive pathway.
@MetalsBrah’s metals argument runs through the gut too: metals compete with zinc, magnesium, and selenium for absorption in the GI tract, so a gut that is already inflamed and dysfunctional becomes a less effective barrier against metals while simultaneously failing to absorb the minerals that would antagonize them.
What this means practically is that the gut is the chokepoint through which almost every other system is regulated. It determines what gets absorbed, what gets blocked, how much endotoxin reaches the bloodstream, how much serotonin gets produced, and how effectively the liver can clear estrogen and deactivate cortisol. Every contributor who talks about nutrition is implicitly talking about gut function, because you are not what you eat, you are what your gut absorbs.
8. The body and behavior are a bidirectional system and behavior is upstream more often than men want to admit.
@jack_schroder_ and @aestheticprimal arrive at this from different angles. Jack frames it as masculine identity and behavioral architecture → the pattern of avoidance, conflict aversion, and purposelessness that the medical literature calls avoidance stress and that suppresses HPG axis activity through chronic neuroinflammation.
@aestheticprimal frames it as hormesis → the distinction between hormetic stress that builds and avoidance stress that destroys, and the actionable difference between engaging with challenges and retreating from them.
@BowTiedUM frames it philosophically: hormones are a lagging indicator of behavior, and the feedback loop runs both ways. High DHT produces the behaviors associated with masculine confidence; but the behaviors associated with masculine confidence also produce DHT.
@CoffeeBlackMD’s clinical simplicity cuts through the noise: lose body fat, train, fix your sleep, simplify your life. That’s a behavioral prescription, not a biochemical one. The behaviors create the hormonal environment, not the other way around.
This is uncomfortable for a space that loves to optimize protocols and stack supplements, because it implies that no stack will substitute for the behavioral foundation. Every expert who touched this theme said it in different language but the same meaning: your body is listening to what you do with it far more than to what you give it.
9. Nutrient density from whole animal foods is the one dietary convergence no one disagrees on.
Not a single contributor recommends a low-protein, plant-dominant, or calorie-restricted diet as a testosterone strategy. Every dietary recommendation across this entire group points toward animal protein, animal fat, and organ meats.
@MagnusVigso provides the ancestral anchor: the highest-testosterone population ever measured ate almost exclusively meat, fermented dairy, and dried animal products. My own TestoSuperFoods framework (beef, oysters, liver, milk, egg yolks) is the same stack that every contributor’s dietary logic points toward, arrived at from completely independent starting points.
@MetalsBrah gets there through ionic mimicry and mineral density.
Simmo gets there through gut healing and digestive ease.
@CoffeeBlackMD gets there through body composition and satiety.
@aestheticprimal gets there through zinc and mineral bioavailability.
The convergence is complete.
10. Supplementation is the last layer, not the first… and herbs are not the solution.
This is perhaps the strongest practical consensus across the group.
@aestheticprimal says it explicitly: the space is obsessed with testosterone-boosting herbs, but mineral balance gives a higher ROI and gets skipped because it’s boring.
@DocAbirHealth’s framework starts with the endocrine machinery… you cannot optimize what isn’t working.
@theholisticnick is blunt: too many men are trying to undo the damage of underlying health issues with biohacking tools, but if the foundation is crumbling, no amount of optimization will hold.
My own hierarchy makes the same argument in six levels → by the time you reach strategic enhancement, almost nothing is actually needed because the system is running quietly on its own.
The practical implication: if you’re spending money on testosterone-boosting supplements while your gut is leaky, your minerals are depleted, your sleep is broken, your body fat is high, and you’re chronically stressed, you are not optimizing. You are compensating. And compensation is expensive, dependency-forming, and temporary.
Where They Diverge
Not everything converges. The disagreements are worth paying attention to, because they reveal both where the science is genuinely unsettled and where individual variation makes a single answer impossible.
On sequencing… where do you start?
This is the deepest practical disagreement in the group. Simmo’s framework is sequential and hierarchical: gut first, liver second, nervous system third. Get the gut working, and the downstream issues often resolve without direct intervention.
@MetalsBrah would push back → toxic metals actively suppress gut function and block mineral absorption, so if metals are the primary driver, fixing the gut without addressing metals is like bailing out a boat without plugging the hole.
@CoffeeBlackMD takes the most pragmatic clinical position: body fat and sleep are the first movers because they are accessible, measurable, and causally connected to the hormonal picture in ways that patients can actually execute.
@jack_schroder_ and @aestheticprimal would argue that behavioral architecture is prior to all of it… that a man living in chronic avoidance stress will regenerate every suppressive hormonal pattern no matter how clean his diet is.
These aren’t contradictory positions. They’re different answers to the question “where do you start?” and the right answer is genuinely individual. Someone with obvious gut symptoms starts with Simmo’s protocol. Someone with a known heavy metal exposure or hair tissue analysis showing high lead starts with @MetalsBrah’s mineral balancing approach. Someone who is obese and sedentary starts with @CoffeeBlackMD’s basics. Someone whose labs are clean but whose life is defined by avoidance starts with Jack’s framework.
On the behavioral vs. biological primacy:
@jack_schroder_ argues that masculine behavioral identity is upstream of all biological interventions. That no supplement stack compensates for a man who refuses to claim himself. @CoffeeBlackMD takes the opposite clinical position: fix the metabolic variables, and behavior tends to follow. The testosterone-confidence loop runs both ways, and depending on which direction you enter it, the answer looks completely different. Both are probably right in different men. The question is which came first in a given individual’s case. A man who has been depressed and avoidant for years because of genuinely suppressed testosterone needs the biology fixed first. A man whose testosterone is biologically adequate but whose psychology produces avoidance behavior needs the behavioral work first.
On the role of TRT:
@DocAbirHealth is the only contributor who addresses TRT directly as a potential tool, and his position is nuanced: TRT is appropriate when lifestyle changes cannot move the needle, but it needs to be done correctly, with hCG to preserve intratesticular testosterone and neurosteroid production, not as a simple replacement therapy. @CoffeeBlackMD echoes this: if you’ve genuinely done everything and can’t move the needle, talk to someone who knows how to get you started on replacement. Every other contributor focuses exclusively on natural restoration. Nobody is categorically anti-TRT, but the consensus is clearly that it is the last resort of a failing system, not the first intervention in a suppressed one.
On carbohydrates and diet composition:
@haidut’s bioenergetic framework strongly favors carbohydrates as the primary fuel, adequate glucose is essential for oxidative metabolism, cortisol control, and thyroid conversion. My own framework recommends fruit, milk, and easy-to-digest carbs as testosterone-supportive foods. @MetalsBrah and @aestheticprimal also favor carbohydrates in the context of mineral and calcium metabolism. But this sits in tension with the broader health content world where low-carbohydrate and ketogenic approaches are popular. Nobody in this group recommends a ketogenic diet for testosterone optimization and haidut’s research summaries present evidence that high-fat dietary states actually drive cortisol and serotonin elevation while impairing thyroid conversion. This is a genuine divergence from mainstream dietary advice, and it’s worth flagging: the bioenergetic, pro-metabolic view of testosterone is fundamentally a pro-carbohydrate view, not a fat-and-protein-only view.
Yours truly (Hansius) Section: How I Apply This
This is where I step out of curator mode and tell you what I actually do.
Before I share anything here, I want to be clear about something.
(If you put everyone in this article in a room together Clark, Simmo, Jack, BlackcoffeeMD, Richard, Georgi, Nick, the whole group) I genuinely believe they would agree on 95% of everything. The differences in emphasis and entry point that look like disagreements from the outside are mostly just different people choosing different angles into the same underlying system. And the depth of knowledge each of them carries far exceeds what any of them has published online. This article is scratching the surface of what these people actually know.
I added them because they are genuinely knowledgeable and they genuinely care about helping people. They are not viral tweet chasers. They are not selling a single supplement and building content around it. They have put real time into understanding this area and it shows in the texture of their thinking. That’s exactly why I wanted them here.
What I’m sharing next is not a superior framework. It’s just my framework, the set of ideas I keep coming back to after ten-plus years of self-experimentation, biweekly blood tests, stool testing, OAT testing, daily biomarker tracking, and working through these questions with hundreds of readers. I’d expect most of the people above to agree with most of it. Where they wouldn’t, that’s a conversation worth having, not a verdict.
The blackpill on testosterone is wrong, but it’s pointing at something real.
I got this response to one of my tweets recently (paraphrased): “There’s nothing we can do to increase testosterone naturally.” And I get where it’s coming from. Natural testosterone boosters are genuinely disappointing. Tongkat on a good day might give you 25–100 ng/dL. Royal jelly maybe 25 ng/dL. Spilanthes, 15 ng/dL. If your testosterone is 300 and you want 800+, these numbers feel pointless. You’re rearranging deck chairs.
But here’s what most people miss: we have plenty of evidence that testosterone can go down dramatically and exactly why. One study cut zinc intake by 50% and saw a 4x drop in testosterone after 20 weeks. A client of mine swapped beef for salmon. His testosterone went from 700 to 350. He swapped back to beef and six weeks later, it returned to 700. So we know: remove the right inputs, and testosterone plummets. Which means the game isn’t pushing testosterone up with herbs. It’s stopping it from going down in the first place.
The real strategy is cellular resiliency.
Increasing testosterone isn’t about pushing it up. It’s about building a biological environment where the Leydig cells can actually do their job. When cells are given what they need (oxygen, nutrients, energy, low inflammation) they perform. That includes testosterone production. This is why some men have 1,000+ ng/dL and barely think about it. Their cells just work.
Not everyone will hit 1,000. Just like not everyone will be 6’5”. But there’s a massive difference between being genetically limited and being biologically suppressed. Most men with low testosterone are suppressed, not limited.
The hierarchy most people ignore.
When I started optimizing, I wanted to do everything. If there was an article titled “20 ways to increase DHT,” I didn’t evaluate it… I executed it. All twenty. Testosterone up. DHT up. Estrogen down. Prolactin down. Cortisol managed. Dopamine boosted. I didn’t care about dose, timing, absorption, or tradeoffs. I cared about coverage.
This was a model error.
The problem isn’t what you try. It’s when you try it. Most men are applying enhancement tools to survival problems. They’re using compounds designed to modify outputs (hormones, neurotransmitters) while the inputs and processing systems are still impaired. Digestion is slow. Absorption is inconsistent. Inflammation is elevated. Stress physiology is active. In that state, adding more compounds doesn’t increase capacity. It increases throughput pressure.
The hierarchy looks like this:
Level 1 — Fascination phase: Everything is new, everything sounds important, you try everything at once. Motion without stability.
Level 2 — Control phase: You get serious about forms, extracts, and timing. Better tools, but still applying them above the bottleneck. The system becomes fragile and dependent.
Level 3 — The fracture point: Supplements stop stacking cleanly. Effects flatten. Tolerance builds. Motivation dips. This is the doorway forward, if you’re willing to update the model.
Level 4 — Foundation phase: The question shifts from “what can I add?” to “what’s preventing normal function?” Diet as a capacity tool. Micronutrients as throughput enablers. Digestion as the gatekeeper of hormones and energy. This phase feels anticlimactic. Fewer protocols. More repetition. But symptoms stop demanding attention — not because they’re suppressed, but because the system producing them starts working again.
Level 5 — The quiet phase: Nothing needs help. Energy is stable. Libido appears without provocation. Recovery happens without protocols. Not because something was added, but because nothing is interfering anymore. Most people realize here how distorted their baseline had been.
Level 6 — Strategic enhancement: Only now do hormones, peptides, and performance compounds make sense. Not as crutches, but as amplifiers. If you cannot stop something without regression, it never belonged at this level.
My practical framework.
Week 1: Lower inflammation and fix the gut. Remove processed food, gluten, high-FODMAP fermenters. Add endotoxin binders: Enterosgel, activated charcoal, lactoferrin, white button mushrooms. Morning sunlight. Easy-to-digest carbs and dairy to stabilize blood sugar and drop cortisol.
Week 2: Restore nutrient deficiencies with the TestoSuperFoods. Beef (400–800g daily), milk (1L+ daily), oysters, liver (30–50g daily or every other day), egg yolks (3–9 daily). These aren’t just good foods. They are the biochemical raw materials that testosterone synthesis depends on.
Week 3: Remove the inhibitors. Address sleep, high estrogen burden, high prolactin, elevated cortisol, low thyroid, overtraining. These are the brakes. Most men try to push the accelerator harder without releasing the brakes first.
Week 4: Amplify. Androgen training → heavy compounds, sprinting, explosive movement. DHT-supportive foods: egg yolks, beef, liver, oyster, milk. Optional enhancers: boron (10mg), creatine (5–20g), Tribulus, L. reuteri, kestose for butyrate production and receptor sensitivity.
The one question to ask before adding anything new.
Before you jump to a new diet or pile on random supplements, ask yourself: have I really done everything with what I already know works?
Am I eating the TestoSuperFoods? Am I eating enough of them? Is my digestion functional? Am I absorbing nutrients properly? Do I have genetic needs I’m not supporting? Is there an underlying root cause → heavy metals, bacterial overgrowth, poor sleep, high cortisol, low stomach acid?
The body runs on vitamins and minerals. Optimize the foundation before you reach for the lever on top of it.
You’re not doomed. You just haven’t been shown the map.
Final Thought: The Convergence Is the Point
Reading back through everything above, a few things stand out to me.
Every expert in this article, regardless of their primary lens, is pointing at the same underlying truth: the modern environment is systematically hostile to male androgen production, and the fix is to understand which layer of the system is broken before reaching for any tool.
The gut practitioner and the metals researcher and the behavioral philosopher and the bioenergetics specialist are not contradicting each other. They are describing the same suppressed system from different angles.
That’s the whole point of this article.
Don’t follow one guru. Follow the convergences.
If this kind of synthesis is useful to you (the full picture, not just one framework) the Health Report is how I apply it to your specific situation. Bloodwork, stool testing, mineral analysis, and a personalized protocol built around what’s actually suppressing your testosterone, not what a generic article says should be.
love your arcticles, this one has been one of my favorties
thanks
also i have been using kestose regularly now, and incorporate many things from your articles
full blood test panels starting next week to see some changes, i know they'll be good
Very informative, good job Hans!
Can you please do deep dive on root causes of low free T/DHT despite high T and normal E2 ?