Is Testosterone Overrated?
Fat loss and muscle growth are a numbers game.
Well, for the most part, at least.
Take in less calories, or enter a calorie deficit, and you’ll lose fat.
Take in more calories, or enter a calorie surplus, and you’ll build muscle.1As long as you also introduce the body to mechanical stress, of course.
But as much as body composition comes down to numbers, it’s really all about the hormones.
Yeah, hormones, the chemical messengers produced in the endocrine glands and transported in the blood to cells and tissues to make them perform certain actions, like muscle building and fat burning.
What are some of these hormones, you say?
Well, there’s growth hormone, DHEA, and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), adiponectin, and the thyroid hormones triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxine (T4), just to name a few.
While important in their own right, the listed hormones are mere peasants when compared to testosterone, which is better known as the king of hormones because of its role in BOTH muscle growth AND fat loss, as well as numerous other functions I’m not going to spend much time delving into because those things it impacts aren’t as big as physical appearance, THE MOST IMPORTANTEST THING IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD.
But what if I told you that the king of hormones, testosterone, is overrated?
I know that goes against everything you’ve been led to believe by muscle mags, gym bros, TV commercials, and other founts of credible information.2Fuck, it even goes against its kingly moniker!
But that’s exactly what I’m telling you!
Testosterone is overrated and isn’t all it’s made up to be, at least when it comes to its most popular belief for usage.
Let’s examine why…
Testosterone, as you know, is the male sex hormone. It’s what makes men men. Produced in the adrenal glands and mainly the testes, testosterone controls male characteristics like facial hair, vocal depth, and spermatogenesis.3Psst…”spermatogenesis” is the educated name for the process involving the creation of the main ingredient in man ranch.
You know, shit we don’t really care about.
Know what else?
Women also produce testosterone.
Yeah, that’s right.
The hormone that gives men their male characteristics is also present in women.
Produced mainly in the ovaries but at a level about 15 times lower than men, testosterone affects mood, energy, sex drive, cognitive function, bone density, muscle mass, and fat storage in women as it does in men, just to varying degrees.
Given what testosterone does, it’s not hard to figure out the effects of low testosterone, which include low libido, decreased sexual satisfaction, depression, lethargy, fertility issues, and, MOST IMPORTANTLY, the havoc wreaked on body composition.4The causes of declining testosterone include aging, surgical removal of the ovaries or early menopause in women, testicular damage in men from a physical injury or something that affects the testes (e.g. mumps, chemotherapy), obesity, and disorders (e.g. kidney failure), medications (e.g. opioids) and disease conditions (e.g. tuberculosis, sarcoidosis, HIV/AIDS) that may result in hypopituitarism (i.e. underactive pituitary gland).
And what’s that havoc?
Why, that the reduced presence of testosterone is a death sentence to gains!
It’s for that reason you should probably take that test boosting supplement you’ve seen advertised somewhere, right? Go to the doctor to get placed on testosterone replacement therapy (TRT)? Maybe get some more sleep? Improve your diet? Get a vasectomy or abandon your children? Do whatever else to raise your testosterone production naturally?
Fuck, seeing as how testosterone is so wondrous for muscle building (or at least you’ve heard it is), why wait until your levels are low to do any of that shit to boost it?!?!
If only you were to do that then you’d see more gains, no?!
Well, no!
Raising testosterone ISN’T what you should do for muscle building purposes?!?!
Say whaaaaaa?!?!
That’s right, it’s not!
The thing is that testosterone, while important, isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be by the public. Consider for instance a 2013 study of men with prostate cancer. The participants had virtually no testosterone in their bodies as a side effect of tumor-inhibiting medication. Despite this, they experienced an increase in muscle mass and strength over a 12-week period that consisted of the use of resistance machines to work out their main muscle groups. That goes to show that you can still build muscle with testosterone in limited supply.
And then there’s research showing that increasing testosterone by natural means doesn’t have much of an impact on muscle growth. Why is because your T levels will still be within the normal range, albeit at a higher level. It isn’t until you’re way, way, waaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyy outside the normal range of 270 to 1100 nanograms per deciliter for men and 15 to 70 ng/dl for women that you see a significant increase in muscle mass, which explains the efficacy of anabolic steroids.5What this means is that if you’re a woman and raise your testosterone by means that don’t include shooting massive quantities of illegal steroids in your keister, you still won’t build enough muscle to look like a man and make your fears about weightlifting come true.
If you’re a dude and raise your testosterone by means that don’t include shooting massive quantities of illegal steroids in your keister, you still won’t build enough muscle to look like even more of a man than you barely look now. That goes to show that efforts to raise testosterone just short of illegal drug use are of no benefit.
What all of this demonstrates is that testosterone, although essential, doesn’t play as big of a role in muscle building as people believe.
As a matter of fact, the level of testosterone has little to do with muscle gains. Current research suggests that it’s actually a matter of how sensitive your muscles are to whatever testosterone is floating around in your body.
The proof is a 12-week study of healthy young men who participated in a weight training program. After the 12 weeks concluded, those who developed the most muscle were the ones with the most androgen receptors — NOT the ones with the highest testosterone levels, as many would hypothesize. These findings clearly refute the idea that muscle growth is about testosterone levels and that those at the upper end of the normal range will have a better response to resistance training than those at the lower end. Instead, those who best respond to resistance training are the ones who are able to use testosterone to its full advantage, no matter how much of it is available.
Elevating testosterone within the normal range won’t do much for you musclewise and isn’t even all that necessary.
With that said, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t want to raise your T levels for vanity purposes.
As it turns out, elevating testosterone within the normal range can reduce total fat mass and visceral fat, the body fat stored in the abdomen that most people have difficulty getting rid of. The mechanism responsible for this change isn’t known, but it’s theorized that testosterone inhibits the creation of adipocytes, or fat cells. Another possible explanation is that testosterone promotes lipolysis, or the breakdown of fats.
Whatever the case, you should worry about your testosterone level for no other reason than for your body fat percentage, not because it’ll help you gain heaps and heaps of muscle, as many believe.
Testosterone has an effect on many things, one of them being body composition. The data shows that muscle growth, testosterone’s most well-known effect on body composition, isn’t as affected by it as people commonly believe it to be. That makes testosterone overrated.
This isn’t to say that testosterone isn’t special. It is. Testosterone does many things for men and women alike. It’s just not the wonder hormone it’s purported to be by advertisers and gym bros who make it seem like all that’s keeping you away from slabs of muscle is an elevated T level. While not all the way false, we see that’s not all the way true.
What’s true is that raising your testosterone will speed up muscle growth…so long as you raise it to a level that can’t be reached by an over-the-counter test booster, doctor prescribed TRT injection, or any other means short of an all-out steroid cycle.
Instead, rather than worrying about keeping your testosterone levels high for muscle building purposes, you’d be better served doing so for fat loss, which is the bigger effect on body composition that testosterone has on both sexes.