The Men Obsessed With ‘High T’

Mark Holman was skinny and depressed erstwhile helium was moving a 9-to-5 occupation arsenic an aerial prime engineering advisor successful 2018. “I felt weak, similar a boy,” says the 33-year-old New Orleans native.

Determined to crook things around, helium spent the adjacent fewer years becoming a health manager and getting chiseled abs. But successful 2021, aft becoming perplexed arsenic to wherefore helium was disinterested successful sex with his spouse astatine the time, helium decided to trial his testosterone levels.

His humor trial revealed his testosterone measured 622 nanograms per deciliter (ng/dL), which is considered steadfast by doctors, but surely not “High T.”

Convinced it would marque him happier, much decisive, and much masculine, Holman devoted himself to people raising his body’s supplies of testosterone, oregon “T-maxxing.”

Low testosterone was erstwhile thought of arsenic an contented mostly for older men, but determination is present a increasing corporate obsession with having “High T,” fueled by manosphere influencers and intimately tied to the Make America Healthy Again movement. Both podcaster Joe Rogan and US wellness caput Robert F Kennedy Jr. person said they person taken testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) drugs; much than 11 cardinal men in the US were prescribed the cause successful 2024, up from 7.3 cardinal successful 2019, according to wellness attraction probe institution IQVIA.

In immoderate circles, men present trial their testosterone each six months—swapping numbers successful locker rooms and radical chats the mode they comparison seat property stats—as they effort to antagonistic a significant decline successful mean testosterone levels successful caller years.

But the inclination besides risks making healthy, younger men pathologize implicit their levels of the inactive little-understood hormone.

Holman mostly considers taking TRT “cheating.” Advised by his “holistic” wellness coach, and acknowledgment to going down T-maxxing rabbit holes online, helium ate a fare filled with eggs, reddish meat, brazil nuts, and oysters to summation his production. He consumed plentifulness of supposedly “testosterone-boosting” herbs and supplements similar tongkat ali, fenugreek, conifer pollen, boron, and zinc. He besides continued pumping robust successful the gym.

By March 2025, helium says he’d astir doubled his T to 1,104 ng/dL, a screenshot of his trial effect shared with WIRED shows. That’s good supra the mean scope for each men of 350 to 800 ng/dL, and approaching the highest levels imaginable naturally. (Natural levels of testosterone max retired astir 1,400 ng/dL and overuse of TRT oregon steroids tin nonstop levels beyond 3,000 ng/dL, which tin bring astir the fabled “roid rage” arsenic good arsenic different perchance superior strains connected the body.)

Holman, who has agelong blond hairsbreadth and bulging triceps, says his physique got “ridiculously shredded precise easily” erstwhile helium started boosting his testosterone and that his beingness changed drastically. “To consciousness the quality was nighttime and day,” helium says.

He was azygous erstwhile helium learned that helium was High T and said helium felt much astatine easiness pursuing women. “Out-competing different men makes much testosterone,” helium says. (One starring testosterone influencer, Derek Munro, bears the grip @moreplatesmoredates connected Instagram.)

Now Holman is himself a men’s “holistic” wellness coach, focusing connected helping guys T-max. He refers to himself arsenic a “High T stud” and posts scientifically-questionable Instagram reels linking High T to “true masculinity” and waking up with “morning wood.”

“The large intelligence effect of testosterone is that it makes effort consciousness good,” neuroscientist and podcaster Andrew Huberman told Rogan during a 2021 occurrence of The Joe Rogan Experience.

“Males of a fixed taxon person to flooded the fearfulness of symptom and punishment, and the surge successful testosterone is what causes the displacement to the willingness to prosecute successful battle,” Huberman said, explaining that determination are testosterone receptors successful the brain’s anxiousness center, the amygdala. “Leaning into symptom and situation really has the effect of making the assemblage consciousness soothed.”