
If you’d like to try to increase your testosterone by taking a vitamin supplement, these tips can help: In other words, taking a daily dose of some of these supplements may pose a risk to your health. What’s more, 10.1% of the supplements contained ingredients that appeared to negatively affect testosterone production.Īmong the supplements evaluated, 13 products also contained vitamins and minerals in excess of the FDA’s Tolerable Upper Intake Level. They found that, while 90% of these supplements claimed to increase testosterone production, only 24.8% of them actually had data to support their claims. In one study, researchers evaluated 50 different “T booster” supplements ( 13).
To date, little research has evaluated the effectiveness of testosterone supplements for improving sex drive. You can have low testosterone levels as a result of primary hypogonadism, secondary hypogonadism, or mixed hypogonadism, which means you have damage to both your testes and your hormonal glands.
concurrent illness, including severe emotional or physical stress. certain medications, including opioids and steroids. obesity, which can affect hormone production and response. HIV, which can affect the pituitary gland, hypothalamus, and testes. inflammatory conditions such as sarcoidosis and tuberculosis, which can damage the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus. Kallmann syndrome, a genetic condition connected to atypical hypothalamus function. Secondary hypogonadism can happen naturally as a result of aging, but it can also have other causes ( 10, 11, 12), including: These two parts of the brain regulate hormone production in the testes. Secondary hypogonadism means that low testosterone results from damage to the pituitary gland or the hypothalamus. Undescended testicles can also cause low testosterone levels. Another example is hemochromatosis, a condition that causes excess iron in the blood. One example is Klinefelter syndrome, which causes a person to have three sex chromosomes: X, X, and Y. Some conditions present at birth can also cause lower testosterone production. Since your testicles produce testosterone, damage to them - such as through a physical injury or cancer treatment - can affect testosterone production.
Primary hypogonadism, in simple terms, means you have underactive testicles. However, some other factors can also cause low testosterone levels ( 8, 9, 10, 11, 12). Testosterone production naturally decreases over the course of your life.