THE BIG T

More muscle, more sex, more energy? Maybe. We shake down the oversimplified and overrated myths about testosterone to bring you what you need to know about it now.

- KEVIN DUPZYK

FEELING TAPPED OUT. Foggy. Just not all that into sex. Gotta be your testosterone, ads would have you believe. And we’re believing it, too, with the number of T-supplement users tripling from the early 2000s through 2016.

Don’t get us wrong: testosterone is one critical hormone. Babies first encounter it in utero, when it triggers the differentiation of boys from girls. In puberty, it contributes to your bone growth and muscle mass and continues to affect functions including your red-blood-cell production and mood stability.

But the message those ads are sending plays right into the economic and social anxieties men are facing. It’s like when antianxiety meds such as Valium first came onto the scene, says urologist Dr. Elizabeth Kavaler. “All these middle-aged women were addicted to Valium because that was the solution to everything. Testosterone has become the new answer for a life of quiet desperation.” More and more of us are feeling the exhaustion of uneasiness. We are being asked to do more with less. We’re just trying to get through the day alive. “Men think, Well if I just get a little testosterone, I’m going to feel great!” Kavaler says. “And that’s not the case.”

There’s so much information out there about T – much of it speculation and lore – that leads us to jump to conclusions about it. Men put all kinds of psychological weight on their testosterone number – a low one makes you think you’re somehow less manly; a high one means you’re basically Siya Kolisi – and that’s where we get things wrong. There’s little evidence for those stereotypes. Low doesn’t automatically imply you’re weak or retiring; high doesn’t guarantee you muscles or World Cup-winning performance.