The Truth About Body-Bulking Testosterone

To jack-up on “testo” or not to jack-up on “testo”? That’s the question – writes David Smiedt.

Ragged on by women at a loss to explain men’s behaviour and red-misted cliché of football commentators the world over, testosterone can be hailed as a creator and destroyer, the unholy bastard child of Vishnu and Shiva coursing from a wellspring in your nuts.

According to those who prefer the term “testes”, testosterone is at its most fundamental a hormone. More accurately, it is the hormone that makes X and Y chromosome binary bit players.

Aside from enabling us to reproduce, “testo” – if you want to sound like those “do you even lift bro” tossers – also impacts on sex drive, bone mass (two different things by the way), fat distribution, muscle size and strength and red cell production.

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Until you’re 40, your manufacture and distribution operation couldn’t be more streamlined. You got the juice. After 40, it drops off at a rate of roughly 1.6 per cent a year.

In an era where Human Growth Hormone has become the contemporary bodybuilder’s chosen shooter, anabolic steroids – which are derived from testosterone – still have a determined, if illegal and often dubiously sourced, following.

So much so that two reports from the Australian Crime Commission this year found steroid seizures and arrests at record highs. And here’s the nut-shrivelling kicker: we are catching way less of the stuff at the border. Which means it’s being produced in Australia. Dick Smith would be proud. But not.

Without medical justification and professional supervision, supplementing with testosterone in this manner can be decidedly risky – especially since a lot of the anabolic testosterone turbo chargers on the market are actually formulated for potential Melbourne Cup winners and athletes measured in hands. 

The NSW Department of Health is at pains to point out that in tablet form, anabolic steroids come with a serious risk of liver cancer or liver damage. You are also somewhat more likely to erupt in explosive bouts of anger over a stubbed toe or a run of red lights. So, you know, good times.

There’s also the not inconsequential matter of illegality.

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That said, the internet is bristling with people swearing that the old t-tone – okay we made that word up – has delivered everything from a dream body to spiritual fulfilment.

The same internet that believes Elvis is alive, well and flipping burgers in Emphysema Arkansas.

With all that in mind, new research is suggesting that one aspect of testosterone supplementation has perhaps been unfairly demonised. Dr Shalendar Bhasin of the – deep breathe - Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston – found that in the course of a three-year study of 308 men testosterone supplements did not cause a hardening of the arteries, one of the leading cause of heart attacks.

If that’s the silver lining, the soft truth is that none of the subjects found themselves any harder or hornier. And yet, according to a study in the Medical Journal of Australia, between 2001 and 2011 alone, world testosterone sales went from $150 million to $1.8 billion. That’s a 12-fold increase.