Mark Holman was skinny and depressed when he was working a 9-to-5 job as an air high quality engineering marketing consultant in 2018. “I felt weak, like a boy,” says the 33-year-old New Orleans native.
Decided to show issues round, he spent the subsequent few years changing into a well being coach and getting chiseled abs. However in 2021, after changing into perplexed as to why he was disinterested in intercourse together with his companion on the time, he determined to check his testosterone ranges.
His blood take a look at revealed his testosterone measured 622 nanograms per deciliter (ng/dL), which is taken into account wholesome by medical doctors, however definitely not “Excessive T.”
Satisfied it could make him happier, extra decisive, and extra masculine, Holman devoted himself to naturally elevating his physique’s provides of testosterone, or “T-maxxing.”
Low testosterone was as soon as regarded as a problem largely for older males, however there’s now a rising collective obsession with having “Excessive T,” fueled by manosphere influencers and carefully tied to the Make America Wholesome Once more motion. Each podcaster Joe Rogan and US well being secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. have stated they’ve taken testosterone substitute remedy (TRT) medication; greater than 11 million males within the US had been prescribed the drug in 2024, up from 7.3 million in 2019, in accordance to well being care analysis firm IQVIA.
In some circles, males now take a look at their testosterone each six months—swapping numbers in locker rooms and group chats the way in which they examine bench press stats—as they attempt to counter a important decline in common testosterone ranges lately.
However the development additionally dangers making wholesome, youthful males pathologize over their ranges of the nonetheless little-understood hormone.
Holman typically considers taking TRT “dishonest.” Suggested by his “holistic” well being coach, and because of happening T-maxxing rabbit holes on-line, he ate a food regimen full of eggs, pink meat, brazil nuts, and oysters to extend his manufacturing. He consumed loads of supposedly “testosterone-boosting” herbs and dietary supplements like tongkat ali, fenugreek, pine pollen, boron, and zinc. He additionally continued pumping iron within the fitness center.
By March 2025, he says he’d virtually doubled his T to 1,104 ng/dL, a screenshot of his take a look at end result shared with WIRED exhibits. That’s nicely above the traditional vary for all males of 350 to 800 ng/dL, and approaching the height ranges attainable naturally. (Pure ranges of testosterone max out round 1,400 ng/dL and overuse of TRT or steroids can ship ranges past 3,000 ng/dL, which might carry concerning the fabled “roid rage” in addition to different probably critical strains on the physique.)
Holman, who has lengthy blond hair and bulging triceps, says his physique obtained “ridiculously shredded very simply” as soon as he began boosting his testosterone and that his life modified drastically. “To really feel the distinction was night time and day,” he says.
He was single when he discovered that he was Excessive T and stated he felt extra comfy pursuing girls. “Out-competing different males makes extra testosterone,” he says. (One main testosterone influencer, Derek Munro, bears the deal with @moreplatesmoredates on Instagram.)
Now Holman is himself a males’s “holistic” well being coach, specializing in serving to guys T-max. He refers to himself as a “Excessive T stud” and posts scientifically-questionable Instagram reels linking Excessive T to “true masculinity” and waking up with “morning wooden.”
“The foremost psychological impact of testosterone is that it makes effort really feel good,” neuroscientist and podcaster Andrew Huberman instructed Rogan throughout a 2021 episode of The Joe Rogan Expertise.
“Males of a given species have to beat the worry of ache and punishment, and the surge in testosterone is what causes the shift to the willingness to interact in battle,” Huberman stated, explaining that there are testosterone receptors within the mind’s nervousness heart, the amygdala. “Leaning into ache and problem really has the impact of creating the physique really feel soothed.”
