Testosterone Boosters: Do They Work?

Search "testosterone booster" and you'll get a wall of black-and-red bottles promising more muscle, more drive, and the energy you had at 25. The supplement aisle has an answer ready before you've finished asking the question. So here's the honest one, from a school that has been coaching men through their 20s, their 40s, and their 60s for more than 50 years: most of these products don't raise your testosterone, a small handful might nudge it, and the things that reliably move it are free.

That isn't a knock on supplements — we make one, and we'll get to it. It's what the published research actually shows, and you deserve to hear it before you spend the money.

What a testosterone booster actually is

A testosterone booster is a dietary supplement — usually a capsule blend of herbs, vitamins, and minerals — sold on the claim that it supports your body's own production of the hormone. That distinction matters more than the marketing lets on: it is not testosterone. Prescription testosterone replacement therapy puts the hormone itself into your body under a physician's supervision. A booster contains no hormone at all. It's betting that certain plant extracts and micronutrients can help your endocrine system do a bit more of what it's already doing.

The ingredient lists are also remarkably similar from brand to brand. Across the best-selling products, the same short roster keeps appearing: tribulus terrestris, Eurycoma longifolia (tongkat ali), zinc, magnesium, L-arginine, aspartate, horny goat weed, and fenugreek. Compare five labels and you'll mostly be comparing proportions, not philosophies.

Do testosterone boosters work? What the research says

This is the uncomfortable part. In 2024, a team led by Afonso Morgado published a systematic review in the International Journal of Impotence Research covering two decades of data — 52 studies on 27 different proposed testosterone boosters, across four groups of men: athletes, healthy men, infertile men, and men with late-onset hypogonadism. The headline finding is one sentence long. Most fail to increase total testosterone.

An earlier review in the same journal came at it from the retail shelf instead of the literature. Those researchers took the 16 best-selling testosterone supplements and the 16 best-selling erectile dysfunction supplements from major online retailers, pulled out all 37 ingredients, and graded each one against 105 randomized controlled trials. Only 19% of ingredients earned an A grade, meaning net positive evidence across two or more RCTs. Sixty-eight percent landed at a C or a D: contradicting evidence, negative evidence, or no published evidence at all.

Sit with that number. In the products men are actually buying, roughly two-thirds of what's inside the capsule has either failed in trials or has never been put in one. The 2024 review's authors were direct about the reason: regulation in this category is loose enough that supplements can sell for years on claims nobody was ever required to verify.

The ingredients that hold up — and the ones that don't

"Most don't work" is not the same as "none do," and the same reviews that deflate the category also point at the exceptions. In the 2024 systematic review, Eurycoma longifolia — tongkat ali — was rated possibly effective both in healthy men and in men with late-onset hypogonadism, making it the most consistent performer of the herbal ingredients. Withania somnifera, better known as ashwagandha, was rated possibly effective in healthy men. Among athletes specifically, β-hydroxy β-methylbutyrate and betaine were the two compounds the reviewers considered effective.

Ashwagandha is worth a closer look, because it's the ingredient with the deepest supporting file. The National Institutes of Health's Office of Dietary Supplements notes that extracts may lower stress, anxiety, and cortisol, that trials have used roughly 240–1,250 mg per day with benefits clustering at 500–600 mg, and that it "might also increase testosterone levels." That last phrase is doing exactly as much work as it says: a maybe, not a mechanism you can bank on. And it isn't harmless: ODS also documents cases of acute liver injury at 450–1,350 mg taken anywhere from one week to four months, advises against use in pregnancy, and flags caution for thyroid conditions, hormone-sensitive prostate cancer, and interactions with diabetes, blood pressure, immunosuppressant, and sedative medications. Talk to your healthcare provider before you start it, especially if you take anything prescription.

Now the other side of the ledger. Tribulus terrestris is one of the most common ingredients in the entire category — and it sits squarely in the "most fail" bucket in the trial data. Zinc and magnesium matter, but the honest framing is that correcting a genuine shortfall is a different thing from raising an already-normal level; topping off a tank that's already full doesn't make the tank bigger. D-aspartic acid has been studied and has not delivered.

We'll be straight with you about our own bottle, because that's the whole point of the exercise. GMA Max Testosterone Boost contains tongkat ali — the ingredient with the best evidence in the category — alongside zinc, magnesium, saw palmetto, and tribulus. Tribulus is in there because it's in nearly every formula of this type, and the human evidence for it is weak. Our label's own citation list includes that critical 2021 review. We'd rather you knew that from us than found it out afterward.

If your goal is simply to stop leaving the basics on the table — zinc, magnesium, vitamin D — a daily multivitamin for men is the cheaper and more sensible starting point, and you'll find both formulas in our men's health collection.

What actually moves your testosterone

Here's the part nobody sells, because there's nothing to sell. The biggest levers on a healthy man's testosterone are behavioral, and their effect sizes make most supplements look like rounding errors.

Sleep is the big one. In a 2011 JAMA study, ten healthy men averaging 24 years old slept up to ten hours a night for three nights, then under five hours a night for eight nights. Daytime testosterone dropped 10–15% — an amount the researchers compared to aging 10 to 15 years. The men also reported their sense of well-being sliding as their levels fell. No capsule in this category has produced a swing like that in either direction. If you're sleeping five hours and shopping for a booster, you're trying to fix with a supplement what you're actively undoing every night. Start with our guide to magnesium glycinate for sleep if getting there is the hard part.

Body composition is the second. Excess body fat is strongly associated with lower testosterone in men, and losing it tends to move levels in the right direction. If that's the road you're on, read our honest take on fat burner supplements first, because that category has the same evidence problem this one does.

Then there's the training itself. Hard resistance work and the kind of full-body conditioning we've run on the mats for five decades support strength, body composition, and the hormonal environment that goes with them. This is the argument we make to every man who walks into our martial arts school in Gallatin, TN at 45 convinced his best years are behind him: the guys still moving well at 60 aren't the ones with the fullest supplement shelf. They're the ones who kept showing up, kept lifting, and kept sleeping. Cut the alcohol back while you're at it. For what belongs around the training, see our fighter's guide to supplements for muscle recovery.

When it isn't a supplement question at all

Persistent fatigue, low drive, loss of morning erections, mood changes, and strength you can't rebuild no matter how you train can all point at genuinely low testosterone — and that is a medical diagnosis, not a shopping decision. It's confirmed by blood work, typically drawn in the morning and repeated on a second day, and it's evaluated alongside the rest of your health, because low levels can signal something else entirely.

If that describes you, see a healthcare provider and get tested before you buy anything. A supplement is not a substitute for a diagnosis, and self-medicating around an untested symptom is how men lose years. Nothing on this page is medical advice, and no dietary supplement is intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

The honest summary: if you're a healthy man with reasonable sleep, reasonable body fat, and a real training week, a testosterone booster built on the ingredients that have actually cleared trials is a modest, optional add-on. If any of those three are missing, fix those first. That's the same advice KwanJangNim Spillmann has given students for 50 years, and it hasn't needed a label yet.

Sources & Research

• Morgado, A., Tsampoukas, G., Sokolakis, I., Schoentgen, N., Urkmez, A., & Sarikaya, S. "Do 'testosterone boosters' really increase serum total testosterone? A systematic review." International Journal of Impotence Research, 2024;36(4):348–364. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
• Kuchakulla, M., Narasimman, M., Soni, Y., Leong, J. Y., Patel, P., & Ramasamy, R. "A systematic review and evidence-based analysis of ingredients in popular male testosterone and erectile dysfunction supplements." International Journal of Impotence Research, 2021;33(3):311–317. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
• National Institutes of Health, Office of Dietary Supplements. "Ashwagandha: Is it helpful for stress, anxiety, or sleep?" ods.od.nih.gov
• Leproult, R., & Van Cauter, E. "Effect of 1 week of sleep restriction on testosterone levels in young healthy men." JAMA, 2011;305(21):2173–2174. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov