For no reason other than the fact that I get asked about it constantly – and because half the explanations floating around the internet are either oversimplified or just wrong – I want to walk through IGF-1 signaling the way I actually think about it when I’m working with a client. This is going to […]
Author Archives: Ron Males
Supplements work as additions to a functioning hormonal system. They can’t override active suppression. Fix suppressors first, add to what’s working second. Undiagnosed sleep apnea is the most common suppressor I find that men haven’t accounted for. “I sleep seven hours” is not the same as “I sleep well.” Alcohol at 4-6 drinks per week […]
Total testosterone is the number almost every man fixates on. It is also the number that most consistently misleads. Free testosterone and SHBG together tell the actual story – I have had clients with 720 ng/dL total T who felt terrible, and clients with 480 who felt fine once we saw where their free T […]
This is the tier list I would give a client in the first session if I had to summarize a decade of watching supplements work or fail in real bloodwork. It is not a ranking of marketing claims. It is a ranking of what has consistently produced measurable change in my client base versus what […]
SHBG is the protein your liver produces that binds testosterone and renders it biologically unavailable. It is the single most important variable on a male hormone panel after total and free T, and it is the one most often missing from a GP’s workup. A total testosterone of 700 with SHBG at 70 nmol/L describes […]
I am not anti-TRT. There is a real and meaningful population of men for whom TRT is the right call after a complete natural protocol attempt. The problem is that the conversation usually happens too early, in the wrong order, and with the wrong workup. Roughly half the men I have worked with who walked […]
The standard “low T” workup most GPs run is total testosterone, sometimes free T, occasionally TSH, and a basic metabolic panel. That panel is sufficient to miss approximately 70% of what actually causes men to feel hormonally off. I have built what I call the hormone panel decoder around this gap – the specific set […]
Eighteen months is long enough to do something genuine with male hormone optimization. It is also long enough to do it wrong in a way that compounds into a real problem. The men in this article did it right, but not because the path was straight. The biggest difference between an 18-month arc and a […]
Enclomiphene is the drug that most men sitting in TRT clinic waiting rooms have never heard of and probably should have. It’s not a testosterone. It doesn’t shut down your natural production. It doesn’t crash your sperm count. It doesn’t commit you to a lifetime of weekly injections. What it does is poke the brain […]
Quick Review: Creatine Monohydrate and DHT Creatine monohydrate is the most well-studied supplement in sports science and one of the few in my protocol I’d call universally worth it. The DHT effect — which came from one widely-cited study and has been mostly misunderstood ever since — is real but modest, and the framing around […]
Boron’s primary mechanism is SHBG reduction and estradiol modulation – it frees up bound testosterone rather than raising total production. This distinction matters for who it works best for. My client Aaron had total T at 720 and felt terrible. Free T was 8.4 pg/mL. SHBG was 78. Boron plus magnesium glycinate dropped his SHBG […]
Vitamin D3 is a steroid hormone precursor, not a vitamin. It acts on receptors in your Leydig cells, pituitary gland, and hypothalamus – every level of the testosterone production system has vitamin D receptor presence. Deficiency suppresses the whole axis. The optimal level is 50+ ng/mL on the 25-OH vitamin D test. Most reference ranges […]
Quick Verdict: Magnesium Form Comparison Magnesium oxide is the most common form in grocery store supplements and has roughly 4% bioavailability. Most of it goes through you without being absorbed. Magnesium glycinate absorbs well, doesn’t cause GI distress at therapeutic doses, and is the form I use with almost every client. Buy glycinate. Stop buying […]