Testosterone Explained (Low T, Muscle Growth, Aging & TRT) | Dr. Ben House

Ben House (0:00)

People are not getting informed consent. And that's why the TRT discontinuation rates are also bananas, because they aren't being sold the true story.

This can be done really, really well. Tasazron can be life-changing if it's needed. It can be absolutely huge, but it can also be done really, really poorly, just like anything else. And in those cases, people are not being told the true story. And really, if Tasazron is ever your first line, just from a low Tasazron draw, if Tasazron is the answer there, I'm walking to the door. Like, it's not as simple as low testosterone, testosterone.

There's 120 things that can cause low Tasazron. You should not be, you should be asking like, why is this low?

Andy Galpin (0:48)

The science and practice of enhancing human performance for sport, play and life.

Welcome to Perform.

I'm Dr. Andy Galpin. I'm a professor and scientist of human performance. And today I'm talking with Dr. Ben House. Ben has a PhD in nutritional sciences and has spent the last 20 years or so working with high level performers, almost especially, but not exclusively in professional sports. He has been one of my absolute top and go to resources for nutrition and physiology for the better part of two decades now. He brings an unbelievable depth and understanding of both the literature as well as the practical relevance to that. In this conversation, you're going to learn a ton about testosterone, everything from what testosterone really is, how it's impacted by aging, how it's impacted by nutrition and other relevant factors. You're going to also learn a ton about some misconceptions and some of the things that are being purported commonly in media and other avenues about what's really going on with testosterone and how we should be thinking about it across our culture. So that said, I hope you enjoy our long and detailed conversation with Dr. Ben House. Dr. Ben House, welcome in.

Ben House (2:01)

Thanks for having me.

Andy Galpin (2:02)

So beyond excited to have you here. A lot of areas I want to go into today.

You've been in pro sports for a long time. You've been in this entire world of performance and nutrition and science for as long as anybody I know. But I want to start with testosterone. I know you've done a bunch of work lately. You got a bunch of papers that you've authored and published and a whole bunch of stuff going on. So if you wouldn't mind, can you just give us everything there ever is to know about testosterone and keep it in like 30 seconds?

Ben House (2:31)

Sure. Yeah, it's a male hormone.

I think the internet thinks it's more important than it probably is. That's not to say that it's not important and that it can't change physiology. But I think we give it inside of the normal range, we give it a lot more credit than it's probably do. With an asterisk there that I think you and I both appreciate, that there are some things that we don't know about it. Like how important is the peak does dropping from 800 to 500? How is that bad? We know 300 is really bad. But what's the delta there?

Andy Galpin (3:13)

So a handful of ways we want to tackle this topic because it is so big. And one of the things that I appreciate about you so much and over your career is, you're one of the very few people I can look to that can look at the same exact problem as everybody else and just see a little bit differently. What is the primary thing for someone who's in a high performance mindset, and they want to be the best they possibly can? Well, going to the disease and medicine, at some other point, that's not really what you and I do for the most part.

So a performance mindset person, just kind of off the top of your head, what are the things they should be thinking about with testosterone?

Ben House (3:48)

I can give you the wish list. I think that's maybe the most important part. The wish list for most of us is probably to go back in time and to get testosterone probably in our late teens and to track it over time.

Testosterone total and I'll throw free in there and then also sex hormone binding globulin. Tracking those longitudinally, I think for the individual, that's where the money is. And really looking at not just one time point, but how does it relate to all these other time points? And the analogy that we sometimes use is shoe size, right? Say you're a size 10 and that's your norm, right? But then all of a sudden at 40, they're trying to fit you into a size five shoe.