--- title: Are You Man Enough? The Truth About Low Testosterone description: Drugs marketed to help men get their mojo back are having a moment, but are they safe? canonical: https://time.com/3063213/low-testosterone/ author: Michael Lester article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-07-31T12:41:54.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-01T08:57:59.306Z article:section: Health og:title: Are You Man Enough? The Truth About Low Testosterone og:description: Drugs marketed to help men get their mojo back are having a moment, but are they safe? og:url: https://time.com/3063213/low-testosterone/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd9bec3b9a13e06cb/69869e3935ba6fc477c0346c/phil_deflated_eyes_04.gif?branch=production&width=500&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 500 og:image:height: 281 og:image:alt: phil_deflated_eyes_04 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Are You Man Enough? The Truth About Low Testosterone twitter:description: Drugs marketed to help men get their mojo back are having a moment, but are they safe? twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd9bec3b9a13e06cb/69869e3935ba6fc477c0346c/phil_deflated_eyes_04.gif?branch=production&width=500&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Are You Man Enough? The Truth About Low Testosterone > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=a61ef31e-c48e-4e02-b5a5-af604f7978d1&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Are You Man Enough? The Truth About Low Testosterone [Watch (HLS stream): Are You Man Enough? The Truth About Low Testosterone](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/pG2ZyJXa.m3u8) (4:35)  _Published 2014-07-31. Low-T drugs marketed to help men get their mojo back are having a moment, but are they safe?_  by [Michael Lester](https://time.com/author/michael-lester/)  ## Michael Lester Jul 31, 2014 12:41 PM UTC  by [Michael Lester](https://time.com/author/michael-lester/)  ## Michael Lester Jul 31, 2014 12:41 PM UTC Low-T drugs marketed to help men get their mojo back are having a moment, but are they safe? With the market for low-testosterone, or “Low-T,” therapy projected to reach $5 billion by 2017, many new centers have sprung up across the country offering a spectacular catch-all treatment. TIME spoke to experts in the field and visited the [Ageless Men’s Health](www.agelessmenshealth.com/) testosterone clinic to get the inside story on a treatment that promises to “boost your strength training, sex drive and performance to the levels you’ve been wanting.” Read TIME’s cover story, “Manopause?! Aging, Insecurity and the $2 Billion Testosterone Industry,” [here](http://time.com/3062889/manopause-aging-insecurity-and-the-2-billion-testosterone-industry/?pcd=hp-magmod).  Phillip Toledano for TIME Phillip Toledano for TIME ## Transcript How do assess low T? A man comes into the office. Is there a symptom score, a checklist, a way of determining that if you start out today with low T and I give you something, in three months, do you not have low T? Those metrics, those measures, don't exist, and that's the problem with the field currently. Yeah we can raise your testosterone, but does it mean anything. [ CROSSTALK ] Low testosterone. [ CROSSTALK ] Be the best you can be. [ MUSIC ] LowT and whatever that is, that's, that's a pharmaceutical. That's not even a medical term. That's somebody in the marketing, in the back office of a marketing department said okay let's come up with low T it sounds interesting. To me it was just very tired all the time, lethargic. I just never had the energy to put in a days work. And then be able to workout like I used to and a simple shot. Could just bring me back to normal the way, you know. I used to have the energy and stamina and everything that I had before. [ MUSIC ] This is a growing industry now. There's much more awareness of low- T now. And I also think. it's, they're realizing it's so common, so many men of all different ages need the replacement therapy. The transformation is amazing and, and I, and I say that to them that I promise and they're like wow, promise is a big word. I'm like. You ask any of my guys here I have 200 very happy guys here. Hey guys. Do you know your testosterone levels? You should. Yeah what is the optimal level. That's a great way of asking it and unfortunately I don't even have a good way of answering that question. Well there are no levels per say per age. I get that question a lot. Like what should my level be? We think that the higher it is, the better it is, but we don't know. How high is good enough? I don't know. Are you a man who feels like you're losing your edge? Are you getting all you can from your workouts? Are you satisfied with your romantic life? We're often going a see a guy's gonna come in. Big belly, smoking, doesn't exercise, and he says, you know doc, I want some testosterone cuz I don't really feel that drive. And I can give him testosterone from today til tomorrow. It ain't gonna work so good unless the guy changes his diet and begins to do physical activity. So it's not like, here's a prescription, and it's gonna be magic tomorrow. And I think there's this. Unfortunate notion that you take this testosterone and don't change other things of your life and all of the sudden, boom, magic, like, you're gonna be twenty years old. You don't change what the libido is or the fatigue is. We don't really have good measures of okay, did this work? They gave you the testosterone, did you feel better? That's not what the FDA looks at. They look at whether the testosterone levels went up. And we know how you can boost your strength training, sex drive, and performance to the levels you've been wanting. We run a men's center and out of every hundred men that come in and say I want testosterone. I have low T, I have this problem. Only about 18 % of them actually get testosterone. Because a lot of them have other issues. I would say less than one percent of the guys who come in, or maybe one percent who come in for evaluation don't qualify, because they're too high for whatever reason. But it's rare. Very rare, that a man doesn't qualify. There are patients who have testicular failure for a variety of reasons. There are patients who have pituitary failure, for a variety of reasons. Some medical reasons that can actually occur that can change hormones in the body. That's not the person who's coming in and said I saw that ad on TV. Part of it unfortunate is driven by FARMA Now I can go 30 45 minutes on, on a treadmill, or on a elliptical. And it's just like, it's nothing. So I don't think it that's necessarily a miracle, I'm just sort of getting back to doing normal things that that I wouldn't necessarily have the energy for. How long do they stay on treatment? Ideally they should stay on their whole lives. There's a lot of, what I would say, hocus pocus out there. And people unfortunately buy a lot of this stuff. And they're not gonna really feel better. You know, initially maybe they will, because everything's going to make them feel better, because they expect to feel better. There is no magic [ INAUDIBLE ] out there. 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