Boron is known as a trace mineral that plays a role in various bodily functions, including bone health and hormone regulation.

does-boron-really-boost-testosterone-urologist-explains

Does Boron Really Boost Testosterone? Urologist Explains

welcome back to our series on testosterone boosters and do they actually work I'm Dr Rea Malik urologist and pelvic surgeon and today we're going to be talking about boron so Boron is a trace element and it's found naturally but it's also found in a number of foods these can include things like prunes avocados nuts legumes and certain foods are pretty high in boron these can include things like dried parsley wine and caviar now the way it's thought to increase testosterone is not entirely well understood it may have some interaction with hormone receptors or enzymes that create testosterone and metabolize it it may also have some anti-inflammatory effects which can then indirectly cause an increase in testosterone so while you may have heard a lot about boron there's actually only a very few small studies that have looked at the effect of boron in the setting of increasing testosterone so let's review those now the reason this became an area of interest for boosting testosterone was because of a study that was actually done on women in 1987 and in this clinical trial they evaluated postmenopausal women and gave them three millgram per day of boron for 7 weeks and in this study they had a significant increase in testosterone as well as 17 beta estradi from there a number of studies began to look at the efficacy of boron in men now in 1994 the first study looked at 19 bodybuilders aged 20 to 27 and they were training about 4 days a week and of those 19 men 10 got 2.5 migs of boron supplement daily for 7 weeks while the other nine got a placebo while while the groups were similar at Baseline they found that the group that had the Boron on average had been training for an average of 3 years longer than the control group they also consumed less calories and more carbohydrates so in this study they looked at their total and free testosterone as well as their plasma Boron levels as at the beginning of the study as well as at the end they also studied their lean body mass using hydrostatic weighing and their strength based on a one repetition maximum of bench press and back squats at the beginning again and at the end of 7 weeks in both groups both the ones that got Boron and those that didn't they saw an increase in total testosterone lean body mass and strength measures but they were not statistically significant in comparison to the group so likely the change in the group was not due to the Boron but more likely due to the training and that's why they saw these significant benefits now this is not a perfect study right because the groups weren't the same at the beginning and so does this dietary change or history of longer term training actually impact testosterone levels perhaps it does however you would assume that the group who was training for longer and took in less calories may have an even higher level of testosterone so in 1995 another study was conducted looking at eight volunteers and they were asked to take 10 mg of boron and uh in the form of sodium tetraborate every single day with breakfast and at dinner so 5 milligrams of breakfast and 5 milligrams of dinner for four weeks and then take a placebo for 4 weeks after that so they collected their blood samples before and after supplementation and then after the placebo and they basically asked the subjects to avoid taking any other nutritional supplements at the same time when they receive Boron they did see an increase in urinary Boron which would be expected if they were actually taking the supplement so we can assume that yes they did in fact comply and take the supplement they also saw an increase in total testosterone however it was not statistically significant they did however see an increase in mean plasma estrodial concentration so so far two negative studies now there was one clearly positive study that was done in 2011 that was looking at eight healthy men who were on average 41 years old they were taking 10 Mig of of boron again in the form of sodium tetraborate daily with breakfast now this study didn't have a placebo group so it's not a perfect design because you can't understand if the change was due to Boron or due to a placebo and they follow these guys for just one week so every day for one week and they collected blood samples at three different times they had one at day Zero so right before starting the supplement on day one after taking the supplement and then on the sth day in the morning after the full week of supplementation now they saw an increase in both free testosterone from 11.8 to 15.2 P per milliliter and they saw a decrease in estradi levels as well which is sort of curious because that's not what we're seeing in the other studies they also saw a decrease in other inflammatory biomarkers like sex hormone binding globulin CRP an tnf Alpha so I talked about sex hormone binding globulin in a previous video but very simply it's a carrier for testosterone so it binds really tightly to testosterone making less testosterone available for your body to use and so when you decrease sex hormone binding gabin you're going to have more free testosterone available so while these results at least in isolation look good I'm very cautious about this because as I mentioned it's a small group there's no control group and the estoile going down actually doesn't make a lot of sense but again it's a very shortterm study so maybe initially the estad goes down and then later comes up after there's more conversion from the free testosterone to estradi so interestingly there's another study that I think may give us a little bit more information in terms of does Boron really work so when we want to figure this out you want to look at people who are potentially being exposed to higher levels of boron due to their work and so the study looked at these individuals and they measured their testosterone as well as other hormones like FSH and LH which then signal your testicles to make testosterone you would assume that if boron has an impact in these men you would see higher levels of serum testosterone and so this day looked at Turkish men working in a Boron Processing Plant as well as a boron mining area between the years of 2014 and 2017 and they divided up these men based on their exposure so they divided them up from lowest exposure to highest exposure and the highest exposure group was exposed to an estimated of 47 millgram of boron per day which is the highest mean Boron level that's ever been reported in any sort of field study or study where they looked at people working in exposure to Boron so in this study they ultimately saw that there was no correlation between these high levels of boron exposure to any hormone parameter so it didn't change hormones and it did not even change seaming parameters so the good news is that Boron seems pretty safe as long as you're not getting exposed to more than about 20 milligrams per day and that includes the amount you get from food which is generally pretty low about 1 millgram per day but if you're exposed to high levels of pesticides or other sources of boron you may want to be concerned about potentially side effects like nausea vomiting diarrhea rashes headaches and even in rare cases convulsions So based on the literature that we have available on Boron I would say that the evidence for boron in terms of increasing testosterone is quite weak however anecdotally many people have described some success with taking Boron and because we still don't know the mechanism of action of boron we don't really understand how it's going to impact other hormones in the pathway for example estrodial in men so ultimately bottom line I think the evidence for Boron is pretty weak and uh it is not this Holy Grail that many people describe it to be if you guys are enjoying this make sure to check out my other videos on testosterone boosters that have recorded in the past few weeks also make sure to check out my ebook better sex better life that goes over my top 10 tips for improving your sex life and as always you want to take care of yourself because you're worth it

Dr.

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