Does eating Testicles raise your Testosterone? (Liver King Part 2) (Patreon)

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My last post was looking at Liver King’s physique and pondering whether his diet and lifestyle could actually allow someone to get that jacked without using steroids or exogenous testosterone injections.

Say what you will about his alleged gear usage, but Liver King puts a lot of work into his fitness and physique. He works out twice a day, and this website alleges that he does his famous “Barbarian” exercise every Saturday. This involves holding a 70-pound kettlebell in each hand, strapping 20-pound ankle weights on each leg, carrying 70 pounds in a backpack, and dragging 120 pounds on a sled behind him for one mile. This workout is intended to take 2-6 hours depending on your fitness level. I imagine it’s about an hour long workout for Liver King considering this guy did it in 1:17.

<figure>Liver King screaming, vascularly.</figure>

Bull Testicles

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He used to say he eats liver for breakfast, lunch and dinner but lately he’s been saying that he eats bull testicles 3 times a day as well.

Liver King has talked about on several occasions about the concept of “like supports like.” Essentially, several cultures came to believe that if you ate the liver of an animal, it would support your liver function, if you ate the heart of an animal, it would support your heart’s function. This is true to some degree considering that for example, beef heart is very rich in Coenzyme Q10. CoQ10, being a key component of the electron transport chain, is very important for the production of ATP- the main energy currency of our cells. It also has some antioxidant properties, and CoQ10 supplementation has been shown to improve certain heart conditions. So do testicles improve our testicular conditioning?

Ancient olympians apparently ate raw bull testicles right before their events to give them a boost in vigor. Historian Martin Polley at Britain’s Southampton University says that this ancient form of doping was probably seen as a sign of masculinity.(S)

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On that note, if you’re looking for the manliest cook-off, you’ll have to head over to Serbia. Serbia hosts the “World Championship in Cooking Aphrodisiacs and Testicle Specialties.”

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In 1889, neurologist Charles-Edouard Brown-Sequard published a paper titled On the physiological and therapeutic role of a juice extracted from the testicles of animals according to a number of facts observed in man. Brown-Sequard alleged that the testes contained a “dynamogenic, invigorating substance.” I couldn’t find the paper itself, but the book Androgens and Androgen Receptors reports that:

Brown-Sequard (1889) published some of the earliest reports suggesting that the ingestion of testicular extract can affect the mood and libido of aging men

The book A History of Endocrinology reports that Brown-Sequard first tried injecting the liquid extract of testicles of “vigorous young mammals” to male rabbits. At the time, it was generally understood that testicles held some powerful essence considering vigorous semen production meant a vigorous man. Also, people back then were asking the same question esteemed modern muscle hypertrophy aficionados are asking today: Does ejaculating too much make you less powerful?

Since Brown-Sequard found no harmful side effects to the rabbits, the 72 year old gave himself a series of subcutaneous injections of ground dog testicle extract. After eight injections of the watery dog testicle extract, Brown-Sequard’s “strength, vigour and mental activity improved and that there was increased contractility of the bladder and of the intestine.”

<figure>Unfortunately, Brown-Sequard never wrote a paper on whether winners of bladder contractility contests generally have higher testosterone or not.</figure>

Apparently there was a number of studies on the use of testicular extract to treat debilitated people. Brown-Sequard was unimpressed that in America, testicular extract was being hailed as a cure-all of sorts.

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Other than this, the literature on health effects of dietary bull testicles is pretty scant. I did find one paper showing that fish feed enriched with ground bull testicles made rainbow trout grow bigger compared to a control feed.

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While the testicles mainly produce and release testosterone into the blood stream, testosterone and DHT are found in very high concentrations within the epididymis (Leinonen et al., 1980)

Eberhard Nieschlag argues in his 2019 The history of discovery, synthesis and development of testosterone for clinical use that even were you eat the testicles of a megatron-sized bull, “the testosterone taken orally would be inactivated by the first-pass effect in the liver.”

Soon after its synthesis it became clear that, in reasonable doses, testosterone was not effective orally or – as we know today – would require extremely high doses which were simply not available and/or too expensive. Today we know that the lack of oral effectiveness is due to the inactivation of testosterone by the first-pass effects in the liver.

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He estimates that 1kg of bull testicles have about 6-8mg of testosterone. His 1977 paper found that even 63mg of oral testosterone induced no significant change in normal men’s testosterone levels. Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like Liver King is benefitting directly from the testosterone contained in bull testicles.

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I did order some goat testicles from Okinawa, tried them yesterday and finished them this morning. I ate them raw; the package actually said “for sashimi.” It didn’t have all that much flavor and it was a bit soft with some crunchy bits. Not very good. I thought maybe my palate was just subprimal, but Liver King admits bull testicles don’t taste that great.

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I just found whale testicles online, so I may try that as well.

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Maybe it’s the Cholesterol in Testicles?

However, that is not to say that there’s nothing in testicles to support gonadal health. This analysis of lamb testicles reveals they are rich in many nutrients that support gonadal health like b-vitamins, iron, zinc and selenium. Selenium and zinc have both been associated with higher testosterone levels.

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Testicles are also quite high in cholesterol.

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Tim Ferris wrote in The 4 Hour Body about a cholesterol rich shake he drank at night that lead to increased testosterone levels in the morning.

Testosterone is synthesized from cholesterol in the testicular Leydig cells. Steroidogenic cells (like the testes) have additional requirements for cholesterol, because it is the essential precursor for all steroid hormones.

However, just because the testicles require cholesterol to produce testosterone doesn’t necessarily mean eating tons of it will have the testicles pump out a massive load of testosterone. That said, research has found cholesterol to improve muscle gains.

Chang Woock Lee and his team found in 2008 that that high cholesterol intake resulted in greater lean mass gains in elderly men and women after 12 weeks of resistance training. They also found in 2011 that a high dietary cholesterol group had a nearly 3 times higher myofibrillar protein synthesis rate 22 hours after intense resistance exercise than a low cholesterol group. Essentially, more cholesterol meant more muscle growth. A 2017 study from a different group found more myofibrillar protein synthesis from whole eggs than a protein matched amount of egg whites. Of course the yolks are where all the cholesterol is.

Bone Marrow and Saturated Fat

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Interestingly, while dietary cholesterol doesn’t necessarily raise blood cholesterol levels that much, dietary saturated fat is known to elevate cholesterol levels. Liver King also eats tons of bone marrow.

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A 1983 study on 30 healthy, middle-aged men found going from a 40% fat diet high in saturated fat to a 25% fat diet low in saturated fat decreased their total and free testosterone. The testosterone-lowering effect of reducing saturated fat has been observed many times. In an article titled Saturated fat ingestion regulates androgen concentrations and may influence lean body mass accrual, Dr. Charles Lambert explains:

A number of studies (2–5) have shown that reducing saturated fat in the diet, and/or replacing saturated fat with what are considered more healthy fats (polyunsaturated and/or monounsaturated fats), results in significant decline in the circulating testosterone concentration.

Lambert’s article was a response to a study finding that dietary cholesterol was associated with increased lean mass. The authors responded to his article, writing:

In our study, lean mass and saturated fat intake were significantly correlated, but after adjusting for dietary cholesterol, the association was greatly reduced. This may support what Dr. Lambert alludes to, that the data on fat intake and androgens could be an artifact of the strong association between dietary saturated fat and dietary cholesterol. Although the rate-limiting step in steroid biogenesis is cholesterol transport into the mitochondria, it is not clear whether this process can be influenced by changes in dietary or blood cholesterol levels or whether this will change testosterone levels specifically.

Andrew Huberman called a low-fat, subcaloric diet “nutritional castration.”

“If you went on a low-fat diet, subcaloric low-fat diet, it’s a form of nutritional castration basically… that is absolutely deadly to the reproductive system. …Dietary cholesterol is vital for hormone production and, for me, butter, red meat from good sources is wonderful. Other people, they don’t want to ingest those- eggs are good… but some amount of saturated fat is good. If you put your saturated fat to zero, your testosterone will drop. There’s no question about it.”

Honestly, I was a bit disappointed when I found out that you can’t expect the testosterone contained in bull testicles to do much for your own T levels. On the webpage of Liver King’s supplement “KING,” it’s written that:

Testicle is nature's most concentrated source of virility (strength, energy, drive) and supports healthy testosterone production, libido, fertility (without disrupting internal feedback loops), and aids in the metabolic health of your testes. Testicle contains proteins, peptides, enzymes, stem cells and base cells specific to testes.

One Youtuber “Frank Tufano” claimed:

“I consumed a fairly small amount of testicles on a fairly regular basis… over the course of several months that shot my testosterone up from the low hundreds to over one thousand and I believe this is something that can be replicated for the majority of the male population…”

This of course is a very weak anecdote and there’s no evidence that I know of that eating testicles directly increases your testosterone. Then again, considering there’s not really any studies on the effects of consistent bull testicle consumption, we can’t say whether or not these “peptides, enzymes, stem cells and base cells specific to testes” have specific manly effects or not. I’m still open minded enough about this to try eating a bunch of bull testicles for a month and see if I feel any different.

We’ll have to tackle the rest of Liver King’s diet in the next post.