Guys obsessed with “High T”

It was Mark Holman He was thin and depressed when he worked a 9-to-5 job as an air quality engineering consultant in 2018. “I felt weak, like a boy,” the 33-year-old New Orleans native says.

Determined to turn things around, he spent the next few years working as a health coach and getting chiseled abs. But in 2021, after becoming confused about why he wasn’t interested in having sex with his partner at the time, he decided to test his testosterone levels.

His blood test revealed his testosterone to be 622 nanograms per deciliter (ng/dL), which doctors consider healthy, but definitely not “high T.”

Convinced that this would make him happier, more decisive and more masculine, Holman devoted himself to increasing his body’s supply of testosterone, or “T-maxxing.”

Low testosterone was once seen as a problem largely associated with older men, but there is now a growing collective obsession with high testosterone, fueled by manosphere influences and closely linked to the Make America Healthy Again movement. Podcast host Joe Rogan and US Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have both said they have taken testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) medications. More than 11 million men in the United States were prescribed the drug in 2024, up from 7.3 million in 2019, according to healthcare research firm IQVIA.

In some circles, men now test their testosterone every six months, exchanging numbers in locker rooms and group chats the way they compare bench press stats, as they try to counter the dramatic decline in average testosterone levels in recent years.

But this trend also threatens to cause younger, healthy men to be affected by hormone levels that are still poorly understood.

Holman generally considers taking TRT to be “cheating.” On the advice of his “holistic” health coach, and thanks to browsing T-maxxing rabbit holes online, he ate a diet full of eggs, red meat, Brazil nuts, and oysters to boost his production. He consumed a lot of supposedly “testosterone boosting” herbs and supplements like tongkat ali, fenugreek, pine pollen, boron, and zinc. He also continued pumping iron in the gym.

By March 2025, he said he had nearly doubled the T to 1,104 ng/dL, a screenshot of the test result shared with WIRED Presents. This is well above the normal range for all men of 350 to 800 ng/dL, and is close to naturally possible peak levels. (Normal levels of testosterone max out at around 1,400 ng/dL and overuse of TRT or steroids can send levels exceeding 3,000 ng/dL, which can lead to the legendary “extreme rage” as well as other potentially dangerous strains on the body.)

Holman, who has long blond hair and bulging triceps, says his body “got shredded very easily” once he started boosting his testosterone, and that his life changed radically. “Feeling the difference was night and day,” he says.

He was single when he learned he had high T and said he felt more comfortable pursuing women. “Competing with other men produces more testosterone,” he says. (One of the leading testosterone influencers, Derek Monroe, goes by the handle @moreplatesmoredates on Instagram.)

Now Holman is a “holistic” men’s health coach himself, focused on helping men achieve T-Max. He refers to himself as a “High T stud” and posts scientifically questionable Instagram clips that associate High T with “true masculinity” and waking up with “morning wood.”

“The main mental effect of testosterone is that it makes effort feel good,” neuroscientist and podcaster Andrew Huberman told Rogan during a 2021 episode of the podcast. The Joe Rogan Experience.

“Males of a certain type have to overcome the fear of pain and punishment, and high testosterone is what causes the shift to wanting to go into battle,” Huberman said, explaining that there are testosterone receptors in the anxiety center of the brain, the amygdala. “The tendency towards pain and challenge actually has the effect of making the body feel calmer.”