In my relentless pursuit of building muscle and strength, I’ve tried just about every supplement in the market. As the years progressed, I’ve limited my use to supplements with significant scientific research behind them showing them to be effective. I’m well beyond the point in my life where I run to the store and buy the latest supplement alleging to make me larger, stronger and more attractive.

Any man trying to get bigger, stronger, and leaner needs to know that there is one hormone in his body that has a major impact on the level of results he will achieve. Testosterone; the Big T. Test is responsible for most things male, and its production peaks somewhere between 18 and 24 years old. Not good news for guys like me, who are well over 24. To make matter worse, as you age and produce less Test, your body also produces more of something called SHBG (sex hormone binding globulin) which binds up to testosterone to make it less effective. I don’t know why your body would do this to you; I only know that it does.

So I took some products for a test spin to see if they would work as claimed, which is to increase not only my total testosterone levels, but also the free testosterone available to be anabolic (muscle building). The combination was Novedex XT by Gaspari Nutrition, Unleashed by Protein Factory, and Stinging Nettle Root Extract by Now Foods.

For 30 days, I took 1 Novedex with 3 Unleashed in the morning with my post workout shake. Then I’d take 1 Novedex and 2 Stinging Nettle Root at night with my last meal of the day. I took 30 days off, then did another 30 days of the supplement stack. Okay, so how do we know its working? Well first of all, I was in the midst of my 14 months of training for my first powerlifting meet. I can tell you these were very productive months in terms of strength increases and increases in overall thickness and size. But anecdotal evidence is not going to do it. I want blood.

First Link Medical is an interesting business concept. They basically allow you to get your blood drawn for any number of tests, without going to the Dr. They send you to LabCorp who draws your blood, does the test, and sends the results to First Link Medical’s Dr. First Link sends them to you.

So I had my total testosterone and free testosterone tested. This is an expensive test; like $275, but no one said science was cheap. Here are my before and after results so you can see for yourself:

Before
Testosterone, Serum 453 ng/dL normal range 241-827
Testosterone, % of Free+Weakly bound 16.1% normal range 9-46
Testosterone, Free+Weakly bound 73 ng/dL normal range 40-250

After
Testosterone, Serum 1361 ng/dL normal range 241-827
Testosterone, % of Free+Weakly bound 47% normal range 9-46
Testosterone, Free+Weakly bound 639 ng/dL normal range 40-250

Holy high levels of T Batman! This was off the charts in terms of my expectations. All the numbers were incredible, but the percentage of Free T floating around in my blood ready to go anabolic when I hit the heavy weights was truly astonishing, at least to me.

So there you have it, one man’s pursuit of more T and the results of his experiment. You should know I am not a doctor or licensed nutritionist. I am not being paid by any of the companies included in this post, nor am I suggesting or recommending you do anything I do. If you are considering purchasing these items, I have a convenient link to Amazon right here on the site.

For those of you who’d like a little more science with your reading, read on. The rest of you, thanks for coming by the site. Please drop me a comment to let me know your thoughts.

Okay, now that only the science geeks are left, here’s what I’ve found out in layman’s terms. Your body maintains a balance of testosterone and estrogen. It produces an enzyme to convert some testosterone to estrogen to reach this balance. What Novedex does is attach itself to this enzyme and make it inert, so it can’t do the conversion. What does your body do in response to not getting the T/E ratio it wants? Produce more T to convert to E, which Novedex blocks again. The end result is more natural production of testosterone.

SHBG binds itself to T, making it unavailable for anything we want it to do. There are various herbal remedies for this problem, and they’re contained in the Unleashed mix. The only one missing that has been shown to work is stinging nettle root, which is why I added that in. These herbs block your body’s production of SHBG.

Today is the last day of my most recent 30 day cycle, and although I don’t plan on doing anymore blood work soon, I can tell you that I have felt very strong in the gym even though I’m on restricted calories right now using ElMam.