Boron
Also: boric acid · sodium borate · boron citrate · calcium fructoborate
Cheap and worth trying — small but consistent free testosterone effect via SHBG reduction; well-tolerated at 6–10 mg/day.
Testosterone & hormonal load
A small but well-designed human study (Naghii et al. 2011) found that 6 mg/day boron for 1 week significantly increased free testosterone by 28%, reduced SHBG by 9%, and decreased estradiol by 39% in healthy men. Boron appears to reduce SHBG, the protein that binds testosterone and renders it biologically unavailable, thereby increasing the free fraction. The effect size is modest but consistent across the limited literature.
Found in.
Two jurisdictions, two different verdicts.
Permitted in food supplements. EFSA guidance dose: up to 10 mg/day. Higher doses may cause reproductive toxicity in animal studies.
Not an essential nutrient with an established RDA. Sold as a dietary supplement under DSHEA. Upper tolerable intake level: 20 mg/day (Institute of Medicine).
The receipts.
- [01]Naghii et al. 2011 — Boron and testosterone in healthy men (PubMed)pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21129941/
- [02]Pizzorno 2015 — Boron: essential for health (PubMed)pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26770156/
- [03]EFSA — Boron tolerable upper intake levelefsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/j.efsa.2004.99
Find Boron before it finds you.
Point the camera at any barcode. Mangood reads the ingredient list and tells you, in one tap, whether Boron is hiding in the bottle in your hand.