A lot of guys out there are freaking out over their testosterone levels, which can lead to things that make men feel less masculine, like erectile dysfunction and the loss of muscle mass. The body naturally loses testosterone as it gets older, because it’s your body’s form of retirement from the wild life of manhood. You’re done making babies; you’re done needing your muscles. It’s time to wither away and die. If you’re among the men desperately hoping to hold onto testosterone as much as you can, consider drinking coffee. A lot of it.
According to a new study published in the European Journal of Nutrition, men who drink more coffee tend to have higher levels of total and bioavailable testosterone (aka, the amount of testosterone in your blood that your body can actively use). Researchers at the University of Oulu analyzed 2,264 46-year-olds in Finland and found that testosterone increased as coffee consumption rose, even after accounting for factors like body size and lifestyle.
Men Who Drink More Coffee Tend to Have Higher Testosterone, According to a New Study
On top of that, the researchers found that coffee drinkers also had less total and visceral fat and more skeletal muscle, while both men and women had lower levels of certain amino acids that are associated with insulin resistance and type II diabetes.
Now here’s the bummer part of the story for anyone with low-T who stopped reading this article to go make a pot of coffee: the researchers couldn’t prove that coffee caused any of this. This is a perfect example of data establishing a link but not a direct cause. And of course, as I often preach in these science-based articles, correlation does not equal causation.
The researchers didn’t assign people the task of drinking a ton of coffee and then sitting back and watching what happens. That means it’s entirely possible that guys with naturally higher testosterone just really like coffee.
Yes, the researchers found that heavy coffee drinkers had more total testosterone and more bioavailable testosterone. But they also had lower free testosterone (aka the tiny bit of testosterone in your blood that your body can use immediately) and a lower free androgen index (a ratio that estimates the amount of active, unbound testosterone circulating through the body). These guys also had high levels of SHBG, a protein that moves sex hormones through the body.
It’s probably wise to remove the espresso IV you inserted after reading the headline, because for now, all science can tell is that coffee drinking and some hormonal patterns appear to move in concert… and that’s about it. Nothing definitive yet.
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