Boost Male Testosterone with Red/NIR Light Therapy

What qualities make a man, a man? That’s no simple question. But from a purely biological perspective, there’s an easy answer: testosterone. Men generally produce far more testosterone than women, and it’s responsible for many of the qualities people consider “manly”—deeper voices, hairy chests, muscular frames, etc.

Man's Testosterone Problem

Unfortunately, around age 30, testosterone levels start to drop. This is normal, but that doesn’t make it easy to deal with. Waning testosterone levels can bring a lot of challenges to a man’s life—things like lower energy, reduced sexual drive & performance, a decline in muscle, as well as weight gain. [1] To make matters worse, testosterone is adversely affected by a host of common challenges that affect nearly all modern men, like nutrition, stress, and lack of sleep—to name just a few. These factors combine to produce dramatically decreased testosterone levels for a lot of men.

Trying to treat testosterone problems can be a double-edged sword. Doctors often suggest supplementation or medication to help with the difficulties of low testosterone or to treat testosterone abnormalities. But these conventional solutions lead to unwanted side effects for many patients. Even more challenging, some men who want to increase their testosterone levels are told by physicians that their numbers aren’t low enough to warrant treatment. As a result, dealing with low testosterone can feel like a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation to a lot of men in their 30s, 40s, and 50s.

So it’s no surprise that a lot of men want a more natural option to boost their testosterone, and with it their energy, sex drive, and physical performance. One promising option is light therapy, as recent medical studies are demonstrating its immense potential for increasing male testosterone. This has been repeatedly proven in clinical trials on various mammals in the past few decades, but recent studies on human men are giving researchers and endocrinologists even more reasons for optimism.

Clinical Research Shows Light Therapy’s Potential for Increasing Testosterone

Medical scientists have been studying the effects of natural light on testosterone production for almost a century. Research over the last decade, and especially the last few years, has been even more illuminating and given the medical community more concrete reasons to believe in light therapy’s potential for increasing male testosterone.

Italian Pilot Study: A 2016 randomized, placebo-controlled pilot study conducted by the University of Siena in Italy evaluated 38 men with a diagnosed low sexual desire. Researchers measured their testosterone levels and separated the men into two groups, with one group receiving a clinical dose of light therapy in the early mornings. In addition to higher sexual satisfaction, the men in the group treated with more light saw their T-levels rise significantly. The control group did not see testosterone rises, but the active light therapy group showed a huge increase from about 2.1 ng/ml to 3.6 ng/ml in just 2 weeks. [2]

Dr. Andrea Fagiolini, the study’s lead researcher, explained the findings: "The increased levels of testosterone explain the greater reported sexual satisfaction. In the Northern hemisphere, the body's testosterone production naturally declines from November through April, and then rises steadily through the spring and summer with a peak in October. You see the effect of this in reproductive rates, with the month of June showing the highest rate of conception. The use of the [light therapy device] really mimics what nature does.” [3]

Male Fertility: Numerous other studies over the last 5 years have found that increased natural light exposure to a man’s testes and sperm actually increases sperm motility, or how well individual spermatozoa are able to move and swim. Motility is a key measure of male fertility and reproductive health. As a result, many researchers are concluding that light therapy can have a significant effect on treating male infertility. [4,5,6,7]

In addition to noting increased sperm motility, a 2017 study published in Scientifi