Why, when there are so many forms of testosterone therapy available, would someone choose to take testosterone as a pill? The most likely reason is the same as why most people would probably, given a choice, prefer to take their medication in pill form. You can take the pill with a glass of water and down it goes. It’s not like an injection where you have the possible pain of the needle going into your body. It’s not like the patch where you have to ensure the irritation and possible skin rash that can be developed by having a foreign body stuck to your skin for a long period of time. It’s not like testosterone cream which you have to smear all over your body which can be rather messy and means you have to let it be absorbed into your skin so you can’t really get dressed and go out of the house until you have done so. So the pill could be considered the most convenient way to take testosterone into your body. That said, why doesn’t everyone do it?
Well, basically, it’s because the unique nature of testosterone as a drug means that it’s very difficult for a pill to be as effective as a person taking it may want it to be. It’s the same problem that cannibals had when they thought that if they ate brains they would become more intelligent (this is true by the way). It just doesn’t work like that with hormones. So when someone comes to ingest testosterone, they cannot expect that it would simply raise testosterone levels.
Perhaps one of the reasons why people think that taking testosterone pills will work immediately is the great success of viagra, or sildenafil as it is known in the scientific world. Now, 15 minutes after you take viagra, you get an erection. So effectively you take a pill and it works almost immediately. So some people think that if you take a testosterone pill you will immediately regain your energy, see your libido increase and feel your mood lift. But you can’t, you will not be able to feel the effects of a testosterone pill in the next hour. You need to undertake a proper program and take testosterone pills regularly to have any effect.
When you take a pill, it goes into the gut or the liver and then relies on some of the hormone escaping the gut and the liver and getting into the bloodstream. This absorption is not reliable, and in fact men are not recommended to take the pills as it is not possible to give a man enough testosterone in pill form to make it work without overdosing him.