Hormones can be thought of as the conductors of your body’s orchestra. They control everything that you do, from breathing to sleeping. The hormones that are the regulators of everything that makes a man a man are called androgenic hormones. And the most important androgenic hormone is testosterone. It floats around your body, controlling the way that your system works.

The number one function of testosterone is to maintain a healthy sex drive, giving you the ability to reproduce at will. Secondary to that, it is vital to maintaining the traits of manhood. These include the growth of body and facial hair, the register of the voice, the mass of your bones and the amount of muscle mass on your frame. Your level of testosterone always has a lot to do with your level of body fat and the amount of energy that you have.

As well as speeding up protein synthesis to boost the muscle building process, testosterone also counters muscle loss, or catabolism, when the body cannibalizes itself for energy. It also plays a key role in the production of red blood cells.

Testosterone is manufactured primarily in the testes. The small amount that isn’t made in the testes is produced in the adrenal glands, which are situated at the top of the kidneys. Production of “T” is stimulated and controlled by the hypothalamus, which is your brain’s command center. Here’s how the process works . . .

The hypothalamus secretes gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH) to the pituitary gland at the base of the brain. In response, the pituitary gland secretes two hormones into the bloodstream;

Follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH)

Luteinizing hormone (LH)

These two hormones are known as gonadotropins. They travel through the bloodstream down to the testicles. FSH instructs the testes to produce more sperm, while LH ‘tells’ it to make more testosterone. It does this by stimulating cells within the testes which produce testosterone. These cells are known as Leydig cells.

Leydig cells make testosterone by converting cholesterol into testosterone. The cholesterol either gets pulled in from the bloodstream or is produced by the Leydig cells themselves.

Testosterone that is produced by the Leydig cells is then sent into the bloodstream, where it goes to work to do its magic.