everyone's always looking for a quick
fix how can i boost my testosterone
quickly how can i have better
stronger longer erections well today i'm
going to talk about one of these
quick fixes and tell you the data behind
the supplement called tongkat ali is
this the magical supplement that's going
to make you better
stronger longer well stick around and
find out i'm dr rena malek urologist and
pelvic surgeon
and today we're going to be talking
about tongkat ali
and specifically the impact on erectile
dysfunction
testosterone and even stress how does
this
particular supplement impact those areas
and what is the science behind it
let's get to it
so tongkat ali is from the forests of
malaysia most commonly and it belongs to
a family called
yuri coma longifoma and it has a number
of properties that are considered
aphrodisiacs or increasing sexual
desire and it has been touted for its
multiple benefits for erections
boosting testosterone infertility and
much much more
so before i get into how this supplement
may or may not help you i want to be
clear
this is not a magic potion if you are
overweight
if you are not eating right if you are
not sleeping enough this isn't going to
help you you have to work on exercise
losing weight sleeping for at least
seven hours every night so that you can
get the benefits of
natural testosterone boost if you're
wondering more about this check out my
video on how to boost your testosterone
naturally
so the specific type of tonkat ali that
you should be looking for if you're
going to buy this supplement is
the hot water root extract the reason
being is is extremely
safe at high doses and it is bio
available meaning it's available for
your body to use
it's also very very bitter so if you
tend to buy a supplement
with tonkat ali and it's not bitter it
probably doesn't have
the right amount that you need for it to
be successful
so today let's start off by talking
about erectile dysfunction
what is the data well there have been
two major studies that have looked at
erectile function after using tonkat ali
they looked at eight different groups of
men and they looked at them for
different periods of time
but both generally speaking were healthy
men
between the ages of 35 to 60 years of
age
and they either receive tonkat ali 200
milligrams a day or 300 milligrams a day
and that could be
either once a day or breaking up into
two doses
twice a day and how do they measure this
well they did a number of
validated questionnaires and what that
means is that questionnaires that have
been looked at and are
accurate for people to identify if
a patient or person has erectile
dysfunction based on a scoring system
and they looked at the number of times
they attempted to have intercourse so
they kept a diary
and they also looked at the firmness of
the
erection and they asked about that as
well and what did they find
well they didn't find that there was a
statistically significant difference
using tonkat ali versus using a placebo
pillar using a sugar pill but in the
group that had more
severe erectile dysfunction they
actually know that there was
a little bit more of a benefit so
perhaps in patients who have
worse erectile dysfunction you may see a
benefit
also they didn't find any adverse
reactions to the supplement
in this particular cohort of patients so
bottom line does it help with erections
at least in the studies that hasn't
shown to be helpful in that arena
but does it help with testosterone and
how does it even work on testosterone
it's not like giving you testosterone
replacement therapy
you aren't really just eating or getting
the testosterone
in your system it's actually allowing
the free testosterone which is normally
bound to sex hormone binding globulin
to be released and so that you have a
higher level of your testosterone that
you already have and it's more available
for the tissues to use
for all the benefits that it provides
including increase in libido
muscle mass cognition a number of other
things
there's also a thought that it might
help reduce the metabolism of
testosterone meaning that your body uses
testosterone and then
it kind of degrades it or gets rid of it
in the system
but it keeps it from degrading too
quickly so it's around for a longer
period of time
so there's actually a number of studies
that have been done on this
about five studies were reported in this
paper and in each of these studies there
were a different number of participants
ranging from
13 all the way up to over a hundred
participants
and all of them had very promising
results in that their serum testosterone
levels did
increase statistically significantly
what does that mean that they increase
it couldn't be
by chance based on the statistical
modeling that was done for the paper
and so this is a real true increase in
the testosterone levels
so does it help with testosterone seems
like it does next
and last thing we're going to cover is
infertility so
does it help with infertility well there
hasn't been a lot of data on this
but there was one good study that was
done on sub-fertile men meaning men who
had
abnormal parameters on a semen analysis
they had reduced semen concentration
meaning when you look
at a bell curve of all men with normal
semen parameters
they fell in the lowest five percent
they had low sperm concentration
low motility meaning they didn't move in
the right direction
and low morphology meaning they didn't
look normal
and in these men they ended up having 75
men who completed the study and they
received 200 milligrams
per day of tonkat ali for a course of up
to nine months
and what did they find well they found
that there was an increase
in sperm concentration that was again
statistically significant
and there was an increase in having
normal morphology on their follow-up
semen analyses after taking tonkat ali
so this is a very small study but it
does show some promising results
i think particularly because if you're
taking testosterone replacement that
will make you
infertile in men who have low
testosterone this
may be an option of course you would
need to have
a dosing of tonkat ali that is
appropriate
and has been regulated the reason being
is that some suppliers who make tonkat
ali
one may have very low concentrations of
tonkat ali which are not really useful
and fill their supplement with a whole
bunch of other things
just for the monetary gain of it and as
i mentioned before on other videos
that there's no regulation of
supplements so
no one can tell you that what they're
putting on their bottle is
exactly what's in their supplement so
you have to be really really careful
and look for reputable sources okay so
lastly before we finish off i wanted to
touch on
the adverse events that have been
reported for tonkat ali meaning what are
the side effects
and there's only been a couple it's been
irritability insomnia and restlessness
and who can't take tongue cat ali this
is really important
so because tonkat ali increases the
bio-available testosterone
in your body people who can't get more
testosterone
shouldn't take tom cat ali this means
men with prostate cancer
people with obstructive sleep apnea
people with breast cancer
and in some cases people with diabetes
heart disease
kidney disease or those who are
immunosuppressed so if you are going to
start this
supplement please talk to your doctor
about if this is right for you
because you don't want it to counteract
with any of the medications that you're
already on and there are a number of
medications
that you need to be careful in taking
this with at the same time
if you're interested in reading any of
the data that i have talked about in
this video
check out the description i've linked
all of the papers that i read to prepare
this video for you all and always
remember to take care of yourself
because you're worth it