Research Review: Is kratom lowering your testosterone?

[SereneKratom]

TL;DR: Long-term kratom use doesn’t appear to lower testosterone like opioids do.

Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... via%3Dihub

Researchers from medical institutions in Malaysia and the United States teamed up to study the effects of kratom on testosterone levels. Their findings were published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology in 2018, which I’ve summarized below:

It’s well known that long-term opioid use suppresses testosterone. This happens because opioids act on receptors in the brain that reduce the secretion of sex hormones, which can result in hypogonadism — a condition where the gonads (testes in men) consistently fail to produce adequate hormone levels. This kind of deficiency is more common in men and can have significant health consequences.

As I’m sure most people here know, mitragynine — the main active alkaloid in kratom — has opioid-like activity. Given this similarity, researchers wondered: does long-term kratom use affect testosterone the same way opioids do?

Previous findings were mixed. Some reports suggest kratom negatively affects sperm, deforming morphology and reducing motility. Yet in Southeast Asia, kratom is used as an aphrodisiac, with claims that it prolongs sexual performance and enhances desire. So — which is it?

To explore this, researchers conducted a study in 2016 with 19 healthy adult men from Penang, Malaysia. All were 18 or older and had consumed between 76.23 to 94.15 mg of mitragynine per day for over two years. In an effort to understand kratom’s isolated effects, none of the participants had reproductive disorders, drug use, or ongoing medical conditions.

The researcher’s main objective was to take a blood test from each participant to assess whether chronic kratom use affected testosterone or gonadotrophins — the hormones that regulate the gonads and testosterone production. To get a fuller picture of overall health, researchers also measured biochemical and blood health markers like iron, creatinine, and glucose.

The results were both surprising and encouraging. After over two years of daily mitragynine intake, there were no signs of impaired testosterone or gonadotrophin levels — And, biochemical markers remained within healthy ranges. In fact, while not statistically significant, testosterone and FSH levels were actually slightly elevated in the sample group.

*** I've been deep-diving into the scientific literature on all things kratom to satisfy my own curiosities and thought I would make an easy summary of this research I read. I figure others might find it interesting too. If any of you do, let me know and I'll do something similar on other cool research papers I come across.

[GreenAnimal]

Very interesting. I was actually wondering about this lately. I have really low energy levels and I was starting to wonder if it might be low testosterone. We really need more studies like this about kratom. There’s so much to learn.