Nugenix Total-T Reviews

It’s possible to have low testosterone and not know it, but if your T levels are suboptimal, you’ll probably experience a range of effects. Men with low testosterone — which affects nearly 40% of males over 45 — can experience everything from decreased libido and semen volume to increased body fat, fatigue, and weakened bones.1

Numerous supplemental ingredients have been studied as potential means to bring testosterone back to normal in hypogonadal men, with some showing much more success than others. These ingredients often get bundled together in nutritional supplements like Nugenix Total-T and are advertised as simple, effective solutions for men with low testosterone.

But the field of options is massive, and Nugenix products (including Total-T) are among the most expensive around. So, our team set out to compare Total-T’s ingredient bill to the competition’s, always with an eye toward relevant scientific research, to determine if it’s worth the cost.

Of the eight ingredients in Total-T, only two are dosed highly enough to make a difference to your testosterone levels, with a third ingredient being capable of improving performance in the gym. However, considering that you could either buy those ingredients separately for less or invest in a testosterone supplement that’s better priced and that provides more ingredients at clinically relevant doses, we don’t recommend Total-T to most men. It’s not that Total-T wouldn’t work at all; it’s just that there are many less expensive options that will work better. (Meanwhile, Nugenix makes a product called Total-T MAXX that contains twice the number of effectively-dosed ingredients, but unfortunately it costs more than double the price of Total-T.) Learn more about the T-boosting supplements we highly recommend by visiting our comprehensive gude to the best testosterone boosters, or go straight to the formula we recommend most: Testosterone Support from Innerbody.

At Innerbody Research we deeply scrutinize every product and service we review, with a research and testing team ready to try various products themselves and compare company claims to any relevant scientific research. For this review of Nugenix Total-T, we leveraged our more than 1,000 hours of studying men’s sexual wellness and testosterone maintenance, as well as lessons learned in the process of creating our own testosterone booster.

We also took the time to order Total-T for ourselves, which gave us specific insights into the customer experience, including everything from product support to shipping logistics. Additionally, like all health-related content on this website, this guide was thoroughly vetted by one or more members of our Medical Review Board for accuracy and will continue to be monitored for updates by our editorial team. Over the past two decades, Innerbody Research has helped tens of millions of readers make more informed decisions about staying healthy and living healthier lifestyles.

Evaluating Nugenix Total-T required us to apply the same criteria we often apply to nutritional supplements targeting certain aspects of male wellness. We often look at efficacy and safety first, as these are two of the most important aspects of any clinical research regarding a supplement’s ingredients. We also scrutinize cost, which was a big factor in our regard for Total-T, as well as convenience, which is a more complicated measurement of things like available subscriptions, customer service, money-back guarantees, and more.

Let’s look more closely at how Total-T performed in each category.

Effectiveness

Nugenix Total-T contains eight ingredients, three of which appear in doses that align with clinical research showing effectiveness in things like testosterone support and athletic performance. For the others, we were able to find some research supporting their inclusion, but that research typically used anywhere between three and 30 times the doses provided by Nugenix.

These are the three ingredients provided at relevant doses:

• Boron: an element shown to improve testosterone levels at 5mg and 10mg doses.2 Total-T contains 10mg.
• Tesnor: a branded combination of pomegranate peel and cocoa bean extracts shown to improve testosterone levels at 200-400mg doses.3 Total-T contains 400mg.
• elevATP: another branded ingredient, this one containing ancient peat and apple extracts, shown to improve strength levels in resistance training at 150mg.4 Total-T contains 150mg.

The presence of these ingredients at these doses is enough for us to believe that Total-T would provide some benefit to most men who take it. But the paltry amounts of some other ingredients prevented us from rating it any higher.

For example, successful studies showing an increase in testosterone levels from zinc supplementation have used doses as low as 10mg, 15mg, and 40mg.5 6 7 Total-T contains 1mg of zinc. By contrast, Innerbody Testosterone Support contains 25mg of zinc, right in the middle of the effective range.

Similarly, successful studies using L-citrulline to enhance nitric oxide production might start at doses around 3g/day,8 and studies showing improvements in athletic performance start at around 6g/day. Total-T contains just over 1g.9 Again, to draw a comparison, Kaged Pre-Kaged Elite pre-workout mix contains 10g of L-citrulline alongside numerous other ingredients.

Safety

One of the benefits of underdosing ingredients is that it reduces the chances they’ll produce adverse effects in users. That’s one of the few things that gives Total-T the edge over similar products that all use high doses of their ingredients. Since research into how higher doses could interact is all but nonexistent, the other supplements may introduce a higher risk of side effects.

Total-T also avoids some of the other common testosterone-boosting ingredients that may have additional safety concerns, at least in this supplement (Nugenix includes many of them in its supplements). For example, shilajit boasts bountiful research showcasing its potential to improve testosterone levels, but it also has some unanswered questions about potential heavy metal contamination.10 11

In one case, the fact that Nugenix decided to include a clinically relevant dose actually works against it in the safety department. Boron’s tolerable upper intake level, as defined by the National Institutes of Health, is just 20mg.12 Certain foods, like raisins, peaches, apples, and avocados, are especially high in boron, so it's easy to get enough boron in your diet alone, and Total-T might risk sending you into a toxic range. This risk is even more significant if you combine Total-T with a daily multivitamin containing boron.

Cost

Price is the area in which most Nugenix products falter, and Total-T is no exception. In fact, although Total-T isn’t the most expensive testosterone booster on the market, it’s certainly among them. Here’s a look at the best available prices for Nugenix’s top T-boosters compared to its strongest competitors:

There are only three products in the chart that are more expensive than Total-T, and two of them are also made by Nugenix. And all of those competitors’ products have more relevantly dosed ingredients backed by clinical research in them than Total-T does.

Convenience

We measure a supplement’s convenience by considering things like regimen and capsule size, but also by experiencing what it’s like to be a customer. We scrutinize website navigation, purchasing experiences, customer service interactions, and even the execution of shipping and return policies.

The Nugenix customer experience is decidedly average. Navigating the website and checking out are relatively easy. Shipping takes about a week, and the company Nugenix uses for fulfillment provides an up-to-date shipping timeline through the initial Nugenix tracking email.

The real dings in convenience for Nugenix come in its guarantee structure. The site advertises a 30-day money-back guarantee on every page, but the application of the guarantee is far from universal. In fact, the policy states that it only applies to recurring orders. The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to sign up for a subscription to any Nugenix product when buying through the product pages. The only way we've found to get a subscription to a Nugenix product is to sign up for one of the company's 14-day free trials, after which time you're automatically enrolled in a subscription.

Companies like Innerbody or Kaged offer straightforward money-back guarantees that promise to refund your money if you aren’t satisfied after 30 or 60 days, respectively — regardless of subscription status.

Nugenix Total-T is a men’s health supplement intended to support healthy testosterone levels and enhance athletic performance. It comprises eight ingredients, most of which boast research supporting their ability to work for one of those aims or another, at least at certain doses.

Here’s a look at the Total-T ingredient list:

• Vitamin B6: 2mg
• Vitamin B12: .4mcg
• Zinc: 1mg
• L-Citrulline malate (2:1): 1,125mg
• Tesnor®: 400mg
• elevATP® Blend: 150mg
• Eurycoma longifolia extract: 100mg
• Boron: 10mg

Total-T isn’t the only supplement from Nugenix that claims to improve testosterone and related aspects of men’s health. It is, however, the least expensive of the bunch. Unfortunately, Total-T underdoses the majority of its ingredients, with only boron, Tesnor, and elevATP appearing at doses that align with successful studies in humans. Other ingredients either lack sufficient scientific evidence to support their use here or have evidence in studies that use much higher doses.

Nugenix company reputation

Nugenix doesn’t have a great online reputation, but there’s an important caveat here that we’ll get to shortly. First, let’s discuss its standings on two popular ranking sites: Trustpilot and Better Business Bureau (BBB).

With the BBB, Nugenix boasts an A+ rating. However, there have been more complaints closed in just the last year (75) than there have been customer reviews (55). And those reviews result in a 1.09-star rating out of a possible five stars. The picture on Trustpilot isn’t much better, with 27 reviews, 100% of which are 1-star.

Now, there are two potential causes for some of these negative reviews. In many cases, customers are frustrated by what they feel was an unauthorized charge to their credit card. This will happen if you sign up for Nugenix’s free sample program, which sends you a 14-day supply of any supplement you want to try. You have to pay for shipping to complete the order, and on the page where you input your credit card information, there’s a small bit of print telling you that you’re also signing up for automatic deliveries that will start 18 days after the date you placed your order. This takes a lot of customers by surprise. Ideally, Nugenix would work harder to make this part of the program clearer and harder to miss.

Another potential issue customers may run into occurs when they buy Nugenix products from third-party retailers like Amazon. We’ve investigated customer reviews for various Nugenix products, and we’ve often found negative reviews that are accompanied by images showing ingredient labels that don’t match the ones you’ll see on legitimate Nugenix products. It appears that counterfeit Nugenix products are available through what appear to be legitimate sellers, which undoubtedly hurts the company’s reputation.

The effectiveness of Nugenix Total-T is based on the relevant dosing of three of its eight ingredients, so we’ll take a close look at those ingredients to understand how the supplement can provide results. To recap, Total-T aims to increase testosterone levels and improve performance in the gym. Here’s a breakdown of its top three ingredients:

Where does Nugenix Total-T fall short?

While the three ingredients we just discussed appear in sufficient doses for us to be confident that Total-T can offer positive benefits for consumers, its other ingredients either don’t offer much benefit (regardless of dose) or are dosed too low to perform the way they do in studies.

For example, L-citrulline has real potential to improve performance in the gym. But this improvement tends to come at doses of 6g or 8g in the studies we’ve reviewed.9 And a thorough pharmacokinetic study of citrulline’s impact on nitric oxide production used 1.5g as the low end of its dose range.8 Total-T only contains a little over 1g of L-citrulline. This doesn’t mean that it won’t provide any results, but its results aren’t likely to be noticeable to most users.

In another example, Total-T includes 1g of zinc “chelate.” To be clear, calling something zinc “chelate” is like asking a bartender for an alcoholic Coke without specifying what alcohol you want in it. And Coke with wine or Coke with whiskey are very different drinks.

Essentially, chelation is a specific kind of bonding process that renders zinc more bioavailable than non-chelated forms.16 But you can use various elements to create chelated zinc, resulting in zinc gluconate, zinc picolinate, and others. And each type has a different amount of elemental zinc in it. So, we can look at Total-T’s zinc dose and have no idea how much elemental zinc is in it, other than to be sure it’s some number less than the 1g dose.

What’s worse, studies looking at zinc supplementation to improve testosterone levels have been successful with doses of zinc starting above 10mg and ranging all the way up to 250mg — way more than the 1mg in Total-T.5 17 (For the record, 250mg doses of zinc are dangerously high, as the NIH lists the tolerable upper intake level of elemental zinc at 40mg/day. In zinc citrate, for example, 40mg elemental zinc would come from a 120mg dose — less than half the 250mg referenced above.)18

The group of men for whom Total-T is a good choice is on the small side, mainly because there are superior options out there for testosterone support and athletic performance that can be had at lower costs. That said, men with health conditions or those who are on medications that might exclude some of those supplements from consideration could do well to consider Total-T.

There also aren’t any especially high doses of the ingredients in Total-T. While that works against the supplement at various junctures, it does mean it may be a safer option than a more robust formula. Men concerned with over-supplementation could consider Total-T a viable option. However, these men would want to make sure Total-T’s 10mg of boron wouldn’t put them too close to the 20mg tolerable upper intake level as set by the NIH.

Who might want to look elsewhere?

The majority of men interested in increasing testosterone levels or improving their performance in the gym would probably want to look elsewhere, at least to start. There are just too many options that offer higher doses of ingredients with better support, contain more potentially useful ingredients, cost less per month, or have some combination of all those attributes.

For a superior testosterone booster, we’d recommend Innerbody Testosterone Support. For athletic performance, there are numerous avenues you could take. We’ll detail these various approaches below in our Alternatives section.

Thanks to the majority of its components being somewhat underdosed, Total-T doesn’t pose too big of a side effect risk. And the three ingredients that appear in relevant doses aren’t provided in quantities that exceed what studies have shown to be relatively safe.

For example, Tesnor and elevATP seem to work best at 400mg and 150mg doses, respectively,13 14 and studies have shown those doses deliver few to no side effects.

Boron is the only outlier here, but only because the NIH has established a tolerable upper intake level of 20mg.12 Total-T contains 10mg, bringing you halfway to the limit right out of the gate. Fortunately, the NIH also states that the average American gets less than 2mg of boron from a daily diet, leaving a pretty big gap for your diet to combine with a Total-T dose before you’re in any trouble.

But a few foods are high enough in boron to create a problem in combination with Total-T if they’re a regular part of your diet, including apples, raisins, peaches, and avocados, each of which provides at least 0.5mg in a regular serving size.12 The risk of boron over-supplementation increases if you’re getting more from an additional supplemental source, such as a multivitamin.

If you do experience boron toxicity, you can expect symptoms like

• Headache
• Hypothermia
• Restlessness
• Weariness
• Renal injury
• Dermatitis
• Indigestion

You may also expect a certain amount of gastrointestinal discomfort at the outset of any new supplement regimen, but this often passes as you get used to a new product. If it sticks around for more than a week or two, it’d be best to stop taking the supplement and consult your doctor.

Nugenix employs a decidedly simple pricing system, even if that means there are no real opportunities for additional savings. Other companies might give you a discount if you subscribe or reduce the effective cost per bottle you buy in bulk, but Nugenix offers one price, one way.

Here’s what that pricing looks like for each of Nugenix’s testosterone-related supplements:

These remain among the higher prices for testosterone boosters on the market, with competitors like Innerbody offering a cost per bottle as low as $47, and Roman delivering a cost per dose as low as $0.97.

Nugenix also offers a 14-day free trial for most of its products, including Total-T. However, when you input your credit card information to pay for shipping, you’ll automatically be enrolled in the company’s auto-ship program, which allows the company to bill and ship subsequent 30-day supplies automatically. If you want to enroll in such a system, this appears to be the only way to do so, as auto-ship options aren’t present on any product page.

The cynical view would be that the auto-ship program exists only to snare customers who don’t see the fine print when signing up for the free trial. Fortunately, auto-ship deliveries are eligible for a 30-day money-back guarantee. So, when you combine it with the 14-day free trial, you can effectively try Total-T for 44 days before asking for a return. And, as we’ve seen in some research, certain ingredients in Total-T may start working in as little as two weeks.3

Still, we prefer the more direct approach that companies like Roman, Innerbody, and others take to setting up auto-ship options, and we’d much rather see Nugenix include one-time purchases in its guarantee.

So, if we don’t think Total-T is a great fit for most men, what should you take instead? Well, that depends on your goals. If you’re looking to boost low testosterone levels, you’ll head down one path. If it’s better performance in the gym you’re after, you’ll likely take another path.

Let’s examine those two goals a little more closely to make our recommendations as clear as possible.

Nugenix’s other T-boosters

Nugenix has three other dedicated T-booster complexes in addition to Total-T, and those might present you with a superior choice, depending on your specific needs. Those options are:

• T-Boost
• Total-T MAXX
• Ultimate

T-Boost is the least recommendable of these three, as it offers fewer ingredients at lower doses than the others, but it still costs the same as Total-T. It also hides the quantities of three ingredients behind a proprietary blend, which the company doesn’t do with its other T boosters.

However, The other two options are mostly superior to Total-T, offering longer ingredient bills and higher doses with a superior selection of ingredients. Here’s a quick comparison of the three products:

As you can see, the potential for each product improves as the price increases. If you’re willing to spend more than the price of Total-T, you can get a Nugenix product that has much more potential to improve your testosterone levels.

Testosterone support

If you’re looking to Total-T for testosterone support, there are a few alternatives you can consider. The most directly comparable product would be a similar supplement with a complex of ingredients intended to improve testosterone levels. Many exist, but only a few deliver clinically relevant doses of multiple ingredients with scientific support at reasonable prices.

After identifying certain gaps in this market, the Innerbody team produced such a supplement — Innerbody Testosterone Support — which offers the greatest balance of effectiveness, cost, and safety. If contains 11 ingredients, eight of which are included specifically to support testosterone production at clinically relevant doses, and the other three of which have specific roles to play in supporting the eight testosterone-boosting ingredients.

Here’s a quick look at the ingredients included in Innerbody Testosterone Support with links to relevant studies that help clarify the job they each have to play:

• Tongkat ali (longjack): 400mg (200:1 extract)19
• Fenugreek: 600mg (50% saponins)20
• Ashwagandha: 600mg (KSM-66)21
• Maca: 200mg (10:1 extract)22
• Vitamin A: 750mcg23
• Vitamin D: 1,000 IU24
• Vitamin K2: 75mcg25
• Zinc: 25mg citrate5
• Copper: 300mcg26
• Selenium: 20mcg27
• Black pepper extract: 5mg (BioPerine)28

You could also look at the effective testosterone-boosting ingredients in Total-T — boron and Tesnor — and try to get them for less by buying them individually. Boron supplements are relatively easy to come by, and Nugenix uses boron glycinate, which we’ve seen in 10mg doses for as little as $0.04 per dose. So, the real expense comes from Tesnor, as it’s a branded extract that’s hard to find on its own. It’s more often included in other T-booster complexes.

One of the simplest such products we found was Testosterone Elite from Life Extension, which combines a 400mg dose of Tesnor (the same dose as in Total-T) with 275mg of luteolin. Luteolin is an isoflavonoid that’s been shown to stimulate testosterone production in in vitro studies, but human or animal studies showing the same are lacking.29 Fortunately, a study in children taking 100mg per 10kg of body weight resulted in no adverse effects.30

So, if you don’t consider the luteolin content, you’re still getting a month’s worth of Tesnor for $42. Add $10 for 240 pills of 10mg boron, and you’re paying about $44 for the same effect on your testosterone levels you would be getting from Total-T at $70. Of course, for $3 more per month at the highest subscription level, you could get Innerbody Testosterone Support and its eight relevant, testosterone-boosting ingredients.

Athletic performance

Supplements to improve athletic performance are even more abundant than testosterone boosters. Some are designed to give you more energy or power in the gym. Others are intended to help you recover more quickly between workouts, so you can hit the gym harder with less downtime.

We’ve put considerable effort into identifying the best recovery supplements and the best muscle-building stacks on the market, but there are also more niche supplements like essential amino acids, branched-chain amino acids, L-citrulline supplements, and nitric oxide boosters.

If you’re looking to throw the kitchen sink at it, muscle-building stacks are likely the way to go. Many contain pre-workout drinks to boost performance energy, as well as protein supplements for recovery and muscle protein synthesis.

Check out our guide to the best muscle-building stacks for more.