OVER THE PAST couple of years, the idea of intentionally maximising your testosterone levels (something once confined to obscure bodybuilding forums and sweaty corners of gyms) has exploded into the mainstream.
Running parallel to looksmaxxing, the trend has found cross-generational acolytes, from chronically online young men to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services. In 2025, Kennedy called low testosterone in men an “existential problem” while claiming that “an American teenager has less testosterone than a 68-year-old man.” In January, the US Department of Agriculture and the HHS updated their dietary guidelines to include recommendations for supporting testosterone health in young men.
Simultaneously, interest in Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT) has skyrocketed. Prescriptions for TRT in the US have risen from less than 1 million in 2000 to nearly 12 million in 2025. It’s no longer a niche therapy – and some of TV’s biggest stars are using it.
Anyone who has watched Prime Video’s hit series Reacher (which just wrapped up its fourth season) will know that the physique of its star is one of the show’s calling cards. Alan Ritchson, who plays the eponymous Jack Reacher, boasts one of the biggest bodies in the business.
The actor has always been large (he stands at 190 centimetres), but he’s gotten even bigger throughout the series. The gains came after a call from Skydance Television, the company that co-produces Reacher. Ritchson revealed in his 2024 Men’s Health cover story that once season one wrapped, the company told him he had lost too much weight.
He tried to keep up with his lifting regime while filming, but he was on set nearly seven days a week. It was demanding on his body. By the end of the first season, he was “utterly fatigued and broken,” and dealing with an injured shoulder. Luckily, there was a full year-and-a-half break between the two seasons.
A few months into that break, Ritchson’s doctor suggested he try TRT. He started the therapy under his doctor’s supervision, and says it has made growing muscle mass much easier. “Getting on testosterone was huge for me,” he told Men’s Health US. “I had none by the time I was done with season one, due to the stress and the fatigue and what I had done to my body. For me, it’s a long game. I want to do Reacher for 15 years… I don’t want to have to have surgery after every season, and testosterone helps.”
He went on to add: “I’m a big advocate of it, especially for people in their forties or above. [Men aren’t] aware that it’s out there, but it could be really life changing. It could be a mood stabiliser for people… it can do a lot more than just help you be buff, but it certainly helped in my journey.”
But just because Ritchson uses TRT, it doesn’t mean he’s putting less effort into his time in the gym. “People can think what they want, but I work out very hard,” he says.
