Can Chugging Raw Eggs Boost Your Testosterone? We Asked the Experts
Jasper Orlando, a young fitness TikToker, lets out a deep breath as he raises a glass of slimy raw eggs to his mouth. The yellow yolks bounce up and down as they glug, glug, glug out of the glass and down his throat. 10 eggs down in approximately three seconds. He winks at the camera. Scroll a little further on TikTok’s “testosterone maxxing” page and another creator calls the same move a “quick late night snack if you want to grow your b@lls”.
It’s grotesque, sure, but also deliberately performative. That’s the point. Videos like this rack up millions of views because they elicit shock. But Orlando says it’s more than that: “I’ve been drinking raw eggs for years long before I did on social media,” he says. He downs 8 to 20 raw eggs a day, depending on how much he’s training, to get a quick hit of protein.
Men have been drawn to raw eggs for decades. “We’ve all seen Rocky,” says a friend when I ask if he’s ever chugged them (the answer was yes). That famous scene where Sylvester Stallone starts his day by downing several eggs straight from the glass inspired bodybuilders and athletes alike to follow suit. “The trend really took off from there in the 1980s, and then picked up again in the mid 2010s, and then resurfaced in 2020,” says Dr. Fady Hannah-Shmouni, MD, endocrinologist and medical director at Eli Health. Even Disney nodded to the trend in the 1991 animated feature Beauty and the Beast, in which the movie’s villain Gaston brags about eating between four to five dozen eggs every morning to get “large.”
Back then, choking down raw eggs without flinching proved you were tough. Plus, they were a cheap protein hit with zero meal prep required. “The general point of it is to consume large amounts of high-quality fats and proteins without feeling very full,” says Orlando. The difference today is that influencers have rebranded it as a way to boost testosterone, tapping into the internet’s hyperfixation with hormones. Orlando himself plastered “TESTOSTERONE MAXXX” over his video, even though he told me there’s little evidence to show that eggs aren’t a sufficient way to increase testosterone levels.
This content sits under the broader umbrella of “testosterone maxxing”—a term used in online communities, especially TikTok and Discord, where teens and young men swap tips for naturally increasing testosterone. In theory, it means sleeping enough, eating consistently, and lifting weights, which all have actual evidence behind them. In practice, it’s a mashup of pseudoscience and viral products that promise hormone optimization. Some influencers are now selling test-maxxing programs, ebooks, and supplement stacks. There’s real business in this because it taps into what Dr. Hannah-Shmouni calls “a combination of fear and wanting to look masculine and healthy, and the desire to seek and achieve health span—the years lived in good health and longevity.” Younger men are more invested in wellness than ever, but in the process many are trying to diagnose themselves with “low T” based on a TikTok symptoms list.
