Maca · Lepidium meyenii

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Testosterone & Aging
"Natural testosterone booster, hormone balancer" is maca's loudest claim, and its most solid human trial was designed specifically to test it: it measured testosterone, estradiol and the pituitary hormones that signal the gonads, among others, and concluded that maca does not change blood levels of reproductive hormones. Independent trials in healthy men and postmenopausal women found the same: self-reported scores moved, hormone readings did not.

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What maca is

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Maca is a root vegetable from the high Andes of South America, a relative of broccoli, cabbage and radish. Local people first ate it as food; only much later did anyone put it into capsules and sell it.

The part you eat is its swollen stem-root, buried in the soil. The plant stores a whole growing season's sugars and self-defense chemicals in this underground larder to get through the winter, so it is filling, and it also carries the pungent molecules typical of the cabbage family. As for the name Peruvian ginseng, it is pure marketing: true ginseng belongs to a different plant family and is not related to maca at all.

Every later judgment starts from this one sentence: maca has no known phytoestrogens and no established action on the androgen receptor. It is not a key that fits a hormone lock. How it works, if it works at all, is still unknown today.

Educational content, not medical advice — consult a clinician.

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Maca · Lepidium meyenii

Story

Connected to · 1

contrast · 1

Testosterone & Aging
"Natural testosterone booster, hormone balancer" is maca's loudest claim, and its most solid human trial was designed specifically to test it: it measured testosterone, estradiol and the pituitary hormones that signal the gonads, among others, and concluded that maca does not change blood levels of reproductive hormones. Independent trials in healthy men and postmenopausal women found the same: self-reported scores moved, hormone readings did not.

Read full story

Stop 1/5

What maca is

EVIDENCEREVIEW 1 · MECH 2 · TEXT 1

READ THE ORIGINAL

Maca is a root vegetable from the high Andes of South America, a relative of broccoli, cabbage and radish. Local people first ate it as food; only much later did anyone put it into capsules and sell it.

The part you eat is its swollen stem-root, buried in the soil. The plant stores a whole growing season's sugars and self-defense chemicals in this underground larder to get through the winter, so it is filling, and it also carries the pungent molecules typical of the cabbage family. As for the name Peruvian ginseng, it is pure marketing: true ginseng belongs to a different plant family and is not related to maca at all.

Every later judgment starts from this one sentence: maca has no known phytoestrogens and no established action on the androgen receptor. It is not a key that fits a hormone lock. How it works, if it works at all, is still unknown today.

Educational content, not medical advice — consult a clinician.