It’s been a bad week for 45-year-old influencer Brian Johnson, aka Liver King. On his More Plates More Dates YouTube channel, Derek Cole shared leaked emails indicating that Liver King—who previously claimed to have never taken steroids—wasn’t so natty after all.
On Friday, in a video on his YouTube channel titled simply “I Lied,” Liver King confessed to his fanbase of ‘primals’ that he was “embarrassed and ashamed” for claiming he never used anabolic steroids.
After taking a deep breath, Liver King locked eyes with the camera and dropped a truth bomb most people found anything but shocking. “Yes, I’ve done steroids and I am on steroids monitored and managed by a trained hormone clinician.”
It was the last part of that sentence that made our small Grinchy hearts grow two sizes. Because we know that hormone replacement therapy can be incredibly beneficial to men who have clinical deficiencies.
After a cringey humblebrag that he was already rich before creating his animal-pelt-wearing persona, Liver King says he developed his offal-chomping persona and ancestral tenants to bring awareness to high suicide rates. And to help men overcome issues like depression, autoimmune disease, anxiety, infertility — problems that can be related to hormone imbalances including testosterone deficiencies. (If you want to read about other red flags for low T, we’ve got a whole article on them.)
KNOW YOUR T
Liver King says that in 2021 when he was 43 years old, “I didn’t feel 100 percent, physically or cognitively.” He says he went to “get monitored and managed by a trained hormone clinician to see what the fuck was going on with my life.”
He doesn’t say which clinician he worked with or if tests showed that he had any hormone imbalances, but that his “levels remained below the normal level” while taking peptides. He says he added “pharmaceutical-grade growth hormone and I finally found success in managing therapeutic levels in the normal range.”
Does Liver King Have Low T?
We don’t know. He doesn’t specify which “levels” he’s talking about in the video, or say that he has low T.
But it’s not outside the realm of reason to suspect it could be his testosterone levels, since he’s taking 0.66 cc’s—roughly 125 mg—of testosterone per week now.
And because the timeline would make sense. Men’s testosterone levels begin to decline at the rate of about 1 percent per year starting in their mid-thirties and up to 40% of men over 45 are testosterone deficient.
Men with diagnosed testosterone deficiencies (if you’re curious what yours are, you can order a test from Hone, which can be taken in the comfort and privacy of your own home) often find relief from symptoms of low T after starting testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) which involves taking therapeutic doses of the hormone under careful physician monitoring.
In other words, it’s done in collaboration with a hormone specialist—just like Liver King advocates for in his video.
What’s Next for Liver King?
Going forward, Liver King says he’s going to do “better” and be more open.
“I think there’s a time and a place for pharmacological intervention monitored and managed by a trained hormone physician,” he says, adding that “hormone replacement has helped [him] in a profound and significant way.”
Yas, King.
