Getting Value for Money?

Interest rates are up, prices are up. Two things that remain important:

1. Your Health
2. Making your dollars go further.

So how do we compare?

T Boosters

Prices are up! Regulation?

We reviewed T Boosters across price and ingredients. We compared these T Booster prices and ingredients from Sept 2021 to Oct 2022, and recently updated pricing for Sept 2023.

This is not about saying if these are good or bad, but key questions we believe should be asked include:

Safety questions:

1. For how long can I safely take these ingredients in these amounts every day?
2. What is the basis for claims to support the ingredients rather than statements on the website? Ideally, there were randomized clinical trials.
3. Is their product registered and subject to a statutory body responsible for consumer safety? If so, is there a registration number?
4. Where is the product made? Where is the registered and certified manufacturing facility located?

Shipping

Finally, beware of pricing in US$ and shipping costs to Australia. Of the 6 T Boosters reviewed, all were shipped from overseas, 2 offered free shipping, and the rest averaged $22 for an estimated 5–7-day delivery time. Those with free shipping were also 43% more expensive than those without.

The T Boosters we included were: 

Observations from T Booster Research:

• None of the T Boosters we reviewed appeared to be registered with the TGA or Therapeutic Goods Administration of Australia. We are happy to be corrected on this.
• Some are "Made in the USA", most we could not establish where they were actually made.
• Most of the claims made, including "guarantees" would NOT generally be allowed in Australia.
• Some ingredients lack "evidence" of actually boosting testosterone.
• Some we could NOT find the list of ingredients or could not find the amounts of the ingredients as is required in Australia.
• Some had ingredients up to 5X the RDI* allowed in Australia.
• Most required 4 capsules a day, the average was 3.83 capsules.
• When we could establish the ingredient list, most had between 9 and 12 ingredients. One had completely changed the product but not the brand.

* Recommended Daily Intake

T Booster pricing

• The most expensive T Booster was $6 per serve, down from $9.13, but this was an outlier and discounted, the average for the T Boosters was around $3.56 per serve up from $3, and the average excluding the $6 standout product was $3.16 up from $2.84 per serve, and these prices EXCLUDED any shipping costs.
• The increase in prices from September 2022 averaged 18.8%, with only 2 products dropping prices. 2 products increased prices and 3 remained static.

Testosterone & Immunity Formula

Old Bull Health's Testosterone & Immunity Formula is not referred to as T Booster and is not advertised as such or claimed to be. In line with Australian requirements, we make proven claims based on included ingredients that it can support testosterone levels amongst other things.

Our product and none of the products reviewed include the testosterone hormone.

The average cost per serving of Testosterone & Immunity Formula is $1.67 per serve. It is a powder format that mixes with water, no capsules. Testosterone & Immunity Formula pricing has remained constant since launch despite increased input costs.

Of the 30 ingredients across the T Boosters reviewed (They all do not include all 30), 11 were included in at least 2 or more products, of which 7 ingredients are included in Testosterone & Immunity Formula. At least two of the ingredients were not included, as we did not believe there was sufficient evidence to support their claims.

Cost of buying similar vitamins

What about just buying the vitamins separately?

We benchmarked the ingredients of our Testosterone & Immunity formula by ingredient for brands sold in Australia. Given their size relative to ours we decided they would remain nameless, but the bottom line is the outcome was a saving of 39%. 

How we did it

1. We ignored sales prices as these can change weekly and be different by retailer.
2. We used one of the largest retail pharmacy chains' websites for consistency.
3. We used the search function, searching for the key ingredient. We then sorted by "Lowest Price" first and selected the first product in capsule form regardless of brand, which had a single ingredient or close thereto.
4. We ignored "out of stock" items of which there were many.
5. Many products are sold with anywhere from 30 to 250 capsules per bottle. We adjusted them all to a 30-day or 1 monthly supply.
6. Where the amount of the ingredient was higher, or less than that in Testosterone & Immunity Formula, we pro-rated the amount. For example, 80mg of ingredient A against a product which had 100mg of ingredient A - we reduced to 80% of the price.
7. Where there was more than 1 ingredient, and we could not locate a single ingredient product, (2 products) we adjusted the price by the number of ingredients and used the assumption that all ingredients contributed to the price equally, which is not ideal, but what we did to be consistent.
8. We ignored multivitamins, as most had 25+ ingredients, and in small amounts.
9. You can find the full list of ingredients in the Testosterone & immunity Formula on the product page.

How Testosterone & Immunity Formula compared?

* Excluded delivery

Summary

Based on the above benchmarking, Testosterone & Immunity Formula is great value and fully transparent in terms of claims, ingredients, and registration.

Look after your body and take care of what you put into that same body.