I want to take this opportunity to call out some serious dumbasses on this platform.
Not something I do on a regular basis, but if you’re reading this, I may very well be talking to you.
Yesterday, I read close to a thousand comments and tweets responding to Secretary Hegseth’s announcement that soldiers thirty and older will get annual testosterone screening built into the health assessment they already get every year.
Soldiers under thirty can request the same test voluntarily. Screening is mandatory for the older group. Treatment never is. If a doctor calls it a deficiency, TRT will remain the soldier’s choice.
An alarming number of those comments said some version of the exact same beyond idiotic thing: Soldiers don’t need TRT. They need to fix their sleep and get their diet in check and a lot of the people saying this were fitness coaches: Professionals, not bots, not randoms, but people whose entire business is apparently built on understanding physiology, telling their following that a twenty six year old three weeks into a deployment just needs some morning sunlight and a macro tracker.
These men don’t sleep eight consistent hours in a climate controlled bedroom. They don’t hit a sauna after training or book a massage when their shoulders lock up. They don’t get three home cooked meals a day built around their macros. They eat what’s in front of them, sleep when they’re allowed to, and run on a nervous system pushed past normal limits for months at a stretch, under conditions most of the people posting their goofy takes have never come within a mile of.
That’s not a sleep hygiene problem. That’s not a diet problem. That’s a body being asked to operate under sustained physiological siege, and telling those men a green smoothie and a consistent bedtime fixes it is either dishonest or it’s fucking stupid, and I don’t know which one is worse.
If you spent yesterday telling soldiers to skip the bloodwork and get their circadian rhythm in order instead, I’m talking directly to you.
You do not understand hormones. You do not understand what deployment does to a body. You’ve built a following on overly confident nonsense, and it’s time for you to shut the fuck up and let the men actually being asked to fight get the care they need.
And if you think I’m out of line or being too harsh, bite me. Anyone telling soldiers to simply optimize their sleep schedule and get their diet in check is a halfwit.