What is Boron?

Boron is a trace mineral that is a micronutrient, it is extremely difficult to get in our diet from food and would require you to eat over 22 red apples or 215g of almonds to get 5mg of boron.

It is necessary in plant, animal and human health that carries a number of benefits including; bone health, reducing inflammation, boosting magnesium and vitamin D absorption, but most prominent in relation to our use it has been shown to increase free testosterone levels.

What are the benefits?

  • Increases free testosterone levels
  • Improves cognitive function
  • Helps in bone growth and vitamin D levels

Increases free testosterone levels

After supplementation of boron it was found that after one week free testosterone levels increased from an average of 11.83 pg/ml to 15.18 pg/ml and significant decreases in E2 which dropped from 42.33 pg/ml to 25.81 pg/ml. It could be inferred the decrease of E2 is due to a higher rate of conversion of total testosterone to free testosterone.

The majority of testosterone molecules are predominately bound sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) and are not bioavailable. Therefore the increase of unbound free testosterone can have beneficial effects, such as an increase of SHBG [1].

Improves cognitive function

Following supplementation of around 3.25mg boron compared to 0.25mg it was found that the higher supplementation group of boron performed better in various cognitive and psychomotor tasks. It resulted in a trend towards less activity at lower frequencies and greater activity at higher frequencies of the dominant frequency spectrum [3].

As a result this included better performance in tasks such as hand-eye coordination, attention, perception, encoding and short term memory [2].

Helps in bone growth and vitamin D levels

Boron supplementation has been linked to improving the central nervous system and immune organs and it plays an important role in osteogenesis. By influencing the production and activity of steroid hormone it has been shown to help in preventing calcium loss and bone demineralisation [1]. Boron also plays an important role in interacting with magnesium, vitamin D and calcium, all of which play an important role in the development of bones and maintaining the strength of bones [3].

More specifically, it can be seen that boron can help increase serum levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D3. Following 63 days of a low boron diet followed by 49 days of 3mg of boron the level of vitamin D3 rose from an average of 44.9nM to 62.4 nM, a 39% increase [1]. It could be proposed that boron suppresses the level of activity of 24-hydroxylase which is primarily responsible for the catabolism of vitamin D3. It may improve production of 25-hydroxylase, which is responsible for activating vitamin D3 [4].

References

[1]https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4712861/

[2]https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/abs/10.1289/ehp.94102s765

[3]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323792821_The_Physiological_Role_of_Boron_on_Health

[4]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15504575/