A report in GQ recently suggests that British men are now having testosterone injected directly into their vocal folds in an attempt to lower the pitch and increase the resonance of their speech. This is the latest frontier of ‘T-maxxing’ – a movement built around optimising male biology through an obsessive regimen of blood tests, supplements and prescription hormones. 

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The treatment is being offered by Chadwan Al Yaghchi, a consultant ENT surgeon at the London Voice and Swallowing Clinic, who says that earlier this year he became the first doctor in the UK to perform the procedure on an otherwise healthy man. He has since treated around 20 men, most of them working in ‘demanding’ professional jobs, including senior positions in finance and property. 

Doctor Al Yaghchi notes that the patients he treats are frequently driven by corporate anxiety: they believe a deeper voice will make them sound more authoritative and give them greater confidence at work – the executive equivalent of stuffing a rolled-up sock down the front of their trousers before a PowerPoint presentation. 

The voice clinic is merely an extreme outpost of a much larger testosterone economy. The testosterone-booster market alone, according to Fortune Business Insights, is projected to exceed $10 billion by 2034. Its business model is brutally simple: take the ordinary anxieties of male life – ageing, fatigue, declining muscle, a faltering libido........

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