Testosterone is a hormone produced primarily in the testicles for men, the ovaries, and the adrenal glands for women.
Testosterone is a steroid hormone necessary for enhanced libido, energy, immune function, and protection against osteoporosis.
It is essential to the development of vigorous growth and masculine characteristics.
For women, testosterone comes in much smaller amounts.
This hormone also plays a crucial role in your:
- Muscle mass and bones
- Facial and pubic hair
- Body’s development of deeper voice
- Sex drive
- Mood and quality of life
- Verbal memory, and
- Contemplate ability.
Testosterone production increases about 30 times more during adolescence and early adulthood.
After early adulthood, it’s natural for levels to drop each year slightly. Your body may see a 1% decline after you’re 30 years old.
As people age, a decline in testosterone production is generally experienced, and the lack of production of testosterone in men is known as low testosterone.
Low testosterone levels result from the inability of the testes to produce adequate quantities of testosterone.
This development affects the whole body system and causes many physiologic, chemical, and hormonal changes.
Deficient levels of testosterone in men also increase the risk of obesity and heart attack.
Maintaining proper amounts of testosterone in the body is essential to sustain overall health and well-being.
People can improve testosterone levels by changing their lifestyles, improving their diet, and including exercise programs in their daily lives.
Natural Ways to Increase Testosterone Levels
- Maintain a well-balanced diet
- Lose weight/Weight management
- Exercise and Physical activity
- Sleep more
- Reduce stress
- Vitamins and supplements
- Avoid testosterone lowering chemicals
- Have more sex
Maintain A Well-Balanced Diet
Diet plays a prominent role in the aspect of maintaining optimal testosterone levels.
As we all know, a well-balanced diet is essential for all human beings to sustain a quality life.
A balanced diet helps keep our body healthy by providing all the required vitamins, minerals, and nutrients to function correctly. It contains several kinds of foods in specific quantities and proportions.
A proper diet helps to maintain overall health, including both physical and mental health.
It can also help remove several diseases and health complications, maintain body weight, provide energy, and improve brain functions.
If our body is missing the proper amount of nutrients it needs, we can build up several deficiencies.
These deficiencies can lead to all sorts of health problems- for example, cardiovascular disease, problems with the immune system, severity of obesity, diabetes, hypertension, depression, and even cancer.
There are seven essential factors for a balanced diet: protein, fat, vitamins, carbs, minerals, fiber, and water.
Poor nutrition can cause numerous diseases and can also create a hormonal imbalance.
To avoid risk, add some essential sources of vitamins, minerals, dietary fiber, plant protein, and antioxidants in your food groups.
Here are some food groups to include, which may increase testosterone production:
- Oysters
- Pomegranate juice
- Beef/Red meat
- Beans
- Celery
- Egg yolks
- Coconut and olive oil
- Foods that contain vitamin D
- Nuts
- Blue cheese
Food groups to avoid that may decrease your average testosterone production:
- Soy foods or soy products
- Mint
- Licorice root
- Vegetable oils
- Carbohydrates and sugar
- Processed foods
- Flaxseed
- Nuts
- Alcohol
Avoid Drugs and Alcohol
Excessive drinking, smoking, and unhealthy diet may damage the testes and lower testosterone production.
Alcohol can also cause low testosterone levels due to the effects it has on the body, including causing hormonal reactions and cell damage.
Lose Weight/Weight Management
The research found that men with excessive weight are mostly linked to lower levels of testosterone.
If you gain weight, your testosterone production drops, but if you lose weight, testosterone production increases.
As people age, especially the belly fat increases and weight gain is experienced. These are associated with chronic diseases such as heart diseases, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, hypertension, insulin resistance, and colon cancer.
Losing weight can be very beneficial for our overall health, including testosterone production.
It helps decrease the risk and complications of several diseases, including diabetes, heart/cardiovascular disease, certain cancers, stroke, sleep apnea, and osteoarthritis.
Losing weight can also get you better sleep, manage stress, better hormonal balance, Improve sex drive, lower blood pressure, improve cholesterol levels, improve mood, reduced joint and back pain.
Regular exercise and a well-balanced diet can help in maintaining body weight.
Exercise and Physical Activity
According to studies and research, any exercise can increase testosterone levels.
Exercise can be beneficial to men with various conditions; this helps prevent the most common diseases that men are most likely to die from, heart disease, and cancer, including low testosterone.
Not all exercises do work in the same way, nor does it affect T levels in the same way.
Moreover, if you’re trying to increase your testosterone levels, you may want to add other T level-boosting activities to your exercise program.
There are several benefits of exercise like:
- Helps in weight loss or maintain weight
- Reduce the risk of chronic heart disease
- Increase energy levels
- Manage sugar and insulin levels
- It gives you relaxation with quality sleep and much more.
There are two types of best exercises to increase testosterone production.
- Resistance Training
- High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
Resistance Training
Resistance training is a form of physical activity or exercise that improves muscle mass, muscle strength, and endurance by making your muscles work against any weight or force.
The research found that resistance training is especially helpful for men and is proven to help increase both short and long term testosterone levels.
Exercise like weightlifting is the best type of activity to boost testosterone levels.
There are different types of resistance training include:
Free weights, weight machines, medicine/weighted balls, resistance bands, own bodyweight work, or any other object that causes the muscles to contract.
Some exercises include squats, deadlifts, lunges, pull-ups, pull down, bent over row, push-ups, bench press, and similar activities.
Benefits Of Resistance Training
- Increases muscle mass
- Increases self-esteem
- Improves muscle strength and tone
- Improves stamina
- Reduces depression and anxiety
- Improves heart health
- It also improves mental health and much more.
High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
HIIT is another proven way to boost testosterone in men and is considered as the most popular exercise technique nowadays.
HIIT, the short form of High-Intensity Interval Training, refers to a physical activity consisting of short, intense bursts (short bursts of arduous work) altered with quick intervals (rest).
This means they can start slow and become faster from one exercise to another. You’ll need to push yourself to the maximum during every set.
Generally, cardiovascular activities and strength training are combined to create an adaptable high-intensity interval training workout.
These are some HIIT workout exercises you can add to your list, including biking, sprints, burpees, rope jump, squat to overhead press, kettlebell swings, Tabata, and bodyweight exercises like push-ups, squats, squat jumps, and bear crawls.
Benefits of HIIT Training
- Improves heart health and reduce blood pressure
- Burn calories and increase fat loss
- Strengthen & tone your muscle
- Increase muscle mass
- Reduced blood sugar
Don’t Overtrain
Exercise and other physical activities are proven to show measurable improvements in testosterone levels.
However, these activities should be done correctly to avoid over-training.
Over-training causes fatigue and diminishes sterility, and it temporarily reduces sperm quality and quantity.
These happen because the body literally “kills” itself during exercise to build and improve the shape and needs rest to attain healthy cell development.
Intense physical activities may reduce the level of hormones in the bloodstream that affects sperm production. These sperm levels return to nearly normal after about three days.
Different studies added that drinking coffee after a few hours of training may protect sperm quality because of the antioxidants in caffeine.
Sleep More
Most of the people nowadays are sleep deprived or don’t get sufficient sleep due to stress, depression, workloads, or maybe some other reasons, which can adversely affect overall health.
Our body produces most of the testosterone needed while we are in sleep.
But if you are not getting enough sleep, our physique increases fat gain, which may result in a decrease in testosterone production.
There are several benefits of good night sleep:
- Improves mental health
- Maintains weight
- Improves brain memory
- Healthy heart
- Improves immune system
- Gives strength
- Reduce stress
- Lower blood pressure
- Boost mood
Lack of adequate sleep can cause numerous health issues.
It also affects the production of many chemicals and hormones that the body needs to function correctly, including testosterone.
A study found that sleeping only 5 hours at night may reduce testosterone production by 15% in men.
Remember: Don’t sleep less than seven hours or more than 9 hours. Sleeping less or more are both associated with adverse health outcomes.
Research suggests that sleeping seven to nine hours at night is highly beneficial for mental, physical, and overall health, including testosterone levels.
Here are some essential tips to get better and deeper sleep:
- Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day.
- Don’t take a long nap in the daytime.
- Get regular exercise
- Avoid caffeine and alcohol before sleep.
- Avoid nicotine.
Reduce Stress
Did you know stress kills testosterone?
The research found that long-term chronic stress is hazardous and can lead to many issues in the human body.
When you are stressed, your body produces more cortisol.
In short, stress raises the level of the hormone cortisol – a steroid hormone that can increase fat deposition, resulting in more conversion of testosterone to estrogen.
Elevated cortisol impacts negatively by decreasing testosterone levels.
Cortisol can quickly reduce testosterone production.
These hormones work entirely in the opposite manner: when testosterone level goes up, the cortisol level comes down, and when cortisol level goes up, the testosterone level comes down.
There are also some side effects of high cortisol.
These can increase food intake, excessive weight gain, and store harmful body fat around your organs, which can negatively impact your testosterone levels.
Here are some tips to keep your stress away:
- Keep a positive attitude.
- Take a break from the stressor.
- Smile and laugh.
- Eat a well-balanced diet.
- Try meditation or yoga
- Deep breathing
- Be assertive instead of aggressive.
- Exercise daily
- Learn to manage your time more effectively.
- Make time for hobbies, interests, and relaxation.
- Get enough rest and sleep.
- Don’t rely on alcohol, drugs to reduce stress.
- Get social support by spending enough time with those you enjoy.
Vitamins and Supplements
Several supplements have been shown to benefit testosterone production. But, not all of them are adequately proven or researched.
Research and studies have found and proven that mostly Vitamin D, Zinc, and Magnesium helps in testosterone production and can take it to the optimal level.
Vitamin D
Vitamin D plays a significant role in increasing testosterone levels. Our body can naturally make plenty of vitamin D from the sun or sunlight.
Vitamin D deficiency is rising fast because people spend most of their time indoors while spending less and less time outdoors.
When we do finally get some sun, we use various creams and sunscreen, which prevents the sun from reaching our skin to enrich Vitamin D production.
Avoid using this substance while getting your skin some sunlight.
Limit the exposure and overhit to avoid the burning of your skin – skin cancer is assuredly not helpful for testosterone levels.
If you’re not getting enough sun, you may have a vitamin D deficiency, which may contribute to low T levels.
Getting at least 15 minutes of direct sunshine each day can also keep vitamin D levels managed.
But if you think you need more vitamin D, you may need to complement your production with the help of foods or supplement it with the pill or booster to boost your testosterone levels.
Your daily dose of vitamin D comes from several foods such as mushrooms, egg yolks, beef liver, and cheese.
From fatty fish like tuna, salmon, mackerel, herring, and sardines
From fortified foods and juices like orange juice, dairy products, soy milk, and cereals products
Studies suggest that supplementing 2000–3000 IU of vitamin D every day is probably a good idea.
For best results, take vitamin D3, which is more active than D2. Make sure you talk to your doctor before you take any vitamin D supplement.
Zinc
Zinc is a dietary mineral that plays a vital role in regulating or boosting testosterone levels.
It only helps people with deficiency, but these could be you – zinc is lost through sweat, so people like athletes, physically hard-working people, or who exercise a lot are more likely to be deficient.
Zinc deficiency is linked to hypogonadism in men, a condition where the sex glands produce little or no hormones.
A study suggests that zinc and vitamin B supplements increase sperm quality by 74%.
Zinc is perhaps even more important than vitamin D for maximizing testosterone production.
The best dietary sources of zinc are animal products like meat, dairy, and eggs, followed by grains, nuts, seeds, and legumes.
Oysters offer the highest amount of zinc per serving of any food. Other zinc-rich foods include lean meats and spinach.
Zinc may also reduce the production or blocks the aromatase action, the enzyme that converts testosterone to estrogen.
Consuming high doses can be harmful and may cause nausea and vomiting.
High doses of supplementary zinc can irritate the intestines and cause liver and kidney damage. Over time, high doses of zinc can also lead to a copper deficiency.
Don’t pair zinc with minerals like calcium, magnesium, and iron in combined doses because these minerals will compete for absorption and limit the overall effectiveness of the supplements.
Magnesium
Magnesium is another dietary mineral essential to our health. It is necessary for both optimal sleep and the production of testosterone.
Also, involved in the development of over 300 different bodily processes.
Magnesium also acts like zinc, as it is lost through sweat and is highly recommended for athletes and physically hard-working professionals.
It is possible to correct magnesium deficiency through a healthy diet.
Food that primarily comprises high magnesium levels are spinach, collard greens, brussels sprouts, kale, swiss chard, watercress, and most types of fish, nuts, beans, bananas, grapes, and raisins.
It also includes cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, pumpkin seeds, flax seeds, and sunflower seeds.
Supplementation of magnesium can help return testosterone levels to normal if the cause of the decrease is a deficiency.
Studies suggest that taking magnesium supplements when deficient will restore testosterone levels to normal.
But if you are not deficient, then supplementation will not raise testosterone levels above normal.
A significant increase in testosterone is seen to people who exercise, rather than people who don’t.
Also, there are several other supplements to boost testosterone levels, including, D-Aspartic Acid, Creatine, Tribulus Terrestris, Fenugreek, DHEA, and Ashwagandha.
Remember, if you are not following a proper diet, not exercising, not getting enough sleep, then no supplement can’t help you increase in testosterone production or optimal testosterone level.
Avoid Testosterone Lowering Chemicals
In this modern world, people generally use several foods and products that contain estrogen-mimicking substances known as xenoestrogens. Chemical that emulates estrogen in the human body.
The use of too much estrogen imitating chemicals results in a decrease in testosterone levels in men.
These chemicals are almost found and used everywhere in our daily lives, including food and shelters.
As these are available everywhere, we cannot avoid these substances altogether, but we can take prerequisite measures to exclude them as much as possible.
Here are some of the chemicals to avoid:
Phthalates
This chemical is used to soften plastic to result in flexibility, durability, and longevity.
Found in plastics, automotive plastics, coatings, lubricants, binders, and vinyl flooring.
Also, found in many hygiene products such as detergents, soaps and shampoos, deodorants, perfumes, hair sprays, plastic bags, and food packaging.
Bisphenol A – BPA
Found in plastics, cans, water bottles, containers, etc.
BPA is used to make thermal paper to produce receipts, tickets, mostly all the printed documents.
Toilet paper also contains BPA.
Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA)
Used in water- and grease-resistant food coatings and non-stick cookware.
Organophosphates
These are mostly found in Pesticides, Herbicides & Fertilizers.
They can be found in non-organic vegetables and fruits. Also found in processed foods and packages, including bread, chocolate, ice cream, and all kinds of frozen foods.
So, it is highly recommended to eat organic when possible, to avoid exposure to them.
Have More Sex
A low level of testosterone in your body may cause some problems with sex drive and performance.
The study suggests that having sex can increase testosterone production, but having frequent sex may reduce testosterone levels.
Regular sexual activity can give a boost to both testosterone and estrogen levels.
Here Are Some Surprising Benefits of Having Sex:
- It makes the immune system stronger.
- Gives relief from headache
- Lowers blood pressure
- Increase your libido
- Lowers risk of strokes and heart attacks
- Lessens pain
- Improves sleep
- Reduce stress
- Improves women’s bladder control
Conclusion:
People can also improve testosterone levels by seeking available treatments to help this deficiency.
While low testosterone levels pose a potential threat to the well-being and health of many older men, treatments like testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) can be used to regain the testosterone levels.
By conducting a series of tests, the doctor will determine if your testosterone level has declined.
If it has, the doctor will then recommend treatments, such as testosterone replacement therapy.
There are different ways that testosterone replacement therapy can be done.
There is the injection method, the oral capsules method, the patches method, and the implant method.
Professionals in testosterone replacement therapy will let you choose which method is right for you and how you are most comfortable.
Individuals are encouraged to talk to doctors or other medical specialists and are discouraged from buying testosterone under the black market.
