Low testosterone is a very common problem among men over the age of 30. In fact, every one in four guys above 30 suffers from low testosterone levels. This should not be taken lightly, as lack of testosterone doesn’t only affect your muscle growth. It can also trigger a shoal of other health related problems, and affect your lifestyle.
Some of the more usual issues resulting from low testosterone levels are: lack of s*x drive, weak bones, erectile dysfunctions, and obesity.
However, this problem is not irreversible. There are thing or two you can do in order to bring your T-levels back to normal. Even more, some of these testosterone boosting techniques are in fact completely ordinary things that any man should do anyway.
But before we start treating the problem, there’s one thing that we should learn. How to identify the low testosterone problem? Fatigue, low energy levels, irritability, mood swings, increased body fat are some of the common symptoms of low testosterone. Remember that having one of them doesn’t necessarily mean that you too fall into this lot. However, the presence of two or more of these symptoms should ring your alarm bell.
Before rushing to the doctor’s office and turning to your medicine cabinet, we advise you to try some of these natural ways for boosting your testosterone levels. Yet, if the problem persists even after you’ve tried these remedies, you should seek medical advice.
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Perform Compound Lifts
Lifting heavy is possibly the best remedy for getting your testosterone levels back in line. And nothing does the trick like the good old compound lifts: squats, deadlifts, bench press etc.. These exercises activate large muscle groups, thus stimulating the testosterone production process.
The mechanics behind this trick is fairly simple. By activating larger muscle group they increase the stress on the muscle tissue. This releases a greater amount of testosterone that is used by your body.
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Increase Fats and Cholesterol Intake
For some of you this may come as a surprise, but it’s been scientifically proven that you need fats for proper functioning of your body. For beginning, cholesterol triggers the testosterone production. Not to mention that it’s crucial for maintaining your brain healthy and improving your cognitive functions. Although this does not mean that we should go on stuffing ourselves with cholesterol and fats, more and more studies have linked them with proper testosterone production.
So, instead on cutting down the fats intake by eating cereals and bagels for breakfast, you can eat a slice of bacon and some eggs. And if you are more for some meat-free source of healthy cholesterol you can try getting it from nuts or avocados.
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Balance Your Vitamin and Mineral Intake
Vitamin and mineral imbalance is often a cause for low testosterone levels. This is especially caused by lack of vitamin D, magnesium and zinc. Each of these micronutrients can be found in different food sources, except for the vitamin D, which primary source is direct sunlight exposure.
However, sometimes this is still not enough, especially when it comes to the vitamin D3, which is crucial for the testosterone production.
As all three micronutrients are extremely important for your testosterone production, you can try solving this problem by taking a multivitamin or some supplement that offers enough of them. You should especially pay attention to supplementing vitamin D3 if you’re not getting enough direct sun exposure.
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Sleep More
Although this might sound strange, getting enough sleep will help your body keep those testosterone levels up and running. Think of sleep as cortisol defence mechanism. One of the deadliest enemies of testosterone is cortisol, which inhibits your body from fully utilizing the produced testosterone.
Two factors can be identified as the main culprits for increasing your cortisol production. The first one is stress, the other is insufficient sleep. If you’re not getting at least six hours of sleep every night, you are exposing yourself to this problem. So try to relax, and get some more sleep. According to most researchers, eight hours of quality night sleep is what your body requires to function properly.
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Increase BCAAs Intake
There is a two-fold reason for finding the branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) in many of the pre-workout supplements. First of all, they are known to directly trigger the testosterone production, thus helping you in improving your lifting performances. On top of that, they continue to boost the testosterone production when you are lifting extra.
The BCCAs are not only available in supplements. You can also get them from cheese.
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Reduce Sugar Intake
Greater than normal quantities of sugar wreak havoc on your blood sugar levels leading to increased insulin production. And insulin is absolutely deadly for your testosterone. It has been proven than eating sugar can cause a significant drop of your T-levels just after two hours. Another negative effect of sugar is that it increases your body fat levels, which has also been identified as a reason for low testosterone levels.
