When it comes to hormones, testosterone is considered the king hormone.
In men, testosterone is produced mainly in the testicles. Women produce testosterone in the ovaries, although in much smaller amounts.Testosterone production in the body begins significantly increasing in the late teens and starts to decline after the age of thirty.
In case you don’t already know, testosterone is the primary sex hormone, and it has a huge effect on your muscle mass and bone density, body fat levels, mood, and red-blood cell production.
Low testosterone levels in men can cause a wide variety of symptoms including weight gain, low sex drive, low energy, depression, and low self-esteem.
How to Boost Your Testosterone: Step 1 – Reduce Your Stress Levels
Research has shown that being chronically stressed out increases your cortisol levels. Cortisol is a stress hormone that your body releases in small amounts during the day in response to different stimuli.
However, chronically elevated cortisol levels can quickly cause your testosterone levels to plummet. Testosterone and cortisol levels tend to seesaw, when one goes up the other one comes down. When you are stressed out, you crave more food due to your cortisol levels being elevated, which in turn will cause you to gain weight.
Weight gain from elevated cortisol causes abdominal fat accumulation known as visceral fat, which is the fat that surrounds your vital organs.
Visceral fat is the most dangerous fat to carry as it not only reduces your testosterone levels, but it significantly elevates your risk of developing heart disease and diabetes and raises your LDL, the bad cholesterol.
Whenever possible, eliminate stressful situations and people from your life. If you cannot eliminate stress at work, ensure your diet is very consistent along with your sleep.
Following the Body Transformation Diet outlined in this book will ensure you are getting ample vitamins and minerals that help reduce the effects of stress.
If your job causes you lots of stress, I recommend you supplement with a high-quality B vitamin complex product. B vitamins can help reduce stress by balancing neurotransmitters in your brain. Vitamins B6, B12, B9, B3 and B1 are important to keeping your nervous system healthy.
How to Boost Your Testosterone: Step 2 – Get Plenty of Sunshine (Vitamin D)
Vitamin D is known as the sunshine vitamin. Along with having numerous health benefits including helping with weight loss, it may also work as a natural testosterone booster according to a study done by German researchers.
Ideally, you’ll want to get at least twenty minutes of sun exposure per day to optimize your body’s Vitamin D levels. Sadly, almost half of the US population is deficient in Vitamin D, and an even higher percentage of US adults lack sufficient levels of this critical vitamin.
To ensure your blood vitamin D levels are where they need to be for testosterone boosting and health, supplement with at least 3,000 IU of Vitamin D per day.
How to Boost Your Testosterone: Step 3 – Minimize Your Exposure to Estrogen-Like Compounds
Estrogen is a hormone that reduces the amount of free testosterone available in your body. Being exposed to products that contain estrogen-like compounds has been shown to lower your testosterone levels.
Estrogen-like compounds come from BPA, parabens, and other chemicals found mostly in plastic containers and packaging.These chemicals seep their way into your food and get absorbed directly into your bloodstream with food.
To minimize your exposure to estrogen-like compounds, do not cook your food in plastic containers and don’t re-use plastic water bottles and gallons. For example, if you are re-heating food that you stored in a plastic container, do not re-heat it inside a plastic lunch box or storage container.
Remove all food from the plastic lunch box or container and use a paper plate or china ware when using a microwave.
I recommend avoiding microwaves altogether when cooking and re-heating food as there is strong evidence that shows eating microwaved food causes food molecules to mutate and become carcinogenic, which can lead to cancer.
What’s more, microwaving food has also been shown to dramatically reduce the nutrient content of vegetables and other foods.
How to Boost Your Testosterone: Step 4 – Avoid Excessive Alcohol
While small to moderate amounts of alcohol consumption has been shown to have a positive impact on your health and longevity, heavy alcohol consumption will quickly suppress your body’s natural testosterone levels.
If you drink often, limit your alcohol consumption to one to two drinks per day. Even better, cut alcohol from your daily diet and only have it once or twice a week.
Keep in mind that all alcoholic beverages have calories, so limiting your consumption will only help to speed up fat loss.
How To Boost Your Testosterone: Step 5 – Don’t Shy Away from Meat, Eggs and Butter
Just like lean red meat, eggs are an excellent source of saturated fat and cholesterol which help boost your natural testosterone levels.
Go with grass-fed butter and organic cage-free eggs. The way you prepare beef and eggs will either contribute to their positive effects on your health or diminish their health benefits.
Avoid frying eggs, even in olive oil as frying adds extra fat calories that you don’t need. The same goes for grass-fed beef. Trim as much visible fat as possible before cooking, and grill, broil, or roast beef at a medium heat.
Avoid adding any oils or high calorie sauces to the pan. Even the leanest beef will release some of its fat during cooking, which ends up at the bottom of the pan and gets re-absorbed into the meat.
How to Boost Your Testosterone: Step 6 – Supplement with Fenugreek
It’s commonly used as a spice and sometimes found in personal-care products such as shampoo and soap.
Fenugreek is a good source of several important nutrients, but its beneficial effects are used primarily for testosterone- and libido-boosting purposes.
In one study, researchers provided 500 mg of fenugreek per day to thirty college-aged men. The men combined fenugreek with an eight-week weight-lifting program and performed four training sessions per week, with half of them receiving the supplement.
When researchers compared the fenugreek-supplement group to the non-supplement group, they noted a slight decline in testosterone in the non-supplement group and an increase in testosterone in the fenugreek group.
The fenugreek-supplement group also experienced a two percent reduction in body fat.
In another study lasting six weeks, researchers provided thirty men with 600 mg of fenugreek per day to monitor changes in sexual function and libido. What they found is that most participants saw an increase in strength and improved sexual function.
While more research is still needed on the effects of fenugreek supplementation and testosterone levels, the research that’s already been performed looks very promising.
When combined with a sound whole-foods diet along with the aforementioned testosterone-optimizing steps, fenugreek has a lot of potential to help further boost your testosterone levels. Take 500-700mg of fenugreek extract once a day before or with a meal.
Although fenugreek is safe to take in small amounts in supplement form, you may experience side effects with higher doses. You can increase the dose to 900mg-1000mg once a day if you do not experience any side effects during the first two to three weeks of supplementation at 500mg to 700mg daily.
How to Boost Your Testosterone: Step 7 – Supplement with D-Aspartic Acid (D-AA)
D-Aspartic Acid or D-AA, is an amino acid that research has demonstrated to have impressive testosterone-boosting effects. Studies have found that D-AA, in supplement form, increased testosterone and luteinizing hormone in just twelve days.
Luteinizing hormone or LH, is a hormone that is responsible for controlling testosterone levels in men. A study from the University of Naples in Italy found that testosterone levels increased about forty percent in men given approximately three grams of D-AA for twelve days, compared to a placebo (fake D-AA). LH increased by twenty-five percent.
What’s interesting about these findings and what makes D-AA a promising testosterone booster is that the study participants were young males between the ages of twenty-six and thirty-seven,
D-AA is a promising supplement for boosting testosterone; however, more research is needed before it gets a strong recommendation.
Consider taking D-Aspartic Acid if your blood levels of testosterone measure below average and you are following all the testosterone-boosting steps already outlined.
Optimal dosing is three to five grams of D-Aspartic Acid per day with breakfast on non-workout days, and thirty to forty-five minutes before training on workout days.
While D-Aspartic acid is considered safe to take in the short term, you should not take it for longer than ninety days as it lacks research on long-term safety.
If you experience headaches or mood swings or a sudden onset of acne while taking D-AA, lower the dose to one to two grams per day and gradually, over the course of two to three weeks, increase your dose to 3g per day.
Unfortunately, many sports and performance enhancement supplement manufacturers use fillers and chemicals to extend the shelf life of their products, and these additives can be responsible for side effects like headaches and even mood swings.
Carefully read the ingredients list of D-AA supplements when shopping to ensure there are no chemicals or fillers in your D-AA supplement. D-AA capsules usually don’t contain any fillers or additives and thus are the best option compared to D-AA powders.