It is a must for all men, and you, in particular, to continually seek and incorporate ways to naturally increase your testosterone levels into your daily routine, especially as you get older. Testosterone is the vital male sex hormone which is critical for the development and maintenance of our masculine traits. It doesn’t mean women do not also have testosterone, they do, but in significantly smaller amounts.
Among several other important functions in men, testosterone is vital in the regulation of the male sex drive or libido, development, and maintenance of healthy muscle mass and strength, as well as the steady formation of new red blood cells and sperm cells. As you grow older and your body ages, your circulating testosterone blood levels progressively falls, resulting in the gradual loss or impairment of all the favorable effects of testosterone on your body and overall health.
The good news is that this reduction in your testosterone levels is not irreversible; there are now numerous avenues you can explore to help boost your testosterone levels in order that you may maintain your virile masculine traits, strength, and confidence without resorting to drugs. This is why I’ll be sharing a handful of ways to naturally increase your testosterone levels with you in this post. Let’s dive right in.
Eat Well And Maintain A Great Diet
No matter your age, it is always a good advice to keep a balanced, healthy diet. To naturally maintain optimal testosterone levels you have to be a lot more conscious about your food and eating habits.
You’ll be needing a lot more greens in your diet. Not that you’re completely going green, because you’ll still be needing some meat as a source of natural vitamin-D, a very important vitamin for the production of testosterone in the body. For those who are strict vegetarians, there is a way out, you can get yours from protein and vitamin D-rich mushrooms, oysters, and shiitakes.
Apart from greens, you’ll also cut out some fats from your diet, but you’ll still be requiring healthy fats for your diet to be balanced. Just like with the greens, you won’t be going totally fat-free because the synthesis of testosterone in your body still requires some amounts of cholesterol. You’ll be fine incorporating healthy omega-3 polyunsaturated fats in your diet; examples of those include coconut oil, beef fat, nuts, egg yolks, avocados, and salmon etc.
Avoid High Sugar Intake And Reduce Your Alcohol Consumption Rate.
Yes, we’ve spoken about diet, but these two deserve special mention. You need to reduce your sugar and alcohol intake to as low as possible. In fact, with sugar, you may need to cut it out completely.
The reason for this is simple, sugar always causes the level of insulin in your blood to shoot up significantly, which eventually lead to increase in body weight and decrease in testosterone. With alcohol, you don’t need to cut it out completely, but you do need to significantly reduce the quantities you take because alcohol is very rich in simple carbs and empty calories, making alcohol consumption to produce similar effects to sugar consumption in your body.
Engage In Regular Exercise
This is not a fad it’s a scientific fact. Folks, either young or old, who committed to regular exercises, have been proven to record significantly higher testosterone levels, including increases in both fitness and reaction time as well.
Exercising regularly with increased physical activity has also been shown to produce higher results in obese men desiring to lose weight and boost their testosterone levels than by following a weight loss diet.
Focus On Hiit Training
It’s one thing to avoid a sedentary lifestyle by combining general physical activity with regular exercises, but it’s quite another to know which exercise is best for you. To increase naturally increase your testosterone levels, you need to embrace High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT).
The reason these are more effective in increasing your testosterone levels than mere cardio is that they are highly effective in burning fat, thus helping to remove a major limiting factor to optimal testosterone levels in your blood.
Studies have been conducted over time and the conclusive results have been that HIIT workouts trounce lower-intensity aerobics workouts like jogging etc. They burn more fat in less the time.
You Need More Time In The Sun
The numerous health benefits of Vitamin D are now open secrets, and we’ve not even fully exhausted those benefits. Vitamin D has been studied and recommended as a natural booster for testosterone in the body.
One of such studies conducted over the course of an entire year found that you can increase your testosterone levels by as much as 25% by simply supplementing with just about 3,000 IU of vitamin D daily.
Spending more time in the sun, or supplementing with around 3,000IU of vitamin D3 daily is highly recommended if you’re truly seeking ways to naturally increase your testosterone levels.
Sleep Properly And Sleep More
One of the easiest, and often most overlooked, ways to naturally increase testosterone levels is sleep. Sleeping well is as important to your overall health as physical exercise and diet are to your health.
When it comes to boosting testosterone levels, sleeping for just 5 hours a day has been linked to as high as 15% decrease in testosterone levels. In fact, those who slept for only 4 hours per day were declared to have had borderline deficient testosterone levels.
It is thus recommended that you sleep about 7-10 hours each night for optimal testosterone levels as each additional hour of sleep you get has the capacity to boost your testosterone levels by 15%.
Avoiding Estrogens
Next on our list of ways you can naturally increase your testosterone level is that you must avoid the ingestion or absorption of estrogens by all means. As pointed out earlier, estrogen is the female sex hormone which, by default, blocks and reduces the effects or potency of testosterone in the body. This antagonistic role of estrogen on testosterone in males become even more pronounced as men grow older as their own bodies become increasingly more disposed to convert their testosterone into estrogen.
This is why you need to avoid estrogen as much as possible, such as you will find in supplements, in foods, in herbs and greens, fruits, legumes, grains etc. This class of estrogen is known as “phytoestrogens” (meaning ‘plant estrogens) because they are of plant origin, even though they function just like human estrogens in the body.
You Need To Avoid Plastics
This may sound a bit odd at first, but it’s true. Phytoestrogens or plant-source estrogens are not the only kind of estrogens you need to avoid, you actually also need to be wary of “Xenoestrogens”. This is a man-made compound which mimics human estrogen to an extent but is actually toxic.
Xenoestrogens find their ways into the body through both ingestion and/or physical contact, either by handling plastics too often and too long or by eating foods or drinking fluids which have been in contact with this compound.
Now you see why you need to avoid plastics as much as possible and also try to limit your use of plastics in keeping, preparing or eating your food. Processed foods which are normally packaged with plastic bags should also be avoided.
Please note that these xenoestrogens are no good for females either, so as far as your entire household is concerned, just keep away from plastics that have not been certified as BPA-free.
Redefine Your Coffee Intake
Increasing your testosterone levels will not require that you stop taking coffee altogether, but you will definitely need to reduce the amounts of coffee you take each day. I know there are many coffee lovers out there but will have to make an adjustment because coffee is actually very rich in phytoestrogens (plant estrogens) that we discussed earlier, which is bad for your testosterone levels.
Indirectly also, coffee also predisposes you to increased stress and anxiety, which will, in turn, result in your body producing large amounts of the hormone cortisol (known as ‘stress hormone’). Cortisol significantly reduces the effectiveness of testosterone in your body, such that, even if you do succeed in increasing your testosterone levels, it won’t be really beneficial for you because the abundant stress hormone in your system is going to block its effect anyway.
Sex Is Good
Can I get an amen? Sex is good for your body in a lot of ways, from your heart to your metabolism to your respiratory functions and to relieving your stress etc. What you also need to know is that a healthy sex life is a very effective way to naturally increase your testosterone levels.
The principle is simple; testosterone is the male sex hormone. Now, the more the body utilizes the available circulating testosterone in your blood, the higher your endocrine organs will be stimulated to synthesize more biologically.
Studies have revealed that on average, testosterone levels increased in subjects when measured at given periods after having sex as opposed when they weren’t having sex. Even in men over 60 years old, it was found that those who were enjoying higher sexual activity for their age were had significantly higher testosterone levels than those who were not so sexually active.
