Feeling sluggish in and out of the bedroom? It might be time to boost those testosterone levels.
Naturally boosting your testosterone does you a world of good beyond having more T juice in the tank. Healthy levels of our favourite man-hormone are important for muscle mass, general health, sexual function, and pretty much everything in between. On the other hand, low testosterone levels cause all kinds of problems including fatigue, weight gain, erectile dysfunction, and reduced sex drive.
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Fortunately, boosting your T levels is straightforward and mostly boils things your mom nagged you about as a child, such as getting enough sleep and eating healthy food. Turns out she had your testosterone’s best interest at heart all along!
Without further ado, here’s our list of eight natural ways to boost your testosterone.
Lose Weight
Men who carry around a good amount of extra weight have significantly lower levels of testosterone than their more trim counterparts. Studies have shown that obese males between the ages of 14 to 20 have up to 50% lower T levels than normal.
Losing weight is never easy, but if boosting your testosterone is one of your goals, then losing weight will come naturally. This is because losing weight entails proper exercise, diet, and lifestyle, all of which also help boost testosterone.
Exercise
Tried and true, exercise is one of the best ways to boost your testosterone. While all kinds of exercise are helpful, some are more effective than others. Lifting weights and other forms of resistance training give the largest increases when it comes to building muscle and ultimately increasing your T-juice.
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However, it’s important not to overtrain and to give your body enough time to recover between sessions. Going too hard on the weights can actually lower your T levels in the long run.
Eat Right
Eating right provides you with a huge range of benefits, such as more energy, less body fat, moral superiority, and increased testosterone levels. Taking advantage of this entails eating enough protein, complex carbs, and healthy fats.
Following this holy trinity will help your body stay healthy, lose weight, and optimize hormone levels. All of these combine into a perfect storm of testosterone coursing through your body. Also, take a pass on simple carbs and processed food – you don’t need that crap.
Reduce Stress
Stress is the mother of all ills for your body. It’s linked to cortisol levels, and when you’re stressed and these levels go up, so does food intake and body fat storage, particularly around the ever-stubborn midsection.
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Cortisol also has a direct relationship with testosterone. When your cortisol levels surge, your T levels plummet; the two are linked like a see-saw. Reducing stress will not only cause your testosterone levels to rebound, but it will also improve your quality of life and resistance to chronic illness.
Take Your Vitamins
Keeping with the theme of “Things Mom Used to Say”, take your vitamins. Having a balanced intake of vitamins has tons of health benefits, but some of them also work as natural testosterone boosters.
Vitamin B, zinc, and magnesium have all been shown to help with your T levels and production. Zinc and vitamin B in particular increase sperm quality by nearly 75%. If you’re not one for popping pills every night, these vitamins can also be found in all kinds of healthy food such as fatty fish, nuts, and leafy greens.
Get Enough Sleep
It’s not only the ladies who need their beauty sleep – testosterone production ramps up when you’re sleeping. For every additional hour of sleep you get, T levels increase by an average of 15%. Conversely, sleeping only five hours a night can reduce your levels by 15%. Aiming for the golden amount of 7 to 8 hours of sleep each night should be your goal.
Drink Less
Drinking huge amounts of alcohol has always been a badge of pride among men, a way to separate the wheat from the chaff. However, despite how impressive men pounding down pint after pint may look, beneath the surface, you may be surprised to find out that their T levels aren’t exactly raging like a coursing river.
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In fact, just five days of drinking is enough to lower your T levels. Keep it up for longer, and you’ll suffer from huge drops in testosterone and could end up with thin chest and beard hair, high levels of estrogen, and a shrunken nutsack. Yup, you read that right.
Doctors recommend you keep your drinking to a moderate level. This means no more than two drinks a day for men, even if that’s hardly enough to give you a nice buzz.
Have More Sex
Finally, some advice your mom hopefully didn’t give you as a child. Testosterone is high-octane fuel for your sex drive. Unlike cars, however, sex doesn’t deplete your T levels. Instead, it boosts it, creating a wonderful feedback loop of raging testosterone and sex drive.
How to have more sex? Well, that’s a topic for another time.
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