Boost your brain, muscles, mood & s3x drive…by boosting your testosterone (naturally)
If you read my last post, you’ll know that testosterone is not just a male hormone - it’s super important for us ladies too!
And while taking supplemental T can be a total game-changer for women with low levels, that’s not an option for everyone.
So here are some natural ways you can boost your testosterone:
Strength training - HEAVY weights! I’m not talking 5/8/10lbs. Progressively increasing your lifts is important! (Please go slow and get the help of a trainer in the beginning to reduce the chance of injury.)
NOT endurance exercise! This decreases testosterone and other androgens (ie. DHEA), even in young people!
Higher protein diet - Most people aren’t getting NEARLY enough!
How much protein to eat? Aim for .75 to 1g of protein per ideal pound of bodyweight. (So for a 140 pound target, you’d consume 105 to 140 g of protein each day.) This is a lot, but it’s much easier to get there if you incorporate whey protein isolate - a scoop of that is 30g! (The “isolate” part is important: this means that the protein is isolated from sugars and fats, including allergens like casein and lactose. Even my dairy-intolerant clients do well with it!)
Fun fact: a recent study that came out showing that when women who were strength training increased their total caloric intake from PROTEIN by 300 cals/day (and changed nothing else!), they lost weight! Pretty cool. I’ve noticed this myself too: when I really upped my protein, fat just seemed to magically melt off my body even though I was exercising the same amount and hadn’t changed anything else. Win!
Higher fat diet - Low fat diets ruin T levels! Your ideal blood cholesterol levels for optimal hormone health should be around 220-240mg/dL! This is actually the UPPER end of what Western medicine considers to be the healthy range. And, this range was actually shown to have much better long-term health outcomes across the board! Check yours - it’s SUPER important for production of all hormones, not just T.
Enough quality sleep - This doesn’t mean you are in bed for 8 hours. This means you’re asleep, soundly, maybe you roll over a few times in the night but you sleep through the night for the most part and wake up feeling refreshed.
A wearable device - like an Oura ring, Garmin, Whoop or Apple watch - can really help you understand how well you sleep (or don’t sleep). Not only do they allow you to track the basic, critical things like how much deep or REM sleep you're getting, but they can show you how often you wake in the night, whether you are breathing properly while asleep and how restful your sleep was.Higher vitamin D - At LEAST 5000IU daily through most of the year if you don’t live in a sunny place near the equator and spend loads of time outside without much clothing on between 10am-2pm. I like a summer dose of 2000IU if I’m outside a lot with skin exposed. It’s important to TEST your levels - you want to be WAY higher than conventionally advised for optimal hormones and longevity: 150-200 nmol/L (Canada, UK, EU) or 60-80mg/mL (US).
Supplements - I don’t personally think there are any magic supplements that can really help boost T in women (or men), but it’s certainly the case that if you’re low in certain vitamins and minerals - like zinc, B-vitamins, boron, magnesium and others - or you eat a crappy diet or lots of processed food, you’re absolutely going to produce a lot less of all your hormones in general, including T. So a well-balanced, nutrient-dense diet is a priority.
Other supplements that can help include Ashwhangada (because it reduces cortisol in most people - see next point), shilajit and medicinal mushrooms. Some of the others - like Tongkat Ali and Fadogia Agrestis, which Huberman swears by - are hit and miss. I think there are differences in the ways those kinds of herbs affect men and women that we don’t yet understand. (Lol, I’ve tried them all, because I’m a scientist who like to self-experiment and I was struggling with my libido…they did nada for me. That doesn’t mean they don’t work, but they didn’t work for me. N=1.)Reduce stress - Stress impacts hormone production in a big way, whether acute or chronic. If your body thinks you’re constantly running from the proverbial tiger (fight-or-flight), it won’t be interested in reproducing and so it won’t be producing robust sex hormones. Instead, it’ll produce stress hormones, like cortisol. Stress pathways in the body inhibit reproductive pathways, a clever system nature came up with to make sure we don’t have babies when we’re chronically stressed (ie. famine, illness). Studies show that sudden elevations in cortisol can quickly reduce testosterone, and that these hormones often work in a seesaw-like manner: as one goes up, the other comes down.
Obviously, in our modern world, this wreaks havoc on our biology, including our hormones, and stress is coming from all angles… toxins in our environment, air and drinking water, drinking alcohol, light exposure at night that wrecks our circadian rhythms...
So, even if you hate the idea, it’s important to find ways to calm your nervous system and send signals of safety to your body, like meditation or mindful diaphragmatic breathing practices. Ashwaghanda and other supplements that help bring calm (like L-Theanine) can also help.Watch your blood sugar - High blood sugar impacts hormone levels, partly by increasing the level of something called ‘sex hormone binding globulin’ or SHBG. Scary sounding name, right? It’s a scary molecule cause it binds up hormones so they can’t be used.
Continuous glucose monitors are incredibly useful for understand your blood sugar and how your unique body responds to different foods, exercise and more. And there’s good news on this: legislation recently changed and now CGMs can bought over the counter in both the USA and Canada! YAY!! This is a VERY worthwhile experiment to do at least once if your life. 1 monitor lasts 2 weeks and costs about ~$120-150. Knowledge is power.
“Power pose!” - Truly, some fake-it-til-you-make-it actually does work to a degree! Stand up tall, strong, confident - that’s the kind of confidence and swagger that T brings us when it’s nice and high!
All of these things are not only good for your testosterone, they’re good for all of your hormones, your metabolism and your overall health.
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