5 Ways To Increase Testosterone
Video Transcript:
Nearly 39% of men over the age of 45 have low testosterone. Low testosterone is generally anything under 300. Now, some of the signs and symptoms may look like loss of body hair, a loss of lean muscle mass, being fatigue, and even being overweight.
Now, women are also prone to being lower in testosterone, and that usually shows up between that perimenopause and menopause time. Symptoms for low testosterone in women may feel and look like a loss of libido, loss of lean muscle mass, muscle tone, and muscle growth, as well as mood swings.
My name is Marcie Vaske and I'm a functional medicine nutritionist specializing in gut health. So here at the Oswald Digestive Clinic, I see a lot of clients come in with bloating, gas, diarrhea, constipation, and there's just to really name a few things.
So if this sounds like you or maybe someone you love, you can easily make an initial appointment to help you get started in better gut health.
But if you are the kind of person who likes to do things on their own or just wanna learn more about gut health, you can download our free guide five ways to improve Gut Health Guide.
It's free, you can read up about it, you can learn, and maybe even gather some tips that can help yourself, and help heal your gut as well.
So today we are going to dig into testosterone and low testosterone and five ways that you can help improve that.
What is Testosterone?
Testosterone is vital to our bodies and as it goes lower, it can look like a change in body composition. As we grow older, it can also look and feel like weight gain.
So let's dig into the five ways that we can improve our testosterone.
How to naturally increase testosterone?
Now, one way to improve testosterone is to get regular physical activity. Things like getting good cardio, going for walks, and maybe even going for a run which is also great for your heart. But one of the best ways to improve testosterone is going to be in the weight room.
Specifically doing strength training, and working big muscle groups. Doing lifts like deadlifts, squats, and bench presses. If none of those sound appealing to you, there's lots of ways to strength train.
The important thing is to help your body gain muscle to help improve that testosterone.
Now the next way to improve testosterone that I want to share is getting enough sleep.
We know how important getting enough sleep is to our whole body and our brain. But, what research is finding as well is that getting enough sleep also can increase testosterone because during the sleep cycle we actually increase our testosterone.
So you want to aim for the traditional seven to nine hours a night to help improve that. There was a research study completed on 24 young men and what they found after one week of restricted sleep, daytime testosterone actually dropped by 15%.
Now that's incredible because normal aging decrease in testosterone is only one to 2% per year. So just that alone tells us how important it is for you to get enough sleep to keep those testosterone levels high and healthy.
The third way to improve your testosterone is near and dear to my heart because it's eating a healthy diet.
To improve and maintain the amount of testosterone that have in our bodies, you want to be sure that you're eating plenty of healthy proteins and healthy fats that supports that testosterone.
Eating plenty of chicken, beef, turkey, any protein you like, and making sure you eat healthy fats like avocado, nuts, olive oil, coconut oil, are all wonderful things that are gonna help support our testosterone production.
One study that was completed showed that overeating or even yo-yo dieting decreases our testosterone. You want to keep in those healthy whole foods in and keep your blood sugar balanced. That will eliminate overeating as well as yo-yo dieting, which helps our testosterone flourish.
Now the fourth way to improve your testosterone levels is reducing your stress.
We know that chronic stress creates lots of inflammation in the body, therefore many disease states. The one that we're highlighting today is how chronic stress decreases testosterone.
What happens is that stress signals cortisol, which is a hormone in our body that disrupts our testosterone. Typically decreasing it or even making it more erratic.
So how can you reduce your stress?
Things like taking a daily walk, doing some yoga, doing just some meditation, taking a few moments during your day to do some breathing which can really just calm the system down.
But, reducing stress and saying no to things is going to be so impactful and improve so many areas in your life and body. I want you to think about that one because when our stress is high or when we are chronically stressed, that reduces our sleep.
As I mentioned above, sleep is something that can increase our testosterone. So we want to reduce stress and increase our sleep. S
The last one that I want tp share is taking a few different supplements that are very helpful if you have significantly lower testosterone.
The first one is vitamin D. Vitamin D is a wonderful vitamin that's going to work in several pathways in our body, it has also been shown to have an impact on increasing testosterone levels.
So if your vitamin D level is low, (and I always recommend you get it checked to see where you're at) which anything below 50 to be specific, you want be in that sweet spot between 50 and 80. That's a great range for vitamin D levels.
If you're below that, you might want to think about supplementing with a vitamin D supplement, and I would recommend taking roughly 5,000 IUs per day. Make sure you are taking it with a meal because the vitamin D gets metabolized better when you have it with the fats that you're eating as well.
The next supplement I want to share is called DHEA, which is a hormone and it helps to actually produce our testosterone. So as we age, we naturally go lower in DHEA which results in lower testosterone.
If you're struggling with those lower ranges and feel like you could use a bit more boost with that testosterone, it might be helpful to try taking DHEA 100 milligrams per day.
Again, I would take that with a meal so that it gets metabolized nicely with all the food that you're consuming. DHEA can also be very impactful on raising and increasing our testosterone naturally. Now, if you don't feel like doing a supplement with that, you can always take or consume fatty fish.
Things like salmon or maybe mackerel, sardines if you like those. If you don't eat fish trying a little bit of flax seed or flax seed oil can help to increase testosterone as well.
The last supplement I wanna point out is something called magnesium. Magnesium is notoriously low in so many individuals, but it can really improve and help balance out our testosterone again.
It's easy to supplement magnesium, I would recommend something called magnesium glycinate and roughly 100-200 milligrams in the evening or at bedtime. Not only can magnesium help improve your testosterone, but magnesium has this great ability to help us sleep better.
And again, sleep is so important for our testosterone levels. If you don't want to take supplements, you can easily eat some foods to help increase that testosterone.
Things like green leafy vegetables, nuts and seeds, and proteins.
So those three supplements can help improve and balance out our testosterone, which will give you levels that you need to feel vitality and feel well within your body composition.
I hope this helped you today and thank you for reading.
If you'd like to explore any of this information further or obtain an individualized nutrition plan, you can schedule an initial appointment at our clinic. We also take insurance and some of our clients get full coverage, which is great.
Or you can start by just downloading our FREE GUIDE: 5 Ways to Improve Gut Health.
