1. Intermittent Fasting
The first of the natural testosterone boosters is intermittent fasting. It’s been shown to increase testosterone by nearly 200 percent or even up to 400 percent. In addition, a study by the University of Virginia Medical School noted that growth hormone levels increased 2,000 percent over the baseline in men who ate no calories for 24 hours, and growth hormone levels are correlated with testosterone. Intermittent fasting basically means you skip breakfast, and you eat your meals closer together. You’ll eat three meals per day: one at noon, one at 3 p.m. and your last meal around 6 p.m. That allows your organs to rest, especially your liver, which is so crucial for naturally balancing hormones, especially testosterone.
2. Heavy Weight Training + Interval Training
If you want to naturally boost testosterone and HGH then combining weight training with HIIT workouts (high intensity interval training). Go to the gym at least three days a week, ideally at least three days a week, and lift heavy weights. Lifting heavy weights 6–12 reps with larger muscle groups like your quadriceps, hamstrings, back, shoulders and chest will help your body pack on the maximum amount of muscle. Specifically, lifting at least 30 minutes up to as long as an hour or so can be very, very beneficial boost low testosterone levels.
Researchers at Ball State University found that “strength training can induce growth hormone and testosterone release.” Another study from the University of Nebraska Medical Center researched the acute effects of weight lifting on serum testosterone levels. The results concluded that even moderate weight lifting and light weightlifting increased serum testosterone levels in participants.
In addition to weight training, combining this with interval training like burst training is the best overall combo to increase HGH. In fact, burst training has been proven to not only boost T-levels, it helps keeps your testosterone elevated and can prevent its decline. Burst training involves exercising at 90–100 percent of your maximum effort for a short interval in order to burn your body’s stored sugar (glycogen), followed by a period of low impact for recovery.
This causes your body to burn fat for the next 36 hours to replace your body’s vital energy stores. It addition to increasing your T-levels, it can help burn between 3–9 times more fat, lower your resting heart rate, lower blood pressure, keep your brain young by increasing circulation, and aids in detoxification by stimulating the lymphatic system.
3. Healthy Fats
Step three is to add a lot of healthy fats in your diet. Most men with low testosterone consume too much junk food and too many carbohydrates. You have to get rid of those empty calories and load up on healthy fat.
A study published in the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry studied the effects of diet on serum sex hormones in healthy men. Results showed that when men decreased their healthy fat intake, serum concentrations of androstenedione, testosterone and free testosterone also decreased. This indicates you can add low testosterone to the list of low-fat diet risks.
There are three categories of healthy fat. Number one is healthy saturated fat. The truth about saturated fat is it’s actually good for you if it’s the proper kind. Healthy saturated fat is found in coconut oil and raw, fermented dairy products like goat milk kefir, yogurt, or raw goat or sheep milk cheese. However, avoid conventional dairy because it will actually damper your testosterone.
The other type of fat you need is healthy omega-3 fatty acids. Consuming benefit-rich salmon a couple times a week or adding a quality fish oil supplement is great. Flaxseeds, chia seeds and walnuts are also great for low testosterone as you get those omega-3s.
Finally, monounsaturated fats can be natural testosterone boosters. Consuming an avocado a day or some olive oil and almonds really helps get those healthy fats that can help you naturally boost your testosterone levels.
4. Liver Detox
The next step on the natural testosterone boosters scale is to embark on a liver cleanse. Your liver is so crucial to testosterone levels. When your liver does not function optimally, it affects your testosterone output. That’s because the liver holds an enzyme that conjugates the 17beta-hydroxyl group of testosterone.
A study published in the Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology notes that “serum testosterone is reduced in up to 90 percent of men with cirrhosis, with levels falling as liver disease advances.” This shows just how vital liver health is to your testosterone, and countless studies verify the effects of liver function on testosterone.
5. Stress Reduction
For most men with low testosterone, if you struggle with frustration, unforgiveness, anger issues, those things all drop your testosterone levels over time. It’s one of the ways chronic stress is killing your quality of life.
Mental and physical stress can be quite therapeutic and is actually necessary for the body. The problem is when you are chronically stressed and your body gets stuck in the state where it’s pumping out cortisol (the “stress” hormone) nonstop.
A 2010 study published in the journal Hormones and Behavior first suggested this when researchers evaluated the “dual-hormone hypothesis” clinically. They discovered that when cortisol is elevated, testosterone responds by elevating as well but soon after bottoms out at a much lower level than before cortisol kicked in! That means you want to find ways to bust stress to keep your testosterone levels up.
Write down a list of the people you need to forgive and then do so. You can do that just yourself, between you and God, or you can do that in person — but it really is important. You can also turn to the Bible and other personal growth books, or seek out the help of a counselor or a good church. Really take care of those emotional issues, specifically resentment, unforgiveness, anger and frustration, and you’ll see that’s going to really help you cleanse you and detoxify spiritually. It’s going to also help naturally raise your testosterone levels.
6. Vitamin D
One of the most important nutrients that can help boost testosterone levels is vitamin D3. In 2011, the results of a study published in the journal Hormone and Metabolic Research announced that vitamin D supplementation boosts testosterone naturally in overweight men by up to 30 percent. This is pretty exciting because research has shown that vitamin D3 is also linked to helping to prevent and treat cancer!
If you have vitamin D deficiency symptoms, it will absolutely crush your testosterone levels. So you want to get out in the sun 20 to 30 minutes every day to detox your body with the sun and get that all-important vitamin D.
Any day that you don’t get 20 minutes of direct sunlight on your skin, you want to supplement with 5,000 IUs of vitamin D3. If you get your blood levels tested and you’re extremely low — below 50 IUs — you typically want to do 5,000 IUs twice a day for three months until you get those numbers up. You can do everything in the world, but if your vitamin D levels aren’t right, your testosterone levels will stay low.
A few other supplements that can help include adaptogenic herbs that lower cortisol, like ginseng. Ginseng benefits healthy testosterone levels. In fact, research from the University of Hong Kong unveiled that ginseng increased testosterone levels in rats, making it yet another natural testosterone booster.
7. Kick the Sugar Habit
If you want to normalize your hormone levels and naturally boost your testosterone, the first thing you need to do is kick the sugar habit immediately. It has been reported that the average American takes in 12 teaspoons of sugar a day (about two tons of sugar in a lifetime), and sugar has been linked to depleting T-levels in several ways.
According to the American Diabetes Association (ADA), for example, type II diabetics are twice as likely to develop low T-levels. Here’s how it works:
- When you eat a diet rich in processed grains and sugars, your blood glucose levels become chronically elevated.
- To help keep blood sugar levels from going haywire, your pancreas starts to work overtime to produce insulin, which helps transport the sugar from the bloodstream into your cells to be metabolized for energy.
- Ultimately, if your cells are exposed to insulin for extended periods, you develop insulin resistance, which causes type II diabetes.
Once diabetes develops your body isn’t able to produce the right levels of testosterone as it should, and the ADA recommends that diabetics get their T-levels checked by their doctor if they start to develop any of the symptoms that I mentioned above.
If you can follow these steps, you are going to see great results in naturally boosting your testosterone levels.
8. Get Quality Sleep
According to an article from the journal Current Opinion of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Obesity, getting enough sleep and at the right times are two of the most effective natural ways to raise testosterone. Most people require around 7 hours of sleep every night, and it’s critical to take advantage of the 10 p.m. – 2 a.m. window.
Your body’s circadian rhythm essentially resets itself every night and releases chemicals like cortisol, which contribute to the overall hormone balance that can prevent low T-levels. I have even heard one endocrinologist claim that one hour of sleep between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. has the same healing effects on your body as two hours of sleep before or after this timeslot!
So ideally, go to bed around 10 p.m. and wake up around 6 a.m. for optimal hormone balance.
9. Lower Body Fat Percentage
In the words of Dr. Gary Wittert – Head of the School of Medicine at the University of Adelaide, Australia – weight loss has a predictable and linear relationship with increased testosterone naturally.
When you consider the effects that insulin resistance and poor sleeping habits have on testosterone, this makes perfect sense because they are all closely knit together with obesity. At the core of this issue is cutting out processed sugars from your diet, which has been linked to insomnia, obesity, diabetes and countless hormone disorders.