Let’s talk about what causes low testosterone and how to boost your testosterone.
Causes
Sleep is a huge underemphasized factor when it comes to testosterone levels.
Research demonstrates that the less sleep you have, the less testosterone you’re going to have. This happens because the way your body controls and manages testosterone is through circadian waves.
This suggests that there is a correlation between your sleep, especially REM sleep, and the generation of testosterone. REM sleep is the second half of sleep. You generate more testosterone the more REM sleep you have.
If you only get six hours of sleep or less, that could be why you have low testosterone. One study shows that eight or more hours of sleep support healthy testosterone levels.
A lack of sleep also increases cortisol. Cortisol will directly decrease testosterone and increase insulin, which will lower testosterone.
Overall, a lack of sleep can destroy testosterone from many different angles.
Other causes of low testosterone
- Age
- Obesity
- Soy products
- Plastic consumption
- High insulin levels
- Liver damage
- Adrenal stress
- High cortisol
- A deficiency in DHEA
- A low-fat diet
- Statins
- An iron deficiency
- Hypogonadism (aging or zinc deficiency)
- Alcohol consumption
Ways to boost testosterone
Four ways to improve your sleep and boost testosterone:
- Get more exercise or do physical work
- Go on a low-carb diet
- Support your gut microbiome with probiotics. Take 1/2 Cup of This Before Bed to SLEEP LIKE A BABY
- Get plenty of vitamin B1, potassium, magnesium (benefits of magnesium), and vitamin D (get some Sun)
- Get plenty of restful, high-quality sleep
Data
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006899311014302?via%3Dihub
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17595245/
I monitor my testosteron. It is high, around 11.
My mother made a meal, and accidentaly fried piece of plastic with the meat for a long time. My testosteron plumeted to 6, for 2 months untill stabilising again.
I know that for me, dropping the carbs helped increase my testosterone by about 3.5 times. It went from clinically low to high.
After being in the craft beer industry for a few years, the testosterone fell off…but zinc, deadlifts and squats (and less beer) absolutely brought it back