2782: How to Naturally Boost Testosterone

0:00If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, Mind Pump with your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we talk about how you can boost your testosterone levels naturally. This is all data-backed information. So if you want your testosterone levels to go up, you want less symptoms of low testosterone, you're going to want to tune in. Now, this episode is brought to you by Crisp Power. These are high-protein pretzels.

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1:55I'm talking right now. Hit pause, head on over to mindpumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. For the last six or seven decades, it's been well documented that men's testosterone levels across the board have been slowly getting lower. So a lot of men are wondering, how do I raise my testosterone? I don't want to go on testosterone replacement therapy. Are there ways I can raise it naturally? And the answer to that is yes, we have good data on natural ways to raise your testosterone. We're going to talk about those today. Yes, you can. feels like the prescription that you gave me when i went through this whole process totally you remember how long ago that was now do you have any idea what that was i it was it's been good seven six seven years right and it definitely helped but you were coming from a whole different place i was but it was it was such a good experience not not good as like i was like i liked it or anything like that good as in like uh to be able to communicate and talk more about this um because i was coming from a place of like i i was i was dialed in i was ready for someone like you to be like all right do all these things and then and trick and so as we go through this list um i remember like you having me stack all these supplements and do this regimen and you ordered them it looks like top to bottom i was going to tell you to do it in reverse so you can save the best for last because i feel like all the other things i was doing i'm like i noticed a little bit from this, but the main one's the first one.

3:19I mean, that one was the one that just moved the needle more than anything. Yes. Exercise. So exercise in general. Now, there's a big caveat here. So it's like an asterisk. Okay. Yep. If you apply exercise improperly, it will lower your testosterone. What do I mean by improperly? Doing too much. So oftentimes, sometimes with fitness fanatics, you'll see men with low testosterone. And the reason why their testosterone is low is they're chronically over-trained. They just push their bodies constantly. They don't give themselves a break. They're constantly training at this kind of sprint level, not doing what's appropriate, but rather doing what they can pretty much tolerate.

3:57And this will lower your testosterone. So when we're talking about exercise, and we're going to talk specifically about strength training, there is an appropriate dose. If you do the appropriate dose, the data on strength training for testosterone is pretty awesome. So here's what you see. I'll quote the data first and we can talk about our experiences. There's an acute spike in testosterone from the application of strength training. So acute is just kind of the short-term boost of testosterone. So the way testosterone production in men works is it's these spikes throughout the day. It typically spikes in the morning.

4:32It's typically when you have the highest amounts of testosterone. So it's not like this constant level of testosterone, but these ups and downs, and you kind of get this average. And exercise will add an additional spike of testosterone, and studies will show about 30%. That's a pretty big jump. That's a big jump. It's just an acute. Now, when you look at strength training, that's the best way to do this. Then when you look into strength training, the exercises that do this best are the big compound lifts, the king of spiking testosterone. Excuse me, squats. Squats raises testosterone. Deadlifts raise testosterone.

5:05overhead presses rows like all those compound lifts excuse me do the best job of doing this but strength training will raise testosterone will spike it acutely and then over time what you see is about a 10 percent increase doesn't sound like a lot but there's definitely more to the story yeah i i want to share more about the the right dose here and why um that's easier said than done when you have low testosterone a lot of times other symptoms you'll see are not the best of rest not the best of recovery and other stressors in your life due to this too so it's kind of like this loop yeah and and so there it's a there's a there's a bit of a delicate at least this was my experience there's a bit of a delicate dance with the the application of exercise i.e.

5:59intensity and volume that you do in order to reap these benefits because you say a study like that and you can't help but go like okay you know you're a 200 or less like testosterone let's just say is your reading clinically low yeah clinically low okay um and you hear oh this gives you a 30 boost and they go train so i'm gonna go hit the gym pretty hard you hit the gym really hard and you're already kind of low then you end up overdoing it then you don't get very good sleep then you don't recover and then you get in this kind of a loop what i had found i remember reducing it all the way down to just one major lift yep like i would just quarter deadlift in an in like for three to four sets and and that one that one that one thing would produce the best feeling and then it wasn't wasn't overdoing it to where i felt like i could recover from it yeah to really paint this clearly if you're if you have symptoms of low testosterone Now, Adam gave a number that's clinically low, okay?

6:58But most men listening to this, I mean, if you're clinically low, like below even what your GP would say you need to be, then you can apply all these things and you might probably also need supplementation. But a lot of men are just kind of low. They're in the range, like a 400, 350. They feel the symptoms of low testosterone. If you're feeling symptoms of low testosterone and your testosterone is lower than it should be for you, your risk of overtraining is higher. Okay. In other words, you may think to yourself, oh man, I got all these symptoms of low testosterone. I have low libido, low drive.

7:32It doesn't take much to really get aggravated. That's right. And you're like, I don't feel good. This definitely feels like low testosterone. So I'm going to go raise it. I'm going to go beat myself up. I'm going to go really hammer myself in the gym. No. In fact, if this is you, you need less volume than a man with good testosterone levels because what they would consider appropriate would be overtraining for you. because your testosterone is low. The program that we have that would be appropriate for someone like this would be like MAPS 15. MAPS 15, which is two lifts a day, would be a really good testosterone-boosting strength training program.

8:08Because the volume is low, it's compound lift-focused, it's probably the most appropriate. Well, that's why there might be a little bit of a misconception in when you think about trying to raise your testosterone, like I'm going to hit the big lifts, and I'm going to get after it. But you also have to recover, and you've got to be able to regenerate and be able to perform again. It's about the consistency of it as well, so you have to factor that in. This is what I meant by this delicate dance, and why I went all the way down to saying even one lift is because you would rather lean on not a lot or on the low side.

8:42Error on the side of low. Yes. Because then you keep going up. Because if you err on the side of too much, then it makes it worse. That's right. And so maybe something that wasn't even that much volume with that much intensity ends up now impacting sleep, which then impacts recovery, which then impacts the next time you go to train again, which then impacts testosterone. To go from no strength training to a little bit of strength training, you'll probably get a boost in testosterone. To go from no strength training to too much, you'll actually make your testosterone worse. Yes. So that's why you want to play that game and be safe with it.

9:12Now, the 10 % long-term rise in testosterone that we show in data, you might think is not that much. So cool, my total testosterone is at 400. Cool, I'm going to go up to 440. like what's the big deal? That's not the whole story. Strength training, because the adaptation from strength training is building muscle and strength, you get an increase. And here's what you reliably see in the studies on strength training is an increase in what are called androgen receptors. Okay, so androgen receptors are what testosterone attached to. So although it's not this simple, I'm just gonna kind of create a scenario or paint a picture to kind of explain this.

9:48If your total testosterone, let's say was at 400 with your current amount of androgen receptors, if you suddenly doubled your androgen receptors, you could effectively feel like you have twice as much testosterone. Right. Okay, so long as there's enough testosterone to dock on those receptors, you suddenly feel like, I got way more testosterone. That's what strength training does that really significantly changes things. So the number of testosterone, when you go measure it, will go up a little bit, but you'll feel like it went up a lot if you do this right because of the reliable increase in androgen receptors.

10:22You build muscle and strength, your androgen receptors have increased. That's like a fact. I'm glad you cleared that up because when you put it up, the numbers at the 30%, 30 % acute, I was like, yeah. You feel that. You went to water, you felt it. Yeah, you feel. And I've described that before. I would have guessed it's higher than 10 % long-term. But that makes more sense to me than it's just like, so it's not just the total number that you're going to see go up 10%. In addition to that, more androgen receptors, which just basically means I can utilize the same test. Even if I had the same testosterone but more androgen receptors, I'm utilizing more of it.

10:54Therefore, I would feel it more. That's right. Here's the other thing, too, about proper exercise is when you look at the negative effects or what people would say are symptoms of low testosterone, strength training directly combats those. So without an increase in testosterone, strength training raises libido. So I have low libido from low testosterone. I'm strength training. My libido goes up. That's great. Depression, this is also a common side effect of low testosterone. Strength training improves depression. It improves anxiety. It gets you to sleep better. And it makes you more resilient as you start to - Productivity, drive, all those things.

11:32Yes, motivation. So it will raise androgen receptor density, which is phenomenal. You want that. It'll raise your testosterone a little bit. That's great also. But it also directly, because exercise does this when you apply it properly, it directly combats those symptoms of low testosterone so of all the ones we're talking about here uh exercise is going to be it's going to be one of the best ones you can put to make you feel the best okay next up is sleep uh so here's what we find with sleep if you don't have good sleep and i mean good not like yeah i get by but like optimal sleep you're reliable your testosterone will reliably be 15 to 20 percent lower if you have really bad sleep probably 50 percent i've seen uh i've had clients who've raised their testosterone dramatically just from improving the sleep yeah just from a dramatic improvement this is where i like tools i'm curious what doug would say too because i know he's he's tracked uh sleep like i have with like his aura ring and stuff like that and then i know you've done it without um there's a there's a clear difference and i'm watching this very closely right now um fact the huge win the other day i had my first three 80s in a row i've never that's great had that many 80s in a row before and uh because i'm tracking so it's such a significant difference on what i feel like the difference between a and i'm using aura ring as my base right so i think what's more just like we talk about body fat percentage more than i think aura ring matters it's more like getting an idea of trend your trend your baseline uh for me uh 60s i'm like groggy i don't feel good i can put 70 i feel pretty good i could train this and that but i don't feel great 80 plus i feel oh my totally different totally different like all through all three of those have you have you been able to connect the dots like that for yourself because you've tracked sleep so so yeah absolutely i mean obviously anything below 70 is horrible for me yeah um 80s typically is great but another thing I'm looking at is deep sleep and REM sleep.

13:30Yes. And a day I don't get enough deep sleep, I can really tell. I think in order for you, so you've scored 90 before, right? I have. Yeah. So I don't even think you can score at 80 unless you get a decent amount of deep and REM. I think the score will knock you because I've had times where I've slept for eight, nine hours, but then my deep and my REM aren't really good and it'll score me down in the seventies because I don't get enough deep and REM. For example, today, I think I was an 81 and my REM sleep, I think was a bit down. yeah so um so they will there is some adjustment for that but uh yeah it's not just about total sleep it's about the quality of yeah and that's the scoring goes off of that so what you've seen 90s though right oh yeah i have and it's like a significant difference i mean i can tell i feel so good yeah i i had a i had a client uh once uh who was really good about tracking things he was a new father uh and he was very involved uh with his kids so he already had two kids had a new baby and um his test he got checked because he had all these symptoms he wasn't feeling good and i'm like it's probably your sleep but whatever he went got tested i don't remember what his number was it was like 350 and uh we fixed the sleep we prioritize the sleep and you know how it is when you first have a kid you're you know seven hours is a lot of sleep when you have a new baby typically you're getting like four or five hours if you're lucky and it's broken and it's broken right he went from uh whatever his number was it was like 350 to like seven it like doubled 700 yeah so So people listening to this, when people think, oh, I need to fix my sleep, it's typically people with terrible sleep.

14:59A lot of us just don't have optimal sleep. Those are the people you'll see a 15 % increase. If you have terrible sleep, you fix that. You're going to see a big boost. And that was my point of kind of bringing up my story. Like I can see a difference between 60, 70, and 80. I've never even seen 90, so I don't even know what 90 feels like. And I've been tracking this for the last month and a half with as low as 40s. so i've got a really good idea of like man it just feels so different to hit that so you're right even somebody who see when you're if you're somebody who lands again i'm just using these arbitrary numbers but let's say you the 70 range which you say you feel terrible there 70 i feel pretty good at 70s like i don't feel great but i feel pretty good like to be able to increase that by just a little bit makes a big difference and it's like that just shows you the power of sleep i'm technically not even in the most optimal 90 range and i can still see a significant difference yeah the big rocks for sleep uh for most people are uh number one don't be on electronics right before bed go to bed at the same time every night wake up at the same time every day you don't want to jet lag yourself every monday because you go to bed so late fridays try to sleep in try to sleep in then start over that messes your your sleep up and then stimulant use so caffeine caffeine makes a huge by the way caffeine impacts everybody's sleep so some people more than others.

16:17But when you look at the studies of even people who have caffeine just in the morning and not that much, when they eliminate, their sleep improves. So stimulant like caffeine, most commonly used drug in the world, it does affect your sleep. And so if this is you and you got bad sleep, check your caffeine use, try to eliminate it or reduce it, maybe slowly reduce it because it can be nasty coming off right away. Get off electronics an hour before bed, go to bed at the same time, wake up at the same time. You will notice within a week of a difference. And your testosterone responds very quickly to improve sleep.

16:49So within a week, you should see some changes. Now we're going to get into essential nutrients. Now this one's interesting because essential nutrient deficiencies are relatively common, certain ones. And insufficiency is very common. So you have deficiency and then you have not optimal. Vitamin D is one of those. To be actually deficient in vitamin D, you've got some pretty bad symptoms. You feel like garbage. You're clinically depressed. You got bone pain. You'll probably go to the doctor at some point. Eventually they'll figure this out. But 70 % of men are insufficient. So 70 % of men don't get enough vitamin D.

17:29They're not deficient, but they're not optimal. Here's what the data shows. When men supplement with 2 ,000 IUs of vitamin D, the people that we're talking about right here, you'll see a 20 % increase in testosterone. Boom. Easy. Vitamin D. Super cheap. super inexpensive supplement most of us don't get enough uh and by the way the darker your skin the more likely you are to not have enough vitamin d it's actually quite common especially if you're african-american or mediterranean like like i am also also useful to know that you could you could kind of like um mega dose it and if you don't if you're not good with every single day i did not know that until not that long ago yeah it's fat soluble you can do one one big capsule once a week yeah so that that was helpful for me because i had it i'm like i need to be consistent with this i'm always kind of low on my vitamin d and then i was told that oh my god you could you could totally if you missed three four days in a row you could take three of those at once and i'm like i didn't realize i could do that and that's helpful for someone like me who has a really hard time with being consistent with that i do a 50 000 iu capsule once every you know 12 days or 14 days like that you could do that's fat soluble oh yeah so you don't have to take it on a daily Much easier than this is an elusive one though, too, because I think people, they think exposure to the sun sometimes is really going to cover the bases until you supplement and you're like, oh my God, you feel a huge difference too.

18:49And a lot of people, they work indoors. And so it's like you're not really factoring your lifestyles change substantially. I love using my dad as an example because if I had to guess that he had a vitamin, I would have never guessed he had a vitamin D deficiency. Never. By the way, he wasn't insufficient. he was deficient that's me and my dad now we're sicilian so he's all of skin our skin's all of yeah but he was outside all the time my dad is not inside you guys he's got a garden he's a sicilian so he's got a garden he's proud of he's always outside he's his skin is dark from being the sun all the time he's always out there he had all these weird symptoms he was weak he had bone pain he wasn't feeling good they couldn't figure out what's going on finally he did a vitamin d test they're like oh deficiency started supplementing i don't remember what they were giving him 10 000 ius a day or something and within days he was like this is i wonder if he's an example of my theory that i think i've shared with you before on what i think happened to me too which is that i was in the sun so much when i was all the way up until i was 20 and i still was an outside person but nowhere near what i was from like zero to 20 yeah and then all of a sudden i was in fluorescent lights and because we him and i can handle so much more sun used to being out in the sun for 10 hours a day type of deal and then all of a sudden going to five hours a day it was such a significant difference almost like my body was adapted to being on the hand i think it's really more your hispanic uh background uh when you look at people african americans for example 90 90 percent insufficiency yeah hispanics up there also yeah so yeah so in in what they're showing now in other data is it's a good idea just to take it yeah it's actually quite rare for people to take vitamin d and have too much and they're finding that just 60 percent of people are deficient right yeah so 70 are insufficient deficiencies lower than that but insufficient you just you still don't you still feel it you just don't feel it's a cheap supplement uh that you could take so uh it's it's it's a big one again if it's deficient your testosterone's in the tank if you're insufficient it's a good 20 maybe higher lower than it could be and it's an easy now what's the uh remind me of the purpose too of always taking it with k2 k2 helps your body absorb it better they work better together okay yeah so you should take that with k2 also yeah So next up is zinc.

21:0015 % of men are insufficient in zinc. Now, zinc, okay, here's a big one. There's a range of studies. Some studies show that not having enough zinc will lower your testosterone by 75%. Other studies, 20%. So zinc is a big one. In fact, some guys, so I know people, my cousin's like this. My cousin started supplementing with zinc magnesium aspartate, ZMA. Remember that supplement? You got famous for that reason, right? Yeah, and he had a big, he's like this huge difference. He's like, dude, my libido's through the roof. Isn't that the Balco guy that created that? Yeah, yeah. It is the Balco guy, right?

21:33He became famous because of that supplement. That's right. And it was so popular because so many people were deficient in it, and it made such an impact, those three together. That's right. And zinc is, again, another cheap supplement that you can supplement with. And again, 15 % insufficient. So that's a, you know, more than one out of 10 men would benefit from taking it. And if this is you, you could test it out, see if you feel the difference. Yeah. Next up, magnesium. 50 % deficiency, not insufficient, deficient. That's a very, very common deficiency. And that can result in 20%. Also, one of the side effects too is sleep.

22:10Oh, yeah. Anxiety and not being able to sleep. So this was a, I mean, this is part of how we fell in love with, I mean, using Ned way back when was like, I remember starting to take that product. And what a difference. just taking magnesium every single night was for me. And so, again, and all this stuff could be this massive loop. If you're low testosterone, you're low magnesium and vitamin D, you're also training. You don't think you're training that crazy hard, but you're training a lot. It's like it's just this crazy loop where you're not getting good sleep, you're not recovering, you're over.

22:41Well, also look at it this way. You might not be insufficient in D, but you might be in zinc or you might be in magnesium or you might be in all three. All three. There's probably a category of guys out there that is deficient in all three of those. So you're looking at severely lower testosterone levels just from basic cheap nutrients. These are very inexpensive supplements. These are not exotic supplements, everybody. You can take that'll make a difference. And then there's the exotic stuff that's out there, right? The herbs and compounds out there that have been shown to raise testosterone.

23:11So fenugreek is one of them. Fenugreek has been shown to raise testosterone about 10 to 20 % in resistance-trained men. what you actually see with fenugreek by the way this is the only one i don't think you put me on no i didn't because i had you taking some other ones but fenugreek will raise uh your sperm count as well it's actually a good fertility uh supplement ashwagandha this is my favorite one of all of the adaptogen uh based herbs they're out there this one has the most uh data to support it uh so and we're going to name a couple other ones but ashwagandha's data is really good really good data uh you see a 15 increase in testosterone if you're really stressed out even better ashwagandha has other effects as well though so it doesn't just raise testosterone it helps with recovery it helps your body adapt to stress when i'm working i just had a friend of mine i have a friend of mine who's an er doctor uh and so his schedule is like he'll work three three days a week but they're like you know overnight he's not getting crazy he's getting terrible sleep then he comes home tries to recover and he's like man every time i train every time I work out, I can't do much.

24:17I feel like I'm just fried. He's been doing this for, he's my age now. So he's been doing this for a little while. And so I said, I think take an adaptogen. It'll just help your body deal with stress. And I talked to him two weeks later. He's like, dude, that, he's all, first he's a doctor. So as I looked up the data, he's like, it was really supported. I know that was that supported. I'm surprised doctors don't know about this. I started taking this. He's like, man, I noticed a big difference. He's like, I'm like, I can push harder in the gym. I'm sharper. My cognitive function, it's like, it helps your body deal with stress.

24:45But it does raise testosterone. Shilajit is another one. In some studies, this one doesn't have a ton of studies, but there's some studies that do show 20 % to 25 % increase in testosterone. That's wild. Tongkat Ali. This one's interesting. You had me on this one. I did. And my opinion on it was I noticed it and then it leveled out. Yeah, so here's what you noticed, your libido. Tongkat Ali will normalize testosterone in men who have low testosterone, but it also regardless of testosterone seems to be a libido boost oh so goat weed yes yeah so so here you are you're you know your your libido's low because testosterone is like whatever you'll get a boost in libido even if it doesn't uh raise testosterone yeah i would uh honorable mention red light therapy red light therapy red light therapy is a good one yeah that one's got some really good evidence on raising testosterone requires you buy a panel yeah use that daily Of all the things, one of the more expensive, but also some of the most amazing results as far as what I've seen people.

25:43Now, I've seen men post their blood work doing a lot of this stuff, and you see some great results. Men are able to get their testosterone from the low end to the high end just from doing the things that we listen to. Yes, sometimes it's one of those deficiencies that really makes a massive impact. That's right. Well, I think this is such an important conversation because more and more today we are seeing low testosterone in young men. And I think it's so important that you check most of these boxes, if not all these boxes, before you go right to testosterone therapy. That's right. Especially young men.

26:22Yeah. I mean, different story if you're 45, 50 years old and over time have come down here than understandable. but but even then i mean i think it's it's wise to go through and check all these boxes because enough times now i've seen a client fix one two or three of these things and it make the difference and so if you can do that without having to go on therapy that is the most ideal way now you will have some people especially older people that will do all these things and like have a similar situation or like in my case messed around with you know steroids when i was in my early 20s and then competed with it and then tried to come on it's just like my body at that point was so used to taking exogenous testosterone that it was like yeah we're we're not coming back and so then it makes sense for someone like that but i mean try this first before you go right to hormone i would say majority of people watching right now who have these symptoms uh will see pretty significant improvement if they did this for 30 to 60 days for sure.

27:27Now we have a guide. We have a testosterone guide that breaks this down plus more with more details. It's totally free. So you can download it. Go to mindpumpmedia.com forward slash testosterone dash guide. Get yourself the free boost testosterone guide. You can also find us on Instagram, mindpumpmedia. We'll see you there. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, Check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, and MAPS Aesthetic.

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