Defying The Drop: 10 Unusual Ways to Increase Your Testosterone

Defying The Drop: 10 Unusual Ways to Increase Your Testosterone

Ignition......we have lift off. Light the burners under your test levels using these science-backed lifestyle. And most would be described as a pleasure. Apart from the one about dipping your balls in ice water, we don't consider that pleasurable.

tl; dr ... Short and to the Point
Who is this article aimed at?
Anybody looking for some 'out of the box' ideas on how to increase their testosterone levels through lifestyle changes.
I am busy - summarize it for me

Watch the football, drive a Porsche, drink some wine, adopt a power stance, have a cold shower, drink a glass of water, eat a raw egg, and go to sleep. Some lifestyle changes based on academic research which have, unusually, shown that you can boost your test without having to fork out for Testosterone Replacement Therapy.

Everyone knows testosterone is key to things like controlling body fat, building muscle and maintaining sex drive.

Recent studies though have shown it also has a significant role in guarding against serious threats to health such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and depression.

With the stakes getting higher as testosterone levels get lower, many men are tempted by expensive procedures like Hormone Replacement Therapy (regular injections of lab created testosterone) to counter declining levels.

But are such drastic measures strictly necessary?

In this article we’ll take a look at 10 relatively small, easy, even enjoyable lifestyle changes we can all make to boost our own natural testosterone. That will help to halt or reverse the age related decline, keeping us feeling and performing at our peak.

Go With the Flow

If you don’t look like the love child of the late great Walter Matthau and a California Raisin, you must be hydrated. Right?… Wrong. Studies have shown that up to two thirds of us don’t drink nearly enough water.

Too little fluid intake slows many essential functions down and hormones are no different. Testosterone, Human Growth Hormone and dopamine will all fall if we don’t get enough water on a daily basis.

How much is enough?

Well official guidelines recommend somewhere between 5 and 8 glasses, but in truth that’s really more of a guesstimate. The reality is it varies depending on factors like size.

The best way to gauge your own requirements is probably good old fashioned urine colour. To paraphrase that great modern philosopher, Ned Flanders, “If it’s clear or pale yella, you’re hydrated there fella, if it’s dark, nearly brown, you’re in Low T town”

Food For Thought

There are plenty of foods out there which will help you boost your testosterone.  The vitamin D in oily fish is hugely helpful, oysters have high levels of zinc which the body needs for testosterone, and there’s even some suggestion that spicy food can raise levels.

For those of us who are not exactly top chefs though, there’s always the trusty raw egg. Eggs are chock full of cholesterol, which is a naturally occurring steroid hormone, and they are also a precursor for all your sex hormones – testosterone included.

Hold on before breaking out that frying pan though. Sadly doing that will oxidize the cholesterol and ruin its effectiveness.

For best results it’s advisable to simply crack an egg into a glass and throw it back to start your day. Rocky Balboa wasn’t just doing that because he was out of pop tarts you know.

Let’s Get Physical …(ish)

If you asked the average person to pick someone who they thought had high testosterone, chances are they would pick a ripped action star or athlete.

Ironically given testosterone’s image, research has found that the effects of doing too much strenuous exercise can be unhelpful to T levels.

Investigators at the University of North Carolina looked into the effects of over training, which can cause a surge in cortisol, a hormone that breaks down muscle and works against testosterone.

They found that guys who felt the burn and carried on, actually experienced a 40% drop in testosterone.

This is similar to findings of a study by scientists at the Universidad Federal de Sao Paulo, which revealed that men’s testosterone can fall by 50% after running a marathon.

Cortisol is sometimes called the stress hormone because it is produced when we’re under pressure, so it’s important to make lots of time to relax. Strictly for testosterone purposes you understand.

Boost with Your Eyes Shut

The American Medical Association recommends a good night’s rest based on a number of studies. One example  comes from the University Of Chicago Medical Centre.

Scientists examined testosterone levels in a group of the fully rested volunteers and compared them with guys who had managed just 5 hours.

They discovered that the sleep deprived subjects had testosterone readings on average 15% lower than guys who had caught enough Z’s.

We know the body uses sleep to perform essential repair, all sorts of processing and re-balancing, so it should come as no surprise that testosterone is influenced by the amount of time we get to recharge. The current consensus is that 7 or 8 hours are preferable.

Get Your Motor Running

It’s easy to see guys of a certain age behind the wheel of a sports car and automatically think midlife crisis. But a new study suggests that these men are having the last laugh.

Not just because their cash flow is clearly pretty healthy, but because their testosterone might be too.

Researchers at Concordia University in Montreal recruited 39 men to each spend an hour driving a £75,000 ($117,000) Porsche 911 Carrera Cabriolet.

Saliva was taken and compared with samples from the same subjects after an hour in a 16-year-old Toyota Camry family car. While the Toyota either caused no change or, in some cases, even a drop in their testosterone levels, the Porsche caused a noticeable rise.

Some suggested that this rise was a response to the added female attention the Porsche got, but in fact  hormone levels were still higher on open roads with no onlookers.

Scientists say the effect of a fast car on a man’s body is a form of ‘sexual signalling’ – where males compete for the attention of the opposite sex.

A Toast to Testosterone

It seems fitting that the perfect example of something which gets better with age, a bottle of wine, may hold the secret to helping guys do the same.

The reason is a compound, found in red wine, known as quercetin. Scientists at Kingston University found that quercetin has properties which blocks an enzyme in the body from telling the kidneys to pass out testosterone in urine, leaving more of it in our system.

Where quercetin looks promising is in its ability to release nitric oxide into the body. This raises blood flow and helps with circulatory issues – which is possibly why some natural supplements already include it – but any actual direct testosterone increasing qualities are yet to be established by clinical trial.

But with the wine being the key, I’d wager plenty of guys are already doing some freelance research as we speak. To any brave souls out there currently, selflessly giving their bodies to science, we salute you.

Keep Your Eye On The Ball

According to researchers from Georgia State University, men who are watching their team play increase their testosterone.

They studied spectators of the 2014 World Cup and found guys experienced a 28% growth.  So sitting down regularly to watch a match could be great for your health. Get in! Not just your health, your relationship too.

Testosterone is vital to sex drive remember, so if that means you have to sacrifice your Saturday and suffer through the big game every week, all season, then you’ll do it. For your partner. To keep that spark alive. Because they mean that much to you and that’s just the kind of guy you are. They can make it up to you someday.

Small disclaimer though, to get this selfless boost in testosterone and sexual performance, your team need to win. If they lose, the Georgia state investigators claimed, you could face a drop of 28%. You might say you only schwing when you’re winning.

Strike A Pose

Research suggested that how you hold yourself has an effect on how much testosterone you produce. Amazingly, a study by a teams from both Colombia and Yale University concluded that you could raise your testosterone by 20% in 2 minutes if you adopted certain power stances.

42 participants, 16 of whom were male were asked to spit in a vial as they entered a room, then adopt either a power stance or very closed off shy body language.

They held this for 2 minutes after which the same participants then gave saliva again. Before and after samples were then compared for testosterone and cortisol levels.

Incredibly the group who were powerful saw a 20% increase in testosterone and 25% drop in cortisol, the more physically shy group saw a 10% reduction in testosterone and 15% upturn in cortisol.

The power stances included: sitting in a chair; legs crossed and fingers interlinked behind the head and standing with feet evenly spread and hands on hips; and standing at the head of a table with palms on the desk.

The last person I heard of raising testosterone by sitting in a particular position was Sharon Stone, but these are striking results.

Cool Beans

Saved the worst for last here. Unfortunately for us all, decades ago some pesky Russian powerlifters discovered that they perform best when they’re boys were cold.

Those big nutters took to dipping their balls in ice water before competition, finding it would give them a much needed flood of testosterone to lift weights more efficiently.

You’ll be relieved to hear that nobody expects you to book a ticket to Siberia just yet though.

A cold shower can produce much the same effects and is a free way to skyrocket your natural testosterone. Anything that gets your boys good and cold will do the trick basically.

Standing outside freezing your balls off in the dead of night after your partner’s kicked you out because they came home to find you lying on the couch, snoozing in front of the game, having finished all the wine and re-mortgaged the house to buy a Porsche, for example.

Conclusion

So there are a number of steps we can take to boost our T. Some easy, some unpleasant and some plain weird. But any combination of these ideas will help. Well, I say any combination, it’s probably best you avoid drinking wine and driving a Porsche.

Other than that, we recommend experimenting with these to find what works best for you. The beauty of all these techniques is they’re about stimulating your body’s testosterone supplies naturally, allowing you to reach your full potential with total peace of mind.

Sure, some of these tips might require a bit of effort, but when it’s a choice between natural and synthetic, it’s always better to be rolling up your sleeves for a bit of graft than rolling them up for an injection.

For many, a quality all-natural booster is a happy compromise. A good organic supplement can taken with any of the above suggestions, so you can absolutely wash it down with a raw egg while you adopt a power stance for in an ice cold shower.

tl; dr ... Short and to the Point
Who is this article aimed at?
Anybody looking for some 'out of the box' ideas on how to increase their testosterone levels through lifestyle changes.
I am busy - summarize it for me

Watch the football, drive a Porsche, drink some wine, adopt a power stance, have a cold shower, drink a glass of water, eat a raw egg, and go to sleep. Some lifestyle changes based on academic research which have, unusually, shown that you can boost your test without having to fork out for Testosterone Replacement Therapy.