Testosterone is key to building muscle. Without it all your hard work in the gym will be in vain. Giving your testosterone a boost will help your overall health as well as your muscle building efforts. Having low testosterone will wreak havoc on your ability to put on muscle mass and will affect the motivation to work out. Muscle and testosterone go hand in hand.
There are a number of supplements out there that claim to know how to boost testosterone, but follow below remedies before investing in them.
Having a low fat diet can be detrimental to your testosterone levels. There have been numerous studies showing the connection between someone who is not enough getting calories from fat and having low testosterone. The connection is obvious. Ideally 30% of your daily calories should come from Fats. The make-up of the 30% should be from healthy fats that are found in salmon, almonds, tuna and olive oil. This is enough and consuming extra calories from fat could lead into other health complications. In the 30% of calories to come from fats, remember to include a small amount of saturated fats. Some sources of saturated fats are red meat, butter and whole milk.
Other areas in your diet that might be affecting your testosterone levels are the amount of alcohol that is being consumed. Alcohol affects the body’s ability to naturally produce testosterone. It encourages the breakdown of testosterone that is in the blood. Along with soy products the consumption of alcohol produces estrogen in the body.
Zinc and Magnesium are important in many muscle building hormones and testosterone is one of them. Having inadequate levels of either one of these is minerals can lead to severe low testosterone levels. A way to remedy this would be to invest in a high quality multi-vitamin. This would be beneficial to you not only to help with your zinc and magnesium deficiency, but could help in other areas where you could be lacking vitamins or minerals.
Losing the fat on your body will have an effect on your testosterone, especially if you are obese or largely over weight. The relationship is between estrogens and body fat. Too much estrogen causes a imbalance and your testosterone levels suffer. High Estrogen levels are linked to loss of sexual performance, drive and muscle loss. Basically too much excess body weight leads to more estrogen in the body thus causing the imbalance of testosterone to estrogen. Losing that fat will help you get your testosterone back.
Your training may be affecting your testosterone levels. Working out for short periods is great for testosterone levels, but once the training period goes over roughly 60 minutes cortisol levels rise and testosterone levels fall. The cortisol to testosterone imbalance happens it can sometimes take up to six days for the your natural testosterone levels to get back to normal. Endurance athletes tend to have quite low testosterone levels compared to other athletes and the long workouts needed for their sport is one of the reasons.
Not getting enough sleep or quality sleep can lead up to a huge 40% decrease in your testosterone levels. At certain stages in the sleep process your body will release testosterone, if you are unable to get to that stage in your sleep cycle you will not get the optimal amounts of testosterone being released. At the very minimum you should aim to get 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Try not to consume any liquids close to sleep time, as this will disrupt your sleep.
Having low testosterone can be linked to a number of health issues such as obesity, high cholesterol levels, erectile dysfunction, depression and cardiovascular disease. Testosterone is crucial for your muscle building efforts, but it also very important for your general health and well-being.
