Health Articles

Posted by Nicole on September 5

As you get older, your testosterone levels drop. But the reduction in your testosterone levels doesn’t come without its share of consequences for your physical and mental well-being. Symptoms associated with low T include erectile dysfunction, reduced muscle mass, decreased sex drive, hair loss, and more.

What can you do to improve your testosterone levels? Following are some simple lifestyle recommendations.

1. Work out.

Exercising on a regular basis is one way you can potentially boost your testosterone. In particular, you may find resistance training to be effective.

Working out also may help to reduce high estrogen levels and raise your dopamine, making for a more balanced profile of hormones and neurotransmitters overall. As an additional plus, it can help to reduce inflammation.

2. Eat fat.

Studies have found that diets which are high in healthy fat content may help to promote testosterone.

So, if you have been following a low-fat diet, it is possible that you have been contributing to your low testosterone levels. Try increasing your intake of healthy fats.

3. Get plenty of vitamin D.

Research suggests that increasing vitamin D intake may also be good for testosterone levels. Suboptimal levels of vitamin D are quite common among those who work indoors all day or live in climates like the Pacific Northwest that tend to be cloudy.

4. Get more zinc.

Supplementing with zinc may help to maintain testosterone levels in athletes. So, zinc is another nutrient that you may want to consider getting more of in your diet.

5. Try to reduce your stress levels.

As this research explains, if your cortisol levels go up, your testosterone levels can experience a corresponding decline.

That means that if you are suffering from chronic stress, it may be having a pervasive negative impact on your testosterone levels.

If possible, try and find ways to reduce or better manage your stress. In doing so, you may be able to restore a better balance.

6. Sleep full nights.

A lot of us feel a need to “power through” our lives, putting productivity first, often at the expense of a full night of sleep each night.

But did you know that by routinely denying yourself a full night of sleep, you can actually significantly reduce your testosterone levels?

Getting sufficient sleep every night is important. So, make it a priority, not an option.

7. Try taking herbal supplements.

Along with increasing your intake of vitamin D and zinc, you can also take herbal supplements to support healthy testosterone levels.

Tongkat ali, for example, appears to be effective in rebalancing cortisol and testosterone.

Other supplements which may help to support healthy T levels or counteract symptoms associated with low T include nettle root, ginseng panax and maca root.

You now have a variety of simple lifestyle recommendations for potentially increasing your testosterone levels. You will most likely get the best results if you take a holistic approach that integrates multiple recommendations from this list.

It can take time for your body to adjust. Don't give up if you don't get the results you are looking for right away. It may take a number of weeks before you start noticing improvements.