Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1212: Seven Ways to Raise Your Testosterone Naturally

Episode Date: January 23, 2020

In this episode, Sal, Adam and Justin detail seven ways you can increase your testosterone levels naturally. What is causing lower testosterone in men? (3:03) What is testosterone and why is it important? (5:50) Breaking the myths surrounding lower testosterone levels. (8:00) The Seven Ways to Raise your Testosterone Naturally. (12:04) #1 - Lifting weights and getting stronger. (13:26) #2 – Getting the body healthy first through a balanced diet. (22:15) #3 – Building a quality sleep routine. (28:08) #4 – Managing your stress. (34:41) #5 – Getting enough sunlight. (41:12) #6 – Supplementing with what you need. (43:30) #7 – Avoiding estrogen-like compounds. (47:43) People Mentioned Jason Phillips (@jasonphillipsisnutrition)  Instagram Related Links/Products Mentioned January Promotion: MAPS HIIT ½ off! **Code “HIIT50” at checkout** Visit Four Sigmatic for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “mindpump” at checkout** Visit Everly Well for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “mindpump” at checkout** How Men Can Naturally Increase Their Testosterone – Mind Pump Blog How To Optimize Your Natural Testosterone Levels – Mind Pump TV Effects of progressive resistance training on growth hormone and testosterone levels in young and elderly subjects. Today’s men are not nearly as strong as their dads were, researchers say MAPS Fitness Anabolic – Mind Pump Overweight Men Can Boost Low Testosterone Levels by Losing Weight Mind Pump 1210: How to Eat to Lose Fat & Build Muscle With Jason Phillips Low-fat diet linked to lower testosterone levels in men Sleep loss dramatically lowers testosterone in healthy young men Relationship between sleep-related erections and testosterone levels in men. Visit Infrared Sauna for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! Visit Brain.fm for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners. Stress relief from laughter? It's no joke Are Adaptogens Nature's Stress Busters? Scientists Discover New Link Between Marijuana Smoking And Testicular Cancer Risk Mind Pump Free Resources  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salta Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode of Mind Pump, we talk all about testosterone. There seems to be an epidemic of low testosterone levels. And this is real, by the way, scientists are now discovering that testosterone levels seem to have been dropping

for the last few decades. A lot of young men are noticing the effects of low testosterone, lack of muscle mass, higher body fat levels, low energy, low sex drive, low motivation. So in this episode, we talk about seven all natural ways to raise testosterone. So these seven ways that we talk about are backed by studies and science and also through our

experience. So we talk all about everything from lifting weights to your diet, stress management, sleep, the kinds of nutrients that you're going to want to pay attention to to make sure that your testosterone levels move up high. We talk about sunlight, vitamin D, and we talk about estrogen-like compounds that you may want to avoid because we're finding that they may actually lower testosterone levels. Now this episode is brought to you by our sponsor for Sigmatic. Now, for Sigmatic is a company that specializes in superfoods, functional mushrooms, and adaptogenic herbs. Now, the range of products goes across a huge category of coffee, hot cocoa, elixirs, matcha lattes, lemonade, and blends. In fact, in this episode, we talk about adaptogenic herbs and how they can raise testosterone. Force Sigmatic has an adaptogenic blend that contains ashwagandha and Siberian jinsing,

both of which have been shown to raise testosterone in men who have low testosterone. We have a discount code for you. If you go to Force Sigmatic, that's F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C, dot com forward slash mind pump. If you use the code mind pump at checkout, you get 15% off. Also, maps hit, this is our high intensity interval training program, 50% off, huge sale, it's half off. Now, this is a full workout program designed to burn the most amount of body fat in the shortest amount of time.

Hit workouts are intense, but short. They're very effective. A 20 minute high intensity interval training session will burn as many calories as much body fat as a longer traditional workout. So if you're interested in burning body fat quickly in a short period of time, this is the program for you and it's programmed appropriately. It's done the right way using weights so you don't lose muscle. You'll love this program. Again, it's half off. Here's how you get the discount. Go to mapshit have done episodes or YouTube clips that are like a topic specific that on questions that I get a lot so I can just kind of reference.

I can go listen to us talk in detail of this. And one that I get all the time and we don't have a single episode where we do like a deep dive on this conversation, but of course it's came up many times because I've shared my journey. And that pertains to increasing your testosterone levels naturally. I get a lot of message around this topic, and I find myself kind of going, having to go back and forth and explain things and ask questions and I'm like, you know what?

We should do a good deep dive on like all the different things that I've done to try and naturally bring my testosterone levels back up and things that you should probably address and look out. I think that's a really hot topic. Well, it's also a hot topic in the research of medical community. And it has been now for the last, I'd say 10 years, because researchers have realized that to stostral levels

and men, average levels have been consistently declining for the last three or four, maybe even more, maybe even five decades consistently. Since the 1980s, in fact, on average, the average testosterone level since Tested In Men has been going down by 1% every year. So there's definitely something that's going on. What do they think is the biggest offender?

If they had to like, post it up on like, the list of like, like one of the main factors that's going on. What do they think is the biggest offender? If they had to like post it up on like the list of like one, like one of the main factors that's causing this. Well, there's, they don't know for sure, but there's a few theories. A few theories to what may be causing this. One is in activity, two would be diet, and three would be exposure to chemicals that could be considered hormone disruptors.

Do they really write that one up there that high? They do. Really? Yeah, they do talk about that one. That's something that like the hardcore science guys really bashed the wellness people that talk about things like that. Well, when it comes to a fetus and how that will affect the fetus long term, there's been cases where boys have been using products

and getting estrogenic-like side effects, and you know, they're endocrinologists or removing those products, and the estrogenic side effects go down. But these are all theories. It's probably a combination of all these things. Yeah, it's a multitude of factors for sure. Yeah, and there's a lot of information around testosterone.

And some of it is myths. Now before we get into that, of course, for those you listening who don't know what testosterone is or why it's important, it is the primary male hormone. It's responsible for masculineizing effects in men. It's responsible for drive and motivation. Even in women, it's responsible somewhat for that. Women have a little bit testosterone.

It gives them that too. Strength and muscle gain, symptoms of low testosterone. You don't recover very well from workouts. You don't feel strong. You have lack of motivation, low sex drive, depression, bone loss. You want good, healthy, natural high levels of testosterone for health. Heart disease, heart attacks, cancers have been connected to low testosterone levels.

Whereas high, normal, natural levels of testosterone have been shown to be protective against lots of disease. So, when you look at some of the warnings of like too much testosterone, they're referring to probably exogenous testosterone when people inject themselves with it. But if you're testosterone levels are high naturally, it's healthier for you. Well, what's your thoughts too

on the ability for it to contribute to building muscle for someone to like comparing somebody who has moderately low testosterone naturally to somebody who has higher levels of testosterone naturally. I mean, I would speculate that the person with naturally higher levels would build muscles significantly easier than somebody who has moderate to low. Yeah, there's a lot of factors, right? There's like your workout, your diet, there's other factors in genetics that determine muscle building, but if all things are equal, let's say you have two twins, one guy's got low testosterone, the other guy's got high testosterone, all within the natural range.

You're going to, yes, you're going to build more muscle, you're going to be leaner, you're going to be stronger, more motivated, you're going to have high energy, all like better sex drive, it's going to make a significant difference. It's the primary male hormone. So when it's low, all the stuff that makes you feel good, all those good feelings can start to decline. So it becomes a big problem. And again, it's a big problem right now in modern societies.

We're seeing this kind of consistent drop, which is kind of interesting. One myth that's out there is that testosterone levels go down as you age. And it's not really a full myth, but I think we attribute the lowering of testosterone to the fact that you're aging. But what they're finding with studies is that much bigger part of the lowering testosterone levels as you age is due to behavior and health changes, not due to the fact that you're just older. Well, and I think we've known this as trainers for years because I'm sure you guys have got stories. I've got stories of clients that I've trained and they're mid to late 50s that would after

we got their diet dialed in, I addressed sleep, I checked off all the boxes that they would be reporting back to me having higher levels than they've ever had. Every single time. And so, you know, yeah, you can be getting old. I think those studies are because we take a mass, you know, the average. Yeah, we take a group of old people. Yeah, old people would say, oh, it looks like,

you know, generally speaking, you know, 10,000 people that are 65 years old have lower testosterone levels than 10,000 people that are 30 years old. Of course, that speaks to the behavior. Yeah, it's just like, whatever you've done, like, leading up to that, like, I mean, it's going to end up resulting in, you know, your health is going to be affected by that. Well, it's like the metabolism thing. It's just like that. People think that they're stuck with this terrible metabolism or as you age your metabolism slows down. It's like, well, no, not necessarily.

You could speed your metabolism up as you get older if you do all the right things as far as nutrition and exercise. Now, of course, the male body does age. So age does happen too. You do start to suffer some of the side effects or whatever you want wanna say of age. But you can maintain a consistent level testosterone

if you were to keep going. Now, hormone, look, here's a deal. You're still getting it older, okay? You're not gonna live forever. But you can keep your testosterone levels high up until the end and the studies are showing that now. Now, the reason why older men have lower testosterone, what some of these studies are saying is because

as men get older, they stop exercising as much. They stop getting as much sunlight. Their diets tend to go... Their body fat percentage goes up. Yeah, absolutely. And this is why you see this. But when they compare healthy, active, strong older men to younger men, the decline is very small.

It's very, very small. So I love training men and women in advance stage, which I would say anything over 65, I would consider advance stage as far as exercise is concerned. And every time I train men, not every time, but most of the time, I would request to see if they got their testosterone levels checked. It's an easy test, and it's an easy way for us to gauge,

you know, certain, you know, is the workouts working? Are we moving at the right direction? So check engine light. And my fit and healthy male clients over 65, the ones that lifted weights were strong, followed a good diet. Other testosterone levels were great. I had one guy trained, he was almost 70 in his testosterone levels tested almost at 700 Every time he tested every single year and it was always up there and this guy was almost Seven years old men don't go through the same big hormonal changes that women do you know women go through menopause with their body stop Being able to have babies. Yeah, a man's body when they're healthy

Theoretically is able to can produce sperm till the day you die and theoretically get a woman pregnant So your testosterone your testosterone levels are heavily heavily influenced By your lifestyle and your behaviors. So if you're a younger man And this is where the epidemic is happening right now the epidemic we're seeing and it's across the board But especially in younger men. So this question was never at I as a trainer early, I never had a 20 year old Asmi had a razor testosterone when I was my 20. Now, almost every person that asked me had a razor testosterone is some kid in his 20s who went and got tested and saw that they had low testosterone levels. So if they're heavily influenced by behavior, so I think we should go through just the most impactful things that can raise testosterone levels

and that can do it naturally. We're not talking about taking steroids, we're not talking about anything illegal or anything crazy. These are ways that can raise, and they can substantially raise your testosterone. I have seen it countless times. I have one guy in particular that I can think of. He was 32, who came to me, was on the border of whether or not he was going to do hormone replacement therapy. His testosterone levels were measuring right in the high 100s, so just under 200, wanted to get, you know, go to the doctor and get the testosterone creams or whatever.

And I told him, give me six months to do what I say, let's see what happens. He was in the middle of the night, and I you know, go to the doctor and get the testosterone creams or whatever. And I told him, give me six months, do what I say, let's see what happens. He went from having testosterone levels out of 180 to over 560. That's a massive increase in testosterone just from lifestyle.

And I used to see that stuff all the time. At the very least, you will notice a boost. I don't know if it would necessarily cure your low levels, but you'll definitely most likely see a raise. Well, when we organized this conversation, we sat down and listed what we thought were seven of the most impactful, and there was a little bit of debate on what would be five or six or back and forth. But there was no debate between the three of us about what we for sure said.

The number one thing that you can do to increase testosterone levels naturally. And I think that's just for me, personal experience, what I went through also all the clients that I've trained, the single most impactful thing that you can do to naturally increase testosterone levels is to lift weights. But hands down heavy weights. By the way, they have compared different forms of exercise on raising testosterone levels. So they've compared more cardiovascular type training, more stretching type stuff. They've compared athletic, playing athletic sports, hiking, and they've also

compared lifting weights, traditional weight training. And hands down, lifting weights raised testosterone significantly more than all the other forms of exercise, although all forms of exercise will raise testosterone. So if you're inactive, any activity will raise testosterone. Is that true, even cardiovascular when you talk about it? So long as you don't overdo it, right? But if you're inactive, if you're just a couch potato, and then you go and you do, you go do some walking on the treadmill or like jogging, as long as you don't overdo it, just

through the simple fact of improving your health. Because in my experience, I've seen negative effects from somebody who goes to do like marathons or run. Overdoing it in a long distance running when you're also trying to increase testosterone. Now that's a good point. Over training or over doing it will do the opposite effect. Even lifting weights. Even lifting weights.

If you go to lift weights and you go and just beat the crap out of yourself way over weight. Well, I remember when I was going through this, it was like, I was only doing like two maybe, like a good week was three days, a normal week would be two days full body, and then just making sure that I started every workout with like a major compound lift. Normally it would be squatting or dead lifting

if it was an upper body type of lead day for me, it would be benching, but doing those big compound lists first and just doing that two, maybe three times a week, strength focus was the probably the biggest impact for me. Oh, and the study supported, again, resistance training in the short term and the long term is superior for raising testosterone in comparison to all other forms of exercise. And the way you want to lift weights is exactly what Adam's saying. Your goal is to go in the gym and get stronger.

Use strength, if you're trying to raise testosterone, the single best almost, it's not totally bulletproof, but almost bulletproof metric you can use to gauge whether or not your workout is helping testosterone is whether or not you're getting stronger consistently. That's probably, it's the easiest metric. So don't worry about how pumped you are or if you got sore or if you got a great sweat. Am I stronger this week than I was last week? If that's happening consistently.

Which is a problem for a lot of men, especially, that I've trained is that they wanna attack everything at once and they wanna come in, like okay, if resistance training is the way for me to boost testosterone, well, why don't I just keep going? Why don't I keep doing harder sessions and more frequent hard sessions, where it really is, it's dose-dependent.

Like you want to make sure you get the right amount, so then you can also recover and gain all those benefits that will help to raise your level of testosterone. I've also taught clients that when we want to leave the gym still wanting more, that's what I would say to them, like you don't want to leave the gym like, yes, like you, oh my, you don't, you're not looking for that. Oh my god, that workout, crew has crushed me or wobbling out, you can barely walk. You want to walk out going like,

ooh, I want more. I'm gonna catch. Yes. That's the feeling you're especially for somebody. I think that's a good gauge period for most people, but it's extremely important I feel for this category of people that have low testosterone. You're seeking that, you know,

I guess you get a good workout and it fuels the rest of the day. So some feedback I used to get from some of my male clients back in the day who were in this predicament was at the end of appropriate good workouts, they felt their libido rise after the workout. So they were telling me, oh man, after my workout,

like I wanna go have sex with my wife or I wanna go have sex with my girlfriend. Overdoing it, you'll feel the workout. So they would tell me, oh man, after my workout, like, I want to go have sex with my wife or I want to go have sex with my girlfriend. Overdoing it, you'll feel the opposite. If you overdo it, you'll leave your workout and sex is the last thing on your mind. You couldn't perform even if you tried. So you should definitely feel at the end of your workout. Aggressive, you should feel some drive, maybe feel a little bit of higher libido. You should feel good. That's a good, and you should get stronger every workout. It's the best metric. Because if your squats going up,

your bench press is going up, your deadlift, your pret, your rows, if those are all going up slowly bit consistently, then you know you're doing most things right. Because if you're not doing most things right, you won't get stronger. So I'd say that's gotta be the number one. And those listening that have been listening for a long time may remember when I was talking

about this and going through this. You know, sometimes the workout was just squats, you know, I was like, I didn't have the energy or the desire to really go lift because, you know, part of low testosterone levels too, sometimes you feel depressed and you feel down and tired and weak and, you know, those aren't the most motivating things when you're trying to get into the gym. So what I found is, you know, hey, sometimes I just get to the gym and I would squat five to six sets of squats

and that would be it, but I would focus on being strong in them and then get out of the gym and just doing that, I felt an impact. Now, now, why does resistance training, well, first off, why does exercise raise testosterone versus being inactive? You're just healthier. So a healthier body is going to have more healthy levels.

It's going to be reflected in healthy, healthy levels of testosterone. But why is resistance training so effective? Because it's telling your body to build muscle. And one of the primary driving, muscle building driving hormones is testosterone. So when you lift weights properly and you're getting stronger, the signal your body is getting is we need to build muscle. Your body sets out to build that muscle and it needs testosterone to do so. So it's actually signaling itself, hey, race testosterone, we need to build some muscle. So that's the main reason why it's so effective. I would say it's the main reason why we're seeing testosterone levels decline in young men. For sure. We're just, you know,

in the past, many jobs were manual labor. We were very active. We were, you know, stronger studies show this. They did, they do a grip test study where they had, you know, college aged men squeezing a gripper. They tested it. they compared it to a 1980s version of the test. So their dad's the one that their dads did. And they were significantly weaker. I think men today in their 20s have the average grip strength of men in their 50s in the 1980s. And there's nothing happening to us genetically. We're just not active. It's just a shift in behaviors. And I think too, yeah, there's been a lot less involvement in high stakes type sports, like physical contact sports. There's been a drop in yeah, like there's been a lot less involvement in high stakes type sports like physical contact sports

There's been a drop in that and has just been different priorities and in jobs look completely different now to where you know There's a lot more like you know that we're sitting down. We're looking at screen It's just a different environment that now we have to do extra just to make sure that our body is healthy and thrive I'm gonna say something that's really unpopular also, which is I guarantee you that these circuit-based high-intensity type classes is not conducive to this person, this category. No. There's too much intensity. You're going to go to testosterone, you're going to go do a circuit.

You're just moving fast. There's a lot of people that, you know, when they, when they start back in their fitness routine, that gravitate towards these group training type classes and or crossfit. And when you're trying to raise testosterone levels naturally, this is not the ideal modality for the best routine for boosting testosterone would be maps in a ball hands down best program that we offer for testosterone boosting and I would start with the two-day week option in the program and the trigger sessions on the other days That is a very strength oriented build muscle oriented Raise testosterone oriented type of of program. I would not recommend doing Circuit training or you know just crazy high-intense

recommend doing circuit training or just crazy high-intense non-stop type workouts. In fact, in terms of resistance training for raising testosterone, there was another study that I had pulled up that showed that obese men raised testosterone more by lifting weights than they did just by losing weight. Even obese men, we know that when someone's really obese and they get leaner, the whartler testosterone will rise, they showed that even someone's really obese and they get leaner, the whartler testosterone will rise, they showed that even if they didn't lose weight, just lifting weights raised their testosterone more than losing weight did.

That's how big of an impact it has on the body. All right, the second one is gonna be your diet. But this one's a little bit more, this one's pretty crucial, but it's not as specific. And what I mean by that is a lot of times we'll talk about proteins, fats, and carbs, and how to cut them and cut your calories, this kind of stuff. Studies show that being too low in anything

is not good for testosterone. So you have to have a high protein diet to build muscle and for testosterone. Fat needs to be adequate for testosterone. And so do carbs, going really low carb, even if your calories are high, might actually be negative for the way your body presides to testosterone.

We recently had a great episode with our friend, Jason Phillips, and this kind of reminds me of how we were talking about, regardless of the person's goal weight loss, we talk about getting the body healthy first. And part of getting the body healthy first is just really looking at where your caloric maintenance currently is at. So wherever and that's even if you're off the quote unquote diet, figuring out where your caloric maintenance is and just

replacing some of the foods that are lower in value nutritionally and with just higher nutrient dense foods into the diet, not trying to restrict a bunch of calories and go on a diet and cut, but to actually keep the body fueled, give it what you're used to eating on a railways, but just make exchanges for better choices in conjunction with lifting weights, is the most ideal way,

which is counter to what I think is common knowledge. I think most people think that, oh, I'm, you know, need to get the gym and I'm overweight. That's contributing to my low testosterone. So I want to go in and go in and die it right away and they start with restricting calories. And that's not how I would take somebody like this. I would assess where they're currently eating calorie wise

and then replace probably some of the choices with higher nutrient dense foods and keep their calories actually up but more balanced. It just goes back to that, you know to that old adage of healthy balanced meal. It's like you wanna give your body a chance to have the building blocks for your muscle to then be able to build and develop properly. I think that we over-complicate this part all the time

and we're trying to do things to hack this Goldilocks zone of being able to stay super lean but then also try and build muscle and this and it takes a little bit away you know from where the body is most optimal and being able to stay healthy and remain healthy. Yeah. Now good rule of thumb would be avoid heavily processed foods. They just don't really do anybody really much good. So stick to whole natural foods.

As far as the macros are concerned, for protein, anywhere between about 0.5 to 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight, if you're relatively lean, if you're obese, then use lean body mass. Carbs, you can go as low as a one-to-one protein to carb ratio. In other words, if you're eating 200 grams of protein, 200 grams of carbs, that would be the lowest that would go. but you probably want to be about 50% higher than that in carbs.

And then fat makes up the difference. So ultimately, what your diet's going to look like, it's going to kind of look balanced. You're going to have, you know, nothing's going to be too low. You're going to have a little bit of everything. The fats are essential for the production of hormones, too low of fat, definitely low-office testosterone. Very, very low carbs does the same thing. Very low carbs has been shown to lower testosterone as well. Now, here's the caveat. If the diet that you're following is optimal for your health, then that's going to be the best one

for testosterone. So if you're somebody that low carbs works best with your health, carbohydrates affect your gut negatively. You get lots of inflammation. Maybe you have lots of food intolerances to grains or the high-carb food, starchy vegetables. Then low-carb is probably going to be ideal for your testosterone as well. So at the end of the day, what what what trumps all of this is the diet that makes you healthiest. Haven't they had studies around, isn't there a connection between low fat diets and low testosterone levels? That's not ideal, really low fat diets at all

when it comes to testosterone. It usually isn't, but there may be a case where there's somebody that just like, doesn't respond well, maybe they have gallbladder, you know, issues or whatever, they just don't digest fats very well. Right, that would be the small exception of the role, but I would say probably one of the most common golf, golf, bladder, you know, issues or whatever. They just don't, they don't digest fats very well. Right. That would be the small exception of the role, but I would say,

probably one of the most common and popular things that I would see because a lot of people that I would coach or train that were dealing with low testosterone was also come from the era of they grew up in the, you know, fat is bad for us. And so they avoided a lot of fat foods. And when I looked at their diet, I'm like, man, you're missing a lot of healthy fats in here. And I just by bumping into it's essential.

Right. So just by me bumping up their healthy fats and their diet would actually make a surge in a difference. So for me personally, I'm looking for almost like an even balance across a board and let them make sure you hit your protein intake and then carbs and fat are pretty equally balanced in their diet and how much that seems to be unless you're at like, they're all biodeiverse.

I mean, there's lots of variables out there and everybody can do the best on one specific way of eating. But I think a good place to start is at least consider the balanced approach first and then extract whatever, maybe inflammatory to you going for. Yeah, like, may be inflammatory to you, you know, going for it. Yeah. Oh, here's another thing on testosterone.

Probably not a good idea to do lots of fasting. Fasting, long periods of fasting or too consistent fasting spikes cortisol and can have a testosterone lowing effect on somebody, especially someone with really low testosterone. If you have low testosterone, for example, if you came to me as a client as a listener and you're like, hey, I have low testosterone, should I do a 12-hour fast every day or 24-hour fast every other week, I'd say probably say no. So, no, testosterone's low. Let's not have you do the fast thing.

Go ahead and just eat your breakfast lunch and dinner because that might have a negative effect. The next one, this is a big one and this is one that I ignored for a long time personally. Sleep plays a huge role in how your body how your body produces testosterone whether it produces enough testosterone. It's got a massive, massive impact

on your body's ability to recover, build muscle. This is something I didn't take seriously until relatively recently. Well, and I think this is a growing problem too. I think that, and I know there's not a lot of research to support what I'm gonna say, but I know that you can just tell

that there's gotta be a major difference of the television screens that we have today, and the ability to stream and binge watch TV, that's just, it's different than what it was just the decade and a half ago. It wasn't like this, like you didn't catch yours. At least, no one needed blue blocker glasses, a decade or so ago.

I mean, the high-deaf, you know, LED screens now are so vibrant. Plus, there was never anything on TV past that's... Yeah, exactly. That's what we were talking about. That's what we were talking about. And you wouldn't, exactly. And even if there was something, it was your one show, maybe two shows, but now I know people listening right now that are honest with themselves.

Everybody's done this before where it six or seven o'clock a night, they get hooked on their favorite Netflix show and they binge through four or five episodes straight until 10, 11 o'clock or midnight and then you try and go to sleep. You know how much that disrupts your ability to fall to fall asleep and then to get into your room. Like I just think that's happening so much more than what we saw before. And even though this was always important,

it's even more important today that you build a routine around getting ready for bed, the same way you have a routine around getting up and getting ready for work. Not to mention, you know, to kind of piggyback on the whole screen thing. Like, with my phone, for instance, not just having it away from where I was,

I used to have it right next to my bed. And I would get notifications, I would get text messages. Things would happen that you're like, oh, whatever, it's there. I don't really think it's affecting me much, but it was amazing how much that was affecting me and just knowing that if I haven't heard a little's affecting me much, but it was amazing how much that was affecting me and just knowing that, you know, like,

if I haven't heard like a little bit of a buzz or something, like it would totally take me out of the kind of sleep that I was in right then. So I had to remove it and put it in the other room and it's been a life changer. Well, here's a couple studies for you. One study showed that when people slept for only five hours a night, it was connected to a 15 to 20% reduction into testosterone.

Okay, here's another one. That's a lot. This is a long-term study. What this study showed that for every additional hour of sleep that you get, your testosterone levels can rise by about 15% or higher on average. Okay, so if you're listening right now and you're being very Calculate how many hours you get a sleep you get you get you get you sleep every single night Now you want to give you you want to add about a or reduce take off about a half hour off that because it takes about 30 minutes to fall asleep Typically, maybe a little less right? So you're like okay according to my calculations I get about 6 to 6 and a half hours of sleep and I would

you get about six to six and a half hours of sleep. And I would surmise that if you're in your 20s and you're in mail listening right now, you're probably averaging about six hours a night. That's what I would say. Or maybe less. Okay, add two hours of sleep to that. You can expect about a 15 to 25, maybe even 30% increase in testosterone.

Boom. According to the studies, according to the studies, just from doing that. So just sleeping more can have a profound effect on your hormone levels and testosterone levels profound now. Does that affect everything else? Absolutely. I notice it my gains and the gym strength my mental clarity pretty much everything now How are you gonna do this? Does this mean you just go to bed earlier? Well, that's part of it But I think you need to take it a step further

I think you need to prepare for going to bed like you do with your workouts. Like, before I go to do my workouts, I do my priming. I take my pre workout or whatever, I have my coffee 30 minutes before I do my foam rolling or my priming. I visualize what I'm going to do. I spend a good 20 to 30 minutes before I work out taking my workout seriously and preparing myself. You should do that at least before you go to bed.

I like to do about an hour. work out seriously in preparing myself. You should do that at least before you go to bed. I like to do about an hour. About an hour before I go to bed, I turn all the lights down or I wear blue blocker glasses, I have to make everything, turn off all the electronics, maybe drink some camel milk tea. I allow my body time to settle so that when I go to bed, I get some really good,

yeah, I mean, if you're getting really good sleep, do you really need like the pre-workout and all these stimulants and all this stuff, like going into it, it's like, you know, I think that we're just conditioned, you know, if you're a regular gym goer guy and like you're going in there and like it's part of the ritual,

like think about that. Like if you're getting good enough sleep, do you really need this excess amount of pre-workout to then, you know, charge your workout every time? You know, that's actually, you bring up a good point that is I've helped a lot of clients after I started doing a weird troubleshooting. Like, you know, sometimes you try to help somebody

with sleep and you just can't put your finger on it. What is it? We've tried this, we've tried this, we've tried that. And I've been surprised how many people don't realize what a difference the amount of caffeine they take in a day and or the time that they take caffeine, how much it can make an impact on your late night sleep. Like huge.

And I know for me personally, I know my time. Like, if I have, as a direct connoisseur, I have a drop of caffeine post four o'clock. You can just guarantee it's gonna ruin my sleep. I mean, so, and I also notice on days when I just have lots of it, like a day where I might have multiple cups of coffee

or I do some sort of rock star or something at the ordinary, like pay attention to the amount of caffeine and the time that you're taking it and then pay attention to that night's sleep. And one of the best things that you can do is either one, reduce the amount of caffeine you're in taking to help improve sleep or pay attention to the timing that you're having at all. You should have a minimum of four to eight hours between your last consumption of caffeine to sleep.

Most people are actually on the higher end. Some people can get away with, you know, four hours. Like if you stop drinking at four, you probably go to bed by by 10 so it's about six hours. It's about right Eight is probably where it wants to be so if you're gonna be in bed by 10 pm I wouldn't have caffeine past 2 pm if you're sensitive to caffeine like I am I have caffeine anything past 1 or 2 pm And it's probably gonna affect my sleep. So that's a huge huge tip right now the next one which goes along with sleep would be stress management. How you handle the stress in your life. Now there's this common thing that gets repeated. We've probably set it on the show as well that today's day and age, we have a lot more

stress in our lives. I don't think that's really fair. I think it's not fair to... Yeah, I don't think it's fair to pass generations because let's be honest. I've never dealt with a you know a plague I've never dealt with a world war. Yeah, but it's the type of stress. Yes It's the type of stress the type of stress that we that we may have had in the past was acute It was massive and then it went away and the truth is the acute type of stress back then, afraid for my life or survival stress. Probably actually helped if anything,

testosterone levels, and then the other type of this low level, constant stress, is what I think is what's really hurting us. And that is what I think is at normalized. That's what I think is at all time highs. I know you insult to everybody who's 60 years old and older they'll tell you. Yeah, I trust him here.

We were stressed out. It was way more stressful than what different types of stress. Now we have this type of stress that we don't count as stress, but it really is. It is. And when they, with funny, when you see studies with kids or, you know, in adolescence,

they're so aware of all the dangerous shit that's happening all around the world. All the stresses, all the, oh my God, there's over here is going to, then there's this virus came out over here and then there's this climate change is happening. Also the stuff, for the most part, kids were pretty unaware of all the stuff.

Even people in their 20s were like, whatever, you know, the 24 hour news network cycle was invented not that long ago. So, unless it was local or it was a big, big deal, you really didn't hear about it. This is part of stress management. So part of it is stop tuning into all this freaking insane news all the time. That makes a big difference. That's part of managing this kind of stress.

The other part of managing this kind of stress is learn a shit some of it off. So don't let this work stress carry into the rest of your day. Leave it at work or if that's too hard for you to do, maybe create some practices. I just gonna say this is where tools come into play here. Like, this is where I think there's a lot of value to people using things like sonas and meditation and brain FM.

Like, this is where it makes a ton of sense is you recognize that you do it. Because, you know, at the end of the day, if your job creates a lot of stress, you've got to go to your damn job every single day, you can't just eliminate that. So then you find things and tools and resources to help mitigate some of that type of stress.

And one of those things could be meditation or getting in the infrared sauna practice. Breeding practices, brain FM. These are all great tools that will help somebody in this case. There was, this was a couple of weeks ago, I was reading this article on nature's best stress buster.

And it's a natural thing that we do that when we monitor humans and they do this, cortisol levels drop, perceived stress goes down, and it's immediate, and it's something we evolved with. So this is something that we all have, and it's a part of who we are, precisely because it is a powerful stress buster, and that's laughter.

Laughter is phenomenal at doing this. You can think about, maybe it's times in your life when you were in a very stressful situation and something made you laugh, immediately takes it all down. One of the best ways to manage stress is to laugh, is to be able to find things that you can laugh at and joke around about, makes it tremendous.

And they've actually tied laughter, men who laugh more often. They live longer, right? Yeah, they live longer, have lower levels. Lower levels of cortisol, higher levels of testosterone. I also think now to a new practice that I don't think was important before was just becoming disconnected. You can't...

You can't... I mean, as much as we all love Facebook and Instagram and all these tools that connects all of us together and allows us to build businesses, that also can cause a lot of stress and anxiety for the average person, especially if you're somebody who's constantly looking at your ex's page or comparing yourself

to your friends, really though. You know what I'm saying? That's the low level type of stress. It's constant. We didn't have that before. Like we're saying like, you'd go to work, you'd come home, and then it's a different environment. It's not like you'd bring it home with you.

Now it's there always on the weekends. You're just constantly thinking about it, even because it's in your pocket. It's everywhere you go. Now this is how insidious it is, right? You don't notice it. So, in this was an issue that I had too, I would hear stuff like this, and I'd be like, I don't feel stressed. You may be thinking an issue that I had too, I would hear stuff like this and I'd be like,

I don't feel stressed. You may be thinking this to yourself. You may be listening to me. Yeah, that stuff doesn't really stress me out. That's the problem. Here's how you know, okay, that's because you don't know. You're in the middle of it. Here's how you know.

Do a tech fast, okay? Go camping for a weekend, go on a beach trip or something, unplug from everything. And then watch what happens after two or three days, you'll probably say the following words. Wow, that feels really nice. It feels great to have you on all that stuff. But the first half of it will be tough. You'll have withdrawal. Yeah, with people needing me right now. People are needing it. Or you, or you, you just flat out deny doing it, right? Those are, those are all signs that it might be. Or you're

texting. I'm totally like, you know, going tech free right now. I've seen people do that. Yeah, and that's really what it is. Stress management is really about that because there are certain stresses in life that you can't do anything about. Like, you have a job to worry about. You have bills that you need to worry about. And all that stuff. It doesn't mean you're gonna, you know,

not stress management doesn't mean I go live on a beach for the rest of my life and I'm bored or whatever because that's probably stressful in its own way, right? Like a purpose and all that stuff. It's really about managing it, changing the way you view things, learning to laugh and creating those practices, you know, unplugging. That's a great one Adam. I think unplugging at some point during the day, I know, you know, I've had clients who

say at 7pm, it goes off, 7pm, I'm unplugged. You can't get a hold of me, whatever unless you have my landline or unless you're, you know, you're, it's an emergency. Other than that, I'm off at 7pm. What'm unplugged. You can't get a hold of me, whatever, unless you have my landline, or unless you're, you know, it's an emergency. Other than that, I'm off at 7pm. What a great practice. What a great way. Does anybody have landlines? You guys, you don't have a landline, do you? No, my parents do.

My parents do too. Do they really laugh? Because people leave them messages there, and they're like, this, this is still a thing. I'm gonna forgive you. I got a fax machine back here. My mom just got rid of her, a, a, a, a cord phone. Oh my God. She had a landline and the phone had a

cord. Yes. Isn't that great? That's great. Yeah. Anyways. All right. So here's another one. And this one is actually again, remarkable. Actually, all the ones we're going over today are very important. So we didn't pick any ones that have small effects. They all have pretty large. Well, I felt like I think when we were making this list, the only one that was like, yes, for sure number one was lifting weights. The rest of these you could argue, depending on who I'm talking to and what current state they're at, I could have somebody

where tech could be like a number one cause because they are sure. The rest of these I feel like. The priorities can shift. I think the rest of these you could argue what's two, three, four, and five. But there undoubtedly, I think we all agreed that number one is lifting weights.

But the rest of these could be extremely important to whoever I'm talking to. They are. Now here's another one, which is get enough sunlight. Lack of sunlight has been connected to low testosterone levels. Part of it may be the low vitamin D that is a result of lack of sunlight,

but some studies show that it could also be just from lack of sunlight itself. Not even the fact that you're not making creating enough to a vitamin D, but just that we need sun. It's own like benefits for you. We need sun. Now this can be kind of tough, it's funny.

It's like when I would talk to clients about this, they would say things like, well I'm inside all day, I work, like what do you expect me to do about that? So what I used to tell them to do is I'd say, go outside and eat outside, eat your lunch outside. The war, if this explains Justin, all the hipsters in Pacific Northwest,

and the high levels of depression up there. Yeah, hello. Yeah, could it be some, it used to be the sunlight. Yeah, they didn't even put that together. Yeah, it's because they're wearing flannels and growing beards that they're not chopping wood. That's what that's what's happening. That's what's happening. That's what I'm saying though.

You need a lack of sunlight. Here's another one. When you're driving to work or on your way home, sun roof, open your sun roof. You don't even have to open the glass if it's raining or whatever. Just get some sunlight open so that the, that little bit that you get every single day

makes a big difference. Yeah. Sitting next to the window. So when you're in your office or whatever and you need you some work, go next to a window and get some sunlight. But, should we talk about it all the time in this studio? What a difference. Oh, we feel it. I always can tell a difference when we've been in here for hours, working meetings and we're in this dungeon. Yeah, sometimes we've got to just get up and go walk a couple of blocks. And when we do, I always feel a surge of energy from that.

Yeah, but the low D levels and sunlight, those are very big ones, which takes me to the next one. This one can be either very important or not that big of a limitation. Yeah, supplements. Now the most important thing I would say to, with supplements, one that can make a huge difference is if you have a nutrient deficiency that you then fill. Well, that can make a huge difference. Well you have a nutrient deficiency that you then fill.

That can make a huge difference. Well, like to your point of vitamin D. I mean, that's something that I have the supplement for. It's something that I take on a regular basis. And if you're deficient there, it can make a world of a difference. Oh, oh, absolutely. Like, for example, low zinc and vitamin B in the blood

has been shown to reduce sperm quality by something like 70% or something saying like that. Yeah, and it causes, you know, bad effects on testosterone. Low levels of vitamin A, C, and E can also play a role. Of course, we talked about vitamin D. Now, here's the thing with this. You can go and take a multivitamin to make sure that all your bases are covered. The problem with that is too much

of certain nutrients is also not necessarily good thing to approach. Yeah, I would recommend getting your nutrients tested, which you can do. You can either do them, I know, everly well, which is a company we'll work with, does nutrient testing, or you can go to your doctor. But if you see that your zinc is low,

or your vitamin D is low, oh my gosh, the difference is it may. There's is low, oh my gosh, the difference it may. There's your targets. Oh my God. You take somebody with low D levels, have them get their D levels up to normal. It's like you gave them. Well, this is a magic.

We've talked about this since we've started this podcast about supplementation and there's a huge market around muscle building and fat loss type of supplementation, but nothing will improve your ability to build more muscle and lose body fat or a naturally increased hormonal levels than getting yourself balanced. So supplementing with what you need is far more impactful than buying the latest and greatest fat burner or muscle builder. So figuring out where you lack and again, always trying to target this through diet, right? Like we'll always push people to go.

Oh yeah, like, oh, B levels are low. All right, I'm gonna eat more meat. Right. Or zinc is low. I'm gonna eat some clams or whatever. Right. So always trying to get it through whole foods first, but if that's something that you lack

and you have a hard time doing, this is where it does make sense to supplement for your needs. Totally. Now there are some non-nutrient type supplements that can also benefit. So we just talked about your vitamins and minerals, right? If you're lacking one of them, supplementing with them, or eating foods that contain levels of those that are adequate will positively influence testosterone. But what about other supplements?

Well, here's a couple of them. Crayotein, Crayotein in combination with resistance training has now been shown in studies to positively affect testosterone levels, especially in men with low testosterone levels. Now, I love Crayotein. I think Crayotein is the best urgogenic supplement you can take hands down.

It's got the most studies that support it. Of all any supplement I can think of, it's extremely safe for most people, and it's got health benefits, not just muscle building benefits. One of them being, it could help with lower testosterone, especially in combination with resistance training. But there are also herbs and other things

you can take as well. One of my favorites, ashwaganda. Ashwaganda made a lot of noise a few years ago because it was one of the only herbs to consistently raise testosterone levels in men with moderate to low testosterone levels across the board. So they would supplement with this and they'd see this nice decent boost with it. It's considered an adapted genic herb, meaning it helps the body deal with stress. Gen-seng is another one on the different forms of Gen-saying, Siberian and Panics.

Siberian is the one that I like a little bit better for most people. I know four-signatic makes a adapted genic blend, I believe, that contains both of those, which I think for overall health, it's a great supplement, but if you have low testosterone, great supplement. So long as you're doing the other stuff too, by the way.

I do wanna say that. Supplements won't do anything for you if you're diet and your workout is not happening. But you throw those on top of it and you can know you start to notice that that boost you know that you can get from those types of herbs. Now what about things to avoid? Things to avoid. Well so here's the least important one. Babies. But. But. There's really killer testosterone. Yeah, I do. Yeah.

This one's the least important I would say for now, but studies are coming out and they're showing some pretty crazy stuff. Estrogen-like compounds, Xenoestrogens. They're found in plastics like BPA, parabens. Those have been shown to have estrogenic antitestosterone effects in boys and in men. Now here's, this is one of the ones that the, you know, are the science guys really harp

on the wellness people that talk about BPA and things like that, but this is, it's probably because it's their number one that they'll bring up a lot of times. Right, and so that's where I, so this is where I it's their number one that they'll bring up a lot of times. Right, and so this is where I agree with the hardcore academics that will crap on those studies and talk about how small of a difference and is it so insignificant that it doesn't matter that much? And yeah, you know what, in a healthy individual, you're probably right, we're probably splitting hairs

on what a big difference at me. But if you're somebody who has abnormally low testosterone levels, and this has been connected to that, it just seems like this should be one of the boxes that you also check. Yeah, especially if you're especially sensitive to it, and maybe you don't even know, you might be being exposed to high levels

of one of these chemicals and not realize it. I read a story of a young man without was happening where his testosterone levels were low. He was getting gynecomastia and other signs of estrogen. Took him years to figure it out, but it was some of his products that we're using that had exceptionally high levels of some of these xenogent type properties.

They took it out and within months you got better. Now do you recommend, what do you recommend somebody Google's products that are high in BPA or like what do you, yeah, we're, we're some of the biggest, I know like water bottles, like typically they, they might try to address the bad, like any kind of like skin products or like hair products. I would avoid parabens. So you want to go look at products that's in to say paraben free shampoos, avoid parabens so you want to go look at products in the say paraben free shampoos, hand lotions, that kind of stuff. And then when you buy products, you know, plastic bottles and stuff like that, you want BPA free. And then Adam said something, you're right, you don't want a microwave in plastic. That's been shown to leech some of the chemicals from the plastic into your food

because of the heat. Do you see that a lot in the bodybuilding community with all the different like six pack options? I'm guilty of it. I mean, the six pack bags sells in plastic. It's all their plastic bags. Yeah, I wasn't until Doug, that was one of Doug's Christmas gifts. It was a Christmas or birthday gifts you got me. I don't remember what it was for where he got me

all the courteous over to glass. Yeah, it converted all my containers over to glass because he saw me coming in there with plastic every single day. So no, I'm 100% guilty of just throwing it out. Now the body building kill and your gains, bros. And when you look at the body of the community, you think, oh, they don't seem to have loads of testosterone. It doesn't matter to the shit. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Shooting it into you.

Yeah, it's a lot of people are CCs. They're taking so much to testosterone, BPAs and estrogen blockers on top of it. Yeah, right. It's not going to do much. No, the other ones too that have estrogenic properties alcohol and a lot of marijuana. So marijuana was the one I did notice difference. And I wouldn't even even though I talk openly about smoking weed and big fan of marijuana, I I'm not like this huge pothead where I'm smoking throughout the day. It's a good. It's a pretty regular thing for me to do at night time.

The same way probably somebody has a glass of wine at night. I take a couple hits of something before I go to bed or when I'm relaxing to watch a little TV at night. It's on a semi-regular basis. I would say almost every other night or so for sure you can guarantee that I am. When we were trouble shooting all the things that what boxes was I checking when I was trying to increase my hormones, I remember,

Sal bringing that up, well have you tried to like do a fast for a while from marijuana and at that time I hadn't in a while and it did make a difference. I noticed a difference when I came completely off. It only took about a week or so, and I felt the increase. But I also, if it's low,

and what I noticed was if it was like a day or two of like heavy smoking, let's say it was a weekend, I was hanging out with friends, and they were also people that smoked, and we decided to smoke all day, and goof around or whatever it was that we were doing. Those days would be the days that I noticed that I'd have lower levels

or I'd even, in my case, because I've battle with Gino, I would notice that I'd have a flare up after that and by reducing the amount that I was consuming, I noticed made a difference. Yeah, in animal studies, cannabis reliably affects the reproductive system of animals. In humans, the studies are mixed, but I will definitely place my bet that it affects humans in similar ways to animals in terms of, you know, and for men, lowering testosterone levels,

maybe one of the things. And this may be why marijuana was connected to... Marijuana, the compounds in cannabis are very anti-cancer, except for a couple cancers. It's actually a couple cancers that cannabis can actually drive, one of them being testicular cancer. And it makes sense because of the way

it affects the reproductive system. So those would be things, those are all the things that I would avoid. So there you go, follow those steps that we talked about. And watch what happens, test your testosterone levels now, then do all those things, give yourself about 90 days. I was just gonna say, you gotta give yourself some time and be consistent.

This is not a try one or two things. Oh, tomorrow the next day also, and you feel this huge increase, you need to be consistent with it. And at least 90 days, I would say, maybe even a little longer than that. And then watch what happens and you should see a pretty measurable rise in your testosterone loss.

And if you're somebody who's, you know, we, you mentioned everything well, this is another area where I highly recommend, you know, you pick up two or three tests from them, you, you test right away, and then you go through this protocol, you start to manipulate, you know, two or three or all seven of these things that we just discussed, and then test again, 60 to 90 days later, to notice the difference. And I promise that if you are consistent

with the seven things that we talked about, you'll see a difference. You should see a difference. And with that, go to minepumpfree.com and download our guides. They're all absolutely free. You can also find all of us on Instagram. You can find Justin at MindPump Justin.

You can find me at MindPump Salon, Adam at MindPump Adam. Thank you for listening to MindPump. 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 Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com.

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