Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - What 17 Studies Say About Increasing Your Testosterone Naturally

Episode Date: August 9, 2017

If you want to know what testosterone is, how it affects your body, what will and won’t increase your body’s natural testosterone production, and what you can expect in terms of bottom-line results, then you want to listen to this podcast. Here’s a little sneak peek of what you’re going to learn in this episode: What normal testosterone levels look like in men and women, and how to know if you’re low. How much testosterone levels actually affect muscle and strength gain and fat loss (this might surprise you!). Why high-fat dieting is overrated for boosting natural testosterone production, and what you should do instead. The best and worst types of exercise to do if you want to maximize your testosterone levels. And more…   Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: www.muscleforlife.com/signup/  

Hello, hello again. This is Mike from Us For Life and you are listening to another episode of my podcast. Now, if you want to know what testosterone is, what effects it has in the body, what will and won't work for increasing your natural testosterone production, and what kind of bottom line results you can expect from boosting your testosterone levels, then you want to listen to this podcast. Here is a little sneak peek of what you are going to learn in this episode. What normal testosterone levels look like in men and women and how to know if your levels are low, how much testosterone levels actually affect muscle and strength gain and fat loss. And this might surprise you why

high fat dieting is completely overrated for boosting natural testosterone production and what you should do instead the best and worst types of exercise to do if you want to maximize your testosterone levels, and more. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead, I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine. Specifically, my fitness book for men, Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. Now this book has sold over 350,000 copies in the last several years and has helped thousands of guys build their best bodies ever. And that's why it has over 3,000 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average. So if you want to know the biggest lies and myths that are keeping you from achieving the lean,

muscular, strong, and healthy body that you truly desire, and if you want to learn the simple science of building the ultimate male body, then you want to read or listen to Bigger, Leaner, Stronger today, which you can find on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play. All right, let's get to the show. Imagine with just one weird trick, you could boost a single hormone in your body and lose fat and gain muscle without even stepping foot in the gym, feel confident, strong, and assertive, skyrocket your energy levels and mood, look and feel a decade younger, have earth shattering sex, and sleep like a baby.

Now I'm going to stop there because if you're listening to this podcast, then that pitch probably sounds familiar because it is a short list of the many promises made by the testosterone peddlers on the internet and late night TV infomercials. These people make it sound as if increasing your testosterone levels will damn near give you superpowers and that it's really as easy as just popping a few pills every day. And boy, oh boy, do they sell a lot of pills. Trust me, as someone in the supplement industry that refuses to sell a hormone supplement because they are all worthless, I am losing out on a lot of money by not getting into the testosterone business. Anyway, my point is testosterone is on a lot of people's lips these days.

I mean, testosterone placement therapy, otherwise known as TRT, has seen a meteoric rise in popularity. Testosterone boosting supplements are selling like hotcakes and steroid use is becoming more and more prevalent. This trend has also produced a lot of unanswered questions as well, such as how much does testosterone really affect muscle growth and fat loss? How do you know if you even have high or low testosterone levels? And how much can you affect your testosterone levels naturally through things like diet, exercise, and supplementation? And what can you really expect from those things in terms of results? Well, we are going to get to the bottom

of all of that and more in this podcast. And by the end, you're going to know a lot more about testosterone than most people ever will, including how to optimize your testosterone levels naturally and safely. So let's start at the top with a basic question that many people can't answer. And that is what is a hormone? Now, most people can tell you that testosterone is a hormone, of course, but few of them could probably explain what a hormone is. So I think we should just start there. A hormone is a chemical that the body produces to control and regulate the activity of cells and organs. Hormones play a critical role in pretty much every bodily function, including growth, digestion, metabolism, reproduction, and even mood.

You can think of them as quote-unquote messenger molecules that give your cells and organs instructions. For example, insulin is a hormone that you have probably heard of and probably heard a lot of bad things about as of late. A lot of bad things that are untrue, I might add, but that's another discussion. Anyways, insulin is a hormone that causes cells to absorb glucose, which is blood sugar, from the blood and use it for energy. All right, so that is a hormone. Let's now move on to what testosterone is. So testosterone is a hormone that is mainly produced in the testicles and the ovaries. It is the most important male sex hormone, also called an androgen, and that's why men generally have much higher testosterone levels than women. And those testosterone levels affect a lot of what goes on in the body,

including muscle and bone strength, the production of red blood cells, sex drive, the production of sperm, and energy levels and mood. This is why testosterone's effects are very easy to see. The more testosterone there is in a body, the more manly it looks and functions. And on the flip side, the more of the female hormone estrogen there is, the more quote unquote womanly the body will be. Accordingly, when testosterone levels aren't as high as they should be, you can experience various side effects like low sex drive, erectile dysfunction, low sperm count, sleep problems, loss of muscle and strength, fat gain, brain fog, and depression. So there clearly are plenty of good reasons to pay attention to our testosterone levels and really just do whatever we can naturally to keep them in a normal

range. And that brings us to the next question, which is what is a normal range? Now, did you know that you can have symptoms of low testosterone despite having your testosterone levels check out more or less perfect? And the reason for this has to do with the difference between testosterone levels and free testosterone levels. You see, not all of the testosterone that's produced by your body is actually available for use. Much of what it produces ends up binding to two different proteins in the body, which are albumin and sex hormone binding globulin, otherwise known as SHBG. And most of these bound testosterone molecules, they can't break free from the proteins and thus aren't available for use.

This is why testosterone levels can be in a normal range or even high, but due to high albumin and or SHBG levels, free testosterone levels can be low and produce symptoms of low testosterone. Fortunately, however, a simple blood test can measure levels of both total and free testosterone, which are usually expressed in terms of nanograms per deciliter of blood or NG slash DL. And in case you're wondering, a nanogram is a billionth of a gram and a deciliter is one-tenth of a liter. a gram is a billionth of a gram and a deciliter is one-tenth of a liter. So generally speaking, the normal ranges of testosterone in men are 270 to 1070 NGDL total testosterone with an average of about 679 NGDL. And in terms of free testosterone, the normal range is about 9 to 30 NGDL free testosterone,

or about 2 to 3% of total testosterone. And in women, the normal ranges are much lower. They're about 15 to 70 NGDL total testosterone. And free testosterone is again, about 2 to 3% of that, which is actually 1 to 5 picograms per deciliter of blood. And a picogram is one trillionth of a gram. So we're talking a very, very small amount. Now you probably noticed that these are some pretty large ranges. Some people's bodies just produce a lot more testosterone than others. And that can make it hard to determine what really qualifies as low testosterone. Even further complicating the matter is the fact that what is low for one person can be totally fine for another. That's why you have to look at more than just testosterone and free testosterone levels when you are evaluating

hormone profiles. You need to also check for symptoms of low testosterone, which commonly include sadness, reduced energy, decreased strength, a decline in the ability to play sports, and a decline in work performance. So for example, while a middle-aged man may not experience any sort of symptoms of low testosterone at 350 ngdL, a man under 40 probably would. You can find evidence of this in research that shows in men younger than 40, the likelihood of symptoms of low testosterone rises when total testosterone levels fall below 400 NGDL. And furthermore, studies show that in men aged 40 to 90, symptoms of low testosterone tend to set in when total testosterone levels dip below 300 Ndl and in case you're wondering the symptoms

in men aged 40 and up are similar to those for younger men but also include less physical endurance erectile dysfunction reduced libido and a tendency to fall asleep after dinner so as you can see for us guys our overall quality of life is heavily impacted by testosterone production and heavily impaired by a testosterone deficiency, which is why some guys are willing to go to great lengths to avoid it. Now, many guys that are doing things natural or unnatural to raise their testosterone levels, or are interested in doing things to raise their testosterone levels, are more concerned with how it's going to affect their body compositions. Let's talk about that,

starting with how much does testosterone really affect muscle growth? Well, most people think that testosterone is a major determinant of how quickly we can gain muscle and strength, and they're right. Testosterone is the primary hormonal driver of muscle growth. Its muscle building effects are so dramatic that in one study, subjects who were administered testosterone injections gained a significant amount of muscle and lost fat without even exercising. So with that said, it would seem to be a safe bet that the higher our testosterone levels are, the bigger and leaner we're just going to naturally be, right? And the answer is it's really just not that simple. That assumption is true if we're just going to naturally be, right? And the answer is it's really just not that simple.

That assumption is true if we're talking about shooting literally our T levels through the roof with steroids, but here's what most gym goers don't know. The fluctuation of testosterone levels within the normal range has very little impact on muscle growth and fat loss. In other words, raising your testosterone levels won't necessarily confer significant body composition benefits until you exceed the physiological normal range. And that can only be accomplished with exogenous, which means introduced into the body, not produced by it, hormones, which means you have to be on steroids. And, you know, we can find ample evidence of this in the literature. For example, one study conducted at McMaster University investigated whether the variance in hormonal responses to weightlifting affects muscle and

strength gains. The subjects were all young resistance trained men, and they did five weightlifting workouts per week and followed your standard high protein bodybuilding diet. Now, after 12 weeks, scientists found that the participants experienced vastly different hormonal reactions to the workouts, but these differences had no significant effect on muscle growth or strength gains. In other words, there was no meaningful difference between the people who experienced dramatic spikes in anabolic hormones during and after training and those who experienced more muted reactions. Another study worth mentioning was conducted by scientists at the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. And in this study, synthetic testosterone and testosterone suppressing drugs were used to manipulate the testosterone

levels of 61 young healthy men. This went on for 20 weeks and in the end researchers found that there was a dose dependent relationship between testosterone and leg strength and power and that means that the higher the testosterone levels were the greater the leg strength, but those effects were not significant until testosterone levels reached about 1,200 NGDL, which as you now know is about 20 to 30% above the natural ceiling. Now granted, the increases in strength and power would have been higher if the subjects had been weightlifting, which they weren't, but those results are still telling. And for even more perspective, we can look at an extensive review of steroid research conducted by scientists at Maastricht University in 2004. What they found is that people lifting weights on steroids gained on average between about four and a half and 11 pounds of muscle

over the short term, less than 10 weeks, and that the fastest muscle gain was five pounds over the course of six weeks. Now that might sound impressive, but when you compare those numbers to what you can achieve naturally, which I'm going to record a podcast on soon, by the way, one thing becomes very clear. And that is if an anabolic drug cocktail that doubles or even triples your testosterone levels doesn't necessarily cause you to gain quote unquote shocking amounts of muscle, what then can we really expect to achieve with a relatively small increase? And the answer of course is next to nothing. Now that isn't to say that you shouldn't take steps to increase your

testosterone levels. I think you should. And we're going to talk more about that soon, but you should do it knowing that it isn't likely to help you much in your quest to get bigger, leaner, and stronger. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness.

All right, so that is muscle building. Let's now look at the other side of the coin of body composition, and that is fat loss. Does testosterone help you lose fat faster? Now, the study I just cited that was conducted at the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science also investigated the relationship between total testosterone levels and body fat levels. And what they found is that testosterone levels were strongly correlated with leanness, which means that the higher your testosterone levels are, the naturally leaner you are going to be. Moreover, unlike the counterfactual findings related to muscle growth, this effect was seen in differences well within the physiological normal ranges. For example, differences of just 100 to 200 NGDL significantly

impacted total body fatness. And just to share a staggering statistic that kind of stuck in my brain, check this out. So men at 300 NGDL were on average 36% fatter than men at 600 NGDL. I mean, even if you try to mentally account for possible confounders, that's still pretty shocking. Anyway, the exact mechanisms underlying these observations haven't been fully teased out yet, but research does show that testosterone can suppress the creation of fat cells and that low testosterone is also a contributing factor to obesity. So in short, we don't quite know why people with high testosterone are more resistant to fat gain and tend to be leaner than people with low testosterone, but it is an empirical fact that is being investigated further. All right, moving along,

we have now reviewed how testosterone impacts both your muscle and fat levels. And we've also kind of set some realistic expectations as to what is and isn't possible without steroids. So let's now talk about increasing your testosterone naturally. There are several natural science-based strategies that you can use to boost your testosterone levels. And depending on your circumstances, the overall effects on your general health and well-being can be anywhere from negligible to rather significant. If you are already doing most of what I'm going to cover, then you obviously don't have much room for improvement. But if you're not, then you do have room to improve and the resulting physical, mental,

and emotional improvements might be quite dramatic. So first, let's talk diet. Now you've probably heard that some diets are more quote unquote anabolic than others. And there's actually some truth there. Your eating habits definitely have a profound effect in your testosterone levels where many testosterone gurus go off the rails though is with their actual diet recommendations. The worst of them promote tricks and hacks like eating more of individual foods ranging from the mundane like eggs to the obscure like Brazilian nuts. Most of them though are just staunchly high fat and low carb. That

they say is the real secret to maximizing your testosterone production. And ironically, the opposite is true. And let's find out why, starting with how dietary fat intake affects testosterone levels. The body needs a certain amount of dietary fat to maintain optimal health and performance. There's no denying that. If you don't get enough fat in your diet, a whole host of physiological processes are going to become compromised, including hormone production. And that's why the Institute of Medicine recommends that adults get 20 to 35% of their daily calories from dietary fat. consider about that though, is those percentages were established for the average sedentary person who burns a lot less energy than those of us that exercise regularly. And especially those of us with above average levels of lean mass. For example, a 190 pound sedentary man with a normal amount of muscle mass would need to eat about 2000 calories per day to maintain his body weight.

mass would need to eat about 2000 calories per day to maintain his body weight. The Institute of Medicine then says that he would need to eat about 45 to 80 grams of fat per day. And that's reasonable. Now, if we take me, I weigh 192 pounds right now, and I work out about four to six hours per week. And I do a bit of cardio as well. And I have about 45 to 50 more pounds of muscle than the average 190 pound dude. And thus my total daily energy expenditure is quite a bit higher. And I need to eat about 3000 calories per day to maintain my body weight. Now, if I were just to blindly apply the Institute of Medicine's percentages, then my fat intake would soar to 65 to 115 grams per day. But do I really need that much more fat just because I'm muscular and exercise regularly? And the answer is no. Exercise improves fat metabolism, but it doesn't dramatically increase our need for dietary fat.

Now, what does all this mean for testosterone production? Well, switching from a low fat to a high fat diet, it can boost your testosterone levels. That's true, but not by very much. For example, one study found that men who got a whopping 41% of their daily calories from fat had 13% more testosterone than men who got only 18% of their daily calories from fat had 13 percent more testosterone than men who got only 18 percent of their daily calories from fat. Another study conducted a decade earlier demonstrated more or less the same thing. So what that means is, strictly speaking, eating a lot of dietary fat is quote-unquote better for increasing your testosterone levels, but it's just not very exciting when you consider that one, increasing your testosterone levels, but it's just not very exciting when you consider

that one, increasing your testosterone levels by relatively small amounts isn't going to do much of anything and certainly isn't going to help you get jacked faster. And two, if you eat that much fat, you're going to have to dial your carbohydrate intake down, which isn't only non-optimum for your body's muscle building machinery, so to speak, but it actually can suppress your testosterone levels. That's right. A low carb diet can suppress testosterone production so much so that if you exercise regularly and eat an even halfway sensible diet, the carbs that you eat are going to affect your testosterone levels a lot more than the fat.

We can find evidence of this in a study conducted by scientists at the University of North Carolina. And what they found is that when combined with daily exercise, a low-carb diet raised resting cortisol levels and reduced free testosterone levels. Now, how does that work? Well, there's an inverse relationship between cortisol and testosterone, which means that the higher your cortisol levels are, the lower your testosterone levels will be. Therefore, anything that dramatically and chronically raises cortisol levels like caloric restriction, overtraining, high levels of stress, and low carb dieting, it's also going to dramatically and

chronically lower your testosterone levels. And this is one of the many reasons that I recommend a high-carb diet if you're physically active, and especially if you spend a lot of time in the weight room. You see, it helps keep cortisol levels low and thus testosterone levels high. And the mechanisms in play here are actually pretty simple. If you eat a high carb diet, your insulin levels are going to be generally higher than if you were eating a low carb diet and insulin lowers cortisol levels. So in a sense, a high carb diet allows you to train hard without paying the price of abnormally high cortisol levels, putting the kibosh on your

testosterone production. A high carb diet is more anabolic than a low carb diet for other reasons as well, but that's another discussion. So here's the bottom line. If you're physically active and you care about your health performance and results, and especially if you lift weights regularly, you are going to do far better eating a lot of carbs than a little. All right, next up is protein and specifically how does protein intake affect testosterone levels? And I am just going to get right to the point and say that a high protein diet is good for a lot of reasons, but it doesn't appear to affect testosterone production one way or the other. That's what scientists from the college in New Jersey found in a study conducted with 23 experienced collegiate weightlifters. These guys

were separated into three different groups with one group eating one to 1.4 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day. The second group eating 1.6 to 1.8 grams per kilogram of body weight per day. And the third group eating over two grams per kilogram of body weight per day. The daily average is about 2.36 grams per kilogram of body weight per day. After 12 weeks, the scientists found that the differences in testosterone levels were negligible. So while you should definitely eat plenty of protein, if you are trying to maximize muscle gain and or fat loss, you should also know that it isn't going to affect your testosterone levels. So next on the list for diet and testosterone production is energy balance. And in case you're not familiar with that term, energy balance is the relationship

between the amount of energy you consume and the amount that you burn. When you are eating less energy than you burn, you're in a state of negative energy balance or a caloric deficit. And this results in weight loss. And on the flip side, when you consume more energy than you burn, you are in a state of positive energy balance or a caloric surplus. And this results in weight gain. These energy states also affect hormone production. Specifically, research shows that a caloric deficit, a state of negative energy balance, lowers testosterone levels, but they do return to normal once the deficit is erased, which means once energy intake is increased to equal or exceed

expenditure. Now, my point here isn't that you should avoid caloric deficits at all costs, of course. I mean, if you want to lose fat, you're going to have to restrict your calories, or if you want to maintain your body weight, you're going to inevitably be a little bit under your expenditure some days and a little bit over others, and that's fine. What you want to avoid, though, is accidentally staying in a slight caloric deficit, you know, so slight that the fat loss is too minimal to be noticed for many months or even years as a result of mild and chronic under eating. Many people do this. They will be in a slight deficit for several days, usually throughout the week, and then they will slightly overeat one or two days on the weekend and rinse and repeat. That cycle is not good for hormone production.

And you also don't want to do what many people do, which is binge on the weekends and then heavily restrict your calories for five or six days to try to undo the damage. That also will result in low testosterone levels. Instead, what you want to do is you want to have a good idea of how much energy you're burning every day. And then you want to make is you want to have a good idea of how much energy you're burning every day. And then you want to make your default diet consist of more or less that many calories. And that brings us to the last dietary factor, which is micronutrients, how micronutrients affect testosterone levels. And the first thing I have to say is don't listen to the deranged IFYMers all over

Instagram that are gloating over their abs while eating handfuls of pop tarts and pints of ice cream every day. The foods that you choose to eat matter. They matter a lot. And the reason for this is your body needs a lot more than just quote unquote macros to stay healthy and vital and to perform optimally. It also needs a large number of vitamins, minerals, and other micronutrients. Thus, it's no surprise that certain micronutrients play vital roles in supporting testosterone production. For example, zinc, vitamin D, and magnesium are known to suppress testosterone production. zinc, vitamin D, and magnesium are known to suppress testosterone production, and cruciferous vegetables contain a substance known as indole-3-carbinol, or I3C, which research shows can reduce estrogen levels and thereby help maintain optimal testosterone levels. So the

bottom line here is this. If you want to help your body produce as much testosterone as possible, then you want to eat a diet very rich in micronutrients. This is one of the reasons why I highly recommend that you get at least 80% of your calories from relatively unprocessed, whole, nutritious foods that you prepare yourself and that you eat at least a couple servings of fruit and vegetables every day. All right, so that is more or less everything worth discussing on the subject of diet and testosterone production. So let's move on now to the next factor, and that is body composition, how to use your body composition to boost your

testosterone levels. And this is important because research shows that as body fat levels rise, free testosterone falls and estrogen increases, which is conducive to further fat gain. So you have a kind of hormonal whirlpool, a vicious cycle of sorts that can arise from just being fat. body fat are generally associated with lower levels of testosterone. And that is one of the reasons why I recommend that guys with more than 15% body fat focus first on cutting down to about 10% body fat before going into a caloric surplus to maximize muscle growth. And for women, I would raise that number to about 25% body fat. If you do that, then you're not only going to support your body's natural testosterone production, you're also going to look better and gain muscle faster as well. Now, another way that you can positively influence your body's natural testosterone production is with exercise. And most people know this. Most people know that exercise can raise testosterone levels. What they don't know though, is it also can tank

your testosterone levels. And it really just comes down to what type of exercise you do and how much you do of it. And the worst choice is just doing a ton of cardio. Now this is bad for many reasons, not the least of which being the fact that it can greatly elevate resting cortisol levels, which in turn, as you know, depresses testosterone levels. And if you really want a problem with testosterone production, then you want to combine a large amount of cardio with a large caloric deficit, as many people do. And the results of that can be quite catastrophic. Now that isn't to say that all cardio is bad. Of course. You just need to know how much is too much, and that would make for another good podcast. I will make a note. Anyway, moving on, if you want to have healthy hormone levels and you want a lean, muscular,

and athletic physique, then the type of exercise you want to focus on is resistance training. You are probably not surprised, but many people actually don't know that resistance training supports testosterone production. Most people know, of course, it helps you build muscle, but not that it can raise testosterone levels. However, not all forms of resistance training are equal though, both in terms of muscle building and hormone optimization. And what it comes down to is, if you want to get the most out of your time in the gym, then you want to, one, focus on compound exercises

like the squat, deadlift, bench press, and military press. Now, as far as testosterone goes, research shows that these exercises elicit larger hormonal responses than the isolation exercises that you see most people doing than the isolation exercises that you see most people doing. The next thing that you should be doing if you want to get the most out of your resistance training is following a workout routine that combines traditional strength training

with bodybuilding. This combination of training methodologies is the perfect way to get the most muscle and the most testosterone for your mileage. The reason for this is the low rep high weight work that you do to build strength is also vital for building muscle, but pure strength programs tend to be low in volume, which means you don't do very many reps per week. And studies show that that just isn't optimal for maximizing both muscle growth and testosterone production. You definitely want the heavy weights, but you also want a bit more whole body volume than what you'll find in most strength training programs. That's why I generally recommend a hybrid approach that emphasizes heavy compound weightlifting,

but also uses isolation exercises to increase total weekly volume on key muscle groups without going so far that you enter over training territory. And my third testosterone boosting exercise tip is, and this is kind of just reiterating, keep cardio to a minimum, which means do just enough to achieve your goals. So we already talked about why doing too much cardio is bad for testosterone production, especially when cutting. And this is also kind of a recipe for that skinny fat type of look that nobody wants. And this is also kind of a recipe for that skinny fat type of look that nobody wants. But if you want to get really lean, you are probably going intensity interval training because it allows me to lose more fat in less time. So I can keep my total cardio down, but get more fat burning out of it. And research also shows that hit can increase testosterone production as well. All right. So that is it as far as exercise and testosterone production goes. Now, before we wrap up, I want to touch on one

more thing, and that is testosterone boosting supplements. Supplement companies love to make them, and bodybuilders and fitness models love to shill for them. If we are to believe the hype, these pills and powders are every bit as effective as steroids and absolutely sure to transform us into super ripped alpha males slathered in sex and sensuality. But that's just not the case. Not anywhere close to the truth. Actually, the reality is there is not a single natural testosterone booster on the market that could deliver even a shadow of that promise. I would say the best you can get is maybe a small and temporary increase in testosterone levels, which as you now well know, will do more or less nothing for you. Now we've covered a lot so far in this podcast, so I'm not going to linger here long, but just

to give you an idea of why these supplements are so underwhelming, let's take a look at three of the most common ingredients found in them. First, there's tribulus terrestris. Second, there is ZMA. And third, there is D-aspartic acid. Now, multiple studies have proved that supplementation with tribulus terrestris doesn't affect testosterone levels, body composition, or exercise performance. The bottom line is it is a complete dud. End of story. It's not even one of these speculative ingredients that may actually do something, but it just hasn't been researched enough yet. No, no. This has been researched fairly extensively and we know it does not work. So if you see a testosterone boosting supplement with it, just know that's

a supplement that's going to do nothing. That tells you that the person that created that formulation doesn't know what they're doing or doesn't care. And I would say that even extends to the company. So if I saw personally, if I were shopping around for supplements and I saw a company that was selling a testosterone boosting supplement, that would already be a red flag. But then if I go look at the formulation and it has tribulus terrestris, I would buy nothing from that company. I would move on and find somebody else. Now, as for D-aspartic acid, research shows that supplementing with this actually can raise your testosterone levels. However, it is unreliable and the effects are slight and temporary. The most you can hope for is a small read negligible increase that might last a month or so. Now, if you go around and look at a bunch

of these products, you are going to find many other ingredients as well, including horny goat weed, uricoma, longifolia, holy basil, velvet antler, and salt palmetto. And the story with all of these is the same. Each and every one is either unproven or ineffective. So the unfortunate truth here is this. If a testosterone booster contains 100% natural ingredients, it's just not going to do enough to matter. Even in a best case scenario, it's just not going to matter. And if you've taken a quote unquote natural testosterone booster that you felt made a significant difference, it was probably the placebo effect or wasn't as natural as you thought. And if you

think that supplement companies wouldn't sneak steroids into testosterone boosting supplements, think again. All right. So let's do a quick recap of everything we've discussed. So testosterone is an incredibly important hormone. It directly impacts our quality of life in many ways, and it factors heavily in our fitness and performance. It really is worth much of the attention that it is getting these days. What many people and many guys in particular don't want to hear though, is there really are no quick fixes for raising and maintaining optimal testosterone levels. High testosterone levels are something that you have to earn. They're just one of the many rewards for healthy living, which looks something like this. One, eating enough calories. Two, eating plenty of nutritious

foods. And if you want bonus points, then you should also supplement with a well-formulated multivitamin. Three, balancing your macronutrients properly. Four, staying lean. Five, doing regular resistance training workouts. Six, not overdoing it with the cardio and seven, getting enough sleep. If you do all of those things, you're going to look and feel great and have the highest testosterone levels you can naturally achieve. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don't mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on

iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any of the new goodies. All right, that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon. Oh, and before you leave, let me quickly tell you about one other product of mine

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