 In this episode of Mind Pump, we talk all about testosterone. Now 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 gonna wanna 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. 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They're very effective. A 20 minute high intensity interval training session will burn as many calories or 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.com that's M-A-P-S-H-I-I-T dot com and use the code hit 50 that's H-I-I-T five zero no space for the discount. I have something that I want to talk about. What's that? Oh, I'm excited. You have a topic? You get excited? I do. What are you gonna say? I do, I do. No, it's, you know, I was, I love when we have done episodes or YouTube clips that are like topic specific that on questions that I get a lot so I can just kind of reference like here go listen to us talking 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 come up many times because I've shared my journey and that pertains to increasing your testosterone levels naturally. Oh, right. 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 and medical community and it has been now for the last, I'd say 10 years because researchers have realized testosterone levels in 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 levels has 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 post it up on a list of one of the main factors that's causing this? Well, they don't know for sure, but there's a few theories. A few theories to what may be causing this. One is inactivity, two would be diet, and three would be exposure to chemicals that could be considered hormone disruptors. Do they really rate that one up there that high? They do. Really? Yeah, they do talk about that one. That's something that the hardcore science guys really bash the wellness people that talk about things like that. Well, when it comes to like a fetus and how that'll affect the fetus long-term, there's been cases where boys have been using products and getting estrogenic-like side effects and endocrinologists are removing those products and the estrogenic side effects go down. But these are all theories. It's probably a combination of all these things. 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 of you listening who don't know what testosterone is or why it's important, it is the primary male hormone. It's responsible for masculinizing 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 and 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 where people inject themselves with it. But if your 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 too? 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 muscle significantly easier than somebody who has moderate to low. There's a lot of factors, right? There's like your workout, your diet, there's other factors of 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 gonna, yes, you're gonna build more muscle, you're gonna be leaner, you're gonna be stronger, more motivated, you're gonna- High energy levels? High energy, all like better sex drive, it's gonna make a significant difference. It's the primary male hormone. So when it's low, all the stuff that makes you feel good, you know, 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, this 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, it's not 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 a 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 fifties that would after we got their diet dialed in, I had dressed sleep, but I checked off all the boxes that they would be reporting back to me having higher levels than they've ever had naturally. 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 of all the sum of everything. Yeah, old people say, oh, it looks like in, you know, generally speaking, 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, I mean, it's gonna end up resulting in, your health is gonna 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 to you. You do start to suffer some of the side effects or whatever you wanna say of aging. But you can maintain a pretty consistent level of testosterone if you were to keep going. Now, Hormone, look, here's the deal. You're still gonna get 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. They don't, 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. I've had, so I love training men and women in advanced age, which I would say anything over 65, I would consider advanced age 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, certain, you know, is the workouts working? Are we moving in the right direction? Good check engine light. And my fit and healthy male clients over 65, the ones that lifted weights were strong, followed a good diet. All their testosterone levels were great. I had one guy I trained. He was almost 70, and 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 70 years old. Men don't go through the same big hormonal changes that women do. You know, women go through menopause when their bodies stop being able to have babies. A man's body, when they're healthy, theoretically is able to produce sperm till the day you die and theoretically get a woman pregnant. So 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, as a trainer early, I never had a 20 year old ask me how to raise her testosterone when I was my 20s. Now, almost every person that asked me how to raise testosterone is some kid in his 20s who went and got tested and saw that they had low testosterone levels. So 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 gonna do hormone replacement therapy. His testosterone levels were measuring right in the high 100. So just under 200, wanted to 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 we'll 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. Hands down, heavy weights. And 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 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 some walking on the treadmill or light 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 that goes to do like marathons or yes, that long distance running when you're also trying to increase testosterone. Now that's a good point. Over training or overdoing 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 what you- 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 and 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 deadlifting. If it was an upper body type of lead day for me, it would be benching, but doing those big compound lifts first and just doing that two, maybe three times a week, strength focus was 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 wanna 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 wanna 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, we wanna leave the gym still wanting more. That's what I would say to them. Like you don't wanna leave the gym. Spent. Yes, like you, oh my, you don't, you're not looking for that. Oh my God, that workout, crush me or wobbling out, you can barely walk. You wanna walk out going like, ooh, I want more. Yes. You want, 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, 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 would tell 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 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 squat's going up, your bench press is going up, your deadlift, your rep, your rows, if those are all going up slowly but 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'd 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, why does resistance training, well first off, why does exercise raise testosterone versus being inactive? You're just healthier. So a healthier body is gonna have more healthy levels. It's gonna be reflected in 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 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, raise 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 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 dads, 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. We're just, and it's, there's nothing happening to us genetically. We're just not active. It's just a shift, yeah, in behaviors. And I think too, 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 there's just been different priorities and jobs look completely different now to where, you know, there's a lot more, like, you know, we're sitting down, we're looking at a screen. It's just a different environment that now we have to do extra just to make sure that our body is healthy and thriving. 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. And there's- Too much intensity. Are you gonna go do a circuit? You're just moving fast. And there's a lot of people that, you know, 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 you. The best routine for boosting testosterone would be MAPS anabolic. 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, raised testosterone-oriented type of program. I would not recommend doing circuit training or just crazy high-intense nonstop 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 raise testosterone more by lifting weights than they did just by losing weight. So even obese men, you know, we know that when someone's really obese and they get leaner, the Hortler 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 people talk about proteins, fats and carbs and how to cut them and cut your calories and the 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 produces testosterone. Well, we recently had a great episode with our friend, Jason Phillips. And, you know, 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 fuel, give it what you're used to eating on a regular basis, but just make exchanges for, you know, better choices with in conjunction with lifting weights is the most ideal way. And which is counter to what I think is common knowledge. I think most people think that, oh, I'm, you know, need to get a gym and I'm overweight. That's contributing to my low testosterone. So I want to go in and go on a diet 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, that old adage of healthy balanced meal. You know, it's like, you want to give your body a chance to have the building blocks, you know, 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 like 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 a 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 one 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 I 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 is it's going to kind of look balanced. You're going to have, and 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 of fixed 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 other high carb foods, starchy vegetables. Then low carb is probably going to be ideal for your testosterone as well. So at the end of the day, 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? There are. 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 doesn't respond well. Maybe they have gallbladder issues or whatever. They just don't digest fats very well. Right. That would be the small exception of the rule, but I would say probably one of the most common and popular things that I'd 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 and the 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 just by bumping- Not to mention it's essential. Right. So just by me bumping up their healthy fats in their diet would actually make a surge and a difference. So for me personally, I'm looking for almost like an even balance across the 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 like- Yeah, we're all biodiverse. I mean, there's lots of variables out there and everybody can do the best on one specific way. But I think a good place to start is at least consider the balanced approach first and then extract whatever may be inflammatory to going forward. 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 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 probably say no. So no, testosterone's low. Let's not have you do the fasting. 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, sleep plays a huge role in 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 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 a decade and a half ago. It wasn't like this. Like you didn't catch your, at least... Yeah, no one needed blue-blocker glasses, you know, a decade or so ago. I mean, the high-def, you know, LED screens now are so vibrant. Plus there was never anything on TV past 10 o'clock or not. Yeah, exactly, the programming wasn't there. And you wouldn't, and even if there was something, it was your one show, maybe two shows, but now, and I know people listening right now that are honest with themselves, everybody's done this before where at 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 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 to kind of piggyback on the whole screen thing, like with my phone, for instance, not just having it away from where I was, like 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, ah, whatever, like 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 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. Yeah, well, here's a couple of 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 in testosterone, okay? Here's another one. That's a lot. This is a long-term study. 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 honest, calculate how many hours you get asleep every single night. Now, you wanna give, you wanna add about a, or reduce, take off about a half hour off that because it takes you about 30 minutes to fall asleep typically, maybe a little less, right? So you're like, okay, according to my calculations, I 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 a male 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, just like that. According to the studies, according to these 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 in my gains in 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, or have my coffee 30 minutes before I do my foam rolling or my priming, I visualize what I'm gonna do. I spend a good 20 to 30 minutes before I workout, 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. An hour before I go to bed, I turn all the lights down or I wear blue blocker glasses. I have to make everything calm, turn off all the electronics, maybe drink some chamomile 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 so 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 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 a drop of caffeine post four o'clock, you can just guarantee it's gonna ruin my sleep. I mean, at all. 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 out of 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 four hours. Like if you stop drinking at four, you probably go to bed 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 p.m., I wouldn't have caffeine past two p.m. If you're sensitive to caffeine like I am, I have caffeine anything past one or two p.m. And it's probably gonna affect my sleep. So that's a huge, huge tip. 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 said 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 past generations because let's be honest. I've never dealt with 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 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, you know, afraid for my life or survival stress probably actually helped if anything testosterone levels. And then the other type, this low level constant stress is what I think is what's really hurting us. And that is what I think is that normalized it. That's what I think is that at all time highs. Because I know you insult everybody who's 60 years old and older. Yeah I trusted me, we were stressed out. Right, 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 it's 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 changes happening, all this other 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 in to 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 to shut some of it off. So don't let the 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 was just going to 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 saunas and meditation and brain FM. Like this is where it makes a ton of sense is you recognize that you do that. Cause you know, at the end of the day, if your job creates a lot of stress, you guys, you still 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 you know, getting in the infrared sauna. Right, breathing practices, brain FM. These are all great tools that will help somebody in this case. Now 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 just, 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 could think about maybe 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. I read that same thing. Lower levels of cortisol, cortisol, higher levels of testosterone. I also think now too, a new practice that I don't think was important before was just becoming disconnected. You know, it's, you can- You mean tech wise, yeah. 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, 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 cause it's in your pocket. It's everywhere you go. Now this is how insidious it is, right? You don't notice it. So, and 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 this to yourself. You may be listening to me. That stuff doesn't really stress me out. That's the problem. Here's how you know. Okay, that's cause 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 not be on all that stuff. But the first half of it will be tough. You'll have withdrawal? Right, yeah. People need me right now. People need me right now. Anxiety doing it. Or you just flat out deny doing it, right? Those are all signs that it might be a problem. Or you're texting. I'm totally like 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 cause 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, stress management doesn't mean I go live on a beach for the rest of my life and when I'm bored or whatever. Cause that's probably stressful in its own way, right? Lack of purpose and all that stuff. It's really about managing it, changing the way you view things, learning to laugh and creating those practices. Unplugging, that's a great one, Adam. I think unplugging at some point during the day. I know, I've had clients who say at 7pm it goes off. 7pm, I'm unplugged. You can't get ahold of me, whatever, unless you have my landline or unless it's an emergency. Other than that, I'm off at 7pm. What a great practice. 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? I laugh cause people leave them messages and everything. I'm like, this is still a thing? I'm gonna bring it back. You got a fax machine back here? My mom just got rid of her, a cord phone. Oh my God. She had a landline and the phone had a cord attached. Yes, dude. Isn't that great? That's great. Yeah, anyways. 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 effects. 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 the current state, they're at, like I could have somebody where tech could be like a number one cause because they are- Oh, sure. The rest of these, I feel like- The parties can shift. Right, 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 the 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 vitamin D, but just that we need sun. It's own like benefits for that. 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 at work. Like, what do you expect me to do? Yeah, I'm not supposed to do all that. So what I used to tell them to do is I'd say, go outside and eat outside, eat your lunch outside. I wonder if this explains, Justin, all the hipsters in Pacific Northwest and the high levels of depression up there. Yeah, hello. Could it be sun? It used to be the sunlight. I didn't even put that together. No, it's because they're wearing flannels and growing beards and they're not chopping wood. That's what's happening. That's what I'm saying, though. It could be the lack of sunlight. Here's another one. When you're driving to work or on your way home. Sunroof. Open your sunroof. 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. Sitting next to the window. So when you're in your office or whatever and you need to do some work, go next to a window and get some sunlight. Shit, we talk about it all the time in the studio with a different feel. Oh, we feel it, man. 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 gotta just get up and go walk a couple 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 deal at all. Supplementation. Yeah, supplements. Now the most important thing I would say with supplements, one that can make a huge difference is if you have a nutrient deficiency that you then fill. That can make a huge difference. Well, like to your point with vitamin D. I mean, that's something that I have to 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, absolutely. Like for example, low vitamin, low zinc and vitamin B in the blood has been shown to reduce sperm quality by something like 70% or something insane like that. Wow. Yeah, and it causes 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. Now 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 a good thing. It's like a shotgun 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 it makes. There's 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 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. And 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? We'll always push people to go. Oh yeah, like B levels are low. I'm gonna eat more meat. 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. Creatine. Creatine 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 creatine. I think creatine is the best ergogenic supplement you can take hands down. It's got the most studies that support it of 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 can 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, ashwagandha. Ashwagandha made a lot of noise a few years ago because it was one of the only herbs that consistently raised 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 adaptogenic herb, meaning it helps the body deal with stress. Ginseng is another one. And there's different forms of ginseng, Siberian in panics. Siberian is the one that I like a little bit better for most people. I know FourSigmatic makes a adaptogenic 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 your diet and your workout is not happening. But you throw those on top of it and you start to notice that boost 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. Really kill your testosterone. 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, or the science guys really harp on the wellness people that talk about BPA and things like that. But this is 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 agree with the hardcore academics that will, you know, 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. It's probably, we're probably splitting hairs on what a big difference it may, 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, if you're, 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 where that 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 estrogen type properties. They took it out and within months he got better. Now, what do you recommend? Somebody Google those products that are high in BPA or like what do you? Yeah, one of some of the biggest, I know like water bottles, like typically they might try to address that, like any kind of like skin products or hair products. I would avoid parabens. So you wanna go look at products that's in the say, paraben-free, shampoos, hand lotions, that kind of stuff. And then when you buy products, plastic bottles and stuff like that, you want BPA-free and then Adam said something, you're right, you don't wanna microwave in plastic. That's been shown to leach 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, they're plastic bags. Yeah, it wasn't until Doug, that was when Doug's Christmas gift, was it Christmas or birthday gifts you got me that? I don't remember what it was for, where he got me all the- Convert you over to glass. Yeah, he 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 in there. Now the bodybuilding community- Killing your gains, bros. And when you look at the bodybuilding community, you think, oh, they don't seem to have low testosterone. It doesn't matter to them. It doesn't matter. They're shooting it into you. Yeah, I would just add a few more CCs. They're taking so much testosterone, BPAs and estrogen blockers on top of it. That's not gonna do much in that case. The other ones too that have estrogenic properties, alcohol and a lot of marijuana. So marijuana was the one, I did notice a difference. And I wouldn't even, even though I talk openly about smoking weed and a big fan of marijuana, I'm not like this huge pothead where I'm smoking throughout the day. It's a pretty regular thing for me to do at nighttime, 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. And it's on a semi-regular basis. I would say almost every other night or so for sure you can guarantee that I am. And when we were, you know, troubleshooting all the things that, you know, what boxes was I checking when I was trying to increase my hormone levels, 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'd 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 we just, and they were also people that smoke and we decided to smoke all day and, you know, 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 battled with gyno, 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 may be 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. There'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've gotta give yourself some time and be consistent. This is not a try one or two things. Oh, tomorrow, the next day also, you feel this huge increase. You need to be consistent with it. Give it 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 level. And if you're somebody who's, you know, you mentioned Everly well, this is another area where I highly recommend, you know, you pick up two or three tests from them, 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 mindpumpfree.com and download our guides. They're all absolutely free. You can also find all of us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin. You can find me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam.