Brian (1s):
Hello and welcome to the Get Lean Eat Clean podcast.
Brian (5s):
My name is Brian Gryn. I'm a certified
Brian (7s):
Health coach, trainer and
Brian (8s):
Author,
Brian (8s):
And this podcast is for
Brian (10s):
Middle aged men and women looking to optimize their health and get their bodies back to what it once was 10 to 15 years ago. I will give you simple, actionable items to get long term sustainable results. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show.
Brian (26s):
All, right Welcome to the Get Lean Eat Clean podcast. My name is Brian Gryn. I hope you had a great weekend and happy Tuesday. If you're listening to us on Tuesday, hope you had a chance to listen to my interview with performance and mindset coach Paul Salter. We discussed how self-sabotaging behaviors could be a detriment to your weight loss goals. We also got into hypnotherapy, the power of word choice, the importance of community and belonging and much, much more. So if you haven't already, I highly recommend listening to my interview with performance coach Paul Salter. Now in today's micro podcast, we are gonna discuss ways to naturally increase testosterone as we get older because it typically tends to drop from our mid thirties on about one to 2% per year.
Brian (1m 8s):
And it's important to start to learn ways to naturally increase it just to get ahead of the curve because testosterone can be linked to helping with muscle mass, strength, libido, sex drive, improve mood and bone strength. So one other thing to understand is that there isn't a perfect number for testosterone. It'll vary based on the individuals, but there's a range between about two 40 and nine 50 nanograms per deciliter. So I think it's important to find out where you fall in that range and to maybe do some certain activities from a weekly and monthly basis to help naturally increase it. One of those ways is to attempt to keep your body fat percentage at a reasonable range between about eight and 15%.
Brian (1m 53s):
You don't want it too low and you don't want it too high. Research shows as body fat percentage rises, your testosterone will fall and your estrogen levels will in increase. The more fat you have, the higher the aromatase activity and essentially that is gonna convert your testosterone to estrogen. By lowering your body fat, you're gonna lower your aromatase activity and more testosterone is left over. So it's important to understand that there's a link there. There was a 2013 meta-analysis where 20 relevant studies showed overweight subjects were able to experience an increase of 120 nanograms per deciliter After losing a significant amount of fat So, they increase their testosterone roughly 20 to 50% by just by getting their body fat percentage in a reasonable range.
Brian (2m 42s):
Now, one of the things to understand is this can take time and patients, but if you can get it between a typically a range between about eight and 15%, you are gonna be much better off when it comes to testosterone. Number two is making sure that you're getting correct micronutrients, and I think it's more difficult in in this day and age mainly because of the soil depletion we have. But two of the, the nutrients that come up most when it comes to testosterone is vitamin D, which is typically a hormone and zinc. Now you can get these from foods and there was a 2011 study showing that one year supplementation of vitamin D for those who were deficient increased testosterone levels by about 20%.
Brian (3m 26s):
Another, another study showing in the Journal of Nutrition that three months of daily supplementation of zinc males were that were deficient were almost able to double their testosterone in about three months. So this is, these are blood levels that you could definitely get checked out maybe every three to six months just to see where you're at because most people are deficient in both vitamin D and zinc. So I would advise either going through supplementation or trying to get it through your diet, zinc typ, typical foods that are high in zinc, poultry, beans, nuts and seafood in particular oysters and then vitamin D, best that you could get it from the sun, expose your body to to to the sun, but if not, fatty fish, hearing sardines, milk and whole eggs.
Brian (4m 13s):
Two, two vitamins and nutrients to keep an eye on. And number three, getting correct amount of sleep. You've probably heard it a lot, but multiple studies have shown a strong correlation between total sleep time and total testosterone levels. So if you haven't already, it's really important to prior prioritize sleep. I talk about it a lot and one of the things that you can do is make sure that you sleep in a quiet, dark space and aim for about eight hours of quality sleep. Would it be ideal? What they found is that each hour below eight hours of sleep seemed to drop testosterone levels by about 15%. So consistent time of getting up and going to sleep is really important.
Brian (4m 54s):
A dark, cool environment, making sure that maybe we stay away from blue light within about one to two hours of bed and maybe do some things to sort of calm the nervous system down. Maybe reading or taking a bath or sleep, doing some type of meditation or just having a nice calming conversation with your significant other might might be a great way to get into bed And. now those are the three ways that you can naturally increase testosterone. One, stay within about eight to 15% of body fat percentage. If, if this is maybe a big of a bit of a stretch for you, just try to increase it to a, a nominal level under 20% would be a good goal for most males.
Brian (5m 37s):
And in intake, adequate zinc and vitamin D for zinc, 10 to 40 milligrams per day in vitamin D, about a thousand to 2000 I use daily. And then three, getting adequate quality sleep. So those are three ways to help increase testosterone levels naturally. And if you have any questions, feel free to email me, Brian at Brian Gryn dot com. I appreciate you listening and I hope you're enjoying the show. Thanks so much and I will talk to you on Friday with another great interview.
Brian (6m 9s):
Thanks for listening to the Get Lean Eat Clean Podcast. I understand there are millions of other podcasts out there and you've chosen to listen to mine and I appreciate that. Check out the show notes@briangrin.com for everything that was mentioned In, this episode. Feel free to subscribe to the podcast and share it with a friend or family member that's looking to get their body back to what it once was. Thanks again and have a great day.
