123 | How to Naturally Increase Testosterone with Dr. Reed Jarvis

Alright. Welcome back to the Real Health Podcast. We just wrapped up our infertility master class. If you're listening to this, I hope you were able to join us. And if not, that's okay because we have a monthly master class each month.

So if you weren't able to join us for this one, hopefully, we'll be able to see you next month on the last Tuesday of the month. Today, we're gonna continue diving into hormone month. This is our last episode of hormone month, and we're gonna dive into a topic that's affecting more men than ever before. We're gonna be talking about low testosterone, and more important, what you can do about it naturally to help raise and maintain healthy testosterone levels. So testosterone isn't just about building muscle.

I'm a 24 year old guy, and most guys my age, even guys younger than me, older than me, that's usually what we think about whenever we think about testosterone is just building muscle and, you know, making gains in the gym. Right? So but it's one of the most important hormones when it comes to your energy and your drive and your mood, your focus, and your long term health as a guy. So what's alarming though is there's a significant decline in testosterone levels among men, over recent decades. There was a study that was analyzing data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, and they were looking at data between 1999 and 2016 that found that the average total testosterone levels in adolescent and young adult men decreased from approximately 605 nanograms per deciliter in 1999, to around 451 nanograms per deciliter in 2015 and 2016.

So this decline remained the same even after adjusting for variables like age, body mass index, and even lifestyle factors. And this means that a 35 year old man today will have significantly lower testosterone levels than a 35 year old man did just two decades ago, even without any changes to their lifestyle or their health status. So in this episode, we're gonna kinda dive into why that might be and what we can do to combat this decline. We're gonna break down what testosterone does. We're gonna talk about why it drops and why it's continuing to drop.

We're gonna go over some signs that you might be dealing with low testosterone and give you some natural science backed ways to support healthy testosterone levels without jumping into medication or TRT. So let's start off with the basics. What is testosterone? Testosterone is the primary male sex hormone. It's produced mainly in the testes, and it's regulated by the brain, specifically the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland.

This hormone plays a huge role in building muscle and strength. It plays a role in regulating your sex drive, supporting mood and mental clarity, maintaining bone density. It even plays a role in red blood cell production, and overall just motivation and vitality as a guy. So some of the common symptoms of low testosterone that you might be feeling that could indicate that you might have low testosterone is fatigue or a decreased libido, erectile dysfunction, not able to recover from workouts properly, if you have any mood swings or anxiety or depression, increased body fat, stubborn body fat, or even if you just have a lack of motivation and a difficulty building or maintaining muscle mass. And here's something important.

Many men have testosterone levels that fall within the normal range. So if you got your testosterone levels checked, they may come back quote unquote normal, because but they might still not feel the best, and this is because normal doesn't necessarily mean optimal. The normal range of testosterone in adult males is typically between 270 and 1,070 nanograms per deciliters. That is a wide range. That's a massive range.

And you could be on the low end of, quote, unquote, normal and still have symptoms of low testosterone. So let's talk about the big question. Why are testosterone levels dropping so dramatically today? Because the decline is real, and it's happening faster than it's ever happened before. So reason number one would be lifestyle habits.

Most guys today are sitting more and moving less and spending more time indoors than they ever have before. They are constantly under chronic stress, and chronic stress plays a massive role in decreasing testosterone production. Cortisol, the main stress hormone, it directly suppresses testosterone production. Another one is poor sleep. Testosterone is primarily produced during deep sleep.

So if you're not getting in deep restful sleep seven to nine hours a night, or if your sleep is inconsistent, you're going to feel it, and your testosterone levels are going to plummet because of it. Reason number two is due to poor nutrition. Our diets today are low protein, high processed carb diets, and these deprive your body of the building blocks needed to make hormones, specifically testosterone. Deficiencies in micronutrients like zinc and magnesium and healthy fats are all extremely common, and all of these are critical for testosterone production as well. Reason number three that testosterone levels are dropping is environmental estrogens.

And what does that mean? In our world today, we're constantly exposed to different endocrine disruptors. Those are things like plastics and BPA and phthalates and pesticides and even conventional skincare products like soap and household products. All of these are endocrine receptors, and they mimic estrogen and disrupt your natural hormone balance. And reason number four is underlying health issues.

Health issues such as insulin resistance and prediabetes, having poor blood sugar dysregulation, which ultimately comes down to the lifestyle factors and nutrition as well. Obesity is a main driver. Obesity rates are higher than they've ever been before, and that's a main reason why testosterone is dropping because obesity increases the enzyme aromatase, which converts testosterone into estrogen. Also, chronic inflammation and having poor gut health, all of these factors, underlying health issues can quietly suppress natural testosterone production and testosterone levels. And finally, reason number five, one that we cannot, necessarily alter, so we're gonna mainly talk about the first four.

But reason number five is age because, yes, testosterone levels, they do gradually decline after around age 30, but most men today are dealing with accelerated hormone decline. It's dropping faster than it ever has before due to poor habits and stress and not necessarily just their age. So let's talk about some solutions that you can implement today to help improve and maintain healthy testosterone production. These are real proven ways to naturally support your testosterone levels, and here's what I suggest or I walk through with my patients every day that are asking about how to maintain healthy testosterone levels. So number one is sleep.

Sleep is your foundation. You must prioritize deep, consistent sleep. This means getting seven to nine hours of quality sleep in a dark, cold room, a good sleeping environment, a screen free room, limiting blue light exposure late at night cause that can disrupt your circadian rhythm and force you to not get into deep quality sleep. So- and here's why. Because testosterone production, it peaks during REM and deep sleep.

So if you're not getting into that deep sleep, especially, that deep sleep around 4 and 6AM is whenever testosterone production is the highest. If you're not getting into that deep sleep at that time, your testosterone levels will not be able to replenish, and your body will not be able to produce the testosterone it needs. Number two is lift heavy and sprint hard. And here's why. Because resistance training, especially heavy compound lifts and compound movements like squats, dead lifts, bench presses, overhead presses, power clings, all of these heavy compound movements stimulate the production of testosterone more than other forms of resistance training.

And, as well as resistance training, we also wanna be doing high intensity interval training, like sprinting, or just short bursts of high intensity effort one to two times a week because this also helps stimulate that testosterone production. We do not wanna spend hours and hours doing, long duration cardio, because what this does is it spikes your cortisol levels, and like we mentioned before, higher cortisol levels can block the production of testosterone. So what we wanna prioritize if we're looking to maintain, or improve testosterone levels as a man is we wanna lift heavy, and we want to do high intensity interval training for our, cardiovascular exercise. Number three, we want to eat to fuel the hormone production. Here are some ways that you can do that.

You need adequate protein to build and repair tissue in, whenever you're doing these resistance training in this cardio. So you wanna eat adequate protein to help build and repair that muscle tissue. You also need healthy fats because cholesterol is the backbone of testosterone. So what are some good sources of healthy fats? Olive oil, avocado, wild caught salmon, grass fed beef, pasteurized eggs, all of these are great sources of healthy fats to get healthy cholesterol, to help support that testosterone production.

We also wanna include foods that are high in zinc and magnesium and vitamin d to support testosterone production and synthesis. Most guys and most people in general are low in these micronutrients, so those are micronutrients that we specifically want to focus on for testosterone production. Solution number four, we want to manage our stress daily. This is because chronic stress is a testosterone killer. So we want to practice intentional stress management.

Some different ways you can do this is getting in controlled stressful environments and helping your body build resilience to stress such as sitting in a sauna or a cold plunge. Specifically, sauna helps boost the production of testosterone, and it also helps boost the production of protein synthesis. So that is a great option, especially if you're trying to build and maintain lean muscle. You can do deep break deep breathing exercises like box breathing to help lower your stress and that cortisol response. You can go and take a walk in nature, disconnect from screens, the chronic screens in social media.

It causes a cortisol spike whenever we spend too much time looking at that at those things. And then we can also do some prayers, some meditation. Whatever helps you downshift and also helps you manage your stress best, do that, because that is that is the number one way that we can lower those cortisol levels. And then finally, solution number five is we wanna detox your environment. So some some basic and some simple ways that we can do this is start by storing food and drinks that you might have in glass or stainless steel containers instead of plastics, because plastics, like I mentioned before, is an endocrine disruptor.

So we can also upgrade our personal care routine, our soaps, our deodorants, lotions. We can use, natural soaps and deodorants that are made without parabens or phthalates. Also, you can install a high quality water filter, like a reverse osmosis water filter, because this will reduce exposure to hormone disrupting chemicals that are often found in city water, municipal water, like chlorine and heavy metals and pesticide residues. These simple swaps can make a big difference over time in protecting and restoring healthy testosterone levels. And then a bonus tip.

So I want you to start with those five that I just mentioned because those are your foundations, And then, this bonus tip is gonna be some supplementation. The supplementation is not a complete fix. It's only gonna supplement healthy foundation. So once we have our foundations good, then we can consider some supplementation. First, we have some adaptogens like Tongadali, Ashwagana, Fenugreek.

Both of these help reduce cortisol and support free testosterone levels. So these are great adaptogens that you can use to help support, your already natural production of testosterone levels. Next, you can supplement with vitamin d three and k two, especially if you're deficient in these micronutrients and you're not getting enough through your diet, supplementing these is a great alternative. Next, you have you can supplement with zinc and magnesium because these are so important, for testosterone production. Zinc is essential for testosterone synthesis, and it also helps inhibit the enzyme aromatase that is found, with obesity, like I mentioned before.

And then you can also supplement with magnesium because that supports free testosterone by reducing the binding of testosterone to sex hormone binding globulin, and it also plays a role in sleep quality, recovery, and lowering inflammation, which are all key for hormone health. And then finally, creatine. Creatine is not just for performance in the gym. It also might support DHT levels, which is a testosterone derivative. So those are all great supplement options if you're looking to supplement your natural testosterone production.

So if you're experiencing any of those symptoms I mentioned before of low testosterone, don't guess. Go and get tested. Ask for a full hormone panel to check your total and free testosterone, your DHEA, your LH, your FSH, maybe even insulin and CRP if there's some blood sugar dysregulation or any metabolic issues that are suspected. Work with a provider who understands both the clinical and the functional view of hormones and of testosterone, and in most cases, you can avoid jumping straight to TRT or testosterone replacement if you fix the foundation first. So to wrap this up, low testosterone is becoming more common, but it's not inevitable, and it's not hopeless.

There are definitely things that you can do today no matter your age to help support and maintain healthy testosterone levels. Your body was designed to thrive, and whenever you move well, eat intentionally, you reduce stress, and you clean up your environment, you're going to give your body the signal to produce and regulate hormones naturally. So if this episode resonated with you or someone you care about, go ahead and share it and download our testosterone support guide that you can find at realhealthco.com/resources along with all of the other guides that we have published and made completely free for you guys. So if you enjoyed this podcast, make sure to follow, and I'll see you in the next episode.

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