hi guys welcome back to the channel i'm here again today with dr kitchen hello um and we're going to
be doing the second part in our series looking all about hormones and today we're going to be looking
at natural ways to boost your testosterone what are some easy things that people can do tomorrow
morning in order to improve their testosterone levels okay we'll get your trainers on
and get out there and start exercising exercise particularly resistance training and
high intensity interval training has been shown to increase natural levels of testosterone getting
your sort of seven to eight hours of quality sleep in every day that also improves hormonal health
and there's plenty of things in terms of lifestyle that you can do so stress you know we all have
stress there's many ways of there's many different types of stress as well you know there's mental
physical physiological emotional stress it's our job now to try to reduce stress as much as
possible because stress has a big knock-on factor on hormonal health okay so this isn't something
that necessarily you'd be able to do on your own but when you come into the clinic we also look at
your sort of health history we look at medications that you might be on so for example things like
certain antidepressants will reduce your sex drive would you reduce your um can it affect
erectile function as well and also we would think about certain medications that might stimulate
your uh natural testosterone levels as well so there are certain fertility drugs which can
improve your testicular health and testicular function in terms of production of sperm
and of testosterone also something very simple you can do at home is you can take the necessary steps
with your nutrition with your nutrition so ideally you want to stick to a plant-based diet that has a
focus on being as unprocessed as possible you want to try to identify foods that have got
higher levels of pesticides and toxicity and for those particular fruits and vegetables
switch to organic versions um include some really healthy fats because you need healthy levels of
cholesterol to produce hormones and also you need healthy levels of protein in your diet as well to
supply the amino acids which are really important in hormone production as well there's also some
really important things to avoid so alcohol and caffeine have both been shown sorry sorry sorry
and they've both been shown to dramatically decrease natural levels of testosterone there
are some doctors as well the one you know the one we've men we've been mentored by and dr hertoghe
and dos roussier they also talk about excessive levels of cereal fiber have a big impact on
binding up free hormone levels and then that eliminates it from the system a little bit too
early so perhaps sort of trying to stay away from certain grains just having a much more unprocessed
diet is really really helpful okay so no more all bran yeah no more all brand and also avoid
refined sugars as well because refined sugars has also been shown to decrease um natural levels of
testosterone and smoking smoking smoking smoking big big no-no um no one should be doing it please
and it has a direct impact impact on hormonal health and of course on grown adult health
so your testicle function is really impacted by smoking cigarettes and then finally the
one thing that we can introduce for our patients is natural stimulators of testosterone production
so there's various herbs and supplements which have got varying degrees of
evidence-based medicine behind them to support their use so there's plenty of studies carried out
on them some on humans some on rats there's plenty of studies on rats and there's also historical use
in ayurveda and chinese medicine but some of the supplements i might consider introducing
for patients are things like ashwagandha tribulus terestas tonkat ali and horny goatweed i just love
that name as well as plenty of other vitamins and minerals so for example you need vitamin d
zinc and selenium for healthy testosterone production as well and these are things that
we would probably um support our younger patients who don't want to go on testosterone replacement
we might try that natural route first now i know you're very concerned about your penis
are you taking any of those yourself i'm taking a natural stimulator which is called
libido stim m it's a pharmaceutical grade supplement that uses all of these natural
a very very good combination of many of these herbs i've mentioned and it stimulates it has
stimulated my natural testosterone levels i mean it's so for me it was a bit of an experiment just
to see would it change my markers did it and it did magic so you're in the gym you're working out
some beefcake comes over to you and they're like mate i've got something for you you're interested
okay tempting as it might be there's plenty of these you know things around there's dyna bowls
there's anova um you know who you are you know who's taking it um there's plenty of synthetic
testosterone derivatives available um in the black market and from dodgy people essentially
these formats of testosterone have often have a core of dihydrotestosterone attached to another
ester or another chemical the problem with them is that they're extensively metabolized in the
liver and that can drive up your cholesterol to dangerous levels and although you know you might
have this effect of improving your muscle and your um reducing your fat composition
it can have a paradoxical effect on your natural testosterone levels so if you've been taking these
synthetic testosterones long term you might suppress your own okay so that's bad what is good
so what we generally recommend at the clinic is bioidentical hormones so we use plant-derived
testosterone and this is produced in a laboratory it's processed but it's absolutely identical
atom for atom molecule for molecule to the testosterone we produce naturally in our bodies
and it's derived from wild yam or soy it's natural in terms of its structure and how it behaves in
the body it the body recognizes it as our own natural testosterone okay so we've already said
that you can apply it to the testicles any other way that you can use this you can apply it to
the inner arms you can apply it to the inside thighs you can apply it to the buttocks so we
use we generally recommend a cream we prescribe a cream that's made especially for our patients
and we can actually adjust the dosage so it's literally tailor-made to you because the thing
about testosterone and hormones in general is that there's no one-size-fits-all it's very much
a tailor-made bespoke compound that we would have for you we prescribe it it's made in a pharmacy
but you get like a pump or two of testosterone cream a day you would apply it to your chosen area
and it sits in this fat layer underneath your skin and in there it gradually releases testosterone
throughout your body do you have any comments about injections or pellets so the injection is
it does have a role and it is bioidentical once it's injected and and the chemical part
of the molecule has left the testosterone and it behaves very similar to the cream um it tends to
have a slight issue in that when you first have it injected there's a surge in testosterone
and you feel great for the first few days or the first few weeks after it's been injected then
there's a bit of a trough and you don't feel as optimal as you would if you're using it every day
so the cream is applied every day usually in the morning and for the majority of young
men testosterone is produced in the morning and it then it grows down throughout the day
in the same way the cream is being applied on a daily basis goes up and then gradually
comes down so the injections are um to be used either every week every two weeks or sometimes
every every two months um and then the the main problem with them is that there is obviously the
pain of the injection and then there's this sort of massive surge and then a bit of a trough and
depending on how your body uses testosterone it might be that your sort of sub-optic you might
have sub-optimal levels of testosterone in the later part of that time and similarly pellets
they are really really popular in america basically it's it's like an implant it's a
implant of testosterone about the size of a grain of rice and small cut is made into the skin of the
buttock and then the implant is put inside and in that from that site it's releasing testosterone
for the next sort of two months to three months sometimes to four months depending on the brand
of implant used now the pellet is very convenient because you don't have to take a you don't have to
take a cream every day you don't have to have an injection but it's very very difficult to control
it's certainly not what i would start someone on and also in england we do have an issue with
finding pellets that are not just reliable but we know that they're going to be acting for long
enough as well because they have a similar issue to the injections that in the first you know
soon after they've been implanted that there's a surge in the levels of testosterone and then
later on there's a trough and then that might be the time where you're actually having sub
sub optimal levels of testosterone so kish are you actually taking any testosterone yourself
i'm not taking bioidentical testosterone right now i am optimizing my own levels with two different
sort of strategies one is i did a short course of something called clomiphene now um chromophene or
clomid it's actually a fertility drug that's used in men and in women and in men it increases your
natural levels of testosterone and also improves your sperm count as well and i'm also taking the
combination product called libido stem and what i've realized is that first of all energy levels
are a lot better i've got no other had no other real issues and you know no libido problems um
perhaps body composition has definitely improved since starting this program of treatment um but
definitely that sort of get up and go that's a lot better now really glad to hear about your libido
yeah there's no problems with my mojo okay guys so that's it for this week
join us again next week where we're going to be talking about testosterone for women
if you have any questions in the meantime please let us know in the comments section
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