Testosterone can be a touchy topic. With its inherent ties to cultural concepts of
virility and societal perceptions of manliness, the quest to boost testosterone has become
a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States alone. But as the number of quick fixes,
miracle cures, magic pills and fitness crazes continue to rise, men’s testosterone levels
continues to fall.
Could it be that what we consider manly is actually tanking men’s testosterone? Let’s
cut through the infomercial fluff and see what the science says, shall we?
Hi it's Emily from Bite Size Vegan and welcome to another vegan nugget. With the overwhelming
amount of misinformation surrounding men’s health, exacerbated by pharmaceutical-company-funded
studies, multi-million dollar advertising campaigns and enough internet pop-ups to crash
an entire computer network, not to mention the rather sticky web of “what it means
to be manly,” it’s more important than ever for men to have unencumbered access to
the hard science about their health. Especially when so many of these “solutions” are
not only dangerous but can even be fatal.
So with this video, I’m launching the Men’s Health Series to help you clear out your spam
box and unearth the root causes of common male health concerns like hormonal imbalances,
erectile dysfunction, enlarged prostate, and more with a focus on prevention and reversal
through diet and lifestyle.
And since I’m far from an expert on this subject for several reasons, I’m excited
to welcome back to the channel Dr. Michael Greger - a physician, New York Times bestselling
author, and internationally recognized speaker on nutrition, food safety, and public health issues.
Dr. Greger has dedicated his life to providing accurate, unbiased, science-based, free information
on nutrition and overall health on his non-profit website Nutritionfacts.org. You can find my
previous interviews with him addressing common nutrition concerns, the leading causes of
death and more linked in the sidebar and below.
So let’s jump right in and get the lowdown on Low-T.
You’re gonna hear from an actual doctor now.
Emily: Well Dr. Greger, thank you again for taking time out of your busy schedule to be
on the channel and answer some questions.
Dr. Greger: So happy to anytime, you know when I go around and speak during this book
tour of the last few months – lots of folks came up to me and said that they learned about
my work from your work and so, I was just so excited to be back on the program.
Emily: Can you tell us a little bit about the dietary and lifestyle factors that impact
testosterone levels in men?
Dr. Greger: You know, people have this sense that bodybuilders, bodybuilding, gives you
lots of testosterone. But actually it can be the reverse. Exercise does not boost testosterone
levels. In fact, there’s something called “over training syndrome” where if you
work out too much you actually get a big dip in your testosterone levels. So they do studies
of so-called natural bodybuilders– these are bodybuilders who aren’t injecting steroids
– and within a few months before a big competition testosterone levels can drop as much as 75%.
They basically wipe out the testosterone in their bodies because they’re so stressing
themselves. It’s kind of like when women athletes stop menstruating. Basically the
body says I’m under so much stress, like reproduction is the last thing I gotta think
about. And so the same thing actually happens in men, too. But, you can, through dietary
manipulation you can block that overtraining syndrome. So, there was a study where they
took people and they switched them between a low carb diet and a high carb diet. A low
carb diet centered around meat and a high carb diet centered around plants and they
found that within three days of switching from low carb to high carb, you can actually
dramatically increase the testosterone, decrease the cortisol, or stress hormone levels such
that you can, by eating a plant-based diet you may be able to avoid over training syndrome.
So, still stress your body like crazy but not get the stress and the dip in testosterone.
In fact, even a single high fat meal can drop both free and total testosterone as much as
30% within an hour. If you want your testosterone to go down like in an hour eat a high fat
meal. And that, in fact, can last for hours. So, in the short term, can have really quite
dramatic effects. If you want to boost your testosterone in the short term. You’re like,
oh quick, I need testosterone in an hour! Actually the most powerful booster of testosterone
in men is having sex. So, in fact, these interesting studies where they had men shave – so if
you have an electric razor you empty your electric razor and then you shave – the
days that you have sex, there’s actually more hair. That you have so much spike in
your testosterone your hair, your beard actually grows that much quicker. And you can do it
yourself at home. You shave and then you can actually weigh how much hair every day, and
on the days you have sex you actually have more beard growth because there’s that much
more testosterone in your body. Interestingly though, you do not get the same effect with
masturbation. No testosterone boost at all and the question is why not? And it’s interesting,
they think it’s something called – it’s actually the boost in testosterone with sex
in men is a consequence of what they call competitive success. So, if you take famous
studies were done on tennis players. So, if you do the same exertion – playing tennis
– and you win, you get a boost in testosterone. But if you lose you don’t get the boost
in testosterone. And while sex is not typically seen as a competitive event, you can imagine
in the mind of a man afterwards there’s this kind of winner mentality. Whereas the
same mental state doesn’t exist when one masturbates.
Emily: There’s a long-standing stereotype and belief that manly men eat meat and vegan
men are often mocked with their lack of virility or lower testosterone levels so, I wanted
to ask are there any comparative studies on testosterone levels between vegans vs. non-vegans
Dr. Greger: There weren’t until the 1980s when the first study on male hormone levels
between vegetarians and meat eaters and they found that testosterone levels were the same
between vegetarians and meat eaters, but the vegetarians’ estrogen levels – the men’s
estrogen levels were significantly lower because probably they’re eating so much fiber. Fiber
pulls estrogen out of the body. And so their testosterone to estrogen ratio was actually
higher in the vegetarians. Now there weren’t any studies on vegans until the 1990s and
what they found was that vegans actually have higher total testosterone levels than meat
eaters but they also have higher, what are called sexual hormone binding globulins, which
kind of tie-up excess testosterone in the blood, and so the free testosterone levels,
the amount of testosterone in the body that’s actually able to cause secondary sex characteristics
in men, etc, is the same between vegans and meat eaters. So yes, they have higher total
testosterone but more of it is bound up in the blood, so actually the free testosterone
levels are the same between vegans and meat eaters and vegetarians.
I hope you enjoyed hearing from Dr. Greger on the truth about testosterone. You can find
links to relevant studies and Dr. Greger’s site on the blog post for this video linked
in the description below.
And I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic in the comments!
If you found this video-boost-of-testosterone helpful, give it a big thumbs up and share
it around to help men cut through the crap and take hold of their health. Be sure to
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Now go live vegan, take control of your testosterone, and I’ll see you soon.