hi guys Rena Malek urologist and pelvic
surgeon today I'm going to go over five
ways to increase your testosterone or
boost your testosterone naturally so
make sure you stick around to get each
and every one of those tips
first off why does everyone even care
about testosterone having low
testosterone can create a lot of
unwanted symptoms like low libido low
energy difficulty concentrating and
losing muscle mass so not only does it
cause these really frustrating symptoms
it can also be a risk factor for other
really scary things like heart disease
metabolic syndrome which includes
diabetes and hypertension
osteoporosis and even all cause
mortality or death so making sure that
your testosterone levels are optimal is
really important number one lose weight
yeah easy to say why why does it even
matter well the reason being is that
obesity or being overweight means that
you have more fat cells and fat cells
actually have a specific enzyme in them
which takes all that good healthy
testosterone and converts it into
estradiol so it is well understood in
the scientific literature that weight
loss and overweight and obese men can
help boost testosterone levels
significantly and how much weight do you
really need to lose so in one study they
looked at the amount of weight loss that
was needed to increase testosterone
levels and they found that an average of
21 kilograms or nearly 46 Pounds was the
average amount of weight loss by people
who did increase their testosterone
level but do you really need to lose 46
Pounds well sure that would be great but
another study looked at specifically
physical activity and diet and how did
those contribute to increasing
testosterone so what that study
concluded was that increasing your
activity level could actually reduce the
amount of weight loss that you need if
you increase your physical activity you
might actually need to lose even less
weight something like 12 kilograms or 26
pounds and that brings us to our number
two suggestion which is exercise great
so exercise is important for
testosterone but what kind of exercise
should I just go for a walk well
actually they've studied this so they
looked at young healthy men and who are
already physically active and they put
them into two categories they put them
into a steady state exercise where they
ran to achieve a certain output for 40
to 45 minutes at a continuous level so
the other half were put into a group of
high intensity exercise and what that
means is they went for 90 seconds at a
really high output and 90 seconds in a
recovery zone and they did that for
about 42 to 47 minutes they measured
their blood levels before the exercise
guys after the exercise and 12 hours
later and they found that those who did
the high intensity interval training did
actually increase their testosterone
levels significantly more than those who
did steady straight training however
after 12 hours they found that this
highness the interval training actually
had a lower testosterone level and they
hypothesized that they're actually using
the testosterone to help recover during
that time so yes there may be some
benefit to doing high intensity interval
exercise rather than just going for a
walk or going on a steady state exercise
so my take home is do some high
intensity interval training for a short
burst of time and that will increase
your testosterone level and be easier to
really do on a regular basis so while
exercise is super important for boosting
your testosterone you can't lose weight
without going to diet which is our
number three recommendation diet what
kind of diet should you actually eat so
there's lots of claims to testosterone
boosting foods and certainly there are
foods that might be better to help boost
your testosterone but how much do you
need to eat to make a real impact it's
hard to say so what I tell all my
patients is avoid processed foods eat
natural foods and fruits and vegetables
that you find at the supermarket in the
produce aisle while I was researching
testosterone for this video I actually
found an interesting study on the keto
diet and testosterone so if you're
interested in learning more about that
please comment below or if you've heard
of a certain testosterone booster in
your diet let me know so I can comment
on the data behind it but I want to tell
you this very recent study that just
came out in 2020 they looked at the
National Health and examination survey
or nhame study which is a nationally
density looking at people all over the
country in the United States and getting
a lot of information about their diet
their activity level and blood and urine
samples to obtain data that can be used
to find correlations between certain
things and so what this group did was
they looked at the die dietary type of
men and their testosterone levels what
they found was that men who restricted
fat in their diet were likely to have a
lower testosterone level than those who
didn't restrict fat in their diet so
does that mean you should eat fatty
foods well I don't know yet I think that
specifically if you are a normal weight
individual who wants to boost your
testosterone I would not limit fats in
your diet because that may be actually
limiting your ability for your body to
produce testosterone but if you're
overweight improving your weight is more
important than changing the components
of your diet also I get a lot of
questions about soy products so our soy
products gonna make my testosterone
level drop so the reason this comes up
is because soy has estrogen-like
compounds called isoflovanes which then
are concerning for people who want to
increase their testosterone level but
what does the data really say so a 2010
meta-analysis looked at 47 different
studies and compiled all the data and
what they found even a really high
intake of soy would not reduce your
testosterone levels I'm going to tell
you about one of these studies because I
thought it was really interesting this
study took young men between the ages of
18 and 30 and they were randomized for a
period of four weeks to twice a day take
either a vanilla flavored soy protein or
a vanilla flavored whey protein or
vanilla flavored cake mix and so they
didn't know what they were gonna they
got these little plastic baggies with
them and they were supposed to take it
for four weeks and see how it impacted
their testosterone levels and what this
study found was that even this high
intake of soy proteins which was the
equivalent of 41.5 grams of soy protein
per day did not affect testosterone
levels even after taking it consistently
for four weeks so my advice to you is
don't worry too much about the soy
products that you're eating especially
if you're getting good healthy protein
from soy products it's probably probably
not going to impact your testosterone
levels that's what the data says number
four good sleep so did you guys know
from 1985 to now there has been actual
data to suggest that American adults are
getting less and less sleep and poor
quality of sleep so how does that sleep
impact your testosterone levels so
there's actually two interesting studies
on this once I looked at 2300 men in
that same national health and nutrition
examination survey or the nhane survey
and what they found was that per each
hour of sleep that people reported
getting less their testosterone
decreased by almost six points another
study looked at 10 healthy men and what
they did was they had them sleep for
three days over eight hours and then
after that they slept for eight days and
they were required to sleep for only
five hours and they measured their
daytime testosterone levels and what
they found was that they decreased their
testosterone levels by 15 percent and
where they get this idea of sleeping for
five hours well actually they found that
this is the exact sleeping pattern or
sleep restriction of 15 of the working
adult population so sleep is super super
important more recent data has suggested
that it might be related to the time
when you wake up so there may be some
circadian rhythm Association so if
you're waking up really really early
that may be more detrimental to your
testosterone level than going to sleep a
little bit later so bottom line is get
better sleep and sleep for longer
periods of time so try to reduce sleep
interruptions avoid looking at your
phone before bedtime and try to really
get into a bedtime routine and go to
sleep around the same time and wake up
around the same time each and every day
and number five avoid endocrine
disrupting chemicals so endocrine
disrupting chemicals are found
throughout our environment due to
pollution in certain Cosmetics or
consumable items as well as Plastics the
most popular of these are called bpas or
bisphenol a and how do these actually
work to impact your testosterone levels
so they actually disrupt endocrine
action and testosterone is created
through an endocrine process so being
exposed to endocrine disrupting
chemicals can actually result in a
number of problems they've been found to
be associated with not only low
testosterone but diabetes obesity
learning problems and even cancer
another study looking at the nhanes
database looked at young adults so young
kids and found out their level of BPA
exposure by looking at the urinary
concentration and also correlated this
with their testosterone level and they
found that in adolescent boys having a
higher amount or higher exposure to bpas
was correlated with a lower testosterone
level so how can you avoid bpas well
avoid using plastic containers use
Alternatives like glass or metal or
other things and don't warm things up in
plastic containers you can also cut back
on your use of cans and look for
products that are labeled BPA free
you'll see that all over BPA free that
means that they don't have bisphenol a
which is really important in avoiding
those kind of endocrine disrupting
chemicals so wait don't leave yet I'm
going to talk about a supplement that
I've read about that people said might
boost testosterone this is called
ashwagandha what is ashwagandha
ashwagandha is an herb that has been
tatted to have really good benefits of
stress relief and anxiety reduction and
so this has actually been studied in a
randomized trial meaning that they took
60 adults and they randomized them to
receive either ashwagandha or a placebo
medication and what they found was that
they did actually increase their
testosterone levels but this was not
statistically significant so what does
that mean it basically means that it's
likely due to change chance that that
increase happened they did find however
that there was a reduction in anxiety
and depression in people who were taking
the supplement so certainly that can
reduce your stress levels which can be
important for improving testosterone
levels overall alright thanks so much
for watching hope you enjoyed it if you
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always remember to take care of yourself
because you're worth it