My name is Luke Sherran and this is a follow-up video to a hormone level check
that I had done using a service called Medichecks. Now if you watch any of my
videos you'll know that for a while I suspected that I might have low
testosterone. Well I was pretty shocked to discover that not only was my
testosterone level low, but it was actually outside a normal healthy range.
So in this video I'm gonna tell you what happened next and I'm gonna share with
you some of the things that I did to actually double my testosterone levels
naturally within a relatively short amount of time. So first things first
quite a few people questioned the validity of the Medichecks results so
of course I followed up with my GP. Now my biggest issue at the time was fatigue
which can have quite a few causes so to try and diagnose the issue they ran
quite a few tests for me. Well I've got the results and the good news is that
almost everything came back normal and within a healthy range however the
testosterone was low. In fact even lower than the original test result at five
nmol/L compared to the original result of 6.08
Now a normal healthy range should be somewhere between seven and thirty-one.
Now interestingly my cholesterol came back high too.
Now initially I just dismissed this because I have a pretty healthy
lifestyle, however there are studies show possible links between high cholesterol
and low testosterone. Cholesterol is used to make sex hormones in a body like
testosterone but I wasn't fully convinced that this wasn't just an
anomalous result. So following up with my GP again they wanted to perform a fasted
cholesterol test and they also wanted me to retake my testosterone test because
it wasn't properly time-stamped when I originally provided the sample. Now
testosterone levels are naturally highest around 9 a.m. in the morning and
despite that being the time that I actually took the test, because it wasn't
time that I had to take it again. So as you can probably tell I was getting a little
bit frustrated with the lack of progress and the amount of time between tests
however I had already started doing my own research to try and find out what I
can do to start naturally increasing my testosterone levels. Initially I felt
like any changes I made would be extremely limited
because most of the recommendations I was given, I was already kind of doing. I
already had a healthy lifestyle I ate well I trained I don't drink I don't
smoke however as I started doing more and more research I started realizing
that there was more and more possible answers. So firstly I wasn't alone there
are lots of younger healthy men me being diagnosed with low testosterone every
day as a result of our modern lifestyles and lots of external factors.
So I began compiling a list of actionable changes that I could start
implementing straight away into my lifestyle and I'll share these with you
very shortly in this video. So when I went back to the GP to get my next set
of blood test results my testosterone levels had already improved in just a
couple of weeks. My levels were up from 5 nmol/L to 10 nmol/L
and we're now within a normal healthy range albeit still at the lower
end of the scale. So although I still wasn't feeling great it was actually
really encouraging to see that the change I had made had already had an
impact and continued lifestyle changes would hopefully improve this even
further. So I've now been referred to an endocrinologist which is a doctor that
specializes within the endocrine system, which controls all of your hormones. Now they
will certainly want to run their own tests as well but my goal is to try and
get my levels back into a normal healthy range by the time I actually get to see
them. I'm hoping when I speak to them as well they'll be able to give me even
more lifestyle changes that I can make to improve my levels and hopefully
validate the research that I've already done. So now the bit that you're probably
most interested in which is what did I actually do? Well I made a lot of changes
and unfortunately I made all the changes at the same time so individually I don't
know which have actually been the most effective. However I have summarized them
into nine different areas. So the first area I looked at was around nutrition
now although my diet is pretty healthy by most people standards
I still wanted to identify few opportunities particularly around
vitamins and micronutrients. Additionally I found that a lot of foods contain
toxins pesticides and even molds that can be really estrogenic and quite
powerful endocrine disrupters. The next area I looked at was my gut health
now the microbiome within your body can play a really big role towards your
overall health, so I took a really strong six-day course of probiotics to really
help get a much better ratio of healthy bacteria within my gut. The third area I
looked at was a sunlight exposure. Now within the UK a lot of people are
actually vitamin D deficient and this is largely due to our busy modern
lifestyles which largely involve being indoors. Now although you can get vitamin D
from certain foods the best source is the Sun, so the recent heat wave we have been
experiencing in the UK certainly helped me with that. The fourth area that
I looked at was actually sleep and not just a quantity of sleep that I was
getting but the quality of the sleep as well. So I started using a product again
called dream which really helps promote a really nice deep sleep which makes you
feel much more rested in the morning. Now the fifth area is where things get a
little bit more interesting, and I started looking at estrogen control.
Now I was definitely showing signs of estrogen imbalance or estrogen dominance
particularly looking at the quality of my skin and the places in which I had
started to store fat on my body. Now this is a huge area and I found out I was
potentially exposing myself to a lot of xeno-estrogens throughout the day from
the endless plastic bottles that I was drinking water out of - to the pesticides
and estrogen within the water supply and even the soaps and body washes I was
using the list just goes on and on. The sixth area was how I could actually
detox my body and get rid of these toxins. Now a lot of them are stored in a
subcutaneous fat which can actually be released with sweat so taking a hot
sauna can be a really good way of actually getting rid of these but the
best strategy is really just to avoid them in the first place. The seventh area
was using supplements. Now generally speaking I would say that testosterone
boosters aren't really very effective particularly if your testosterone levels
are within healthy range. However they can be quite
effective if you have low testosterone. I also added in some additional vitamins
and micronutrients to my diet as well. The penultimate change I made was
actually my training. Now I'm a big fan of high-intensity high volume training
with minimal rest and supersets with antagonist muscles. However I adapted my
training to make sure that the total volume was much lower and that my
workouts weren't quite as lengthy. Finally I started using tactics to avoid
blue light. Now this is something I am constantly exposed to all day because I
sit in front of two large monitors and I use my mobile phone all the time. Now the
blue light from these devices is known to be pretty bad for your eye health but
it can also really disturb your sleep patterns and your circadian rhythm
particularly if you use them just before you go to bed. So that's a brief overview
of all the changes that I made and they seem to have had a very positive impact
on my testosterone levels so far. Now my appointment with my endocrinologist is
in the start of August so it will be really interesting to see what I can get my
levels up to by the time of that next appointment. Now I appreciate I've only
really touched upon the changes that I've made to my lifestyle I've not
really shared the details of what I did at this stage. Mainly because this would
make this video incredibly long but if it's something that you're interested in
let me know and I'll happily share the specifics of exactly what I did. So I
hope you find this video interesting and if you did don't forget to give it a big
thumbs up. I'm gonna be documenting the journey around my testosterone levels
over the next few months so I'm really hoping to create some really useful
content for anybody that's in the same or similar position as I am. So make sure
you subscribe and don't miss out on the great content I have coming up and I'll
see you in the next video