How do you make a hormone? - Part 2: Testosterone

See Part 1 for the hilarious punchline and discussions on the role of leptin in your body and the importance of controlling it.

This part will tackle the manliest of manly man hormones, Testosterone. As much as we think of testosterone as ball power, it is important for the fairer sex as well, so don't stop reading here if you think this article isn't important for you due to your lack of sack.

Testosterone is probably the most well known androgenic steroid hormone and one that mediates a host of processes to do with boners, being horny and other such fun business, but it is responsible for far more than that. How about this for a list of the effects of increasing testosterone: Promotion of muscle size and strength, fat loss, increased bone density, better insulin sensitivity, more energy, elevations of mood and some minor cognitive increases. These are surely attractive effects regardless of gender, furthermore, ladies can rest assured, achieving T levels anything near those that lead to you having a voice like a sub-woofer, a jaw like Brad Pitt and hair appearing in new places is literally impossible naturally.

Don't worry, this isn't going to happen without boat loads of roids. Now where is my eye bleach?

The bio-synthesis of testosterone and the upstream and downstream modes of action and signalling are horrendously complicated, so I will be assuming you don't want to be overwhelmed by heavy science, just as much as I don't want to pretend to understand all of it. So let's move ahead with the practical side; more testosterone means a more muscular, leaner, happier you. Unfortunately, our generation is suffering from a drop in T levels; turns out your Granddad wasn't just more of a man than you because he fought in the war, T levels were actually higher on average back then, with one study showing there has been an average age corrected drop in T levels of 17% over the past 20 years. A portion of this is due to environmental factors that are largely beyond our control (or would cost you a shit load to attempt to rectify) such as air and water contaminants. There are a few things we can do to do bump our T levels back up though; before anyone thinks I'm about to reveal secrets which will unleash your inner hulk and make you irresistible to the opposite sex, bear in mind that natural T increases are always fairly modest, unless your levels are currently in the toilet. The less of the following you currently do, the more positive changes you will notice from implementing them, but being a realist, I feel the need to tell you that feeling like you've just been injected with super soldier serum and are about to become the most annoyingly patriotic of all superheroes is highly unlikely.

Go fix your country's government, you smug prick

Without further adieu, here is a list of things you can and should do to make sure you body's natural testosterone production is optimised and as such, be as lean, jacked and tanned as you can be. (Note: testosterone doesn't make you tanned, but you should be anyway, because who doesn't want to be tanned?)

Lift some heavy-ass weights
I say this so often I'm starting to annoy myself, it's pretty much the unifying theme throughout everything I write, so if you are not lifting (or considering lifting) heavy-ass weights, please leave. Lifting should be focussed on complex lifts which use a large portion of your body's muscles to get the most T bang for you buck and volume should be fairly high to give your body a stimulus to which to adapt. Lifting things in pretty much any fashion has been shown to increase T, but research does indicate that keeping rest intervals fairly short (90-120 seconds) may lead to the largest rise in T levels.

LIGHT WEIGHT!!

Sleep
Sleep is vital to normal hormonal secretions, if you are lacking sleep, your cortisol (a stress response hormone) levels will be high, which has knock on effects, lowering T. Get some good quality sleep for at least 7 hours a night, get huge. Speaking of getting good quality sleep, the next point may help...

Have more sex (alternatively get friendly with yourself more often)
and make it good! We all sort of know testosterone and sex are linked in some way, but people tend to not realise that whoever designed us did us a big favour on this one. Sex, or more specifically orgasms, increase testosterone in both sexes, so you can get the benefits whether playing solo or partnering up. Ignore the stories about boxers not having sex before fights to raise their T levels, if any do in fact do this, they are either misguided or doing it just so they get angry as fuck; the research actually says the opposite, forgoing orgasm leads to a fall in testosterone. I'm not sure students really need more incentive to get to copulating like dirty little rabbits, but there it is. Get laid, get gains.

A helpful visual demonstration

Get tanned (no, really)
I mentioned this in my supplement article; Vitamin D is super important. It positively correlates with testosterone levels in men and women, so either supplement with it or get some sun to make it yourself.

She wants the D. Vitamin D.

Make sure you've got the minerals
Specifically Zinc, Magnesium and Selenium (in decreasing order of importance); all are needed for the bio-synthesis of T and are regularly lacking in our diets. You can cover your bases with pills or for more fun can eat loads of red meat (for zinc), seafood (for zinc and selenium), nuts (Brazils are best, for magnesium and selenium) and spinach (for magnesium, zinc and turning you into Popeye).

The candy man can't
Large intakes of simple carbs serve to spike blood sugar (this was covered in part 1), researchers found that the blood sugar spike from 75g of glucose dropped healthy men's T levels by up to 25%. If you're eating cereal for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch and pasta for dinner, your system is being hit with a lot of simple carbs, so your blood sugar is on a rollercoaster ride. In addition to this ruining your insulin and leptin sensitivity, therefore raising your diabetes risk and probably making you fat, it is keeping your T levels suppressed. Not good.

If she offers you some sugar, don't say no

Soy not good
Soy products aren't cool. They contain things called phytoestrogens, which mimic the actions of oestrogen (the female hormone) in your body, which is generally undesirable. Whilst meta-studies are inconclusive on whether soy products truly impact hormonal profile in a meaningful way, there are plenty of studies out there suggesting that they are no good for your T levels, so avoiding them is a good shout. Also most soy products taste damn nasty.

Just eat meat you hippies.

Eat Fat
Even saturates. Yep. Now before you argue, shut up and listen. Low fat, high fibre diets, as recommended by many health professionals that don't actually know a fucking thing, have been shown to drive your T levels into the ground. Whilst intake of saturated fat (think meat), monounsaturated fat (think nuts) and cholesterol (think meat and egg yolks) have all been found to positively correlate with testosterone production. Now don't get this twisted, I'm not telling you to go and drink butter in search of some barely perceptible T boost, I'm just saying low-fat is not a smart way to eat. In general, consume lots of dead animals and you're doing it right.

Don't be fat
Fatties have low T. Don't be fat. Eat right, move, lift, be sexy.

I love you Big, but you're setting a terrible example

Win.
This is good life advice in general, and hopefully not something you need to be told. What you might not know is that T levels will rise when we win a competition or dominance challenge and fall when we lose. Interestingly, this also happens vicariously, so if you're a passionate sports fan and your team keeps losing, your T might also be taking a beating. Man Utd fans might want to change loyalties at this point.

Winning isn't always clean.

That's all for today folks, now go be alpha as fuck.