After suffering from low Testosterone symptoms in my late 30s, and not wanting to hop on TRT, I figured out how to increase Testosterone naturally after 40 so I want to share my experiences with other men over 40 here. I hope it helps!
A lot of guys aren’t even aware that they have low testosterone symptoms or that they need to increase Testosterone after 40.
They just think:
“This is a sign of getting old. I’m older, I’m grumpier, I have low energy, I’m losing muscle. I’m gaining weight. This is just what happens to guys like me, the same thing happened to my dad...”.
The thing is, that’s not the case.
I found this out for myself when I had a home blood test and found that all the symptoms I was suffering from were actually a result of having low free testosterone levels.
Lo and behold, by making a few simple lifestyle changes, I managed to turn things around to the point now where I don’t feel remotely 45, and am in better shape than at 25.
Yes, I know my face looks 45, as my wife keeps telling me… but I certainly don’t feel it!
I wanted to share the 5 main lifestyle changes I made to increase my Testosterone naturally so you too can get back that energy and drive, and become more motivated to look after your health, fitness and wellbeing again too.
1. Decrease Cortisol to Increase Testosterone
More likely than not your cortisol levels, your stress hormones, are too high. That’s because life at our age is a bit more stressful.
We also don’t tend to look after ourselves particularly well — we don’t get good quality sleep, we probably drink booze a little bit more too, which interrupts your sleep.
I tried to find simple ways to de-stress:
Getting out for a walk
Taking a bit of time for myself during the day
Cutting back on things like caffeine and booze, which were stopping me getting a decent amount of sleep.
I also looked into supplementation, and found that Ashwaghanda worked well to decrease my cortisol levels, which in turn helped increase my testosterone levels naturally, back to where they should have been.
2. Decrease Estrogen, Booze & Junk Too!
I’m an Irishman. I love a pint of beer. I’m not saying give up pints, Heaven Forbid!
But too much alcohol elevates mens’ estrogen levels, the ‘female’ hormone, which can lead to both lower testosterone, as well as fat gain across your chest.
I treated booze as something I only indulged in once a week, to decrease these pesky estrogen levels.
I also changed how I viewed food.
Since simply being overweight leads to higher estrogen, I needed to change how I viewed food. It had to become something I was using to nourish a body I wanted to take better care of.
This was in contrast to how many of us treat food, as entertainment, something to cheer us up, or help us celebrate.
I lost weight, decreased my estrogen, thus increasing testosterone naturally in my 40s, by choosing food (most of the time anyway, I didn’t give up junk food completely!) based on what my body needed rather than what my inner needy child wanted.
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3. Increase Testosterone Through Physical Exertion
Low testosterone can be exacerbated when we stop challenging our bodies physically.
That’s one reason our grandfathers had higher testosterone levels at the age we are now — life was tougher, more time outdoors working.
Nowadays most of us are sitting at a desk indoors, then sit on the sofa after work, not being remotely active.
We need to find ways of challenging ourselves physically to send the signal to the body that we need higher testosterone levels.
That means things like working out with weights three or four times a week (*cough… grab my free workout program for guys over 40 here… cough*), doing more grunt work/yard work around the house, and getting outdoors more to be active.
And if you're wondering can you build muscle after 40, you bet you can - it's not too late!
4. Improve Sleep to Boost Testosterone Naturally
I mentioned sleep earlier as a way to combat those high cortisol levels, but sleep also regulates the body’s natural testosterone production.
Basically, if you’re not sleeping enough (quantity) and not getting enough deep sleep (quality), you have crappy testosterone production, and you will eventually suffer from low testosterone symptoms.
Now it’s all very well saying:
“So just sleep more”
It’s not that simple, as you probably well know.
There ARE a couple of things I did that gave me big wins for minimal effort in terms of which habits led to better sleep.
Firstly I made sure I went to bed at a ‘decent time’.
I made sure I was in bed at least eight hours before the time I needed to get up the following morning.
Because, y’know it is pretty hard to get 8 hours’ sleep if you go to bed 6 hours before you need to get up… ;-)
Secondly I treated the 30–60 minutes before I went to bed as my opportunity to wind down, to send a signal to my body, “Hey, it’s almost time for bed”.
I took time away from screens to calm the mind so I wasn’t so wired
I stayed away from having sugary or salty snacks and booze after dinner, which would have led to too much ‘digestion stuff’ happening when I was laying in bed trying to get to sleep.
As my sleep improved, so did my Testosterone increased naturally too!
5. Balance Testosterone through Supplementation
I’m mentioning this last because it really should be just ‘supplementing’ those other four sensible lifestyle changes I’ve just mentioned, rather than being some Magic Bullet solution to your low testosterone symptoms.
Incidentally I wrote an article - Do Testosterone Supplements Work? - that clarifies this whole area.
Anyway, I used two supplements to make sure my body was producing enough testosterone in the first place:
Vitamin D3 and
Zinc.
You only need enough to avoid being deficient in those though.
If we need, say 15mg of Zinc per day, don’t go thinking FIFTY milligrams will supercharge things and send your testosterone levels through the roof!
That’s not how it works, and will just lead to expensive pee.
Basically... Healthy Lifestyle = High Testosterone
You’ll notice, since you’re smart, that most of those things I’ve just told you to do, to:
increase testosterone production, and
improve these low testosterone symptoms you may be suffering from,
are also things you should just be doing for a healthy lifestyle.
Being active
Not being overweight
Not drinking too much booze
Prioritizing sleep
Not dicking around on your phone too much before bedtime…
Those are just things that will lead to a healthy life.
But they’re also the things that will make us thrive as men over 40 and make sure testosterone levels are where they should be.
The key thing is to build these habits slowly, not trying to change too much all at once — that’s how these changes eventually become things that just happen on autopilot, allowing you to thrive again with optimal testosterone.
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