Why Boosters Fail And What Works

Philip Pape 0:01

If you've ever Googled testosterone boosters, you might have seen the landmine of pills, potions, powders promising to skyrocket your T levels. Most of it is expensive, worthless garbage, but your testosterone levels can actually be influenced and significantly by specific behaviors you control. Today you'll learn the seven evidence-based factors that genuinely affect your tea levels, why the supplements you're probably considering are the last thing to focus on, and one common habit that can slash your tea by 10 to 15%, which you want to avoid. Plus, stick around to the end because I'm going to share a counterintuitive insight about dietary fat and testosterone. That's a simple fix you can make today. Ironically, as I recorded, as I record this, just recently was an episode on Mind Pump about natural testosterone boosters. And I had prepared this episode a few weeks ago. I didn't listen to that episode. I have no idea how ours compares to theirs, but I'm just mentioning it in case you guys think I ripped it off because I did. Here's the uncomfortable truth. Most of us, especially men, but you know, testosterone affects women as well, who are over 40, who are walking around with suboptimal testosterone. We often don't actually have a problem with the hormone itself. It's an input problem. How many times have we talked about on the show? It's the behaviors, it's the inputs that affect the hormones downstream. And rather than try to put a band-aid on the downstream effect, we have to look upstream and say, what's going on? Are we chronically undersleeping, chronically dieting, chronically stressed, and then wondering, oh, why don't we have the energy and the recovery and the strength gains and the libido and all these things that we want? You know, why am I having trouble building muscle, et cetera? And so the testosterone supplement industry takes advantage of this. It's a multi-billion dollar machine. It's built on that confusion, just like many things in the fitness industry. And they want you to believe your T levels require intervention as a default. And some of the best people in the industry, you know, we had Ali Gilbert on, and I've spoken to folks that are in the HRT space, will even they will say, look, get your life in order as you take TRT if needed, but let's look at the symptoms, let's look at the blood work, let's look at all that. But if your lifestyle is not there, that alone could be the main issue. Your testosterone is a downstream signal of how you treat your body. That's what it is. So that's where I'm starting from from this podcast, hence the episode title about natural testosterone boosters. And I'm not going to tell you it doesn't matter. Testosterone is absolutely critical for muscle protein synthesis, for bone density, for body composition, energy, mental clarity, sex drive, obviously all of that. But the path to healthy testosterone isn't through definitely any of these supplements, most, if not all of them, and also isn't necessarily through TRT if you don't also address these issues. And in fact, I know many men and the evidence will demonstrate this that just because you're on TRT doesn't mean all of these other issues go away if they're not supported. So we're gonna talk about that today, and I want you to stick around to the end because I'm going to share an insight about a food pattern that a lot of people are talking to me about, thinking it's gonna help with testosterone, and it might be an easy fix for you to implement.

Hormones As Outputs Of Behavior

Philip Pape 3:39

So let's start with a quick overview of testosterone, what it is, how it works in your body. You have something called the hypothalamic pituitary gonatal axis, the HPG axis. And it responds to signals from the environment, from your training, your nutrition, your stress, your sleep. And so when those conditions are all favorable, your testosterone production goes up. When your body perceives some sort of load or stress or energy scarcity, it goes down. And this is just deeply programmed into our survival programming, like many of our other things, just like with food cravings, you know, our brain-related cravings for food in an environment that doesn't really support it too well because of how food is manufactured, et cetera. And the reason that most quote unquote testosterone boosters don't work very well, usually on the supplement side, is because they don't contain bioactive compounds. Some of them do, but they're trying to override a highly stressed system that you cannot supplement your way out of. You just can't. So if you want to take the lazy approach and give them a shot, who am I to tell you not to? But I hope you're here because you want to do it the right way. Think of testosterone less like a tank that you fill up and more like a thermostat. Okay, that's my engineer brain. I go to control systems. If your body has threat signals like you're not eating enough or you're not sleeping enough, or you have all this stress, it's gonna dial the thermostat down. If you want to dial it up, you have to change those signals. That's all it is. That's what I'm saying. It's like a control system, like anything else with our lifestyle. So today I'm gonna give you seven factors with the strongest evidence for affecting that thermostat. And I wanted to pick ones that are supported by recent research, that have decent effect sizes, right? That can sometimes far outpace and dwarf anything you can get from a supplement. They all stack as well. So if you can implement multiple factors, it's gonna create a compounding effect. And I'm going to cover them in order of impact. I'm gonna tell you what quote unquote boosters you could probably ignore and not waste money on. And I'm gonna give you a few honorable mentions that could be helpful. So let's start. Lever number one, the first natural testosterone booster, is no surprise, progressive resistance training, strength training, especially compound multi-joint lifts at moderate to heavy loads. This creates one of the best acute and chronic testosterone response. The acute response, that temporary spike during and after your training, it doesn't matter as much as you think. And some people can overblow it, okay? What matters is the adaptation to that that occurs as you sleep, and then you train again and then you sleep again. So then it's the consistent resistance training over time, which increases your insulin sensitivity. It reduces your body fat, which is a huge impact on testosterone. It helps you build that beautiful metabolic active tissue we call muscle, and it improves your body to regulate hormones across the board. When you regularly tell your body, hey, I need to lift heavy things, I need to be strong and capable, I need to be functional for what out what's out there in the real world, it adapts by providing or improving the hormonal environment that supports adaptation. That is it. This is a foundational first principle. If you're not resistance training at least three days a week in general, I mean, it could be two, but three, if not four, with progressive overload, then you're leaving a lot of that testosterone growth on the table. And you might be living with suppressed testosterone. Here's the thing, the thing about today's

How The HPG Axis Responds

Philip Pape 7:19

episode: it's not all about increasing testosterone as much as eliminating things suppressing your testosterone, which is amazing. Um, and I know since I've started lifting weights, you know, just to share some numbers, I'm now 45 years old. My total testosterone is somewhere in the 600s. So it's not like gloriously amazing, you know, super anabolic, but it's quite healthy and in a decent range for my age. But it used to be down close to 400. And the only thing I changed was getting healthier and lifting weights over those years and doing some of the other things we talked about today. The thing that a lot of people overlook is that train resistance training seems to blunt the natural age-related decline in testosterone. So we can't stop the clock, but we can kind of slow it down, right? So it strength training is not optional. It's not optional, optional, no matter your age. And if you're not doing it, start now, it's gonna make a big difference, including for your testosterone. Okay, number two, the second testosterone booster, is not undereating. Stop the chronic dieting. I talk about this so much now that I am of the mind most people over 40 should be rarely dieting. Should be rarely dieting. By the time you're going into a fat loss phase and an intentional deficit, you should have checked all the other boxes for supporting your lifestyle and be lifting weights and maybe even build some muscle. Okay. There are some edge cases of people who have a lot of weight to lose, and that's a different thing. But for the vast majority of you listening to the show, health conscious, wanting to get in shape and all that, this is a big one. This is a big one. Now, you would think, okay, I get leaner though when I go in a deficit, so that's going to improve my testosterone, right? And actually to some extent, it does, especially if you have excess body fat, and that's where that edge case comes in. But if it's a chronic, if you're chronically dieting, if you're always in a deficit, prolonged energy deficits all the time, well, your body is suppressing a bunch of things. It's suppressing your LH, that's your luteinizing hormone, that signals testosterone production. And that's something you can see in blood work. Your body is saying, hey, now is not the time for things that require a lot of energy, like building muscle or reproduction. And this is we see this in athletes and chronic dieters and physique competitors

7 Natural Testosterone Boosters

Philip Pape 9:31

and people who are, you know, older men, especially who are like always cut and shredded, they don't have great testosterone, right? And so if you've been in a version of a calorie deficit for many, many months or years, and really years, you know, a few months here or there is not a big deal, probably. But if your recovery is a problem, you you can't get stronger, you feel like you're running on empty, just look at that. Are you just under-eating? And this is men and women, but yes, even men for testosterone this is a big deal, right? So your testosterone also is gonna adapt downward, even in a short dieting phase. But again, that's more temporary, and that's where a recovery, a recovery diet to come out of it is gonna be the best thing you can do for your hormones if you don't need to diet anymore. Okay. Number three natural testosterone booster is sleep. Now, I'm going through this list, and you guys are probably like, snore, we hear this all the time, we know these other things. But if you're not doing any of these things, don't go to the supplements and the necessarily TRT. Again, TRT, it depends on your medical professional and where you are in life and all that. I'm not telling you not to do that. I'm just saying that's not the be-all-end-all solution. You have to do both. So I've got some really cool data here. A University of Chicago study found that sleep restriction of five hours a night for just one week reduced T by 10 to 15%. And this was in young, healthy men. That's in young, healthy men. And when we look at the curve of what happens with T over age, that's like aging them by 10 to 15 years, right? So one week of poor sleep can make your testosterone look like a much older person. And if you're always getting poor sleep for years and decades, ah, that there you go. That could be a very simple solution, even though it takes effort to change your behavior, I get it, to address testosterone. The majority of our testosterone secretion, this is, and I say our as in men, occurs during sleep. And it especially occurs during slow wave sleep, which occurs in the first half of the night. So if you're fragmenting that sleep, if it's interrupted, if you've got a racing mind with lots of stress and anxiety, if

Strength Training As Foundation

Philip Pape 11:31

you've got insomnia, if you've got sleep apnea, the list goes on and on, and then you just really don't get enough hours of that kind of sleep, you're cutting short that window for hormone production. And then sleep fragmentation is very important. If you are getting enough hours, but you're waking up a bunch, you're you're also getting less of the benefits. And I mentioned sleep apnea briefly, but that has a major testosterone suppressor. And I would say that it is massively undiagnosed or underdiagnosed in men over 40. So if you snore heavily, I mean, ask your ask your significant other if you have a partner and ask them if you snore all the time. You probably know by now. If you wake up tired all the time despite having enough quote unquote hours in bed, if you have headaches in the morning, all of those, you might want to do a sleep study. Just consider a sleep study. And then the target is that seven to nine hours of quality sleep. We're not gonna go through all the sleep hacks today, but this is another non-negotiable that could be a big lever for you. Now, as we go through this, you're gonna be wondering, okay, how do I get started with some of this stuff? If you're looking to dial in the first couple behaviors that it really takes to kickstart your journey, if your goal is fat loss, but you also want to preserve your hormonal health and your performance, grab my free 14-day rapid start fat loss guide. Go to wits and weights.com slash fat loss. Now I have other guides. I have one for muscle as well. You can go to wits and weights.com slash muscle if you're in the muscle building mode. But either of those are gonna walk you through how to set up your nutrition, your training, your next steps to get started. So again, go to wits and weights.com slash fat loss for the 14-day rapid start fat loss guide, or wits and weights.com slash muscle if you want the muscle building nutrition guide. Now, we're gonna get to number four here. And this is body fat reduction if you are what's considered over fat. And I know you don't might not like that term, but that's like the technical scientific term. So if you before you think I'm contradicting myself, right, I just recently said chronic dieting suppresses testosterone, and now I'm telling you fat laws can increase it. I want to clarify if you're carrying excess body fat, especially visceral fat around the midsection, so that's belly fat, the adipose tissue, that actively converts testosterone into estrogen in a process called aromatization. And this is why overweight men often have lower T and higher estrogen levels and things like man boobs and all the other stuff that come with it, then losing body fat from that perspective, especially visceral fat, can very meaningfully increase both your total and your free testosterone. It has, however, it has diminishing returns once you get to a healthy body fat range. And that's a pretty wide range. It's up to you know 15 to 20 percent. We're not talking about being cut or shredded, just a healthy body fat range. Then the benefit of getting leaner on on getting leaner for testosterone is minimal. And then it could backfire because now you're aggressively dieting and stressing yourself out. Which you know what computes the idea that we should be living in a healthy state of body composition, not super shredded, not over fat. And that's generally a good place to sustain things. So my guidance is this if you're significantly over fat, then a moderate, time-limited fat loss phase is probably gonna help you with your testosterone quite a bit. And then if you're reasonably lean, say you you've gotten under 25%, maybe you're in that 15 to 20 percent, I wouldn't chase lower body fat just for tea, right? It's it's the chronic restriction might actually suppress it. And I've again experienced that myself, kind of maintaining around that 15 to 20 percent is a really nice place to be. All right, step number five to boost testosterone naturally is to manage a chronic stress and your cortisol, right? And again, you knew this would come up on the list. And this one always often gets dismissed, you know, as the woo kind of advice with the stress and the mindfulness and everything, but physiology very highly backs this up. Cortisol and testosterone have an inverse relationship. That means they move in opposite directions. If you have chronic

Chronic Dieting vs. Fat Loss

Philip Pape 15:30

psychological stress, chronic psychological stress, so that could even be perceived stress, it suppresses the HPG axis we talked about, the hypothalamic pituitary gonadal axis. And so when cortisol, a stress hormone, is chronically elevated, and that could be your work stress, relationship, conflict, financial pressure, lack of recovery, maybe overtraining, your body downregulates testosterone production. So, you guys that are just living stressful lives, you executives, I had a lot of clients like this, we've got to get that stress off your system at least a little bit. Every little bit helps. And if you don't, you're just making a trade-off. You are basically prioritizing the short-term survival from these stressors, right? Your body trying to be in this fight or flight mode over the long-term benefits of not having that state. So, do you want long-term health, longevity, strength, function? You want to be a strong, healthy man far into your golden years, or do you want to just keep chasing what you're chasing today and then see that decline and maybe a heart attack, maybe some sort of issue down the road? You know, I don't mean to be a fearmonger, but that is the reality of it for many men. So I'm not asking you to be a Zen monk. I couldn't do anything like that. It's recognizing that this unmanaged, crazy stress in your life is physiologically affecting your endocrine system. It is disrupting you. All right, way more than any quote unquote toxins in the environment or EMI waves or any of this nonsense you hear on social media about these minor things. And nothing against, you know, there are toxins in, you know, there are microplastics and all that stuff. But this is chronic stress is dwarfs a lot of those for most guys. The practical tip that I have is get outside, move, make sure you're resting between your training, make sure you spend good time with people you love and care about. Make sure you set boundaries on your work hours. I have a client who has been stressed out of his mind all year, runs a business with his wife. And as much as he wanted to like get more steps and do a few of the things we talked about, he just literally had no time. And I'm talking about you guys know what I'm talking about. It's like 100 plus hour work weeks, go, go, go, go, go, go, go with kids, trying to help out with everything. And there was just no time. And he finally realized, you know what, something's got to give. I've got to jettison some things for my life. I've got to delegate, I've got to hire some people, I've got to just accept, you know, maybe less business over here or doing things in a different way. If I'm going to salvage my health, salvage my relationship with my wife, not salvage, I mean, in his case, it's not a bad relationship, it's just prioritizing them, right? Prioritizing them. And so if you're working 12 hour days, and then on top of that, maybe you're training six days a week because you love being in the gym, and then you're sleeping poorly and you're like, I wonder why my tea is still low. It's not a testosterone problem. It's it's a recovery problem with your stress. All right, lever number six, and this one, this one is a favorite of mine because low carb and keto are so popular still for some crazy reason. But we know clearly by now from the research that low carb diets, chronically low carb diets, not just low carb during a deficit for a short while, but chronically, can reduce testosterone levels in resistance strained men. So carbs have to be under consideration here, guys. A 2022 systematic review and meta-analysis found that low-carb diets were associated with lower testosterone compared to high carb, period. And they proposed the mechanisms include elevated cortisol that comes with carb restriction, and impaired recovery that comes with carb restriction. Two of the biggest topics I always talk about when it comes to eating more carbs is let's recover, let's

Sleep Debt And Testosterone Crash

Philip Pape 19:11

perform, let's reduce our stress by increasing our carbs. I did a whole episode on carbs and stress. So it's so important. Now, does that mean you have to eat four or five, six hundred grams of carbs? No. But if you're training hard and you're trying to get your sleep and you're trying to stay, keep that stress low, like we just talked about, and you want more higher testosterone, your body needs carbohydrates to fuel your training, to manage your stress, to support testosterone production. And I'm just saying don't go down into the sub-100s or the low 100s for a long stretch of time. And I say, you know, the numbers change based on your size, but that's generally the threshold for the vast majority of men. So if you're getting on its lowest end, 100, 150 in a diet, but then up to maybe in the 200s, 300s, 400s when you're not dieting, you're probably fine. It's where you are deliberately just cutting out all carbs because you think it's somehow helpful and it's not gonna be helpful. It's just not. All right. So I have a lot of episodes that talk about it. Just type in carbs into my library and you'll probably find it. All right. So carbs are your friend for testosterone. That could be the thing you're missing. Number seven is alcohol reduction. Oh, yes. I'm not gonna lecture you on drinking, guys. I'm not, I know I see it every day. Oh, I love my bourbon. Oh, I love my IPAs, whatever. If we're talking about what the evidence says on testosterone, then alcohol is one of the clearest dose-dependent suppressors of testosterone. And we also know it creates a lot of visceral adipose tissue and belly fat. So there's probably a correlation there too. Alcohol is directly toxic to your testes, to your testicular tissue at higher intakes. I mean, alcohol is a toxin, but if you flood your body with it, it's going to get to other areas of your body we don't want. Even moderate regular consumption can matter if you already have borderline low testosterone. If you're consuming alcohol multiple nights a week, you've got to consider this as a factor. And the relationship is pretty linear. The more alcohol, the more it gets suppressed. So if your testosterone is a priority for you and your health is a priority for you, reduce or eliminate regular alcohol consumption. And that's the way I'm gonna put it reduce or eliminate regular alcohol consumption. I'm not saying don't occasionally have a beer or mixed drink or at a party have a glass of champagne. Whatever. Okay, that's that's that's not gonna hurt you. As much as I know alcohol is a toxin and has no benefits, having it once every three, four, five months here or there, not gonna be a problem. It's the regular consumption that's really the big problem. Just to give you a little bit of wiggle room, okay? And I know this isn't what people want to hear sometimes, right? But sometimes we have to have this level of structure and commitment when things are just not helping us out. And if you're spending a bunch of money, by the way, on supplements and then you're drinking four nights a week, well, you're just offsetting things. So we've covered all the seven natural testosterone boosters. Stick around. Because I'm gonna share something about dietary fat and testosterone that I hear. There's popular advice that's getting around. I don't know if it's on TikTok or where, because I'm not on TikTok, but I want to address it. Before we do, some honorable mentions. All right. There are some compounds that have legitimate evidence, but only if you are deficient. Only if you are deficient in these supplements, in these compounds

14-Day Rapid Start Fat Loss

Philip Pape 22:23

or in these nutrients, that might be why you have some lower testosterone. So vitamin D is huge. Vitamin D, it's on my short list of pretty much everyone should consider taking vitamin D, get your levels tested. There is correlational. There's also interventional evidence that links vitamin D deficiency to lower testosterone. And many of us, myself included, are in northern latitudes or we work indoors. And I take it, I take it because if I didn't, it would be low, right? And so maybe that has also contributed to a decent testosterone level. All right. But if you already get enough, well, supplementing is not going to help. Zinc. Zinc is the next one. Same principle. Um, zinc deficiency clearly lowers testosterone. And so you can supplement if you eat enough protein from animal sources, you might probably get you're probably getting enough zinc, which a lot of men are. Obviously, if you're not omnivorous,

Visceral Fat, Aromatization, And T

Philip Pape 23:12

that could be something to look into. If you restrict a lot or you have a lot of training and stressed out, that could be have less zinc in your body. So get that checked. Sleep apnea, we already mentioned, believe it or not, like having a CPAP and not obstructing your sleep anymore, and you get treated for it. This is a massively underappreciated for men over 40. Get a sleep study and figure it out. So the the frame I want you to adopt is not that these are testosterone boosters per se. We already talked about the seven boosters. These are things to prevent suppression when you are deficient. Now, what can you what's a waste of money potentially for testosterone? All right. Ashwaganda, very popular. I think there's benefits for certain symptoms like stress and anxiety, for example. Um, I take Legion's Triumph, men's multivariate. It has it in there. I don't think there's anything wrong with taking it, although I have heard some people reference like long-term use could be an issue in some in a study here or there. But I think the effect size is pretty small, regardless, and it's likely mediated by the stress reduction of the ashwagandha. That could then help with the testosterone, but you don't want to rely on that. And I've seen people get build up a tolerance to it as well. Then there's Tongat Ali, which is very popularly mentioned. And the data is that weak there, I think. I think there's a lot of issues with dosing as well and quality control depending on where you purchase it. Uh fenogreek is another one, mild effects, mixed quality. I wouldn't rely on it. Diaspartic acid, tribulus, boron, you've probably seen those as well. I again, I wouldn't say there's any meaningful data. A lot of these are just a waste of money, I'm gonna be honest. And then there's all the multi-ingredient test booster blends, right? And most of these are complete garbage. There was actually a study that looked at these in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition. It found that less than 25% of the ingredients in the most popular testosterone boosters had any supporting evidence at all. So that's less than 25% of the ingredients in all of them. And about 10% had evidence of decrease testosterone. So be very careful with those. If they'd worked, I would love it. I would tell people to use it, I'd be telling my clients to use it, and they don't. The seven boosters we talked about before are your biggest lovers. And then fixing any of these important deficiencies that are evidence-based. So we want to reframe the fact that you may not have a testosterone problem. You may have a problem with the inputs, and your testosterone is low because you're not training, or you're not eating enough, or you're not sleeping, or your stress needs to be fixed, or you're drinking too much. And if you know this is the thing for you, acknowledge it right now. Admit it to yourself, be honest with yourself and say, hey, I've got something to go after. That's a positive thing I just learned about myself. Okay. That is, I don't need to chase supplements. I may not need TRT. Again, I'm not telling you one way or another on that, because that's gonna depend on you know, physiological levels versus where you should be given your lifestyle. I would fix the lifestyle stuff and do some before and afters on your labs, though. I think that's a great way to look at it. And that's it. So uh before we wrap up, I rem I told you I'm gonna share this thing

Stress, Cortisol, And Recovery

Philip Pape 26:19

about dietary fat. So I'm gonna do that in a bit. I do want to remind you again, grab my either fat loss guide at wits and weights.com slash fat loss or my muscle building guide, wits and weights.com slash muscle. If you're looking for a way to jumpstart some of this stuff on a practical level, because we didn't have time in this episode to get into all of it, these are free. Wits and weights.com slash fat loss or wits and weights.com slash muscle. All right, here we go. One of the most common pieces of testosterone advice you're going to hear is you should eat more fat. And I've heard it more with especially the carnivore crowd and the keto crowd, and maybe just low carb in general. And it is it is true that extremely low fat diets where you've got well under 20% of your calories from fat, can test they can suppress testosterone. But I think the type of fat matters less than the adequacy of fat. And there's no evidence that loading up on extra fat beyond adequate levels does anything for testosterone. So, for example, if you as long as you're getting at least, let's say 20, 25%, closer to 30 is the the default that I use with people from fat, you're getting everything you need. And going beyond that, like the 35, 40, or 45% fat, like you might see in carnivore or keto, up to 50% fat, isn't going to move the tea anymore. It should, I mean, you can prove it to yourself, but that's what we understand from the evidence. And and what's nice about that is you don't then need a high-fat diet. You don't have to be on carnivore or keto or something like that for your testosterone, right? You also don't have to be on an extremely low-fat diet. So guess where that leaves us? A reasonable balanced diet with plenty of protein, all the great protein sources we like: eggs, meat, fish, dairy, nuts, olive oil. Well, olive oil is not protein, but olive oil has a fat source, nuts as a fat source. I'm mixing the two, but a balanced diet, right? And not trying to increase your tea by just eating more and more fat or thinking the carnivore crowd has some sort of advantage for testosterone. And I think hopefully the the liver king situation and the fraud that that that was exposed there, when the fraud with Saladino and all those crackpot crazies out there is has has settled this kind of nonsense once and for all. And not like I have a strong opinion on it, do I? All right. So if you're tracking your macros, if you're around 20 to 35% of your calories from fat, that's fine. That's it. That's fine. Focus on your energy, focus your energy on the seven levers we talked about already. Focus on those. All right, you don't have to fix everything today, guys. Just pick one or two to get started. Just pick one thing. Pick one thing to get started on, commit to the next 45 days to move the needle just a little bit, one step at a time, in an achievable way. Set the bar low, right? Set the bar low. Reach out for help, use my resources, and that's it. Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember your hormones work for you when you give them the right symbols. I'm Philip Pape, and I will talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.