I’m about to turn 35 soon and conscious of the sands of time trickling away, I got myself my first testosterone test. Part of me expected it be low on the basis I’m vegan and I always hear how vegans are ‘low test soy boys’ etc. Another big part of why I tested was after reading how plastics are lowering T levels across the West. I was about to start minimising plastic drinking vessels and food containers around the house and wanted to track the changes over time.
My results surprisingly came back as 31nmol with the top end of the range being 28.7.
I’m curious if anyone on here has done testosterone testing and found ways to maintain and optimise it as time goes on?
I’m also curious if people think 31nmol is okay or if I should aim for higher. From personal experience, I’ve encountered how the West can have poor standards when it comes to health compared to many other countries, as an example, Japan has a much higher standard for B12 testing which I now go off.
Get lots of sleep, strength training with a bias towards lifting heavier weight, recover well, eat well, avoid exposure to exogenous chemicals where possible (Wear a respirator when using spraypaint, acetone, stuff like that)
I’m not sure I understand the purpose of your question. First of all, the first half of your question sounds like you are asking for medical advice. I am not a doctor, so I have no idea whether your testosterone values are low, high or unusual. And if they were unusual, we have no idea whether the problem is with your training or some underlying disease.
The second thing is it is not clear to me what you want to do about it. I hope you don’t want to “supplement” illegally. If there is a medical problem, then IMHO talk to your doctor or a specialist and find out whether something needs and can be done. Now that might mean you would not be allowed to race.
For the record (and I am saying that as a non-expert in all of the relevant areas), I don’t think plastic or you eating vegan have much to do with it. Even if there was, I think what is far, far more important are things like:
Getting regular and sufficient amounts of sleep. I cannot stress this one enough. When you turn older, you become more sensitive. (I’m 41.) I need my 7:30-8 hours.
Learn proper stress management. Stress is a part of life, but you can learn to deal with it better. Having your priorities straight and taking care of your mental health are super important. The latter is hard especially for us dudes.
Continue with a balanced diet. (Since you are vegan, I assume you have spent quite a bit of effort on getting your nutrition right.) As a vegan make sure you take the recommended supplements (e. g. Vitamin B12), up your protein intake a little above recommendations (mainly to offset the lower bioavailability of most forms of plant protein), etc. (My point is to do kaizen, continuous improvement.)
Have and maintain friendships.
Even though my list has little to do with your question and might seem weird, this has a much bigger and importantly measurable impact on your life. And if your testosterone levels are unusual, talk to your doctor or a specialist.
But to me it doesn’t sound like you are talking about anything illegal.
I am about to get my T levels checked as well. Not because I think I have any issues but it is an available test, I am 43, and I have been training hard lately. I am wondering what my body is doing at the hormonal level.
What is there to ‘optimize’ if you’re already over the top of the reference range for your country? When I converted nmol/L to ng/dL, its like 850+ which is near the top end of the reference range (900 or 1000 is the top) in the US. And that range includes high T 20 year olds.
One thing that reduces T levels… endurance sports. Oops.
I have no idea whether it changes testosterone level. But in studies like this one it has been shown that people with a healthy social life live longer. On average, we are talking years, and loneliness is as big a risk factor as smoking. Now correlation is not causation, but the health benefits are much bigger than cutting certain types of foods from your diet or avoiding plastic bottles.
Ditto for the other items I have listed: I have no idea what sleeping sufficiently long and well does to your testosterone levels. But its positive effects on basically all areas of life (concentration, being a parent, friend or family member, being an athlete, being a good co-worker, etc.) have been shown. I’d just focus on those.
Cheers fella. My wife has got me on a solid sleeping schedule, in bed by about 8pm and asleep by 9pm. I’ve started doing back squats in the gym with a coach at the start of the year but going to expand into other areas, deadlifts etc. Good call out on the exogenous chemicals. I work from home, so I shouldn’t be exposed to too many I think but will have a look around the house and try have a think. We have about 50 house plants which hopefully filter the air and remove anything harmful like that.
Sorry if I didn’t word it correctly. I’m more after people’s experiences rather than anything medical from a doctor. I’ve started to shun western medical practices, the standards are often substandard and backward IMO, so I try to keep an open mind and look around the world to see what’s better, like in the B12 example I gave with Japan.
I absolutely don’t want to be an ‘enhanced’ athlete by taking gear. Years ago, I accidentally did steroids when I was sold over the counter testosterone pills in my local gym. I thought they would just give me a boost as opposed to actually being gear. I was walking around with stiff nipples all the time, I started developing paranoia etc. Eventually the FDA came out and banned the active ingredient in them. I only found out years later from a friend of the owner of the company that the pills were gear.
Thanks for those ideas you gave. I’ve been working from home for two years now, the most amount of social interaction I get is when I see my dentist, I am being serious by that as well. My wife has thankfully enforced a bedtime rule, we’re asleep by about 9pm whereas I used to stay up till 12pm or 1am. I used to neglect sleep but take it way more seriously now. I definitely need to work on stress management, I often allow myself to get angry with things I have no control over, which is just illogical.
I’m definitely not looking to do anything illegal, not because it is illegal but simply because I don’t want to mess up my body. I know of people who do gear and they end up on the stuff all their lives, they lose their natural ability to produce and maintain decent T levels.
I thought it wouldn’t hurt to have more natural T through healthy lifestyle changes, especially if they’re due to start declining soon. More T, faster recovery, stronger bones etc. Admittedly, my training has been terrible recently as I’ve been having loads of foot problems, so I’m in the middle of transitioning from clipless to flat pedals with Vivobarefoots. Once I get that dialled down and increase my training back up to about 5 rides a week, perhaps I’ll see a big drop, but the drop itself could perhaps just be my body utilising the testosterone for recovery rather than production levels dropping, perhaps.
Thanks for the clarification, I am glad to read that you are definitely not interested in doping. It is good to see that you have improved your sleep schedule, this was a very hard problem for me and I am just getting a handle on it.
Can you explain what you mean here? Are you living in Japan? (FYI I’m a permanent resident of Japan.)
When it came to my sleep schedule, I think a big part of it was psychological. I don’t know why exactly, but for the longest time I felt like I had to be up and productive as long as possible. It took a long time to shed that belief, no idea where it came from.
In relation to the B12 / Japan thing… Years ago I started to suffer from B12 deficiency, not because I’m vegan but because I’m type 1 diabetic. When I looked into it on Dr Michael Greger’s website, he explained how in the West, we tend to have very low standards because of how the general population is so unhealthy. He contrasted it with Japan where he said their testing standards are much higher than the West, so what can be considered optimal or sufficient in the West can be considered suboptimal or insufficient in Japan. Make sense?
I’d never do keto. I’m high carb all the way. I have one or two avocados a week usually which probably helps. I find if I let my fat content increase too much, that it causes insulin resistance.
