As men age, their testosterone levels naturally decline. This drop in testosterone can lead to undesirable effects like low energy, reduced muscle mass, weight gain, and lower sex drive. While some testosterone decline is inevitable, there are lifestyle habits men can adopt to help preserve healthy testosterone levels and vitality as they get older. Implementing these healthy habits can allow men to feel more energetic, maintain strength, keep off excess weight, and sustain passion and performance longer into their later years.
Lifestyle Habits to Preserve Testosterone Levels in Men
Exercise Regularly
Consistently engaging in both aerobic exercise and strength training provides significant benefits for maintaining testosterone. Aerobic exercise like jogging, cycling, or swimming helps reduce body fat levels. Higher body fat tends to correlate with lower testosterone. Strength training with weights builds muscle mass. More muscle mass helps naturally boost testosterone production in the body.
Aim for at least 30 minutes of moderate aerobic activity multiple days a week along with 30 minutes of strength training every 2-3 days. Use an all-natural estrogen blocker supplement for even greater gains.
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Eat a Nutritious Diet
A healthy, balanced diet optimized for testosterone will be rich in high-quality proteins, beneficial fats, and micronutrients. Consuming adequate dietary protein from meat, dairy, eggs, fish, beans and nuts assists with building and retaining muscle. Getting plenty of monounsaturated and saturated fats from foods like olive oil, fatty fish, dairy, nuts and avocado supports production of testosterone.
Vitamins and minerals like Vitamin D, zinc, and magnesium found in foods such as fatty fish, nuts, seeds, and leafy greens enable proper hormonal function.
Get Adequate Rest and Recovery
Good sleep and recovery time enable the body to produce hormones like testosterone more effectively. Not getting the 7-9 hours of quality sleep adults require can negatively impact testosterone over time. Additionally, allowing muscles time to recover both between workouts and getting adequate rest days from training allows the body to adapt and replenish depleted nutrient stores. This helps keep anabolic hormones like testosterone stimulated and supports building strength.
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Manage Stress Levels
When men are under high stress for prolonged periods, their bodies ramp up the production of stress hormones like cortisol. Having continuously elevated cortisol can suppress testosterone. By actively managing life stressors with relaxation practices like meditation, yoga, deep breathing and getting adequate leisure and social connection, men can help keep cortisol in check which helps testosterone remain optimized.
Limit Alcohol Intake
While moderate alcohol consumption may show some health benefits, drinking too much alcohol, especially beer, can lower testosterone production and cause depletion of testosterone over time. If you consume alcohol, limit your intake to 1-2 moderate servings per day, such as a 5oz glass of wine or 12oz beer. Abstaining completely can provide even greater testosterone-optimizing effects.
Quit Smoking Tobacco
Using tobacco products like cigarettes has been associated with decreased testosterone levels in men, likely due to trace toxins present in tobacco smoke. By quitting smoking and avoiding first or secondhand smoke, studies show men can help boost their circulating testosterone levels, sometimes to levels above their original baseline prior to smoking.
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Prioritize Intimacy
Having frequent intimate encounters and sexual activity promotes greater testosterone production. The tactile stimulation and activity involved helps keep testosterone and sexual health hormone levels higher. Being intimate 3-5 times per week is an attainable goal for most men.
Summing up
Optimizing lifestyle habits can profoundly influence men’s hormone health and vitality as they age. While testosterone will decrease as part of the natural aging process, adopting practices supportive of healthy testosterone and managing lifestyle factors that suppress it can help men continue thriving later into life. Utilizing diet, exercise, stress management, proper rest, intimacy and avoiding harmful exposures allows for enhanced energy, virility and passion through the decades.
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