Mindconnection Brainpower Informational eNewsletter 2023-10-22

This problem applies to men and to women. It's what I call "low testosterone syndrome". For women, it's particularly devastating because you ladies have so little to begin with. You need adequate testosterone for several important functions, including storing calcium in your bones. It's also important for mood, "energy level", and confidence.

Low testosterone is extremely common, today. In fact, it's unusual to have enough free testosterone to be within the normal range and that normal range is a tad generous at the bottom end. That is, you may be within the official normal range but actually have inadequate free testosterone. What's "normal" isn't necessarily adequate, much less optimal.

I don't have hard data to back what I am about to say, but I believe "adequate" starts at the high end of normal and "optimal" is significantly above that. Some "expert" who also doesn't have hard data may disagree, and he's welcome to his uninformed "expert" opinion. Let's focus not on trying to be "normal" but on trying to be exceptional.

Since my testosterone is well above the normal range and I'm at the age where being below the normal range is normal (wrap your head around that one), I must be doing something right. I will share some insights with you. I'm going to address these areas:

Supplements
Diet
Training
T-killers

Supplements

You'll find a ton of "T booster" supplements on the marketplace. Most are just B-vitamins with some zinc tossed in, and maybe some herb that nobody's heard of. Many include terrrestris tribulus, which produces amazing results for people who are on anabolic steroids but does absolutely zilch for those of us who are not.

Supplements are just that, they supplement (aid) your other efforts. They are not substitutes. You could take mega doses of the few effective T-supplements and see zero improvement because you have problems or4 even failures in the other areas we will examine in a moment. That said, here are some supplements that can help boost your T (there are others):

Anavar. Hard on your liver, use with caution and cycle off it.
Fenugreek. It works. I take capsules, but also add whole seeds to rice and to beans (when boiling them). The seeds are very hard, don't put uncooked seeds on anything or you may break teeth.
Ginseng. It has a mildly positive effect.
Horny goat weed extract. It helps offset anti-T factors.
Laxogenin. It works. Cycle on and off.
Longjack (aka tongkat ali). This really works. There aren't known side effects, but as with the clot shot it hasn't been clinically tested.
Maca. It has a mildly positive effect.
Stinging nettle root extract. It helps offset anti-T factors.

And, of course you need adequate zinc, magnesium, D, and B vitamins. It does not follow, however, that taking excess doses of these will increase your testosterone. You just need to ensure you don't have a deficiency.

If you are a man, do not take saw palmetto for your prostate while also trying to boost T. You have to choose one or the other. If you are a woman, you don't have a prostate so taking saw palmetto is totally a waste of your money. And remember, men and women not only have different testosterone needs but process testosterone differently. Make sure you are looking at the range that is for your sex or complications will ensue.

Diet

Eliminate the following from your diet, because all of these lower testosterone:

Corn and corn products. There are a few exceptions. Popcorn, for example. Traditional Mexican corn is another example, but it's hard to obtain in the USA because the FDA is the "enforcer" for Big Agra. The main problem with sweet corn is it's been cultivated for 5,000 years to have a large endosperm and basically be a delivery system for endocrine disruptors. Corn or adequate testosterone, these are mutually exclusive.
Processed sugar (e.g., cane sugar, beet sugar, fake maple syrup, HFC, and all of the other variations of this drug). This drug causes your pancreas to pump out the insulin, and insulin is antagonistic to testosterone. You need to choose between being pre-diabetic and having higher testosterone. This is apparently a hard choice for the vast majority of people, but I find it to be a simple one.
Wheat and wheat products. Similar to the problem with corn. Note that beer is a wheat product. Wheat belly (aka, fatty liver) is an epidemic in the USA.
Seed oils. While these highly toxic substances don't directly lower testosterone, they are consumed in place of the healthy fats needed to make testosterone. So you can choose between getting arterial disease plus Alzheimer's or having higher testosterone. The FDA, which is completely discredited, advises eating seed oils; yet another reason to defund the FDA.

Ensure you consume:

Foods containing cholesterol. It's often referred to as a fatty acid. It's actually an unsaturated alcohol steroid. It breaks down in your stomach and becomes the building blocks for testosterone and other necessary hormones. "Organic" eggs, butter, and (whole fat, unhomogenized) yogurt are all good sources. So are avocados, nuts, coconut oil, avocado oil, and olive oil. Bacon and lunch meats contain massive amounts of toxins and thus are not good sources.
A large variety of whole foods, which an emphasis on fruits and vegetables.

There is allegedly some debate over how many meals per day to eat. I say allegedly, because those who have paid attention to decades of trial and error in the bodybuilding world know the correct answer is 6 to 8. It make sense, spreading your nutrients across the day increases absorbability and has many other benefits that are obvious if you think a little bit about it. Various kinds of fasting trigger the starvation response, and that response means more cortisol and thus less testosterone. I do not skip meals, primarily for this reason.

Training

There is allegedly some debate over whether to do three days a week of circuit training (aka, "whole body workouts") or the bodybuilder split routine that involves a leg day and at least four other training days. I say allegedly, because all of the evidence is for the split routine. One reason it works is you trigger the adaptive response with every training session. A "whole body workout" doesn't trigger the adaptive response at all. With the split training, you get a short-term after effect that is testosterone lowering, but you're still riding on the testosterone kick from the previous workout (and a remnant from the workout before that).

To trigger the adaptive response, you need:

Time under tension. You simply do not achieve this with the "whole body workout", because you are hitting all of the muscle groups so not hitting any one of them long enough to get adequate time under tension.
Cellular damage. To get a massive trigger here, you need to focus on a particular muscle group. You don't have enough energy to do all the muscle groups this way in one session.
Metabolic stress. This occurs when your nervous system gets overloaded, when your fuel delivery system can't keep up (that is, you go from aerobic to anaerobic and back and forth), and you've had enough volume overall with enough intensity in specific muscles to overload your overall system. It "may" be possible to do this with circuit training, but it would be a marginal effect at best. With a split routine, you can push into your limits and then some.

Some training tips:

Never skip workouts. Doing so interrupts the testosterone cycles that ride upon one another. Get that "testosterone shot" (the adaptive response) at least 5 days per week, and you have more peaks than troughs.
Focus on the extreme range. Gear everything toward being able to work the muscles in this range, even if you sacrifice working them in the rest of the range.
Use the correct weight. Generally, people use too much weight for a given exercise. One result is they have to reduce the range of motion to move the weight, and what gets sacrificed is that 15% of range (at the full extension) that gives you 80% of your adaptive response stimulus.
Use correct form. For isolation exercises, are you actually isolating? For compound movements, are you properly engaging the prime movers and the stabilizers? To this latter question, let me just say I cringe when I see how people typically do the bench press (for example, they arch their back even though the bench is flat for a reason).
Rather than count reps per set, do as many good reps as you can per set. Select a weight that will give you 6 to 12 good reps. Reduce the weight if you must. Then whatever reps you can do will be what you can do, without needing to count reps every set.
Do multiple exercises per muscle group. For example, rather than just do front squats do four different types of squats. The point is to increase (for the targeted muscles) time under tension, cellular damage, and metabolic stress.
Super set. Do two exercises in tandem. A set of A, followed by a set of B, then repeat, repeat, repeat. If you can do this only for one repeat, that's pretty normal; take a short break then do the other two repeats.
Do at least four sets. This seems to be a good number for most people. You might try additional sets to get more volume, and if so you need to reduce the weight. If you are getting adequate metabolic stress, you will need to take a short break.
Frequently assess your form. Bad form sneaks up on you.

T-killers

I already mentioned dietary things that kill your T. Here are some others:

Parasitic people. These are people who want to engage you in pointless arguing (usually via antisocial media) even though they don't understand the subject, people who gaslight you, people who try to impress you with BS instead of trying to enrich you with truthful information, and people who are just negative. Asking to stop seems to have no effect. I'm stalked by several such people, and I have found that ignoring them tends to work with enough time. Eventually, most such parasites move on to find another victim. Then you get the new ones....
Insufficient social rewards. Loneliness is an example. You can fix this by taking up a social hobby or sport (e.g., climbing or pickle ball), inviting a neighbor or two over, offering to help others, and always treating people with respect. Want to generate good karma here? Make a point of complimenting someone daily. For example, thank your Postal driver for delivering the mail and say it means a lot.
Inadequate sleep. Be consistent with your bed times, and you will solve 80% of this problem. The other 20% can be solved by various means such as having a wind-down time, keeping your bedroom dark, washing your sheets weekly, having a good mattress and good pillows, etc.
Financial problems. These can cause your stress hormones to skyrocket. Make a point of scheduling time to address your spending and look for waste.
Poor scheduling. Always rushing around and arriving late? Fix that by not jamming your schedule. Allow some buffer time.
Working to exhaustion, stuck in a grind (burnout). The usual solution is to work even more. A good solution is to examine what you're doing and adjust things. Work smarter, automate, outsource, and reduce or eliminate tasks that don't produce enough ROI to be worth doing.

Mindconnection eNL, 2023-10-22

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