February 7, 2019
https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/hormones-podcasts/increase-testosterone-naturally/
[0:00:00] Introduction
[0:00:56] About the Podcast
[0:01:54] Podcast Sponsors
[0:05:15] Link to Shownotes
[0:05:44] Start of Presentation: How I Got into This
[0:09:09] Workout Strategies to Optimize Testosterone
[0:17:55] Notoriously Missing Nutrients That Drastically Affect Testosterone Levels
[0:26:38] Podcast Sponsors
[0:29:43] cont. on Notoriously Missing Nutrients That Drastically Affect Testosterone Levels
[0:30:31] Herbal Add-Ons
[0:37:03] Biohacking Testosterone: Tools and Tricks That Actually Work
[0:47:16] Mistakes You're Probably Making That Impact Testosterone and Fertility
[0:54:49] Best Ways to Track and Test Male Hormones
[0:57:12] Closing the Podcast
[0:57:35] End of Podcast
Ben: I have a master's degree in physiology, biomechanics, and human nutrition. I've spent the past two decades competing in some of the most masochistic events on the planet from SEALFit Kokoro, Spartan Agoge, and the world's toughest mudder, the 13 Ironman triathlons, brutal bow hunts, adventure races, spearfishing, plant foraging, free diving, bodybuilding and beyond. I combine this intense time in the trenches with a blend of ancestral wisdom and modern science, search the globe for the world's top experts in performance, fat loss, recovery, gut hormones, brain, beauty, and brawn to deliver you this podcast. Everything you need to know to live an adventurous, joyful, and fulfilling life. My name is Ben Greenfield. Enjoy the ride.
Well, howdy, howdy ho. I got to talk with my low, manly-man voice because today's podcast is all about testosterone. I was invited down to the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine to give a talk on all the ways that you can boost your testosterone, whether you're a man or a woman, via natural methods that might not involve bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. Even though I'm not against that, I just think that there are other things that should be included, or, especially if you're younger, tried first. So, I get in the exercise strategies, supplementation strategies, lifestyle strategies, everything you need to know about how to increase testosterone naturally on today's show. It was kind of fun getting up there and giving a talk to a bunch of straight-faced physicians and making dick jokes. That's just a preview of what's to come.
This podcast is brought to you by Kion, my playground for all things, health and wellness. It's a company I created to scratch my own itch, blending ancient wisdom with modern science to create pure, efficacious shotgun formulations of supplements and functional foods. Every single product at Kion is research-backed, real-world tested often by me and my team of hearty employees and designed to empower everybody, to live a long and adventurous and joyful and fulfilling life. This is the stuff I take. This is the stuff I create. And you can get it all at Kion.
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This podcast is also brought to you by–I promise I won't do those annoying things too much like the “You're welcome,” I'll admit that was annoying, I'm sorry. Anyways though, this podcast is also brought to you by something else I'd discuss in today's podcast, the idea of red light and the use of what's called photobiomodulation to do things like increase the mitochondrial activity of fellas, the Leydig cells in your testes to enhance testosterone and sperm production. I do 20 minutes a day. It helps out with my skin health. It increases nitric oxide production through your whole body. You get faster muscle recovery.
I'm not just pulling my stuff out of my ass. All this stuff is proven by science. They've done robust research studies. A lot of the devices churn out high amounts of dirty electricity, a lot of flicker. You've got to stand in front of them for like an hour because they're low power. But the company Joovv, J-O-O-V-V, has created medical grade power in their devices that will cover your whole body, or they have like this tiny little one called the Joovv Go that fits in the palm of your hand. I toss that thing in my book bag and I can take it anywhere on the planet, lay awake in bed at night reading Harry Potter with a tiny little Joovv Go clutched between my thighs, shining on my balls. There you go. Sorry for the visual but that is the way it is. That's how I roll. Sometimes I'll put it on my tummy, too. It feels really good on your gut. And you can use it on scars, wrinkles, collagen, you name it. It seems very versatile. So, joovv.com/ben. That's J-O-O-V-V.com/ben. And if you use code BEN at checkout, you get a nice little bonus gift. So, check it out, joovv.com/ben.
Alright, let's go talk testosterone. Oh yeah, one last thing. I've got shownotes for today's show. Of course I do. I have shownotes for every show. The shownotes are comprehensive. As usual, I try to put as many resources as possible in them for you. And for today's show, you can access the shownotes at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/naturalt, like testosterone, BenGreenfieldFitness.com/naturalt. Enjoy.
Thank you. Well, let's see. Yeah. Well, welcome to the penis talk. I had done my kettlebell today so I had to wear pants. Normally, that's how I roll though, it's just the kettlebell. Hopefully, everybody have a good morning. Are you guys learning some things? I think this is the first conference I've been to where I have–well, I've never seen these many doctors on steroids. It's crazy. Lots of buff MDs walk around. No, but it's really cool. The expo looks like it has some really great stuff.
I want to start with how I got into all this in the first place because I'm not a playboy running around the world, trying to figure out how to make my dick bigger, but what happened was Men's Health magazine approached me towards the end of 2017 actually and they wanted me to go on this three-month foray to take a deep dive in everything that a guy could do to enhance his sexual performance. My background is in Exercise Physiology and Biomechanics with some studies and human nutrition and pharmacology. And so I understand to a certain extent, not as much as many of the doctors in this room, some of the biochemistry of this. And so I found it fascinating.
So, I went out and did everything, like they had me do freaking Tantric sex and reduced ejaculations and stem cells multiple times and PRP. They had me do like gas station dick pills. I mean, you name it, everything. I got like this penis pump. There's like the Cadillac of penis pumps. I got my ball sucked into it, which maybe five times. I can tell you more about that. But I just did everything and kind of researched along the way like what works and what doesn't when it comes to enhancing male testosterone, libido, sexual performance. Actually, I didn't get on the cover of the magazine, fittingly enough for a magazine about how to make a small dick bigger. They put Mark Wahlberg on the cover. So, that's, hopefully, one of the only pop-culture references I'll make all day because I actually don't know that much about Mark Wahlberg, but I hear he's a great guy. I'm sure his dick is just fine.
Okay. So, what we're going to go over today–and I know we don't have tons of time. I'm going to hit a lot of stuff, and hopefully, leave some type of questions afterwards. And if I don't get to all the questions, I'll give you guys URL at the end. We'll give all the slides. I'll probably be up at my booth later on. After, I'll boogie you out there. If you guys have more questions, we can chat around a cup of coffee out there. We'll go over strategies, actually specifically, workout strategies and exercise strategies because that's big for optimizing testosterone.
Nutrients, basic nutrients, honestly, what I would do if I was going to create a testosterone support formula, some of the things I would put in it. I don't have any formula for that type of thing, but I want to cover some of the stuff I've studied on that. Herbal add-ons, biohacks, a lot of people are interested in everything from red light to acoustic sound waves, all these things, and whether or not they actually work, mistakes that impact sexual health, and then some of the ways that I like to test and practice stuff. We'll boogie straight into this, workout strategy stuff in my testosterone, which actually do not include making love to a vibrating foam roller in your living room, but that is what I do each morning.
Actually, I want to start with the low-hanging fruit, this whole exercise lifestyle piece, because sometimes I think we forget about the low-hanging fruit. It's like plant medicine right now. Everybody is interested in their MDMA and going in their 38th ayahuasca retreats and microdosing with psilocybin. I mean, I'm of the opinion that a more stoic route would be a little bit more advisable starting off. I think everybody who wants to go off and do a deep plant medicine journey should go fasting and go isolate themselves, camping in the wilderness for three or four days, and I bet they would probably discover themselves in a very similar way that they would have if they'd have gone out and done plant medicine. I think everyone should start with that.
In the same way, I think before you go running around injecting stem cells into your dick or doing all these expensive procedures which just look at some of the basic things, some of the low-hanging fruit. We'll cover a few of them here. The first is some very interesting studies on sprint length and testosterone. In this idea, that brief sprint sports can actually up-regulate androgen receptors and also up-regulate testosterone both acutely and chronically to a limit extent growth hormone as well. Does anybody know the length of time necessary for a boost in testosterone for repeated series of sprints? Like how long you need to sprint on a bicycle or a rowing machine or anything else? I mean, I was an ExPhys major and we would do this ungodly hard 32-second–they call them Wingate protocols for power analysis on the bike. And those are 30 seconds. Anybody know how long for these studies on enhancing testosterone?
Male 1: One to two minutes?
Ben: Lower, lower. Yeah. Who said six seconds? Boom, somebody has bound PubMed. Okay. Yeah, six seconds. That's all it takes. So, six seconds, and usually, the work to rest ratio–I mean, if you're consulting with a patient or you yourself are doing a protocol like this, it's just a brief series, four to six, six-second sprints, usually one to five, one to 10 work to rest ratio. Very long recovery periods, very short sprints. That's one exercise tactic for testosterone is just basic very short sprints. Basically, the idea is using just the creatine phosphate system. Once you dip into the glycolytic energy system, you don't see that same hormonal response. So, very brief sprint efforts if you're designing a workout protocol.
The next is to lift heavy stuff. And we also know that this up-regulates androgen receptors. As far as how to actually do this, one of my favorite methods, and there's actually some really interesting studies that look at longevity at sprint performance, the overall functionality and fighting off frailty with the use of a hex bar. I think that just about everybody should own a hex bar, especially as they age, it's a perfectly way to lift heavy stuff. I always have one loaded up next to the room that's next door to my office. Also, kettlebell is fantastic for that, but hex bars, kettlebells.
I mean, we know that there are certain things that are correlated with longevity, that also are kind of correlated with fertility. For example, grip strength. Grip strength is one fantastic parameter to track for longevity. We know grip strength dynamometer is a great way to track anti-aging. We know walking speed is another parameter, the ability to be able to sit down and stand up. Actually, I literally sit down and stand up every day 30 times, and I have a lot of my clients do this. You just sit down, both legs in front of you, stand up. And there's actually a really interesting study that looked at markers for aging and mortality. And the ability to just be able to sit down and stand up was a big one.
But lifting heavy stuff, full body exercises; deadlifts, squats, anything along those lines works. Long rest periods, I alluded to this before but this is specifically related to weight training. If you are prescribing exercise program to a guy who wants to increase either testosterone or libido, this idea of concurrent strength, endurance training, CrossFit, Spartan training, most of that flies in the face of building testosterone. Instead, long rest periods. At least 120 seconds long rest periods after a weightlifting set appears to be the sweet spot that are more for enhancing testosterone.
That does not mean that–and this is my pet peeve if I'm at the gym, guys slumped over, sitting on a bench, playing Candy Crush, reading a magazine, staring slack-jawed at ESPN waiting for their next set. Like I'm a huge fan of either doing supersets, back-to-back sets where you have bench press and later you're recovering from the bench press, you have them doing squats or doing functional movements like cat-cow exercises and opposite arm leg extension and yoga moves or dynamic stretching, things in between each of the sets that fill in those rest periods.
So, you're still getting a lot of density in the training routine, but long rest periods also appear to be very effective. I've got six different ones I'm going to give you. There's a workout–actually, that was a couple of years ago. Nick Delgado, I think he's here, we're actually at the Venetian working out before one of the UFC fights, and he was taking me through this forced rep workout. This is another strategy. They've done some really good studies on for, again increasing receptor density and increasing testosterone, increasing growth hormone. The idea with this is that you go through a weightlifting set but towards the end, towards the last two to four reps, you actually have a partner who is assisting you through the movement to enable you to be able to do a forced rep through partial range of motion with the weight that's heavier than you normally be able to handle because you're already fatigued.
So, if you don't have the ability to work with a partner, there's also this newer idea of what's called variable resistance training. I had a podcast recently with this guy who designed something called an X3 Bar. It's like an elastic band system. And I use elastic bands for this a lot when I travel. I'll do an elastic band set to failure and then to move through partial range of motion with the band; same thing, same concept. Forced rep is what they're called. There's another type of training protocol, it's very similar, by Dr. Doug McGuff called “Body by Science.” I'll tell you that in a second, or I'll tell you about that in a second. But basically, this idea of doing an entire set and then moving through partial range of motion at the end of the set, that's another strategy that appears to have a really good hormonal response.
The next is using your legs. That's actually on a Vasper machine. Have you ever used one of these Vasper machines? Very cool. You're grounding, earthing. You have a blood flow restriction on all four limbs. And then, along with that blood flow restriction is ice or cold. So, you're essentially trapping a lot of lactic acid in the tissue. And when you do that, very similar to what's called Kaatsu training, you see an increased growth hormone response afterwards. So, very cool machine, but of course it uses the legs. Any type of weight training movement, any type of leg day is incredibly beneficial for testosterone. I mean, you see a lot of guys, especially, who lift weights, get jacked, but then they kind of have toothpick leg syndrome going on. And as a result, they're not actually hitting the areas that have the most androgen receptor density. So, squats, deadlifts, again doing things like working with the hex bar, doing things like using a kettlebell for the hamstrings and the glutes, anything that incorporates lower body, specifically lower body strength training, not lower body chronic cardio, is very effective for this.
And then, the last one would be, speaking of the devil, avoiding chronic cardio. I mean, I competed in Ironman for about 10 years, and that was the lowest that my testosterone ever was. As a matter of fact, I've sought steep rise in my own blood testosterone values after I quit racing Ironman. I mean, I was doing everything to try and stave off a lot of the loss of libido and function like the holes in the bike saddle and I was trying to use as many fats as possible. But I still saw a pretty steep decline in testosterone from chronic cardio.
The theory is that number one, when you're constantly running from a lion and the body wants to down-regulate fertility because we don't want to bring children into the world and in the time of stress when we're riding a bike down the highway for four hours a day. But then the other reason is that the body will actually cause catabolism of your muscle as a way to be able to maintain a lower weight once you start doing all this chronic cardio. So, you see a loss of muscle that goes hand in hand with a decrease in hormones as well.
So, avoiding chronic cardio, that's another big one. If you start to work these strategies into a strength training program or into an exercise program for your clients or for your patients, this is exactly what it should look like, very brief short sprints with long rest periods, very brief high-intensity heavy weightlifting sessions with long rest periods, using the legs a lot, having a partner and doing forced reps or using machines that allow you to do forced reps. All of these work very, very well for increasing testosterone. Those are some of the exercise strategies.
Okay. So, if I were going to design, like I mentioned, like a supplement to enhance testosterone levels, I would hit a lot of the basic stuff that I think gets on there emphasized because we like to talk about a lot of the sexy Chinese herbs like Eurycoma and Tongkat Ali and horny goat weed and tribulus. A lot of these things work more to enhance libido and blood flow to a greater extent than say testosterone or the hormones, but there are things that we know actually fill in the basics. Magnesium is one. With both magnesium and then also zinc that I'll mention, most of the studies that show magnesium or zinc to increase hormone status, or specifically in men to increase testosterone, show that it works in heavily exercising athletes or very active individuals who are sweating a lot.
There's not a lot of evidence that magnesium and zinc supplementation will assist with testosterone levels in the absence of physical activity and heavy amounts of sweating. But nowadays when a lot of people are doing sauna, a lot of people are exercising, a lot of people are sweating, in many cases, these are two, magnesium and zinc, notoriously missing minerals that can assist quite a bit with the natural testosterone response.
Another one is vitamin D. Vitamin D I think, sometimes there's a horse that gets kicked to death. I think there are a lot of people who are risking arterial calcification or some amount of potential for vitamin D toxicity by taking 10,000 units a day. But in smaller amounts, vitamin D has actually been shown to up-regulate androgen receptors and to cause a favorable hormone response. It's also a pretty potent sports performance enhancing aid.
I think the problem is that in many cases, and it's always my pet peeve when I look at like a multivitamin on the label and I see this, is vitamin D3 in the absence of some of the cofactors necessary for its absorption or necessary to reduce some of that risk of calcification. Does anybody know what a couple of those factors would be? Have you read “The Magnesium Miracle” or Kate Bleue's book on vitamin D or the B?
Male 2: Vitamin K2.
Ben: Yeah, vitamin K2, and what's the other one? They always went along with vitamin D. Magnesium. So, vitamin K2 and magnesium should always accompany vitamin D supplementation. And if you're trying to create a stack for enhancing testosterone that has magnesium in it and vitamin D in it, I would also consider including vitamin K, like a 2,000 or 3,000 international units of vitamin D3, and like 100 to maximum of 200 micrograms of something like a vitamin K2. It's a really, really good blend.
Okay. Zinc, I talked about–actually, I caught some flack for talking about this. The last time I was on the Joe Rogan episode, I walked in with like my black ant extract, which is actually one thing that I use that I find is excellent presets, excellent for libido. And zinc, like magnesium, is something that in athletes and in heavily sweating individuals has been studied for increasing testosterone. There's another one, very similar to black ant. So, I recently discovered some really good research on this one. We know that shellfish are pretty high in zinc, but plants, there are some supplements now where they're taking like powdered marine clams and offering that as a really potent zinc supplement.
Now, of course, the problem with this is zinc toxicity, the fact that zinc can throw off some of the zinc-copper ratios in the body. So, you do need to be careful again, especially if people aren't very active. But if a man is taking into account some of the exercise recommendations that I just gave, then I think that magnesium, along with zinc, especially if they are sweating, those are smart supplementation strategies. So, I like multivitamins that have zinc in them. I like black ant extract. You can get it in powdered form or textured form. I like clams. These are all examples. Clams or clam extract of things that can help to boost testosterone.
So, again, we're just going after the basics here. DHEA, that's a tricky one. It's banned by USADA. It's banned by WADA. It's banned by most international sport sanctioning bodies, which is tricky. Like in the realm of Spartan racing, I race professionally right now on obstacle course racing. One of the top pro-athletes just got kicked out and banned from the sport because he was going to Walgreens and he was buying what he said or what he thought was DHA, but he was instead getting DHEA. It's a very simple over-the-counter supplement that you can get at Walgreens, CVS, et cetera.
So, you need to be careful with athletes finding out that DHEA improves sports performance or increases hormonal status. It does at as little a dose of 25 to 50 milligrams per day, but you do need to be very careful. I find that this is another one that's sneaking into a lot of supplements, including like cognitive enhancers, nootropics, et cetera. And if you're working with athletes, you want to make sure you're aware that even though this is effective for testosterone, it’s something you need to be careful with.
Creatine. Creatine is one of the most studied safe supplements known to man for staving off sarcopenia. It's a known nootropic. The dosage is about five milligrams per day for a basic creatine monohydrate. There is no loading that's required. That's all a myth from the body building industry. There's no fancy mixes that are required for creatine. Myself, most of the people I work with, we all take five grams of creatine a day. What's the most creatine, kind of like vitamin C, orally that you could absorb in any one time? Does anybody know? It's like one and a half, two milligrams.
The problem is a lot of these supplements, they're giving like four/five-milligram creatine monohydrate portions. So, I recommend using a powdered form or using a smaller dose like one and a half to two milligrams, and you take two to three doses of that during the day. Creatine is also very well absorbed in a warm solution, in a warm medium. So, if you want to maximize creatine absorption because it's very potent as an ergogenic aid. And for testosterone, you would take one and a half to two milligrams powdered in a little bit of warm water and a tea or in your morning coffee and take your creatine that way.
So, you just want to make sure you're using creatine the right way and not overdoing it. As a matter of fact, I used to be a bodybuilder. Bodybuilding is one of the most horrible things you can do for your testosterone, for growth hormone, anything. I was like a sex symbol but all I could do is just lay around on the couch in between weight training sessions like a giant slab of meat. I had no libido. I had very low testosterone. I couldn't get it up. But all I was pretty much doing was creatine and a high protein diet.
Now, I don't necessarily endorse that route nor do I endorse maintaining less than 3% body fat, but I do get a question speaking, just to dive down this rabbit hole a little bit, about macronutrient ratios, where I address some of the basics; zinc, magnesium, creatine, vitamin D, some of those others. But another basic variable that's often missed is your basic macronutrient ratios for the ideal diet. There is no such thing as the perfect diet, but in most situations, for most of the guys especially who I'm working with, A, sweet spot for protein, and we cycle a little bit. On active days, we go less. On more active days, we go more because I like the idea of protein cycling and mTOR cycling and feast/famine cycles. But it's about 0.5 to 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight. Those are the protein ratios. Closer to 0.55 is better, 0.55 to 0.8 grams per pound of protein. There's no evidence that you get increased nitrogen utilization once you go past 0.8 grams per pound.
The next variable that I shoot for is about 30% to 40% of the diet being comprised of fats, which as you know are excellent as hormone precursor. In many cases, people who have like a PPAR gene issue or familial hypercholesterolemia or gallbladder issues or their APOE 34/44, I'm not recommending saturated fats and lots of butters and coconut oil. I'm more recommending monounsaturated, polyunsaturated Mediterranean style fats. But ultimately, with the protein being 0.55 to 0.8, the fats were 30% to 40%, and then everything else is filled in with the carbs. And it has been shown that a very low carbohydrate diet, which I followed a ketogenic diet, very low carbohydrate diet, both with high physical activity and low physical activity for long periods of time. I've been experimenting with that diet since 2012, and the number one thing that it seems to really hit on in addition to thyroid is testosterone.
And so in most of the active males that I'm working with, the way that we tackle this is they do carbohydrate refeeds nightly. Typically, they're doing 75 up to 200 grams of carbohydrates at the very end of the day, and then they're slipping back into primarily moderate to high fat, moderate protein intake, the rest of the day, with intermittent fasting cycles on each day, and that creates a really beautiful scenario to keep glycogen levels restored to maintain hormonal status, but to not have wide fluctuations in glycemic variability during the day. That's kind of the macronutrient piece and how I pieced it together for a lot of the folks that I work with.
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Then the last basic, well I didn't talk about this, but boron is also very interesting. At about 10 milligrams of boron per day, and raisins are a good source, nuts are a good source, you can get some from fish, you can get some from dairy products, you can get some from wheat products. You can also supplement of course with boron. But that's another one that had some really good research behind it in terms of it literally working on hormones, not necessarily libido or sexual performance but specifically hormones.
So, now we've got a really nice little stack that you can put together. It surprises me how few testosterone supplements there are out there. I mean, here's low-hanging fruit for those of you who are business-minded that just include these basic variables; vitamin D, magnesium, zinc, boron, creatine. These things would be the base of a really good testosterone supplement formula, in my opinion.
Then we can get into some of the slightly more fringe add-ons. Maca is one. Maca has got this wonderful nutty taste. The red form of Maca has been well-studied for its effect on prostate cancer. It can up-regulate receptor density. It impacts testosterone. It can impact libido. And so Maca almost would add that to the list of basic nutrients, but it is a little bit more fringe, a little bit less research behind it in some of these others, but that's one that I really like, is Maca root. Specifically, in people who have been on antidepressants like SSRIs, there are some really interesting data on Maca root helping with those people if they have hormonal imbalances through use of antidepressants. So, Maca would be for somebody who's on pharmaceutical for antidepressants. It seems to kind of stave off some of the impact on hormones.
Another one is cacao or cocoa, and a lot of people are familiar with the idea of flavonols and nitric oxide. And I'm a huge fan of daily dark chocolate, hooray, or cacao or flavonol supplementation, especially for any guys who want to enhance sexual performance. This is not going to enhance testosterone much at all but it will increase nitric oxide. I'm on this new kick where I'm drinking cacao tea every morning. I can give you guys a recipe. You want my recipe for cacao tea? It's amazing. It's almost a replacement for coffee, which I can't say that too loud because I own a coffee company and I can't let it out that I'm drinking cacao every morning instead of coffee. But I'm drinking cacao a lot now.
I get these bags from Amazon. It's called MiCacao, super dense. It's like cacao nibs. There's like cacao, I think it's like the leaf in there and then a cacao powder, but it's called MiCacao, M-I Cacao. And what I do is I take a couple of tablespoons of that. I use a little NutriBullet. And then, you get ghee. Coconut oil would work as well. That's some kind of a fatty medium, a little bit of salt because everybody knows the keto good hot chocolate and my 10-year-old son taught me this, is salt. You got to put salt in hot chocolate.
So, you got ghee, you have your cacao, you have your salt. I do a little bit of Butterscotch Toffee Stevia in there. And then, typically, I'll top that off with a little bit of tea. I like to use a chaga tea. Right now, I'm putting a couple of packets of the Four Sigmatic chaga tea in there. I blend that up for a minute. If you want to have like Christmas in a cup every single day, that's amazing for your nitric oxide levels. That blend is just like it's thick and you can almost see it with a spoon. I'm addicted, obviously.
So, cacao. Eurycoma, that's another one that goes by longjack, Tongkat Ali. This seems to not only increase fertility but it's one of those ones that has a really good impact, kind of like fenugreek does on libido, creating that positive cycle. And a lot of us realize this, right? Once our libido goes up and we start to have more sex, it creates this positive feedback loop where you get increased testosterone from having more sex, you have increased blood flow, you're using your genitals like a muscle, and so it creates this nice positive feedback loop. And this is one that's got some really good studies on it for libido, not so much blood flow but simply increasing actual sexual arousal.
Fenugreek acts very, very similar. I love this. It's just a basic Ayurvedic herb. I mean, like cumin, fennel, coriander, fenugreek. All of these are bitters or digestives so they can kind of enhance the first phase insulin response if you use them prior to a meal. But fenugreek, in particular, is also fantastic for libido and has some really good studies behind it for that. You can literally take a lot of these things, like the coriander, fennel, fenugreek. Keep it in like a black pepper grinder on your countertop, which is what I do, and you can just sprinkle a lot of these herbs or grind a lot of these herbs onto your food, onto your meals during the day.
So, that's another one that I really like. It's got this nice–actually, I hear something funny about fenugreek. It has this kind of like maple–it's got like a licorice maple flavor but it actually, and don't ask me how I know this, but it actually, guys, makes your semen taste like maple syrup. It does. I'm not kidding. For those of you who are not Canadian and you want to surprise your partner one of these days, have a bunch of fenugreek because it actually does give you slightly sweet semens. It's very interesting. So, there's another benefit for it.
Pycnogenol, pine bark, it acts very similarly to cacao in terms of its flavonol-like effect for nitric oxide. It's another one that's got some good studies behind it, very simple to get in supplement form. And again, hopefully, it gets your wheels turning those people who are entrepreneurial business-minded in here about things that you could use to create some kind of a libido or a testosterone enhancing supplement. But there's another one that's got some really good data behind it. When you look at a lot of these things, I'm going to talk about other therapies like red light therapy and acoustic sound wave therapy, a lot of these things–and many physicians are doing this now.
I recently interviewed one guy, Jud Brandeis, on my show and he's a GAINSwave practitioner in the San Francisco, San Jose, kind of the Bay Area. He has a supplement, a protocol that he prescribes to his patients after they've been through that therapy or a P-Shot or PRP to increase blood flow, and it really works nicely hand in hand, a lot of these things that are flavonols or nitric oxide precursors. So, these can be kind of adjunct to some of the more biohacking type of things that you might have in your practice.
And then, tribulus. Tribulus significantly enhances sexual drive. Actually, it's known as the goat head weed, which is cool because it actually looks a little bit like a goat head. I raise Nigerian Dwarf goats and it's funny that actually, they have that look. And tribulus is known as something that can increase your actual libido very similar to something like fenugreek, for example. So, with a lot of these fringe supplements that seem to work, they're either working to increase blood flow or they're working to enhance libido. And these are some of the ones I've actually been studied that have been shown to work.
Okay. Let me go ahead and throw off my testosterone estrogen ratios real quick. That's actually how I lounge around at home, by the way. I like to read Grey's Anatomy on my giant sheepskin rug, on my bed, like eat a giant greasy turkey leg and then go take a bath and red wine while I'm getting fanned with giant leaves and fed grapes. That's how I live my life.
Now, we're going to get into some of the things that you can use as biohacking strategies to increase testosterone. This is a really interesting one. Electrical muscle stimulation, no, not in the balls, but specifically in the areas where there are high energy and receptor density, which specifically would be, as you know now from the exercise talk, legs, the legs. Electrical muscle stimulation, high-intensity electrical muscle stimulation particularly on the legs has some good data behind it, mostly in rodent models because they didn't do a lot of heavy shock therapy in humans. But I actually do protocols now. There are a lot of devices out there like the Compex and the Marc Pro.
There's one that I like though. It's called a Neu.fit. It's a DC current. It's a DC current that allows you to literally get the muscle to produce a multi-hundred-pound contraction without producing skin burns. Especially in someone who's immobilized, who has joint pain, or who wants to be able to get this effect, I mean it's the sorest I ever get. I only do this twice a month. I do a workout with this new fit. I attach all the electrodes to my legs and go through a series of squats and lunges. But electrical muscle stimulation for androgen receptor up-regulation has some really good data behind it.
So, that's one that I like is EMS. That's something you could add to your practice as an offering or something that you can recommend to clients or patients. This is one that has gotten a lot of press recently as well, this idea that somewhere in the range of 600 to 700 nanometers of light, shown specifically on the testicle, seems to impact Leydig cells in the testes, and specifically, in the very same way–you may see like the Vielight out there can do the same thing for neural tissue, increase the oxidase activity. In neural tissue, you can do the same thing in the testicles by using red light therapy at a specific wavelength. You don't want to exceed about 820 nanometers or so because then you get this heating effect that can damage sperm that can lower testosterone production. But brief forays of red light therapy about 10 to 20 minutes appear to be very effective.
And here's something interesting. I didn't realize this. You're no doubt familiar with this idea that we want to limit blue light and artificial light exposure, not just to our eyes but also to our skin because we have opsins and specific protein photoreceptors in our skin that respond to light. Like, there are fascinating studies where they shine the light in areas of high blood flow, like the back of the knee or the inside of the wrist. And when it's blue light, it's actually been found that that disrupts sleep cycles even if the eyes are closed. So, this is why when I go into my hotel room in the Venetian, when I check in before I go to bed, I turn off all the lights and then I just go unplug or cover anything up with black electrical tape that's producing light because you sleep a lot better.
Well, guess what else has photoreceptors that seem to interact favorably with red light? Your balls. Your balls are actually an eye, guys, and you have opsin, you have photoreceptors so you not only have the interaction with the mitochondria but you have the interaction with these photoreceptors, and that's why there seems to be such a positive effect of red-light therapy on testosterone. So, that's an interesting one. That's another one that I do just about every day. A lot of different ways to do it. You can use your imagination.
So, the next one is called thermogenesis. It's kind of funny. There's this company now, they sent this to my house, it's called a Primal Jetpack and it's literally an ice pack for your balls. It's almost a little bit gimmicky because it's just like an ice pack and it says, “Put it on your balls,” and it's great marketing. But when you look at a lot of these old Russian and Finnish powerlifters, there's this strategy of increasing growth hormone, increasing testosterone by icing or keeping the testicles cold. And we know the whole idea about the hot tub and getting in the hot water decreasing sperm count, but it turns out that frequent forays in the cryotherapy or cold thermogenesis cannot only cause an increase in growth hormone or an increase in testosterone but it can also result in an increased vascularization to the crotch.
So, this idea of using cold therapy and also avoiding like tight fitting garments, sleeping in a cold room, sleeping combat style, using–I use this thing called the Chilly Pad which circulates water at about 55 degrees underneath my body while I'm asleep, which is great for entering your deep sleep cycles where a lot of repair and recovery occurs, but it's also wonderful for testosterone. So, paying attention to temperature is also important. And this idea of ice therapy or ice in the balls is also really good, especially in somebody who sits a lot, somebody who spends a lot of time in airplane, somebody who has to wear pants and underwear. I'm very glad I don't have a job where I have to wear pants and underwear a lot of the time and I can keep my balls cold. But this idea of using this as a therapy seems to have some efficacy behind it.
Then there's PEMF, pulsed electromagnetic fields. Now, the most interesting data on pulsed electromagnetic fields–we know a lot of people are just checking to make sure it wasn't there so they don't look like a hypocrite. I just have this producing a bunch of dirty electricity in my back pocket, my microphone pack. I don't know what that will do. But cell phones have certainly been shown to reduce sperm count and sperm quality, as has microwave radiation. But by exposing the body to low intensity, basically, like a low frequency, long wavelength, pulsed electromagnetic field or PEMF, it can actually reverse a lot of that damage. So, this is something that you can use as a way to undo a lot of the damage that a lot of guys are doing nowadays by walking around with their cell phone in their pocket or by getting exposed to microwave radiation or by working at their desk, by having a wife underneath the desk, it turns out that PEMF is a good strategy to reverse a lot of this.
So, this is another kind of biohack. PEMF mats, I have a PEMF mat at home. This one right there is called the Pulse Center. It even has a square pad on it, very high frequency, and I can sit. Here, I'm reading, but you can sit on that stool and literally just kind of like suspend yourself over it and just blast yourself with PEMF for 10 or 20 minutes. And you also get a little bit of–I found a sexual performance enhancing effect. And that was powerful as what you get with this stuff, the acoustic sound wave therapy.
Has anybody here done the acoustic sound wave therapy like the GAINSwave? This was actually part of what Men's Health magazine had me do is they had to go check out what happens when you do like the 20 minutes of blasting your dick with acoustic sound waves. This was all based on originally the concept of breaking up kidney stones using acoustic sound waves. It turns out that you can actually improve vascularization. You can break up old blood vessels. Build new blood vessels with about a 20-minute treatment. And a lot of people are doing this like on a monthly basis and it's a proven treatment for erectile dysfunction, but also appears to have a sexual performance enhancing effect. My wife and I have done this protocol and then combined it with a lot of the flavonols and the blood flow precursors that I was talking about earlier. Very cool 1-2 combo.
The other thing that I've combined this with was a penis pump. A good GAINSwave practitioner will recommend to you that you use a penis pump for about 30 days after this. And when I went in there and did my protocol, they gave me like the Cadillac of penis pumps. It's like this digital penis pump, and I was super excited about having my own digital penis pump because I never had a penis pump before. But I'm also a very productive guy. I just sit there holding my penis pump and having it do its thing while I'm just watching TV or whatever. I wanted to work. And I'm an author, so I wanted to type and finding emails, working at my desk, and I put my penis pump on. I figure out if I angled it just so on my desk, I could work hands-free.
And I remember I was doing this, I was like 10 days in and I heard this sucking sound like–and my left ball got sucked into the penis pump, and I looked down and it's turning like purple. I kind of thought that I had just castrated myself and I managed to rip the rubber gasket out and pull it out of there. The idea is that the penis pump actually works. Just don't go hands-free with your pump. But that 1-2-3 combo of the GAINSwave plus any type of nitric oxide precursor, plus some kind of a pump works really, really well. And I've done that treatment I think eight times now. Very effective, and that's another one that I really like. They have a booster too. They're out there somewhere.
Platelet-rich plasma injections. They'll do this. A lot of times, we do acoustic sound wave therapy. You can get this as a standalone treatment. I've done it. I've done both this and stem cells. I have to say I probably noticed a little bit more from the stem cell injection versus the P-Shot, but obviously, for a lot of people, the P-Shot is more affordable in your practice. If you're not, you're doing stem cells. A lot of people are not doing stem cells but they are doing PRP. I noticed good results with the PRP. And again, this is something that can be combined with acoustic sound wave. It's also been something that has been studied. And particularly, in cases of erectile dysfunction or Peyronie, it's been shown to have a little bit of an effect in reversing that.
So, I think it's a good treatment to offer the stem cell piece, which I've also done. I did this on a couple of different clinics. The one new clinic in Spokane, I had the U.S. Stem Cell Clinic ship my fat-derived stem cells up to there, and we did the treatment there, just the basic nerve block and an injection. And then, when I was under sedation at Dr. Harry Adelson's clinic in Salt Lake City, we also did a protocol there with bone marrow aspirate and exosomes and PRP. Probably, in terms of inducing erection after erection, literally like I was a 14 or 15-year-old boy for many, many days after the protocol with what I think, even though I'm not using a tape measure, is a noticeable increase in size. Nothing seems to actually compare to the stem cell procedures. I know they're more expensive. I know they're a little bit more fringe. My dick for about three days looked like I've been run over by semi-truck. It was all black and blue and my wife was really nervous. But ultimately, the stem cell thing, I think it really works. I've done a lot of stem cells now and it moves the dial for sure.
Now, then there are habits. Common mistakes that people make that affect testosterone and fertility. So, the first one, in case you hadn't guessed already, is underestimating the nasties of plastics. Anybody read the book, “Estrogeneration,” about phthalates and parabens, and PCBs, and how readily these wind up in the urine of males. They just use something like this in their shampoo with their conditioner. It gets absorbed very rapidly and very unfavorably affects testosterone-estrogen ratio.
So, this is one I feel like I'm preaching to choir a little bit. Everybody's nodding. You guys know this one. Make sure that if somebody is taking expensive tribulus terrestris or anything else, they're not washing their supplements down with water from a plastic bottle. So, that's one. Another one is chronic cardio. One very interesting study, this was an obese man over 10 weeks. What they found was that by simply increasing level of physical activity without introducing any special gym routine or exercise routine but by instead simply getting rid of a sedentary lifestyle, there was a direct increase in testosterone.
So, this idea of hacking your environment, standing workstations, standing up, moving, Pomodoro breaks, figuring out ways to inject low level physical activity into the day constantly is a very, very effective method, especially if you're working with people who have like 8 to 10-hour workdays, who are sitting a lot. This is another one that has an impact on testosterone levels. Probably part of it also has to do with the fact that when you're sitting a lot and you're inactive, what do you get? More heat in the crotch, right? So, like moving. You're actually getting a little bit of airflow as well. I think that that actually has an impact as well.
Eating too often. This concept of intermittent fasting, you actually do see, especially with longer fast, you see a decrease in growth hormone and a decrease in testosterone. But what a lot of people don't realize if you look at a lot of these studies in greater detail, after the refeed, you can literally see hundreds of percentage point rises in a lot of these anabolic hormones. Just as we know, the body responds very well to press-pulse cycles, right? You exercise and you recover. You eat protein; you don't eat protein. You feast; you fast. And this idea of intermittent fasting or alternate day fasting or fasting mimicking diets or water fast accompanied by a return to a refeed appears to give you almost like this stair step periodized effect on growth hormone testosterone.
So, if you have a patient or a client who's complaining that they're concerned they're going to lose their libido or the hormone is going to drop because they're fasting too much and they're not eating as many ribeye steaks as are their carnivore diet neighbor, the idea is that you actually can get a really good effect with fasting, especially in a post-workout scenario. I discussed this when I interviewed Mark Sisson on my podcast. Waiting for one to two hours after a workout to eat also has a favorable impact on growth hormone and testosterone level. So, rather than finishing up the workout and dropping everything to go suck down your Maltodextrin and fructose and whey protein, you actually wait for an hour to post-workout and that actually has an effect on hormones as well.
EMF, I already talked about dirty electricity and electrical pollution a little bit and the use of EMF to avoid that. But just making sure that guys, that patients are aware that the phone in back pocket is a bad idea. Yeah, there are cases like the DefenderShield cases, one that I use that blocks EMF to a certain extent. But you need to be pretty careful with exposure to dirty electricity. What my office is set up is everything shielded with CAT-6, metal-shielded Ethernet cable. There is no Wi-Fi. There is no Bluetooth. There's very little dirty electricity. And the people who really want to take things to the next level, you can even hire a building biologist to go around your house with a meter to actually measure and see what levels of EMF being produced that could potentially be harmful.
There's also a little device you can get on Amazon called an Acoustimeter. And this is what I have. So, any newfangled device or sleeping scenario or anything else and test with the Acoustimeter and actually see the amount of EMF that that's producing. It's very, very interesting. I remember one test I did. I tested my body and the EMF was almost like nothing. And then, I tested my phone and the EMF was way above six, like off the scales in the Acoustimeter. And then, I held my phone in one hand way over here and had my son test my hand over here and all of a sudden, my body was serving as an antenna and my own EMF levels were jacked up. So, it's pretty crazy how much you actually get exposed to simply by holding your phone or having to touch your body.
Okay. This one, I'm sorry guys but ejaculating too much, this is one of more of those ancient wisdom type of things that doesn't have a lot of studies behind it inside you that you give away your gene, you give away your life force too much, and you might wind up with a decrease in testosterone and when you look at a lot of these Ayurvedic charts. And I'll link to some of them if you want to look at them even more in the resources webpage that I'll give you at the end of this talk. I actually have a few of them pulled up here.
For example, in your 30s, it's three to four times a week; 40s, two to three times a week; in your 50s, one to times a week; in your 60s, once a week, depending on your health. But this idea of reduced ejaculation frequency, a lot of guys swear by this for increasing testosterone. When I wrote that article for Men's Health magazine, I did it. I noticed a big increase in libido upon using like reduced ejaculation frequency. I mean, it's very simple. You can read a book like “The Multi-Orgasmic Male,” which I think every guy should read if you want to have great sex, especially Tantric sex.
And you can actually do like a power breath where you're kind of squeezing the muscles almost like a keto contraction and then drawing the breath back up the spine. And then, the other thing that you can do until you've taught yourself how to do this properly is you simply put a lot of pressure onto the perineum, that soft spot between the anus and the genitals, and you can actually hold back some of ejaculate that way as well. But this concept of reduced ejaculation frequency is under tactic that a lot of guys are swearing by. Unfortunately, this is how I felt every single time that I did it. When you're lying in bed at night, because I'm a married man, a lot of times, the time that you finally have sex is at night after the day is over, I would just lay there feeling like I needed to go to the gym and bench press. So, understand that it can produce a little bit of pent-up aggressiveness, too.
This is how my wife and I have breakfast. I stand boxers, my pink underwear, she eats a banana and stares lovingly into my eyes. I think I've just come down from reading “Grey's Anatomy” on my bed, on my sheepskin rug in this photo. But anyways, I actually already alluded to this. I don't kick the horse to death. Ignoring the power of sex. We schedule sex, we calendar sex, and sex creates a positive feedback loop where more sex increases libido and increases testosterone. And you can have sex frequently without necessarily, as I just alluded to, ejaculating. You can still orgasm, you can still have a good time, and you can still create this positive feedback loop.
But this is another one simply ensuring that your patients and your clients are scheduling and making time for sex in the same way that they'd schedule or make time for workouts. It seems like you'd take a lot of the romanticism out of sex, but I'm talking about scheduling, big hot date nights or periods of time where you actually isolate partners that they're together and you simply make it happen. I think that's important and often underemphasized.
And then, as we learn from “South Park,” gluten. And if you saw the South Park episode, know that gluten makes your dick fly off and fly around the room and explode. So, just be careful with–no, I'm just kidding. I don't know of any data behind gluten, but that is a really funny cartoon if you've never watched that one.
Okay. I want to finish with a few quick ways to test, the way to track and test. So, blood is okay. I mean, most of you are smart enough to know. I know many of you are practitioners. All you're getting is a snapshot of testosterone, a DHA or estrogen when you do a blood test. I mean, you can do a simple blood test but I really don't like it because it's a single one-time snapshot. For example, I know my cortisol is naturally elevated in the morning. I know it's even higher after I've had a cup of coffee. I want to see my rhythm throughout the day, and this is where something like a salivary panel can come in. I like a salivary panel because you're getting multiple readings throughout the day of actual bioavailable free hormones.
But what it doesn't show you–what does a salivary panel not show you? It will show you free. It will show you bound and unbound. But what will it not show you? Downstream metabolites. Like what's it getting broken down into? How fast is cortisol are getting broken down? How fast is testosterone getting broken down? The urine panel, which is four to five urine collections for hormones, and I think Dutch actually has a table out there if you want to go dig deeper into what they're doing, it gives you the downstream metabolite. I'll give you an example. I had really rampantly high cortisol for a very long time, especially when I was racing and I was an endurance athlete.
And I have a lot of practitioners who expect me to have chronic fatigue or adrenal fatigue or low cortisol, I was doing stress, I was doing meditation practice, I didn't feel like I was hardwired and feel like I have high cortisol, but every single time I'd test, I'd have very high cortisol. Well, it turns out that upon finally doing a Dutch test, my cortisol metabolites were very high. It wasn't that I had adrenal glands that were producing just crap tons of cortisol; it was that that cortisol was not getting broken down at a very rapid pace at all. In my case, the reason for that was because I was following a ketogenic diet, participating in endurance sports, and I had thyroid down-regulation. Well, one of the ways that you break down cortisol metabolites is by having adequate thyroid activity.
So, for me, it turned out–well, I learned from a urinary panel that what I should go after is not the adrenal glands and excess cortisol, what I should instead tackle is the hypothyroid piece that's keeping the cortisol metabolites from getting broken down. So, I like a lot of the deeper insights that you can get when you're doing something like a urine panel. So, that's my favorite way to test for a lot of this stuff.
Hey, thank you, guys. That's my giant penis talk and I will be–if you want a good cup of organic coffee, I'll be out at my Kion coffee booth out there for about the next half hour or so and then I'll be at the GAINSwave booth I think around 3:00. I'll be out there for a while. So, if you guys have some more questions, I love to chat about this stuff, so come chat. Thanks for coming.
Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the shownotes to resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com, along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful “Ben Recommends” page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've recommended for; hormone, sleep, digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So, when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the shownotes, use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.
I recently spoke at an event called “A4M” in Las Vegas.
My entire presentation was focused on 32 different ways to increase testosterone naturally, with no injections or hormone replacement protocols required. I'm not against bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT), but I do think one should explore as many natural alternatives as possible first. Or, for even more bang for the buck, pair BHRT with the tactics you'll discover in this episode.
A4M, which stands for “The American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine” is dedicated to the advancement of tools, technology, and transformations in healthcare that can detect, treat, and prevent diseases associated with aging. They promote the research of practices and protocols that have the potential to optimize the human aging process. The organization is also dedicated to educating healthcare professionals and practitioners, scientists, and members of the public on biomedical sciences, breakthrough technologies, and medical protocols through our advanced education entity: Metabolic Medical Institute (MMI). Their event in Vegas each year is, in my opinion, well worth checking out.
In this podcast, I will review the key biomarkers for achieving peak male health, along with the most potent and effective practices for optimizing biological variables for men's fertility and longevity. I will also unveil a host of little-known biohacks proven to enhance or restore peak testosterone and drive, along with how to practically implement a blend of ancestral wisdom and modern science to amplify sexual performance.
You'll discover a multimodal approach to optimizing male sexual performance, learn how to identify key biomarkers to assess male health and get the best ancient practices and modern scientific strategies that enhance or restore men's fertility and longevity.
Oh, and by the way, women need testosterone too, and all these tactics will work for the ladies as well.
In this episode, you'll learn…
-Workout Strategies to Optimize Testosterone…9:00
Sprint
- Study: Physiological and performance changes from the addition of a sprint interval program to wrestling training
- Airdyne bike
- Elliptical trainer
Lift heavy stuff
- Article: How Many Reps Should You Do To Build Muscle?
- Study: Testosterone physiology in resistance exercise and training: the upstream regulatory elements
- Workouts: squats, deadlifts, bench presses, Olympic lifts
- Article: How to Use Weight-Lifting Machines
- Hex bars
- Kettlebells
- Book: Body by Science by Doug McGuff
Use long rest periods
Do forced reps
- Study: Acute hormonal responses to heavy resistance exercise in strength athletes versus nonathletes
- Article: 10 Tips for Proper Gym Etiquette
Use your legs
- Vasper
- Study: The effect of short-term strength training on human skeletal muscle: the importance of physiologically elevated hormone levels
- Article: What is the Best Way to Warm Up?
- Article: How to Warm Up And Cool Down
Avoid chronic cardio
- Study: Effects of strength training on submaximal and maximal endurance performance capacity in middle-aged and older men
- Podcast: Primal Endurance: How To Escape Chronic Cardio & Carbohydrate Dependency & Become A Fat Burning Beast
-Notoriously Missing Nutrients That Drastically Affect Testosterone Levels…18:00
Magnesium
- Mag SRT
- Podcast: Magnesium Supplementation: Everything You Need To Know About Dosing Magnesium, Timing Magnesium, Forms Of Magnesium & More
Vitamin D
- Vitamin D3
- Vitamin K2
- Thorne Vitamin D/K2
- Book: The Magnesium Miracle by Dr. Carolyn Dean
- Sperti lamp
Zinc
DHEA
- Article: DHEA, Steroid Cycling, Liposomes & More: Everything You Need To Know About Fringe Over-The-Counter Health Supplements That Build Muscle & Burn Fat
- Vaxxen Labs
- DHEA
Creatine
Boron
- Boron
- Article: The Ultimate Guide To Biohacking Your Testosterone: 17 Ways To Maximize Muscle-Building, Drive & Anti-Aging
-Herbal Add-Ons…29:00
- Maca powder
- MiCacao
- 75% organic dark chocolate
- Eurycoma Longifolia
- Fenugreek
- Pycnogenol
- Tribulus Terrestris
-Biohacking Testosterone: Tools and Tricks That Actually Work…37:06
Electrical Muscle Stimulation
- Study: Rapid increase in the number of androgen receptors following electrical stimulation of the rat muscle
- Study: Effects of low-frequency electrical stimulation on the change of male sex hormones in normal men
- NES Scanner
- fit
Red Light or Low-Lever Laser Therapy
- Article: I Put a Giant Red Light on My Balls to Triple My Testosterone Levels
- Joovv Light
- Article: Red Light and Near-Infrared Radiation: Powerful Healing Tools You’ve Never Heard of
- Study: The effects of low-level laser therapy (LLLT) on the testis in elevating serum testosterone level in rats
Cold Thermogenesis
- Study: Serum levels of thyroid and adrenal hormones, testosterone, TSH, LH, GH and prolactin in men after a 2‐h stay in a cold room
- Study: In Vitro Temperature Sensitivity of DNA, RNA, and Protein Syntheses Throughout Puberty in Human Testis
- Study: Seasonal variations of human sperm cells among 6455 semen samples: a plausible explanation of a seasonal birth pattern
- Primal Cold Jetpack
Pulsed Electromagnetic Fields
- Book: The Non-Tinfoil Guide to EMFs: How to Fix Our Stupid Use of Technology
- Study: Therapeutic uses of pulsed magnetic field exposure
- Study: The therapeutic effect of a pulsed electromagnetic field on the reproductive patterns of male Wistar rats exposed to a 2.45-GHz microwave field
- Study: The Effects of Cell Phone Waves (900 MHz-GSM Band) on Sperm Parameters and Total Antioxidant Capacity in Rats
- Study: The influence of direct mobile phone radiation on sperm quality
- Study: Effect of mobile telephones on sperm quality: A systematic review and meta-analysis
- Pulse Center
- FlexPulse
- ICES® DigiCeutical® M1 Model System
- ICES® DigiCeutical® A9a Model System
- Earth Pulse
- Delta Sleeper
Gainswave
- Pycnogenol
- Article: How To Get All The Effects Of A Stem Cell Dick Injection…Without Actually Getting A Stem Cell Dick Injection
- Article: The Most Potent Natural Alternative To Viagra (and One Of The Most Shocking Biohacks I’ve Ever Done)
- Podcast: The Non-Pill, Natural Alternative To Viagra That Instantly Fixes Erectile Dysfunction, Boosts Drive In Men & Women, Enhances Orgasm & Much More
- Podcast: Sexual Biohacking With Scream Creams, Testosterone Replacement, Multiple Orgasms, Vaginal Stimulating Devices, Salad Dressings For Better Erections & More
Platelet Rich Plasma Injections (PRP)
- Study: Our experience in the treatment of priapism
- P-shot
- O-shot
- Study: The Effectiveness of Platelet-Rich Plasma in the Treatment of Tendinopathy: A Meta-analysis of Randomized Controlled Clinical Trials
Stem Cells
- Article: Shooting Up Stem Cells With Ben Greenfield – The “Down The Rabbit Hole” Video
- Article: Amniotic Stem Cell Injections, Advanced Muscle Integration Technique, High Dose Vitamin C Therapy & More: A Health Hacking Journey
-Mistakes You're Probably Making That Impact Testosterone and Fertility…47:20
Underestimating the nasties of plastic
- Podcast: Estrogeneration: How Estrogenics Are Making You Fat, Sick, and Infertile
- Article: How to Protect Your Body from the Ten Hidden Killers in Your Home (Fully Updated Version)
- Article: Endocrine Disruptors
- Study: Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals: Associated Disorders and Mechanisms of Action
- Study: Disruption of LH-induced testosterone biosynthesis in testicular Leydig cells by triclosan: Probable mechanism of action
- Activated charcoal filter
- Reverse Osmosis
Thinking “Avoid Chronic Cardio” Means “Don’t Move Too Much”
- Study: Physically active men show better semen parameters and hormone values than sedentary men
- Study: Endurance Training Decreases Serum Testosterone Levels in Men without Change in Luteinizing Hormone Pulsatile Release
- Study: Reproductive hormonal profiles of endurance-trained and untrained males
- Study: Increased physical activity has a greater effect than reduced energy intake on lifestyle modification-induced increases in testosterone
- Tri-Ripped
- Triathlon Dominator
- Obstacle Dominator
Eating too often
- Study: Pituitary-testicular axis in obese men during short-term fasting
- Study: Reproductive Function during Fasting in Men
Thinking You’re Immune To EMF
Ejaculating Too Much
- Article: Taoist Ejaculation Formulas
- Sun Simiao
- Article: Ejaculation May Lower Prostate Cancer Risk
Ignoring The Power Of Sex
- Article: How To Get Fit For Sex
- Jordan Gray's website
- Book: The Multi-Orgasmic Man: Sexual Secrets Every Man Should Know
Eating Gluten
-Best Ways to Track and Test Male Hormones…56:10
-And much more!
If you'd like this comprehensive list of resources from my talk at A4M in PDF format, click here!
Resources mentioned in this episode:
-Book: Body by Science by Dr. Doug McGuff
-Book: Estrogeneration by Anthony Gay
-Book: The Multi-Orgasmic Man
–My podcast with building biologist Brian Hoyer
Episode sponsors:
–Kion: The company I created to scratch my own itch. Real-world tested products to help you live a fulfilling and joyful life. The Kion Aminos, now in the new berry flavor, is one of my favorite products. Use code: BGF10 at checkout and get 10% off your entire purchase!
–JOOVV: After using the Joovv for close to 2 years, it's the only light therapy device I'd ever recommend. Give it a try – you won't be disappointed. Use code: BEN at checkout and get a nice little bonus gift!
–Zip Recruiter: The smartest way to hire. Forget about sifting through piles of resumes. Use Zip Recruiter for FREE when you use my link!
–MVMT Watches: Quality products without breaking the bank. Perfect for a Valentines Day gift! Get 15% off your order with FREE shipping when you use my link.
Do you have questions, thoughts or feedback for me? Leave your comments below and I will reply!
Do you blend the MiCacao whole into the drink or do you steep it and throw away the solids?
You got ghee, you have your cacao, you have your salt. I do a little bit of Butterscotch Toffee Stevia in there. Then I top it off with a couple of packets of the Four Sigmatic chaga tea. I blend that up for a minute. If you want to have Christmas-in-a-cup every single day, that's amazing for your nitric oxide levels. That blend is thick and you can almost see it with a spoon. Check out my “Peppermint-Chaga-Cacao Bomb” recipe: https://www.micacao.com/blogs/news/ben-greenfield…
Hi Ben
I am confused regarding the application of NIR wavelengths on testicles.
In this podcast you say: “You don’t want to exceed about 820 nanometers or so because then you get this heating effect that can damage sperm that can lower testosterone production.”
However when answering a question relating to this on 25 January 2019 under your podcast “What’s The Deal With Fancy Red Light Devices? Your Go-To Guide On How To Use Red Light To Enhance Testosterone, Skin, Recovery, Cognition, Sleep & Beyond!”, you said for shining on testicles “Both Red (660nm) and NIR (850nm) wavelengths have been proven to be beneficial for a wide range of the same desired treatments, such as testosterone, skin health, etc.”
As the NIR wavelengths on the Joov (I have a Joov Mini) is 850nm, can you pls clarify whether you do or do not recommend to apply 850nm wavelengths on the testicles (in addition to Red light at 660nm)?
Thanks alot!
Hey Ben,
Quick question regarding creatine. You indicate to take 5 grams per day, but in 1.5-2 milligram portions. Did you mean 1.5-2 gram portions?
Just want to make sure I am doing it correctly.
Thanks for what you do, Sir.
Yes in grams