Boost Testosterone Naturally: A 10-Part Blueprint

About This Series

Learn to optimise your testosterone with 10 lessons. This article will go through the science behind testosterone, and how it works; its availability, receptor activity and the whole"testosterone system". We'll go far beyond the "eat more protein and lift heavy" advice that's already out there.

You'll learn:

• How to optimise your HPG axis through sleep architecture and energy availability.
• Understand the effect of different types of exercise on your testosterone levels.
• Manage the cortisol-testosterone relationship.
• Eliminate endocrine disruptors
• Build a sustainable programme to prioritise what actually matters: sleep, body composition, resilience, and good nutrition.

This course is designed for men who feel they're experiencing low energy, decreased libido, or training plateaus due to their lifestyles. It's not for people with clinically low testosterone or testosterone-related diseases.

Contents

1. Your testosterone levels aren’t everything
2. The HPG axis
3. Testosterone is made while you sleep
4. Eat your way to higher testosterone
5. The micronutrients that matter
6. Training for higher testosterone
7. Body fat kills testosterone
8. Stress is a testosterone killer
9. The testosterone suppressors in your environment
10. Your testosterone blueprint summary

Each lesson includes evidence-based information, clear and actionable advice, and simple tracking tools. The expected outcomes for men with a misfiring testosterone system would be measurable improvements in their health, performance, mood and possibly testosterone levels within 3-6 months.

Lesson 1: Your blood testosterone levels aren't everything

Most men think about testosterone in the wrong way. They will fixate on a single blood test number: “total testosterone”.  However, this number doesn't tell the whole story. Testosterone works in a "system", which is made up of three parts. 

1.“Production” (how much you make)

Your Leydig cells in the testes produce roughly 6-7 mg of testosterone a day (in healthy young men). This drop is approximately 1-2% annually after age 30. But despite testosterone decline as we age, it is neither inevitable nor consistent across everyone. In fact, some men increase their testosterone levels as they age². The production of testosterone depends on signals from your brain, adequate nutrients and testicular health.

2. “Availability” (how much is usable)

Only 2-3% of your testosterone circulates “freely” in blood, meaning it’s not "bound" to anything. This is called “free testosterone”, and it's the biologically active form that enters your cells and does its work. 

Another 40-50% of your testosterone is loosely bound to a protein called “albumin” and becomes available when it's needed. The remaining 50-60% of the testosterone in your blood is tightly bound to a protein called sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) and is effectively locked away — it doesn’t work, your cells can't use it, it’s not “bioactive”.

A critical point: You can have “normal” total testosterone levels but low free testosterone (or "bioactive" testosterone) levels if too much of it is bound to SHBG. Conversely, someone with low-ish total testosterone levels but normal free testosterone levels will have a normally functioning testosterone system, even though their blood (total) testosterone levels are low. Obesity, some other diseases, inflammation and ageing all reduce your testosterone (and free testosterone) levels³.

3. “Receptor activity” (how well your cells respond)

Even with adequate testosterone production and availability, testosterone must then go on to bind to androgen receptors (AR) inside your cells to exert its effects. The “density” and sensitivity of these receptors vary between different parts of your body and different people. The number of androgen receptors you have can also change in response to exercise, nutrition, body composition and your environment. 

Why the whole testosterone system matters

Two men can have identical total testosterone levels in their blood (e.g., 500 ng/dL) but very different functioning testosterone systems. For example:

• Man [A]: Has low or normal SHBG, high free testosterone, and a normal amount of functional androgen receptors, so he feels energetic, builds muscle pretty easily, has a normal to high libido, and a stable mood.
• Man [B]: Has high SHBG, low free testosterone, and poorly functioning androgen receptors, so will feel fatigued, carry too much fat, have low drive and motivation, and reduced ability to recover from exercise.

The blood test shows the same number, but their testosterone systems function completely differently. Over the next nine lessons, we'll look at how to optimise each of these three parts of your testosterone system: production, availability and androgen receptor signalling.

Tasks

1. Measure your body weight and waist circumference. 
2. Rate the following on a scale of 1-10 for the next 3 days and take an average. We'll use this as a baseline.
   1. Energy/drive first thing in the morning
   2. How well you train or perform if/when you exercise
   3. Your libido/sex drive
   4. Mood
   5. How stressed you are or feel
   6. Your mental clarity and cognitive performance
   7. How you slept (both how long and how well).

Lesson 2: The HPG axis

Testosterone production doesn't start in your balls ("testes" or "gonads"). It starts in your brain. Specifically, in a pea-sized region of your hypothalamus, which is the testosterone command centre of your brain. Most of the testosterone-killing mistakes happen here, in your “hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal” (HPG) axis — not in your gonads.

How the HPG axis works

Your hypothalamus monitors your body's energy reserves, your stress levels, inflammation, and your current testosterone levels. When these are good, and your testosterone starts to drop, it sends a "signal" to your pituitary gland (gonadotropin-releasing hormone), which in turn sends a signal to tell your gonads (luteinizing hormone and follicle-stimulating hormone) to start producing more testosterone. 

When testosterone starts rising in your blood, your hypothalamus detects this and then tells your gonads to stop producing it. This prevents overproduction of testosterone. Your HPG axis is highly sensitive. When it detects “danger” (whether real or not), it suppresses your testosterone production to save energy. 

What is a “danger” to your HPG axis⁴

1. Calorie Deficits: Significant calorie deficits decrease your testosterone levels and increase SHBG, further reducing your free testosterone levels.
2. Sleep deprivation: Decreases your testosterone levels, as most of your testosterone is produced while you’re sleeping.
3. Long-term stress: Activates areas in your brain to produce cortisol, which suppresses HPG axis testosterone signalling in your brain (not your gonads). 
4. Long-term inflammation: Certain inflammatory substances that are elevated if you’re obese, have a poor diet, have some diseases or are ill, which go on to suppress your HPG axis and testosterone production. 
5. Excessive exercise: Some exercise can boost your testosterone levels. But too much exercise (sometimes referred to as “overtraining syndrome”) can disrupt your HPG axis, decreasing your testosterone levels.

Task: Avoid suppressing your HPG system

1. Are you eating enough? Compare what you're actually eating to what you should be eating. You can use an online calorie counter (like this one) to estimate how much you should be eating. 
2. Are you sleeping enough? How many nights did you get at least 7 hours of sleep last week? Less than 3 nights or 2 nights in a row will probably affect your HPG axis function. 
3. Are you training too much? Over 12 hours of aerobic or endurance-type exercise a week may be suppressing your testosterone levels. Try to keep training to under 8 hours a week. 
4. Are you stressed? Are your stress levels consistently above a 7 out of 10? If so, this may be suppressing your HPG axis function. 

Lesson 3: Testosterone is made while you sleep

Research shows that one week of 5-hour sleep reduced testosterone levels by 10-15% in healthy young men. Chronic sleep restriction (less than 6 hours a night for months or years) can suppress testosterone by 20-30%; this is equivalent to ageing 10–15 years⁵.

Your testosterone circadian rhythm: 

Your HPG axis and testosterone levels peak while you sleep (around 02:00-06:00) and they increase again in the late-afternoon/early-evening (16:00-20:00), dipping in-between these peaks.  

This rhythm exists for evolutionary reasons. The early morning peaks in testosterone prepare you for the physical and mental demands of the day, mating behaviour, and competition. The evening decline then allows you to rest, recover and get off to sleep more easily.

When you’re sleeping, growth hormone is also released, and inflammation and cortisol decrease, which keeps your HPG axis functioning properly. So, restricting sleep to under 6 hours reduces the time window when your body makes the most testosterone. Consistently poor sleep also increases cortisol, inflammation, appetite, hunger and other "catabolic" hormones, which suppress your HPG axis function. 

Quality vs. quantity of sleep

Less than 6 hours of sleep a night lowers testosterone. But there seems to be no additional benefits to sleeping over 9 hours. So, 7–9 hours is probably the optimal amount of sleep you need a night.

That said, the duration of your sleep isn’t everything — the quality of the sleep also matters. Frequently waking up at night, night shift-work, irregular sleep patterns, and sleep apnoea can also decrease your testosterone levels, even if you’re technically sleeping for long enough.  

Task: Sleep optimisation protocol

1. Timing:
   1. Calculate when you need to wake up and go to bed early enough to get 7-9 hours of sleep.
   2. Lights out at that time, no exceptions. You should aim to get into a pattern where you can wake up at the right time without an alarm.
2. Light:
   1. When you wake up, open the curtains immediately or go outside to bask in natural sunlight.
   2. Two to three hours before bed, keep all lighting to a minimum (including screens).
   3. When you go to sleep, make sure your bedroom is as dark as possible (blackout curtains, no LED lights, use an eye mask if needed). 
3. Temperature:
   1. You sleep better when slightly cool (not cold), a bedroom temperature of around 65-68°F / 18-20°C is generally recommended.
   2. Time evening showers and/or exercise to allow your body to return to normal temperatures. 
4. Routines:
   1. Avoid caffeine 6 hours before bedtime
   2. Avoid large meals for 3 hours before bed
   3. Avoid vigorous exercise 2 hours before bed
   4. Avoid alcohol for 2 hours before bed. 

Sleep: The non-negotiable factor

You cannot supplement, train, or biohack your way around poor sleep. Sleep is the bedrock of testosterone (pardon the pun). Seven hours of quality sleep produces more testosterone than any (legal) supplement stack does.

If you’re not sleeping enough at the moment, fixing this issue will have the biggest impact on your testosterone levels. More than anything else in this article.

Lesson 4: Eat your way to higher testosterone

An uncomfortable truth: That aggressive low-fat, low-calorie diet that you're following to see your abs is probably tanking your testosteone levels⁶. A “calorie deficit”, consuming fewer calories than you expend, is a quick way to suppress the HPG axis function, often just within a few days. 

In addition to your testosterone levels, there are many other hormonal and metabolic changes in your body when you're not eating enough food. This is a hard-wired coordinated “survival response”, which makes you feel terrible, kills your libido, motivation, and makes building muscle nearly impossible. Your body is trying to “survive”, not “thrive”, and unfortunately, having an optimally functioning testosterone system is a privilege, not a right. 

Nutrition

Dietary fat supports testosterone production, particularly the intake of saturated and monounsaturated fats. Testosterone is made from cholesterol. So, you need to eat enough fat. However, eating too much fat doesn’t mean you’ll make more testosterone; in fact, it may decrease it.

So, not too much and not too little. About 25-30% of your total calories from fat is the general recommendation, with emphasis on saturated fats (e.g., eggs, red meat, and dairy), monounsaturated fats (e.g., olive oil, avocado, nuts), and omega-3 fats from oily fish. Seed oils, high in omega-6, don’t seem to support any increase in testosterone levels.    

Protein and carbohydrate, by themselves, don’t directly influence testosterone levels. Just make sure you’re eating adequate, recommended amounts to maintain general health and support your daily energy demands.  

Task: Calculate your dietary needs

1. Use a calculator to make sure you are eating enough calories and macronutrients. This calculator is a pretty good place to start.
2. Assess your current intake for 3 days (including one weekend day). Are you massively short in calories or any macronutrients? 
3. Clarify your goals. If you’re looking to lose fat or gain muscle whilst optimising your testosterone system, you'll need to adjust your targets.
4. Re-assess after a month. Monitor your body weight, waist circumference, how you're feeling, your energy, libido, training or work performance. If you’re struggling, you may have to readjust your calories or macros. 

Practical reality

You cannot be in an aggressive caloric deficit and optimise testosterone levels at the same time. However, if you’re currently overweight/obese, losing fat may be more beneficial for your testosterone levels in the long run. So, prioritise healthy body weight and body composition first before optimising your testosterone levels through your diet.

Some useful rules include keeping calorie deficits minimal (e.g., under 20%). Limit strict diets to a few months, and you should "re-feed" or take a break from the diet strategically (e.g., for a few days every 2-4 weeks). Ensure you’re eating enough fat from whole food sources. 

For most men, maintaining lean-ish body composition year-round with moderate body fat (10-15%) while eating at or slightly above maintenance produces better testosterone outcomes than yo-yo-ing between shredded-but-depleted and fat.

Lesson 5: The micronutrients that matter for testosterone

Because of the marketing, you're probably aware of many products claiming to “boost testosterone naturally". But, nearly all of these products are overpriced placebos⁷. 

However, several nutrients can genuinely affect your testosterone system function; either directly acting as "cofactors" in “steroidogenesis”, or indirectly by removing obstacles that suppress your HPG axis function.