Testosterone: It's on the decline, let's save ours (serious)
I've been in a few threads lately, primarily jail bait threads, where people are shocked to see how fast women are maturing these days in comparison to us males. It seems that every few years women go through puberty faster while men are going in the opposite direction and seemingly becoming emasculated. Why is this happening, you may ask? Estrogen.
[b]Xenoestrogen[/b]
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenoestrogen[/url]
One Xenoestrogen of particular importance is [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A#Health_effects]Bisphenol A[/url]. Clicking on that link will lead you to a wealth of information on it's health effects but most important to us, the sexual, see below:
[quote]A 2009 study on Chinese [b]workers in BPA factories found that workers were four times more likely to report erectile dysfunction, reduced sexual desire and overall dissatisfaction with their sex life than workers with no heightened BPA exposure.[126][/b] BPA workers were also [b]seven times more likely to have ejaculation difficulties.[/b] They were also more likely to report [b]reduced sexual function within one year of beginning employment at the factory, and the higher the exposure, the more likely they were to have sexual difficulties.[127][/b][/quote]
Oh, sh*t, right? Granted, if you work in a factory that makes BPA your exposure will obviously be at a much higher rate than someone with a "normal" job, the point I'm trying to make is that it does affect your sexual life and hormones. It would take far too much space to go into every minute detail on every toxic xenoestrogen and phytoestrogen and why we should avoid them the most we can so I'd rather talk about what we can do and instead link you to some interesting documentaries.
[url=http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-disappearing-male/]The Disappearing Male[/url]
[url=http://www.anemasculatingtruth.com/]An Emasculating Truth[/url]
I haven't seen the second but I have seen the first, which is said to be a little more informative and deals with more of the nitty gritty factors. Now for the good stuff.
[b]OK, I'm worried, what can I do to protect myself and increase my Testosterone?[/b]
According to Charles Poliquin, one of the best products us men can take to deal with foreign estrogen is DIM. Here is a snippet from a fat loss seminar he held on DIM and it's effects:
[quote]As for estrogen, DIM is a strong anti-estrogen that specifically targets the bad estrogens caused by phyto-estrogens in our environment.[/quote](see full seminar text [url=http://www.ironaddicts.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10420]here[/url]).
Other things worth mentioning are completely avoiding plastics whenever possible, unless they explicitly state BPA-free. Camelbak makes an excellent 32 oz water bottle that I use, you can find that [url=http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&safe=off&biw=1366&bih=661&q=camelbak+32+oz+water+bottle&gs_upl=89l4492l0l5344l21l16l1l0l0l1l650l5997l3-9.4.2l15l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=16572713326288209602&sa=X&ei=O8haTsyMI43irAeAobmNCw&ved=0CHAQ8wIwAg]here[/url] if you're interested. As bodybuilders chances are wherever we go we're packing a meal or two and that meal is typically in some type of plastic container; switch to glass.
Invest some money in a good water filter, although a water filter will not filter out estrogen (there are none that I am aware of) there are other toxic compounds in the water that you do not want inside of your body.
As far as diet goes, please please please, please, do not go low fat. Testosterone is heavily dependent on fat and cholesterol for production. Stock up on olive oil, coconut oil, butter (real butter), they're all good choices. Eat eggs with the yolk. Buy grass feed beef whenever possible.
You've switched out your old containers, you're eating a good amount of fat in your diet and taking DIM to help keep your estrogen in check, great. What else can you do?
Zinc; [url]http://ergo-log.com/zincgluconatetest.html[/url]
Magnesium; [url]http://ergo-log.com/magnesiumtestosterone.html[/url]
Calcium; [url]http://ergo-log.com/calciumt.html[/url]
Vitamin D3; [url]http://ergo-log.com/vitamindtestosterone.html[/url]
I have been following the advice I have just written here to the best of my ability and life is much better for me now. I sleep like a rock, get hard whenever I want (believe it or not, if you stay on this forum long enough you'll see this is a concern for many) and I am busting through plateau's at the gym. This guide is not meant to be all inclusive and I hope with help from the community we can expand it further and perhaps help restore men to what we used to be.
