Fasting And Testosterone Increases

How does fasting impact testosterone? I received this question from a reader the other day and wanted to answer it.

Question

"Jimmy, I'm a 42 year old male who would like to improve my testosterone for my next blood work in 6 months. I'm taking your He Rex natural testosterone booster but what do you think about adding fasting in?"

Answer

Start fasting once to twice per week. Here's how it works

Fasting causes your gonads to send a signal to your testes to increase LH  hormone to potentially increase testosterone. LH is a hormone sent from your testes to your brain to increase testosterone. About a 67% increase in LH hormone leading to a 160% increase in testosterone according to this study.

This is how fasting may increase low testosterone in men

During fasting autophagy is increased, this is the main benefit you see in all the fasting articles. Autophagy is the natural process of your body killing off old, wasted cells. While autophagy is increased during periods of low calorie intake, fasting seems to send the signals for autophagy to the highest levels.

Autophagy cleans out your body. There is some evidence that autophagy can remove excessive estrogen from your body which increases the favorable ratio of testosterone to estrogen. This is an another indirect way that fasting can potentially raise testosterone.

Studies also show that every time we eat, regardless of how often we eat, that our testosterone drops for roughly 3 hours.

Now I don’t want you to freak out and go crazy. For performance and muscle gain, eating the right calories is pretty darn important.

I hate to go back to the “old” research but nutrient timing is still pretty damn important. Remember, before and after you train, your body is primed to handle nutrients especially post workout. If the majority of your calories, specifically carbohydrates, is bookended around your workout.

The key takeaway is that you don’t need to be eating every 2-3 hours. This is where I favor The Physique Formula BCAAS. BCAAS have actually been shown to increase testosterone slightly but more importantly, you don’t digest BCAAS.They act directly on muscle tissue to keep your anabolic with no digestion.