"Lastly, Based on this research I feel strongly in my convictions that ‘health’ involves keeping Calories low (but not too low), keeping body fat low (but again not too low), get lots of sleep, and avoid excessive overuse of exhaustive exercise in the name of optimal muscle growth or long term health. Train consistently, and match strenuous exercise with periods of light exercise.
However, we also know that fasting for long periods (over 50 hours) starts to cause a decrease in testosterone[xiv], and fasting for more than 10 days causes significant decreases in Testosterone[xv]. So it’s not like you can just ‘not eat’ and have super high Testosterone levels.
It is interesting to note that while all the studies referenced above showed a training induced increase in testosterone, the one study that did not show an increase (and in fact a decrease) had people doing a massive amount of exercise in one workout – 50 sets combined of squats, bench press, lat pull down, and leg press. These poor guys saw a decrease in both testosterone and free testosterone that lasted for 13 hours. It would appear that training past your limits can depress testosterone levels. Just something to remember next time you decide to do a marathon weight training sessions that is well outside your typically volume of training."
Bottom line and the actually usable information from this blog post:
- This is not a blog post promoting the use of steroids. Just as there seems to be negatives in having low testosterone there are surely negatives having ultra high levels of testosterone. I’m also not suggesting testosterone is a cure all. Rather, the point is that there is a lot more to testosterone than just muscle building, and that there is a lot of exploration we could do inside of the range medicine considers ‘normal’.
- Leptin and Testosterone should BOTH be measured in men if you think you may have low testosterone. I also think that both Leptin and Testosterone need to be studied more closely for their roles in diabetes and depression.
- This research furthers my belief that ‘bulking’ is a bad idea, unless you are young (early twenties) or taking testosterone. As you may already know overeating has been purported to aid in the muscle building process in young, non-steroid using athletes. However this effect seems to decrease with time, leading to speculation that the slow build up of inflammation eventually reaches a point where muscle growth is blunted.
- Eating leads to a decrease in testosterone as does increasing levels of adiposity. During prolonged periods of overeating Inflammation goes up, Leptin goes up, testosterones goes down, and testosterone conversion to estrogen increases. Therefore unless you are young, or you’re taking testosterone, I simply do not see how prolonged periods of grossly overeating in the name of muscle is a good idea. If you are a women and considering bulking the idea also scares me a bit – lots of Leptin and Lots of testosterone worries me, but truthfully I’m not sure how big of an effect there is on women (thinking I need a women only blog post as a follow up)
- As a general rule of thumb, never bulk to the point where your waist circumference is greater than 50% of your height (men and women).
- There are definite gender differences in sex hormones, their interaction with leptin, obesity and probably food. Why does Testosterone increase in women with increasing adiposity? I have no clue, but it is a very interesting finding.
- Testosterone is involved in much more than muscle building and needs further examination in its role in diabetes, depression, cardiovascular disease, obesity and even things like leptin resistance.
- Lastly, Based on this research I feel strongly in my convictions that ‘health’ involves keeping Calories low (but not too low), keeping body fat low (but again not too low), get lots of sleep, and avoid excessive overuse of exhaustive exercise in the name of optimal muscle growth or long term health. Train consistently, and match strenuous exercise with periods of light exercise.
- If you are worried about your testosterone levels get it measured. If the results come back as ‘normal’ ask exactly what that means.
BP
