The Best Testosterone Boosters for Men.
Testosterone levels naturally decline as you age. While testosterone therapy can be an option, it has disa`dvantages as well. Some older men on testosterone therapy could face increased cardiac risks. You may be interested in natural testosterone boosters instead. Many over-the-counter (OTC) products make claims, but there is limited research to back them up.
Before you buy a testosterone booster, learn about the role of testosterone and the risks and benefits of testosterone treatments.
The Role of Testosterone in Men
Testosterone is the major sex hormone in men. It affects bodily functions including:
Sperm production
Sex drive
Muscle strength and size
Deepening voice during puberty
Bone growth and strength
Growth of facial, body, and pubic hair in puberty
Development of the penis and testes
May play a role in hair loss later in life
Testosterone may play other important roles that we don’t know about yet. Your ideal level of testosterone is difficult to calculate. Levels can vary over time and even over a single day.
Testosterone declines with age, but it is a slow decline. Testosterone decreases 1% to 2% per year. More than 33% of men over 45 may have lower than normal testosterone levels.
Symptoms of low testosterone may include:
Loss of muscle mass
Increased breast size
Irritability
Depression
Difficulty concentrating
Loss of body hair
Hot flashes
Low libido
Erectile dysfunction
Other Natural Ways to Boost Testosterone
Several lifestyle interventions may boost your testosterone and better your overall health, including:
Exercise. Exercise can increase your testosterone. The best types of exercise to increase your testosterone levels are weightlifting and high-intensity interval training (HIIT). Lifting heavy weights is the best exercise to increase testosterone levels.
Building muscle mass triggers the body to produce testosterone. By contrast, endurance exercises like cycling for hours or running marathons can actually reduce your testosterone level.
Maintain a healthy weight. If you are obese, you are four times more likely to benefit from testosterone replacement than non-obese men. Obesity is directly linked to low testosterone levels. Aging 10 years increases your odds of having low testosterone by 36%, but a 4-inch increase in waist size may increase your chances by up to 75%.
Get enough sleep. Sleep is essential for your good health. A consistent lack of good-quality sleep can interfere with your natural testosterone production. It can also lead to weight gain. This can further reduce your testosterone production.
Reduce stress. Stress causes your levels of cortisol to rise. Cortisol is a hormone that works against your testosterone. When your cortisol rises, your testosterone falls. Increased cortisol levels can also cause you to overeat. This can increase your weight and further reduce your testosterone.
Clearly, stress can reduce your testosterone level in several ways. Find positive ways to manage stress, and you may naturally increase your testosterone.
Another Alternative Testosterone Boosters
Natural bodybuilders have an even greater need to keep their testosterone levels in optimal condition. When you are not relying on synthetic test (in one form or another), it is crucial to manage your lifestyle and diet to help your body produce as much natural testosterone as it can.
The amount of sleep you get, the food you eat, the beers you drink … those and a host of other factors will determine how well your body produces the all important hormone, and how much if it your body is able to use to pile on the muscle.
Love them or hate them, natural test boosting products are a multi million dollar industry. The market is flooded with them. Some are good, some are bad and some are downright ugly. How do you tell the good ones from the bad?. It’s not easy, we’ve put together a guide to help point you in the right direction, and recommended the best ones.
Full Disclosure
To carry on our previous point, we expect to see the form of an ingredient listed on the supplement facts panel on the product. Without knowing that it’s impossible to know how effective the product is going to be. For the majority of test boosting products you’ll stumble across on Amazon, this information will not be on the supplements fact panel.
And that should cause alarm bells to ring.
Not because the product will be dangerous, but because it will be ineffective. The highly bioavailable forms of ingredients are more expensive. So when supplement companies have invested in a more expensive (and better) product, they will want to tell you that.
When they have skimped and used cheap ingredients, they want you to miss that when you read the label.
Have you ever asked a supplement manufacturer to provide the certificates showing you that what they say is in their product is actually in the product (and nothing else)? Or show you the testing results for the batch you are buying, to ensure that there are no levels of harmful heavy metals or microbiological pathogens in the product?
Try it!
Proprietary Blends
If ‘neglecting’ to give full information on ingredients on the label wasn’t bad enough, proprietary blends take lack of disclosure to a whole new level.
Andro-Matrix-ZX48, Test-Scicomplex-404 etc. When you see faux-scientific made up names for proprietary compounds on a label then that’s your cue to exit stage left.
It’s an FDA loophole for US products that allows companies to bundle together all the ingredients and only give the dosage of the overall blend. Companies using it claim they do it to protect their intellectual property. Which is complete BS, they do it so they can reduce the levels of the expensive ingredients to trace levels and bump up the levels of the cheap filler ingredients.
Keep the manufacturing cost at rock bottom levels, sell your useless product cheap in high volumes. Make a load of money. Retire to Key West.
Are you happy putting unknown quantities of supplement ingredients into your body? You shouldn’t be. Do not automatically trust these supplement manufacturers, even the big guys. History has unfortunately taught us that you should tread warily and being cynical could keep you safe.
Manufacturing Standards
This is important. Again, there’s more to this than meets the eye. You’ll see ‘Produced in cGMP Premises’ on the sales copy form many products.
cGMP stands for ‘certificate of Good Manufacturing Practice’. It means the facilities used to make the product can insure, amongst other things, that;
- There are no risks of cross-contamination with ingredients used in a different product.
- The mixed ingredients have been blended so that the variance in what is contained in each capsule is minimal.
- Storage and handling of ingredients is such that it will not degrade their quality.
Just being ‘cGMP’ isn’t the whole story though, as there are numerous different certifying bodies able to accredit facilities with cGMP status. And some are more exacting (and more expensive) than others.
Top Product
Centrapeak
First up, Centrapeak passes all of our tests with flying colors;
- Formula – Rock solid
- Disclosure – Full, ingredients, dosages, forms
- Quality – GMP Certified by UL and NPA
They have explained their formula and the research behind the ingredients used, the dosages, the forms – it’s all there in detail on their ingredients page;
What makes it special?
Centrapeak has a unique twist, all the ingredients have solid clinical pedigrees as established test boosters – but also have volumes of research behind them showing they help improve mood and subjective wellbeing, and reduce stress.
So it doesn’t just boost your test levels, it makes you feel better too.
As our readers who have spent years in the gym will know, this is crucial. As the years go on, keeping the motivation levels high is the bedrock of any outstanding physique – if you are not in the gym at all, you’re not pushing any weight.
When you are full of energy, feeling great and itching to unleash that testosterone in the gym, it’s a recipe for success.
