As men age, it becomes increasingly difficult to regulate their hormone levels. Men also start to lose or produce less essential hormones, such as testosterone. Therefore, to maintain a healthy hormonal balance, it’s important to be proactive and find ways to support hormone production.
Balancing hormones is important to prevent weight gain, hair loss, bone and muscle issues, and more while helping you maintain your sex drive, avoid erectile dysfunction, and optimize energy levels. Read on to learn more!
Eat Enough Protein – But Not Too Much
Getting enough protein in your daily diet is important for everyone at all stages of life. Protein helps build muscle, provide energy, regulate the immune system, and support overall well-being. Adequate protein intake can help reduce appetite and support weight loss efforts – another way to help increase testosterone levels.
However, it is possible to overdo it on protein intake. A recent study found that a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet decreased total testosterone levels in men. In the study, the high-protein diets consisted of 3.4 g per kilogram of body weight per day. As an example, that’s about 300 grams of protein per day for a 200-pound (90kg) adult.
Maintain a Well-Balanced Diet
Protein is important for maintaining hormonal balance, but it’s far from the only food group to focus on. You should strive to eat a healthy, well-balanced diet containing fiber, healthy fats, fruits, vegetables, complex carbs, and fatty fish for optimal hormonal health. You should also avoid certain foods like simple carbs, processed sugars, and excessive alcohol consumption.
Watch Your Gut Health
The foods you eat can reduce the amount of healthy bacteria you have in your microbiome. Inadequate bacteria in your gut microbiome can lead to hormonal imbalances that may contribute to weight gain, muscle loss, and bone density loss.
Exercise is Essential
No matter what stage of life you’re in, exercise profoundly impacts your hormones. In addition to helping you maintain adequate blood flow, exercise also stimulates the production of key hormones.
This is especially true when it comes to insulin. Exercising reduces the amount of insulin in your body while simultaneously increasing insulin sensitivity. In addition to helping regulate your hormones, this also reduces the risk of diabetes and heart disease.
Regular exercise, particularly weight lifting and strength training, can have a significant impact on testosterone, HGH, and DHEA production.
Weight Control Supports Hormone Balance
Another reason that men experience hormone imbalance when they get older is because it becomes harder to control weight gain. And, because weight is directly linked to hormonal balance, this can quickly throw your body out of whack.
Gaining weight can also influence hormone balance because fat in the gut can convert testosterone into estrogen. As a result, overweight men often have too much estrogen and not enough testosterone, leading to even more hormone imbalances.
Sleep is Essential
Sleep has a massive impact on hormone production and balance, which is especially true when it comes to testosterone. In addition to testosterone levels increasing when you sleep, your body also uses sleep as a time to cycle and balance. Therefore, when you don’t get enough sleep, your testosterone cycle is off, and production is down.
Getting adequate amounts of sleep each night, 7 to 9 hours, leads to healthy testosterone levels. Low testosterone levels can negatively impact your quality and duration of sleep.
Stress is a Hormone Killer
As with sleep, stress and male hormones have a direct relationship. This means that the more stress and anxiety you experience, the greater the risk you are at for imbalanced testosterone levels, and vice versa.
Therefore, It’s important to find ways to destress. Whether that means going for a run, practicing yoga, or taking up mindful meditation, it’s important to find what works for you. Stress also makes it harder to work out and make healthy food choices, which can further complicate your attempts at hormonal balance.
Work With A Medical Professional
Imbalanced hormones have a wide range of causes, from diet to stress to medical conditions and more. It’s essential to visit your doctor if you aren’t feeling quite like your usual self, as hormonal imbalances caused by medical conditions can lead to serious complications if left untreated.
If you are experiencing low testosterone levels, speak to your doctor about getting a Testosterone subscription. With this service, you work with a medical professional to determine the cause of your hormone imbalance and have testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) shipped to your home if deemed appropriate. You can then self-administer TRT to ensure that you maintain optimum levels of testosterone and live your best and healthiest life.
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