Maximizing Testosterone Naturally (Workouts, Foods, Vitamins/Herbs, Sex, etc)

[WilliamSmith]

Let's talk testo-boosting using natural methods.
If you're a man, you NEED high testosterone levels, the higher the better as long as you max T levels using healthy and natural means.
(We can also talk other methods like "TRT" if you guys want, which are not necessarily unhealthy, unlike pumping roids, but are a little iffier vs sticking with fully natural activities, foods, herbs, vitamins, etc.)

Edit: @Lucas88 you and I talked about this stuff a bit over email so I'll tag you here.

I'm starting off 1st thing with some stuff I got on Vitamin D3 and K2, and a couple others I got from these books:

Vitamin D3 is something I've discovered that's the closest acting thing to a "miracle" supplement, and it's been proven to give an impressive testoboost in studies of men who might have had a deficiency, so let's get into this:

I take D3 gummies which only cost about $0.07 each and am taking 6-10,000 IUs per day (the ones I have are 25 micrograms = 1,000 IUs each), and I'm really impressed how much better it's making me feel much faster than I expected!
(I even was taken by surprise by feeling like I'd had some kind of miracle health potion only a couple hours after taking my 1st 4,000 IUs or so, though that was mostly a 1-off occurrence, but I'm pretty sure I'm experiencing an overall higher sense of well-being consistently from upping my D3 intake.)

That Caleb Jones guy who has written some solid "men's lifestyle design" books including "The Unchained Man" (LOL, nice title) recommended D3 and said he takes about 4,000 IUs a day and he experienced similarly surprising excellent results in improved wellbeing, mental focus, and higher T-levels (since he said he actually pays to get his measured regularly to make sure he has at least as high T levels as a 25-30 year old man, heheh).

Here is what he said about D3:

"There is one vitamin that is particularly important to a man and his
energy levels, and that’s vitamin D. Many people don’t get enough
sunlight and/or live a sedentary lifestyle, both of which sap vitamin D
from your system. Vitamin D also helps improve testosterone levels which
are crucial. Get a blood test to determine your vitamin D levels, and if
you’re low, start taking vitamin D daily. Consult a doctor on specifics.

I have pale skin and live in a part of the world where unimpeded
sunlight isn’t very common. A few years back I took a blood test that
indicated my vitamin D levels were extremely low. I started taking 4,000
IU of vitamin D daily, and within a few weeks I was shocked at how much
it improved my mood and daily focus. My testosterone levels also
improved. I can’t recommend vitamin D enough."

I personally don't want to deal with doctors or get a blood test so I just outright started using D3 without testing, and it obviously worked great for me too.

More on this in a minute...

[WilliamSmith]

More on the wonders of Vitamin D3:
Tim Ferris who wrote the famous 4 Hour Workweek (highly recommended to anyone interesting in the "Happier Abroad" theme, btw, but I'll stay on topic here), wrote another book called the "4 Hour Body" which contains lots more info on D3.
(Maybe not the catchiest book title, but NBD because it is a very solid book loaded with information about melting fat, building muscle, improving sex, and more.)

Here's some excerpts of what he said about D3 in particular in a chapter called "Sex Machine" (LOL, I like that chapter title a lot I must say):

I now use two protocols that I believe are effective for increasing both testosterone and LH, based on repeated blood test results. Neither requires needles or prescription meds.
The first is for long-term maintenance and general well-being. The second is for short-term “nitro” boosts of sex drive and testosterone. Sheer fun, in other words. The detailed rationales behind each can be found in “Sex Machine II” in the Appendices, but let’s start with the nutshell version.

PROTOCOL #1: LONG-TERM AND SUSTAINED

Fermented cod liver oil + vitamin-rich butter fat—2 capsules upon waking and before bed

Vitamin D3—3,000–5,000 IU upon waking and before bed (6,000–10,000 IU per day), until you reach blood levels of 55 ng/mL.

Short ice baths and/or cold showers—10 minutes each, upon waking and right before bed

Brazil nuts—3 nuts upon waking, 3 nuts before bed (see important footnote).15

( Note to any of you "T-gurl" chasing buttboys on this forum: He means the kind of "brazil nuts" that grow on trees, not Brazillian men's gonads, so don't you batty boys get any dirty ideas here if you're looking for an excuse to go to Brazil to commit unnatural acts of indecency with "pre-op T-gurls" or wtf-ever you guys called those schizos, LOL! )

PROTOCOL #2: SHORT-TERM AND FUN “NITRO BOOST”

20–24 Hours Prior to Sex
Eat at least 800 milligrams of cholesterol (example: four or more large whole eggs or egg yolks) within three hours of bedtime, the night before you want to have incredible sex.
The Wolverine intro to this chapter was partially thanks to two ¾-pound rib-eye steaks the night before, but it’s easier to stomach hard-boiled eggs. Why before bed?
Testosterone is derived from cholesterol, which is primarily produced at night during sleep (between midnight and 4:00–6:00 A.M.).

[ By the way, while there's always such thing as "too much of a good thing," based on everything I've learned he's right that cholesterol is GOOD FOR YOU and your cells need it, despite the bollocks propaganda pushed by the medical establishment. I've personally seen people undergo a significant decline in their health as a result of being lemmings and following their medical doctors' advice to cut out nearly all their healthy cholesterol their body actually needed more of, not less of. I know doctors often are well-meaning and sometimes even give good advice, but I have seen first-hand the damage caused by hysteria against healthy forms of cholesterol like you might get from egg yolks and so on. Anyway, there's more about cholesterol in this book in other chapters FYI, but I'm not posting it here. ]

Four Hours Prior to Sex
4 Brazil nuts
20 raw almonds
2 capsules of the above-mentioned fermented cod/butter combination

On this same subject, here is some vitamin test kits Ferris recommended:

ZRT At-Home Vitamin D Test Kits (www.fourhourbody.com/testd) If you spend a lot of your time indoors, there’s a good chance that you are deCcient in vitamin D. Don’t just guess what amount of vitamin D you need, as overdosing will produce side effects.

SpectraCell is a more reliable blood-based test, but ZRT’s saliva mail-in kit can give you an inexpensive estimate of your vitamin D levels. Once you’ve established your baseline, you can use sunlight, supplementation, and UV-B lamps to increase levels, following eight weeks of which you can perform an “after” test to track changes.

Personally I decided not to bother and just try out supplementation with D3 without testing levels (since you'd have to be really overdosing it hardcore to actually have negative issues arise), which worked great for me starting surprisingly soon.
Also I already know sunlight's good for you and agree with gsjackson about that (just with the caveat I mentioned about how if you're as "Nordic" a genetic phenotype as I am then you better watch out not to get too much of a good thing at once, because I have decades of xp turning myself into a lobster from too much sun when doing things like surfing or having fun at the beach, LOL).

This "SpectraCell Nutrient Test" kit, on the other hand, sounds pretty damn interesting! Ferris says he identified a selenium deficiency that tripled his tesosterone levels after correcting it. (NICE! I really like the sound of potentially increasing T levels by multiples using only healthy vitamins/supplements, as opposed to TRT). And he said another guy had B12 and D deficiences that he corrected, which made him feel so good afterward he said he felt like he was on coke, LOL!
I always valiantly resisted the admitted urge to try coke, but I have to say I'm tempted to spring for something like this even though I'm not crazy about the $300+ price tag, because that sounds !@#$in' awesome:

SpectraCell Nutrient Testing (www.fourhourbody.com/spectracell): $364 This test is used to pinpoint vitamin and micronutrient defficiencies. This test helped me identify a selenium deffciency, which—once corrected—helped me to triple my testosterone levels.
One other test subject identified enormous B-12 and vitamin D deficiencies, which—once corrected—made him so energetic that he felt like he was on cocaine. In a good way, that is. Highly, highly recommended.

[WilliamSmith]

Here is some stuff about other good testo-boosting attributes of Vitamin A and Vitamin K(2), the latter of which is important for those of us who take higher than typical dosages of daily D3:

FERRIS IN "SEX MACHINE II"

Vitamin A has a direct positive effect on testosterone production in adult testes, and
supplementation along with zinc has been shown to be as eIective as anabolic steroid administration (oxandrolone and testosterone depot) in stimulating growth and puberty, the latter defined as an increase in testicular volume of 12 milliliters or more.

Vitamin K(2) activates vitamin A- and D-dependent proteins by conferring upon them the physical ability to bind calcium. Dr. Price had no shortage of real- world examples of how K(2) amplifies the effects of A and D:
Cod liver oil, which is high in both vitamins A and D, partially corrected growth retardation and weak legs in turkeys fed a deficiency diet, but the combination of cod liver oil and high ActivatorXbutter was twice as effective.
It has also been hypothesized that vitamin D toxicity is often a result of vitamin K deficiency.
If you choose to supplement with vitamins A and D, as I do with cod liver oil and liquid vitamin D, it is important to ensure adequate K(2). Suggested sources include butter from grass-fed cows and the aforementioned lacto-fermented foods.
In practice, and as a personal example, this just means I have a few forkfuls of kimchi or sauerkraut in the morning while I wait for my scrambled eggs9 to cook in—what else?—butter from grass-fed cows.

Here is another partial excerpt from the "Sex Machine II" appended chapter. He had even more to say there and cited numerous other studies, but here's a little of it:

VITAMIN D3—6,000–10,000 IU PER DAY FOR FOUR WEEKS

One of the top sports scientists in the United States, who wished to remain anonymous, recounted a single anecdote that led me to a closer reexamination of vitamin D:
One NFL player I ended up treating had experienced debilitating shoulder pain for years and had two surgeries as a result, all to little or no eIect. Upon testing his vitamin D levels, it became clear that he was severely deficient. Six weeks after taking vitamin D, his shoulder pain was nonexistent. He had two surgeries for no reason.

Vitamin D, it turns out, does a lot more than most vitamins.
Once vitamin D is activated within the body as calcitriol, it acts as a steroid hormone and regulates more than 1,000 vitamin D–responsive genes, including those that code for specific muscle fibers. It can increase the size and number of type 2 (fast-twitch fibers, which, as indicated earlier, have the greatest potential for growth. It is one of the most overlooked “sleeper nutrients,” according to John Anderson, professor emeritus of nutrition at the University of North Carolina.

The effect can be substantial. Even at just 1,000 IU daily for two years, 48 elderly females deficient in vitamin D (as I was) tripled their percentage of fast-twitch muscle fibers and doubled fiber diameter in functional limbs. The control group experienced no gains.

Peak athletic performance appears to begin when blood levels approach those obtained through persistent full-body exposure to natural summer sun: 50 ng/ml.