Men's Hormone Health Guidance

There is no unified "gold standard" for the health of male hormones (the core is testosterone), and there is no need to rely on messy supplements or extreme fitness deadlift values. As long as you are within the clinical reference range corresponding to your age and do not have persistent fatigue, loss of sexual desire, abnormal hair loss and other pathological symptoms, you don't need to worry about it at all. You only need to adjust your work, rest, diet, and mood according to your own metabolic rhythm.

I met a 28-year-old programmer buddy a while ago, and while scrolling through short videos he came across a bunch of content that said "low testosterone means you are less manly" and "30-year-olds who have less testosterone than high school students will suffer from premature aging." I secretly bought three or four kinds of Internet celebrity testicle-stimulating supplements and took them for two months. First, I broke out in acne on my chest and back, and then I had insomnia all night. I went to the hospital for a hormone check, and my testosterone level was nearly a quarter lower than before taking the supplements. In fact, this kind of "numerical anxiety" is quite common. What's interesting is that the two groups of people now have completely different opinions on testosterone regulation: veterans in the fitness circle firmly believe that heavy squats and a high-fat diet can fully increase testosterone, but most clinicians in the endocrinology department believe that as long as there are no pathological symptoms, it is not a problem for the value to fluctuate within the corresponding age range, and there is no need to mess around.

If you really want to dig out objective data, the 2023 updated guidelines of the American Society of Endocrinology have long since removed the unified testosterone passing line and changed it to a reference range stratified by age: 18-30 years old is 8.2-35.9nmol/L, 31-50 years old is 7.1-29.5nmol/L, and above 50 years old is considered normal if it falls above 5.4nmol/L. To put it bluntly, this thing is like the battery life of a mobile phone. When you are 20 years old, it can be used for two days with a full charge. When you are 40 years old, one charge a day is enough. If you have to force yourself to maintain the full charge state of a 20-year-old at 40 years old, you have to rely on "fast charging" that damages the battery to achieve it. The gain outweighs the loss.

Speaking of this, some people may want to ask, are all the various testicle-stimulating methods promoted on the Internet really an IQ tax? Not all, scorers. I have a friend who has been practicing bodybuilding for 6 years. In order to gain body fat during the competition season, he ate boiled chicken breasts and broccoli for three months, and his body fat was reduced to 9%. At that time, he could not even climb the third floor until he was out of breath. When he went to check his testosterone, he lost almost one-third. Later, he resumed eating two handfuls of almonds a day and braised pork belly twice a week, and the values ​​returned in two months. Some people also say that zinc and magnesium supplements can promote testicles. This statement is correct or not - current clinical studies have only confirmed that people who are deficient in zinc and magnesium will have a significant rebound in testosterone after supplementation. If you have a balanced daily diet, including seafood, lean meat, and whole grains, the extra zinc and magnesium tablets are at most a psychological comfort. If you supplement too much, it will increase the burden on the kidneys.

Oh, by the way, there is another pitfall that many people have. They think that as long as they sleep for 8 hours, everything will be fine. In fact, this is not the case at all. I once met a 35-year-old salesman who drank with customers until two or three in the morning and didn't get up until noon the next day. Calculated, he slept for 8 hours a day, but he always felt heavy and unmotivated. He took a lot of cordyceps and ginseng supplements to no avail. Later, he changed to a job where he didn't have to socialize. No matter how late he slept the day before, he always got up at 7 a.m. and slept at his desk for 20 minutes at noon. Within two months, he said he was back to a much better state. The core reason is that testosterone secretion follows the rhythm of daylight. If you lie down to sleep when cortisol is supposed to rise in the morning, the rhythm of the entire hormone axis is disrupted, and it is useless no matter how long you sleep.

What many people don’t know is that mood has a much greater impact on testosterone than you think. Last month, a young man who just failed the postgraduate entrance examination came to me and said that he had no desire for the past six months and always felt tired. He suspected that his testosterone was low. After checking, he found that the value was in the middle of the 20-year-old age group. There was no problem at all. It was just that long-term anxiety caused continuous high levels of cortisol, which directly suppressed the secretion of testosterone. In this case, it doesn't matter what supplements you take. First, run 3 kilometers two or three days a week. Don't stay in your room at night and watch emo videos. Go out to have a barbecue with friends and chat. After you relax, your hormone levels will naturally return to normal.

As a reminder, if you really experience fatigue, loss of libido, or unexplained hair loss that lasts for more than three months, check that your testosterone is indeed lower than the lower limit of the reference value for your age. Don’t buy supplements blindly. See an endocrinologist first to investigate the cause. Only people who have been diagnosed with pathological hypotestosterone, such as Klinefelter syndrome and testicular damage, need to undergo hormone replacement therapy under the guidance of a doctor. Normal people who use exogenous testosterone indiscriminately will cause the secretion function of their own testicles to atrophy. After stopping, the testosterone level will drop even lower than before, which is purely a loss outweighing the gain.

To put it bluntly, the matter of male hormones is really not as mysterious as what is said on the Internet. "The higher the testosterone, the more manly you will be" is all a gimmick created by businessmen. You have enough energy during the day, you don't feel sleepy when working, and you are in good health, which is much more important than the numbers on the test sheet. Don't mess around with the so-called "manliness", but ruin your body. You really can't do it.