How I Keep Testosterone Levels 800 at 37

Podcast Transcript

Jerred: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast, Jerred Moon here. Coming on with a quick podcast today talking about how I recently optimized my testosterone levels to maybe help you be able to do the same. Now, I will preface this with saying I typically have stayed away from these type of podcasts because I'm just one person.

What I have done. Doesn't really matter, right? It's, it's just me. It's, it's an n equals one experiment. So I don't know if it's helpful for other people. So originally, like I don't normally come to the podcast talking about my blood work or my specific result when it comes to fitness or training or anything like that, because I'm, it's just me.

I, it's just one person. But all I really did to try and optimize my testosterone levels were a lot of the basic things that are out there. And, and so I'll talk about what I did in, in the situation that I was in. But I was definitely feeling off, this was about two years ago. I was just not feeling myself.

Like I just, everything was, was like I, I felt like I had a lot of brain fog. I wasn't as motivated as normal. I. And I immediately blamed it on low T, right? Without even taking any blood tests. I was like, I just thought like, okay, well maybe, well, you're getting older. Maybe you had low testosterone. Now, ill preface this as well with my wife and I had lived in a house previously.

It was, it was our house that got remodeled. There was a bunch of mold that we found. We were exposed to it during the remediation process. And to be honest, that screwed up. Both of us for a little while, like blood work-wise. And so what happened was I went and had my blood work done during all of this, like when I was feeling off and I wanted to see where my testosterone levels were at, and I think I got, it was in the high six hundreds, low seven hundreds was my free testosterone or my total testosterone.

And my free testosterone was kind of on the, on the lower end. I don't remember the exact amount. And I was working with a functional med med doc at the time, and she was like, well, this is still like, okay, this is still pretty good. And, and I'm telling you this because someone might hear like, oh, you're at, let's just call it 700.

Like, I, I wish I was at 700. Some people would wish they, they'd wanna be at that level. Maybe you're at 400 or something like that. But testosterone is very. Especially like total testosterone and free testosterone. It is very independent of like you as a person, right? It, it just goes back to what's the best diet, like the best diet's, the one that you stick to, the be the best diet is how your body reacts to it, what, what results you're seeing.

And that's the same here as well. And the only reason I'm telling you all of this is because I'm throwing around specific numbers, because they're my numbers, but. I think everyone should be getting blood work done at least once a year. More frequently if you're trying to change something specifically and you're implementing some sort of protocol to fix it.

So when I say specific number, just know when I was at 700, I was feeling off. Or when I was at high 600, I was feeling off. I was feeling different than normal. I could just tell something was off. And another thing that we found out in my blood work that was that my SHBG sex hormone binding globulin was high, which was causing my free testosterone to be lower.

And I'm not an expert on any of this stuff, just so everyone knows. I hired a functional med doc in my local area to do the blood draws to go over like. How all these things work in conjunction with one another, because I've never really nerded out on the blood work. I just like to get it done frequently so I can know where I'm optimal.

So anyway, she was like, Hey, this, these, these levels aren't necessarily bad. They are different for you. But she didn't have a lot of recommendation on like, anything that we could do. She's like, yeah, yeah, I don't know. Maybe could be getting older, um, whatever. And I was not okay with that. I was like, no, I, I just, I don't feel right.

Like I really want to double down on trying to get my testosterone levels up. I really don't wanna take TRT. Like if you've heard me on this podcast, like I wanna save TRT for much, much later on in life, decades from now. I hope that way. I. It. That's just something I can do at that point in time, is not something I wanna do in my thirties or forties right now.

So anyway, what did I do to raise my testosterone? 'cause I just got tested recently and my free testosterone is in the upper, upper mid range and my total testosterone is 8 44. So quite a significant increase in about an eight month time period. And all I did was double down on the things that I knew would work.

Now the, like I said, the reason I'm sharing these is because these are also backed by science. Like if you, you can pull up just study after study of like the basics of how a dude could increase his testosterone. So here's what I doubled down on sleep. I. I have always found sleep very important. If you've been listening to podcasts for a long time, I just made sure that I was getting a lot of sleep.

I tried to cut out the super early morning, wake up, and I just focused a whole lot on sleep, and I honestly think that that is, that moves the needle like 70% of the way. That's just my own opinion. No science there, but that was one of the big things that I did. I focused on sleep, making sure I was getting enough deep.

Quality sleep, making sure the room is really dark, the room is really cold, going to bed and waking up at the same time, getting an opportunity to have at least eight hours in bed, if not eight and a half or nine hours in bed, which would put my sleep time somewhere between seven to eight hours most nights.

So that's what I was doing for sleep. Now, supplementation, I don't know how much this really moves the needle on specifically, but I did make sure that I was consistently taking zinc, magnesium, boron, and Vitamin D. Now you can work with a provider to find out exactly how much you were taking, but I was not taking each one of these as an individual supplement.

I just found a good multivitamin that had zinc, magnesium, boron in it, vitamin DI did supplement with separately. I just took a vitamin D and a DK supplement, and it also raised my vitamin D levels was another thing. It raised my vitamin D levels quite a bit. I think when I had originally tested, I was in the.

30 high thirties for vitamin D and now I'm like in the mid fifties, which is good for me 'cause I. Don't get a ton of sun exposure. I burn really easy. I'm pretty fair skinned, so it's also easy for me to get vitamin D, but I'll, at the same time, I'm often trying to cover myself from not getting sunburns, those kind of things.

So it's always like this back and forth. So anyway, those were the supplements that I was taking. Zinc, magnesium, boron, and Vitamin D. And I did specifically mention that the vitamin D supplement was an A, D, and K. So it had vitamin A, vitamin D, and vitamin. K in it. That was off the recommendation actually from my wife.

She was like, Hey, I've just used this one before to raise my vitamin D levels, and it was very effective and it worked really, really well. And I think that that's a huge factor there. I've experimented with just zinc and B boron before, and I didn't see a huge needle move there, but I just made sure that those things are there.

So zinc, magnesium bore on vitamin D. Next stress reduction. There's only so much I can do in my life to reduce stress, but I do know that that's a big part of it. So the only thing I actually did to try and reduce stress was I didn't actually change much in my life. I just tried to put in more mindful moments throughout my day.

For me that specifically breath work, I like to do box breathing, which is five second inhale, five second, pause, five second exhale, five second, pause. And you just do that on repeat for me. It's just a reset. I try to do it. Once a day just to try to calm down, try to like, make sure, 'cause sometimes I don't feel stressed out, but after I do that, I, I can just totally tell like, oh wow, that, that brought down my anxiety a little bit or whatever.

Even if I didn't feel like I was stressed or anxious, it just felt like I, it, it helped a lot. So that's something I did add in. Now for me specifically, you don't need to add this. I know there's been a lot on the internet about it. But I added Tonga Ali. Tonga Ali as a supplement. You can get this from a lot of different places.

I specifically got it from Momentous and I wasn't doing it because I wanted it to necessarily raise my testosterone, like directly what? I had specific blood work that said my sh BG sex. Hormone binding GLO globulin was high, and I was reading some articles online that this could spec specifically bring it down.

My functional med doc agreed with me. So I did start supplementing with that, taking it once a day, and I was, and I'll be a hundred percent honest with you, I was not a very consistent, I was consistent for like a month or two, and then after that I was taking sporadically. I'd forget for two days and then take it for two days, and so on and so forth.

So I was sporadically taking that. Over the last six or seven months, and it did help, but I did it to lower that SHBG, because if your SHBG is too high, from what I've been told, then it doesn't necessarily affect your total testosterone. It affects your free testosterone, and they're both really important, right?

It's like you have to look at both and, and I was able to optimize both on this most recent set of labs. Now, other things that I took into account outside of that was I, I. Don't really enjoy doing caloric deficits. I stayed away from those to the best of my ability while also still doing fasting. But I just made sure I hit my calories every day.

I would make sure that I get a moderate to high amount of protein every single day. If you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you know I'm not big on like getting, I'm 185 pound male. I'm not big on getting 185 pound a hundred grams of protein or 190, that, that just is very difficult for me.

My current lifestyle with my kids' schedule and everything else, and I can sit around and make excuses, but I just, I get like one 60 to one 70 and that's typically fine for me. So that's typically what I shoot for, and that seems to work out for me. So that's why I say moderate to high. For some people that's high.

For some people that's moderate. I cut my endurance training almost out completely. Um, I had been doing a lot if, again, if you listen to podcast, I trained for ultramarathon, not that. And I had kept up some of that. I stopped running for a while after that 'cause it's burnt out. Then I picked it back up and now I just stay away from it and I'm not.

It's not specifically because I think it just crushes your testosterone. I just wasn't feeling good doing a lot of endurance training. I still do runs, but I typically only do two to three miles and then every, anything else I do endurance wise, I I'll do on a bike or I'll try to split it up with like some mixed modal training like we do in garage gym athlete, all that kind of stuff.

So really, I did specifically try and limit my endurance training, and then I brought back more high intensity training, which I had strayed away from to some degree. And it wasn't that it. I just wasn't doing it like it'd be in the programming, something that could be higher intensity, and I had this back injury that's just kind of like left me shellshocked on a lot of things a few years ago, and so I just have never brought like that true 100% intensity, like in a Meet Yourself Saturday workout that we do, a garage gym athlete.

I just wasn't bringing that level of intensity for a while, but I brought that intensity back. I was like, you know what, let's just. Just go for it, like, and so I brought back a lot of intensity, typically one to two times per week. Nothing crazy. I just wanted to make sure I was getting some of that higher intensity, like interval style training because it's just proven to re increase your overall testosterone levels.

And that's about it. As you can see there, the main things that I did were just the basics, basic supplementation, basic sleep guidelines, basic dietary guidelines, just all the basic stuff. I didn't do anything crazy. I didn't take any crazy supplements. I didn't do anything that, you know, off the charts, wild or insane, and it did drastically help me optimize my testosterone levels, and especially given my age and everything else, I'm pretty happy with the numbers.

I'm sure they could be higher. Some people might, might think that you could be higher, some people are lower, whatever. Like I said, it's very individualized, like where do you feel like yourself? That's why I think everyone needs to have their own baseline and do their own blood test. But I, I find that between 800 and 900, that's typically where I'm feeling pretty good.

Like I'm feeling like myself, if you will. And I'm not, I don't think I've ever tested above 900 in all the years I've been doing blood work. And only recently had I ever tested below 800 and that was that more recent, I was like, I gotta do something about this. So anyway, here's the deal. If you are trying to optimize these things, what you have to go back and look at is just your basic lifestyle guidelines, okay?

The, the EEO three elements, the stuff that we have in our app, the all the basics I think are really important. And if you could focus on all of those things now, focusing on all of those things, I'm not gonna lie to you, is a lot harder than taking TRT. You could just go get a needle. You can get it from basically a hundred different websites right now.

Go, go inject some TRT, and if that's what you wanna do, that's your decision. And that's a hundred. That's a hundred percent. Okay. I don't care. But there is the other side of this where if you can just do some very basic things, you might actually be able to optimize your hormone levels without having to rely on TRT or anything else.

And so you just need to focus on the basics. Now I'm saying that as like. I know this is an in in equals one experiment, right? There's just me, just my my levels. But when I looked at the research in preparation for this episode, it's just funny because like that's everything I did is just basically what, these are blanket recommendations.

It's just the basic stuff. This is like what's proven and a lot of different scientific studies to help raise your testosterone levels for dudes. And that's all I did. I just did the basics. But it was the consistency in doing all of those things every single day. Except for that Tong Cat Ali, like I was pretty consistent in everything else.

All the other supplementations, the protein, the sleep, the stress reduction, not hitting ca caloric deficits, like all these things were top of mind for me every single day. And I had to make sure that I was working these, these habits. So if you are looking to. Optimize your hormone levels. Start here.

Start with the basics, but then track everything. Track every single thing that you're doing. That way, whether or not you're actually doing it, like the, the numbers don't lie, right? The numbers don't lie. If you can actually track all these things and do it for six months and have a blood work. Draw before and a draw after those six months and really see what moves the needle.

That's what I recommend because if you just have one bad draw, you should definitely get another draw to see if it's consistent. 'cause also these things can fluctuate throughout the day and then also see if, if. You are doing the basic things over that six months when you start to actually track each and every single thing.

And how consistent are you, because that's the real kicker here is it's very hard to be consistent across all these things. And I mentioned like I. I admitted, I'm like, Hey, I was not consistent in, in taking ton at Ali, and the reason I wasn't is because I don't want to always take that. It's, it's a fringe supplement in my opinion.

Like I'm not a hundred percent sure of the, of the safety profile and everything. I was okay with taking it for now, but I'm not gonna continue to take it. So I, I wasn't really fully bought in on that one. Being something I wanna do. And so having said that, my mind wasn't fully in it. I wasn't consistent, but everything else I was crazy consistent with.

And it drastically helped. And now I'm gonna cut that out and see if anything else changes. But if you can be consistent in the basics and you're fully sold on like, Hey, these things will work. You just gotta track, track 'em and try 'em out for a long period of time, you will see some results. Because I know that this has worked not just for me, but for a lot of people who are trying to optimize their testosterone levels.

So if you're looking to do the same, give some of these habits a try and let me know how, how it works. But that's it for this one, for all of our Garage gym athletes out there. Thanks for sticking around doing the training. Listen to the podcast. Really appreciate you. If anybody wants to be a part of the training, go to garage gym athlete.com.

Sign up for a free trial. We'd love to have you there. That's it for this. We wanna remember, if you don't kill Comfort, comfort will kill you.