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Comment by jvanderbot | Hacker News Reader

My personal experience with monitoring free testosterone matches this. Though I've never undergone treatments.

For example, I only feel like myself when I'm regularly boxing (competitive, high volume anaerobic+aerobic, physically intense), spending time alone and outside, adhering to a higher fat diet/lower carb diet, occasionally blowing off work to do something else, and so on.

What I take from this is that men respond well to testosterone. There are a number of testosterone boosting activities and foods that might help, including acute treatment when necessary. Glad this is getting recognition.

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"For example, I only feel like myself when I'm regularly boxing (competitive, physically intense), spending time alone and outside, adhering to a higher fat diet/lower carb diet, occasionally blowing off work to do something else, and so on."

These are supposed to increase your testosterone levels?

Yes..they do a great deal; outside activities that get you sun (Vitamin D) and the high fat (good fats not lard) give your body the raw material to make T. Exercise boosts it as well as anything involving moderate levels of fear/stress. Along with sleep.

Excellent point! I had forgotten about vitamin D as well.

I live in Canada, I'm basically a Vitamin D junkie. Otherwise I get depressed during November/December.

Anecdotally, as an aggregate, my testosterone levels increase during phases of my life when I do those things.

I suppose I am now required to look up references to support the following statements:

1. exercise without over-training boosts testosterone (maybe some middling results here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00441300 ) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S174360951...

2. Reducing stress increases testosterone http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2000-13208-002

3. High fat diet increases testosterone https://www.nature.com/articles/4500825 (and probably ref 33)

4. I should have also mentioned that my lifestyle often includes less drinking during these phases https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article-abstract/74/5/957/2875...

5. That i socalize more and skip work more as well. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00441-005-0006-2

and that taken as a whole, I feel more like myself, increasing self esteem, which may itself help. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136466131...

Or you can look for pop blogs. https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/how-to-increase-test...

But of course, I just googled around for a bit to find one-off papers. It's a good starting point if I wanted to write a research paper on it, but I really don't. I wanted to provide my own experience, and have.

Quite interesting, thanks!

Diet and exercise do wonders. Best drug by far. Every other remedy is pain management.

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