Exercise and Testosterone

This article comes from www.WebMD.com, May 2014.The author examines the ways that working out can help improve testosterone levels for men whose levels are not so low as to require medical intervention.

One of the points they mention, but do not explain, is that being overweight or obese can cause serious drops in T levels. This happens because fat cells both produce estrogen and have estrogen receptors, and the more estrogen one has, the less effective one's testosterone will be in relation.

If you want to serious improve your overall hormone levels, lose the bodyfat - do not accept it when doctors tell you 18% is healthy - it's borderline obese. And don't trust body mass index (BMI) to be a good indicator, either. You can have a BMI of 24-25 and still have 20% bodyfat.

For most men who are not athletes or competing in strength events, 12-15% bodfat is a good goal. 

One other point - the author mentions that weight training provides more return on investment for increasing T levels, but he didn't mention that long sessions of steady-state cardio can actually increase estrogen levels and reduce T levels. The best evidence of this is that endurance athletes, such as professional cyclists, are 20-50% below normal in their T levels during a 3-week race such as the Tour de France.

Does Working Out Affect Testosterone Levels?

By Eric Metcalf, MPH
WebMD Feature
Reviewed by Brunilda Nazario, MD

If you’re a man with low testosterone, exercise may help.

Doctors and fitness professionals still have a lot to learn about exercise and its effects on testosterone. Several factors besides your workout are involved.

But one thing is clear: You need to make exercise a habit in order to get the benefits.

After exercise, testosterone levels rise -- but not for long.  

"Sometimes it’s 15 minutes after exercise that testosterone is elevated. Sometimes it can be up to an hour,” says Todd Schroeder, PhD, who studies exercise and hormones in older men at the University of Southern California.

It's not yet clear what health effects, if any, these temporary boosts may have. Of course, exercise has many other well-known health perks.

For men who have low testosterone, exercise alone probably won’t raise their levels enough to make a difference in how they feel, says endocrinologist Scott Isaacs, MD, of Emory University. But he says for men whose testosterone level is on the borderline between normal and low, “I think it’s going to have a much more potent effect.”

4 Factors That Matter

Your weight, age, fitness level, and the timing of your workout all matter.

1. Your weight: Isaacs treats men with low testosterone. He sees obesity as a big part of the problem. If you’re overweight, exercise can improve your testosterone levels by helping you shed pounds, says Isaacs, the author of Hormonal Balance: How to Lose Weight By Understanding Your Hormones and Metabolism.

2. Your age: Older men seem to get less of a post-exercise boost in testosterone, Schroeder says -- though this needs more research. Still, exercise offers many other health benefits for older men, including bone and muscle health and better balance.

3. When you exercise: Your testosterone levels vary throughout the day. Levels are typically highest in the morning and lowest in the afternoon. Research has found that strength-training workouts may have a bigger effect on testosterone in the evening. As a result, the brief boost from your exercise session might be even bigger if you schedule it after work instead of early in the morning, Isaacs says.

4. Your fitness level: Not in great shape? If you start exercising, you maybe get a bigger, though still brief, boost in testosterone than a man who's already in good shape. But after a few weeks, your body gets used to the challenge. Eventually, you'll get a lower hormone response from the same workout, Schroeder says. 

All Types of Exercise Count

Endurance training and resistance training (such as weight lifting) both boost testosterone levels briefly, Schroeder says.

Lifting weights or doing other strength-training workouts has a bigger effect on your testosterone, Schroeder says. He says the following strategies will give you an even bigger boost in testosterone from your strength training workouts, which is backed up by research. 

• Use more muscles. (For instance, a full-body workout affects this hormone more than doing one exercise, such as biceps curls.)
• Lift heavier weights rather than doing many reps of light weights.
• Have shorter rest periods during your workout.

Still, you should build an overall exercise plan that also includes cardio and flexibility training, so you're helping your overall health.

Overdoing it, though, could backfire. Elite athletes (and amateurs who overtrain), can see a drop their testosterone level, which is a sign that they’re doing harm to their bodies. In these cases, they tend to have low testosterone and high cortisol, a stress hormone, Schroeder says. He notes that a rise in cortisol can be linked to a fall in testosterone. 

Signs of overtraining include:

• Excessive soreness
• Trouble recovering from workouts
• Trouble sleeping
• Losses in performance and strength

Give yourself enough time to rest between workouts, and eat healthfully to help your body recover after workouts.

Isaacs discloses that he is on the speaker’s bureau for Abbott Laboratories, which markets a testosterone replacement product. Schroeder reports no disclosures.

Hmmmm . . . my father was 40 when I was born. I certainly got the ADHD thing. In my 20s, I was suicidal more than once. And according to my girlfriend, I am on the autistic spectrum a wee bit. Thanks dad!

This comes via Dr. Jeremy Dean at PsychBlog.

Higher Risk of Mental Illness for Those With Older Fathers

Massive study finds children with older dads much more likely to have autism, ADHD and bipolar disorder.
A new study has found that the children of older fathers have a much greater risk of serious mental illness.

The findings come from a huge number of people: everyone born in Sweden between 1973 and 2001 (D’Onofrio et al., 2014).

The researchers included over 2.5 million people, representing almost 90% of the population.

They found associations between older fathers and psychiatric conditions such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, autism and ADHD.

When they compared fathers who were 24-years-old with those who were 45-years old, they found that children of the older fathers were:

• 25 times more likely to have bipolar disorder,
• 13 times more likely to have ADHD,
• 3.5 times more likely to have autism,
• 2.5 times more likely to have suicidal behaviour.

The findings remained after they controlled for birth order, education and a host of other variables.

Brian D’Onofrio, the study’s lead author, expressed surprise at these numbers:

“We were shocked by the findings. The specific associations with paternal age were much, much larger than in previous studies.”

Faulty sperm

The authors suggest that the explanation for the association is that, while women are born with all their eggs, men continue to produce sperm, which degrades in quality over their lifetime.

People are exposed to all kinds of environmental toxins which could cause this kind of genetic mutation.

Molecular genetic studies have indeed found just this degradation in the quality of men’s sperm with age.

D’Onofrio concludes:

“While the findings do not indicate that every child born to an older father will have these problems, they add to a growing body of research indicating that advancing paternal age is associated with increased risk for serious problems. As such, the entire body of research can help to inform individuals in their personal and medical decision-making.”

With the average age at which men have children increasing in many countries, these findings could have important implications for both public policy and for individual decisions about when to procreate.

Image credit: Nisha A

Dr Jeremy Dean is a psychologist and the author of PsyBlog. His latest book is "Making Habits, Breaking Habits: How to Make Changes That Stick". You can follow PsyBlog on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

 

Heart disease is an issue in my family - my father died from it, as did his father, and my maternal grandfather, as well. Maybe it makes more sense now why I am a personal trainer?

So I am 46 years old, 6 ft 1 inch tall, 195 lbs, 31 inch waist, 135 total cholesterol (70 of that is HDL), and my blood pressure is 100 over 65 most days. According to the website that can help you determine your "heart age," I am 31. I guess that is good, except that they think I am overweight at 195 lbs (despite my waist size and, which they did not ask for, my low body-fat percentage).

People who know their 'heart age' make greater improvements to their heart health

Date: February 5, 2014
Source: Kaizo
Summary: New research suggests that talking to patients about their heart health using the "Heart Age" concept, a simple way of estimating and expressing cardiovascular risk, promotes behavioral changes that result in a reduction in their CVD risk, leading to improved health outcomes.

Risk scores for diseases such as CVD are usually presented as the percent chance of contracting the disease within the next ten years. The Heart Age Calculator, http://www.heartage.me, uses the same well established risk factor data, but expresses an individual's risk score as their estimated Heart Age to make it more personally relevant to the individual.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the world's biggest killer(3), but doctors have long struggled to explain risk factors to patients in a way that encourages them to change their behaviour thus reducing risk. Previous research has shown that Heart Age is more likely to be understood and motivate people to make positive changes than traditional % risk scores, especially those who are at higher levels of modifiable risk(4).

Now, for the first time, researchers have shown that using the Heart Age tool to raise awareness of CVD risk promotes behavioural changes that result in a decrease in CVD risk. Researchers at the University of the Balearic Islands, Spain carried out the study amongst 3,153 patients, who were randomly assigned to one of three groups before completing an annual health assessment. One group was then presented with their CVD risk expressed as a % risk, while another received the same information expressed as their estimated Heart Age. A third control group received general guidance on healthy living only. Follow up measurements were recorded a year later during the subsequent annual health assessment.

Dr Pedro Tauler, researcher belonging to the Research Group on Evidence, Lifestyles and Health from the University of the Balearic Islands, commented "We know that traditional risks scores can be confusing. We wanted to test whether using the Heart Age Calculator to talk to patients about their CVD risk would have an effect on motivating them to adopt healthier lifestyles and, in turn, reduce their risk of developing CVD."

The results showed that patients who had been told their CVD risk (both as a percentage or Heart Age) demonstrated significant decreases in their risk scores compared to the control group, with improvements being greatest in the Heart Age group. Furthermore, patients who were told their Heart Age were far more likely to take action to live healthier lifestyles, such as quitting smoking. Quitting rate for smokers was four times greater in the Heart Age group compared to those who received the traditional percentage risk scores.

The authors highlight that the significant improvement in CVD risk seen in this study in the Heart Age group was reached with no intervention other than informing participants of their Heart Age.

Dr Pedro Tauler said: "This would suggest that the mere fact of presenting the patients with information that is easy to understand has a positive effect in engaging them to take preventive action. Heart Age is a cost- and time-effective strategy to motivate patients to adopt a healthier lifestyle that results in a reduction in their CVD risk. The simplicity of the tool and the fact that it is easy to understand are core to its effectiveness."

Story Source: The above story is based on materials provided by Kaizo. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Journal Reference:
A. A. Lopez-Gonzalez, A. Aguilo, M. Frontera, M. Bennasar-Veny, I. Campos, T. Vicente-Herrero, M. Tomas-Salva, J. De Pedro-Gomez, P. Tauler. (2014). Effectiveness of the Heart Age tool for improving modifiable cardiovascular risk factors in a Southern European population: a randomized trial. European Journal of Preventive Cardiology; DOI: 10.1177/2047487313518479