More sleep = More Testosterone!

Didn’t sleep well this morning I woke up at 4:00 and couldn’t get back to sleep. It reminded me of an article that I read not long ago that stated that researchers from China collected blood from 531 Asian men between the ages of 29 to 70. The researchers found that the less men slept, the lower their serum testosterone levels would be. In this study there was a direct correlation between sleep and testosterone levels and was independent of age, exercise intensity and total body fat.


Sleep helps balance testosterone levels

 

In an earlier study, it was reported that men who slept between 4 and 6 hours had lower testosterone levels than men who slept more than 8 hours. In a more resent study, the relationship between sleep loss and testosterone levels was lower in men who slept between
4 and 6 hours, compared to men who slept more than 6 hours. This helps prove that men who sleep less than 6 hours a night have lower testosterone levels compared to those who slept more than 6 hours each night.

I’ve had clients ask me if they should wake up in the middle of each night to take their “branch chain amino acids”. And of course the answer was and always will be NO! Not if it’s going to interrupt your sleep pattern for that night. So men, nothing will ever be as important in keeping the testosterone up (no matter what the age) than sleep and good old fashion weight training----and as you know--- they have supplements for that also!

 

References:
Goh VHH, Tong TYY, Mok HPP, Said B., Interactions among age, adiposity, bodyweight, lifestyle factors and sex steroid hormones in healthy Asian men. Asian J. Androl 2007 9:611-621

Harrison Y. , Home JA. Should we be getting more Sleep? 1995 18(10) 901-907