Is it possible for one’s testosterone to be perpetually high? Or, does it go through cycles of highs and lows based on your body and environment?
Lately I’ve felt like my T is at an all time low. I remember being horny as a billygoat over the summer when I was training with great effort and constant progress, making really quick strength gains and putting on weight.
However, my training has been far less productive recently, with only a few lifts or aspects improving week to week. Eating a large surplus of calories has been making me feel sicker and sicker with digestion proving to be less than optimal as well. I’ve also been immensely stressed out from school. My mood is usually rather low, I wake up (even after many hours of sleep) wanting to stay in bed, sex drive has been way down along with actual sex being less satisfying, and it all points to the symptoms of low T to me.
What causes T to fall?
What causes T to rise?
Does there ever HAVE to be a falling, theoretically?
Testosterone secretion occurs cyclically throughout the day. You can google the graph of it in ‘average males’
You sound like your experiencing the seasonal change in mood that many people suffer from. People get depressed when the sun isnt out as long and doesn’t get as high in the sky.
Get your vitamin d levels checked.
Also get Free Testosterone and Estradiol levels checked if you want. You don’t have a baseline from when you felt good for comparison but you’ll have numbers.
I’ve been supplementing with vitamin D-3 since the article was published on this site, roughly 5,000IU a day. I can’t imagine having gotten more than that ever before. I also wonder how much natural vit D my skin is capable of producing since I don’t have a whole lot of melanin goin’ on.
I’m interested in this too, and Rippetoe described a hormone fluctuation model of programming for advanced lifters. It deals w/ testosterone/cortisol ratios which is another thing I am interested in as a marker of overtraining and when to back off or really push training. I don’t know anything more about it, so if anybody has any more detail on this please share.
I know the blood tests for it are expensive, but it would be cool to have an affordable home version available.
I’ve also been hearing about what was described as a ‘photoperiod’ or duration of time in late summer/early fall where athletes gained performance at a higher level than all year around, which I’m assuming was vitamin D related.
Usually when I feel like that it is combined stress from work, school, and lifting, and with Winter and cold coming, it really doesn’t help.
Aren’t cortisol and testosterone created from the same hormones? If you’re stressed as hell, and I’m sure you are what with finals coming up, that is a viable reason.
[quote]TheBigV wrote:
Aren’t cortisol and testosterone created from the same hormones? If you’re stressed as hell, and I’m sure you are what with finals coming up, that is a viable reason.[/quote]
I agree. I believe stress is the main reason for all of your issues.
I’d bet that once you’re done with the finals, that everything will fall back into place, soon enough.
I too would like to know more if there is changes… I recently got really sick, requiring an over night stay in the hospital. So I backed off training and drive and everything seemed to come back on its own, was really run down. 4 weeks off training did wonders for me. I was moody at times and hated it but I feel better then ever.
But to what the op is saying. It could be stress. That has a huge impact on your health. If your stressed it affects all aspects of your life including your sex drive. School and dead lines are hard to get adjusted too.
Meditation is useful. I meditate daily for only ten minutes and often by the end have a new morning wood and am real relaxed so that is definetly lowering cortisol and upping testosterone.
Also visualization which is good anyway . Visualizing what you want like achieving a goal or being amped up lifting heavy shit or any other situation or event that raises testosterone when it really happens will raise your testosterone. Not just imagineing actually lay down in aqueit spot breath deep relax and do it uninterupted for like 20 minutes straight.
One of the easiest way to up your testosterone is to visualize yourself fucking girls for like ten to twenty minutes (no jackin off just do it with eyes closed). It’s great leaves you feeling really energized driven pumped and horny all day. I love doing it pre workout normally ads a few reps to lifts and gets you pumped for it. It is crazy how good this works I had a nearly sleepless night a few days ago woke up no wood feeling exhausted no sex drive etc. Then did it for twenty minutes was like a walking boner for the rest of the day.
Testosterone is very interesting like that. Actions and feelings that it causes make you produce more. That is why this works testosterone makes you think about fucking girls. But if you make yourself think about fucking girls your testosterone will go up which in turn makes you think about it more and it goes up more etc. etc. Same with acheiving goals lifting heavy or fighting.
Dylan, that’s wildly interesting. I know I can bring certain feelings to the surface by really focusing/concentrating on them. Doing it more strategically sounds like a good idea. Do you have any evidence that your T actually increases when doing this?
The idea of stress is actually something that I didn’t consider because the stress I’m under has been relentless for the last two months. Though there are periods of higher and lower stress during that time, it’s been “high” the whole time. I also realized this semester that my training is unreal in the summer, and I also remember being horny as all hell this past summer. It really makes sense that constant worry, stress, erratic sleep patterns, and everything associated with my school environment would disrupt the natural homeostasis.
Man, I had the same experience last summer. my T was at an all time high (i think). I got a lot of back acne, a lot of hard-ons and i was killing it in the gym. Now that I think about it, it was probably because I was on vacation on a hot, sunny place where i could sleep a lot and had nothing to stress out about. maybe those are the kinds of things you´re missing right now.
[quote]nz6stringaxe wrote:
Dylan, that’s wildly interesting. I know I can bring certain feelings to the surface by really focusing/concentrating on them. Doing it more strategically sounds like a good idea. Do you have any evidence that your T actually increases when doing this?
The idea of stress is actually something that I didn’t consider because the stress I’m under has been relentless for the last two months. Though there are periods of higher and lower stress during that time, it’s been “high” the whole time. I also realized this semester that my training is unreal in the summer, and I also remember being horny as all hell this past summer. It really makes sense that constant worry, stress, erratic sleep patterns, and everything associated with my school environment would disrupt the natural homeostasis.[/quote]
Ya the meditation will definetly help the stress.
I do not have actual evidence. But I do know of hypnosis cds that (basically guided visualization). To give the mind thoughts of sex or other thoughts that increase testosterone.
Visualization/imagination is extremly powerful for example practicing a technique or skill in your mind will cause those nervs involved to fire off.
In my opinion daydreaming/imagination in humans is a natural process by nature you will dream about things youu like and want/ (our society / doing dumb shit causes some people to do the opposite and imagine wha tthey don’t want). So you imagine what you want and your unconcisoue trys to help you get it. For example when drilling a technique in a sport(say shooting freethrows) when you first learn you are doing it the wrong way more times than the right way so shouldn’t you get worse since you are doing more practice of the wrong way then the right way?
But you do not this is because you want it to go in so your mind discards the bad and keeps what you want . My belief anything you imagine will make your unconciouse more likely to want to become what you imagine. This is because you act as you acted in the past due to your memories (you are the same everyday so you know you now is based on your past). So you imagine yourself with high testosterone or doing things that require high testosterone or increase testosterone your body will produce more testosterone.
Basically to sum it up imagined events and real events have a much more similar effect on your body and mind then you would think. And you naturally unconcisouly and conciously go for what you want and your unconciouse assumes you spend more time dreaming of what you want.
I have not gotten an actual test to see if it actually changes test levels. But I definetly feel the difference. Same as you you didn’t get testosterone tested but you just "feel’ it. Same with me. Either way who cares even if it somehow makes you produce no testosterone it['s not testosterone we want it’s the positive effects of it like strength, drive, sex drive, confidence, muscle building etc. And doing the visualization causes those good effects.
FWIW, I too had been experiencing symptoms of low T recently. Erratic sleep patterns, low libido, finding it very difficult to get into the gym, progress being very hard to come by and finding it very difficult to eat. Just generally feeling like crap.
I got slightly run down so I decided to take the day of training and just lie in bed and eat(that usually sorts me out if I feel run-down) but I just got all out sick and had to take a week off training.
I was just about to get back into it and was upping my calories again when all of a sudden I got this pain just under my chest that felt like my intestines were tied in knots. After a few hours(and no food at all) it got bad enough to send me to the doctor which is a very, very rare occasion for me. After the usual questions about what I ate and my usual eating habits he concluded that it was an acidic build up and the cause was likely stress.
I got a bit of a surprise as I’m often described as laid-back(my boss hates that, I’m ‘‘too laid back’’ ) but it made sense when I considered how things had been getting on top of me recently. Since then however, I’ve managed to clear my head and a lot of issues have abated and I’m feeling fantastic again.
Regular sleeping, progress in the gym is back, appetite is back, horny as fuck again.
Never really occurred to me that a 20 year old male could have low T. But hey, first time for everything I suppose.
) but it made sense when I considered how things had been getting on top of me recently. Since then however, I’ve managed to clear my head and a lot of issues have abated and I’m feeling fantastic again.