While I could accept the decline in my maleness as a part of the life cycle, aging gracefully into the night, where I’ll sip Earl Grey tea wearing a cardigan sweater to avoid getting a chill, and petting my cat while yelling at the kids to get off of my lawn, that just isn’t me. The reality is I don’t feel my age at all. The only time I even think about it is when I calculate how much longer I have to go before I can file for Social Security.
The levels of hormones that make me male are bordering on the abyss of
going South of Vag (shout out Jim Wendler), so I have taken drastic, yet legal steps to try to reset the course of the Battleship Man before it runs aground and I have to take one of the dinghy boats to shore and spend the rest of my days in a grass skirt.
I had already started the process before I got my actual blood work done, so I had a few things on hand. I spent Friday night and most of Saturday immersed in the research and have come up with the best attack plan I can, short of buying prescription drugs illegally on the worldwide web. First, I broke the plan into three distinct categories:
- Increase total testosterone levels
- Decrease SHBG levels
- Inhibit aromatization of testosterone to estrogen
For the uninitiated, allow me to very briefly explain, mostly to be sure I understand it myself. Number 1 is fairly self-explanatory. My overarching goal is to increase the total amount of testosterone my body is producing. There are various means of doing so; everything from diet, resistance training, sleep, even watching porn. I do most of this stuff already–although my porn viewing has been sub-optimal of late, which I will now remedy–but they have pretty minimal impact. Number 2 is critical, because testosterone gets bound up to Sex Hormone Binding Globulin, leaving less of it available as free testosterone to do the magic man stuff we want it to do. Less SHBG means more free T, so finding a way to lower SHBG is step 2. Number 3 is the one I find most fascinating. The body keeps a natural, genetically determined testosterone/estrogen ratio and there’s an enzyme called aromatase which converts some testosterone into estrogen to maintain this ratio. If we can inhibit this enzyme from working, the ratio will become skewed toward testosterone, which the body doesn’t like, so it creates more testosterone so the aromatase enzyme can convert it to estrogen. If we can continue inhibiting this annoying little enzyme, the process continues, thereby increasing total testosterone levels. Inhibiting the aromatase enzyme has medical uses too, but not relevant to this discussion.
Attacking each item on my list, I started with my diet since there’s power in them there foodstuffs. My daily regimen includes a lot of dairy, with a womanly-sized dose of cottage cheese every morning, and at least one womanly Light & Fit Greek yogurt every day. I love them so much I will sometimes eat two or three of these delights with frozen berries for a homemade parfait. While it is far from definitive, and let’s face it, only math is truly definitive, there is some evidence that dairy consumption increases estrogen levels and decreases testosterone levels. The studies required quite a bit of dairy to be consumed before the hormonal changes were noted, but I’m on the cliff’s edge, looking straight down into a vagina-shaped canyon, with only steroids or testosterone replacement therapy as the bridge to get me across. So every little bit helps. No more dairy for me. Side note: have you ever considered that humans are the only species on planet Earth to consume the breast milk of another species?
In lieu of my typical fare, I ate 4 whole eggs with vegetables, and chased it down with some peanut butter, dark chocolate and coffee. Dietary cholesterol and a higher fat diet in general seem to be pro-testosterone. Menno has a great article on it here. I will be sure to eat at least 3 whole, extra large eggs every day from now on. I also bought ground beef to replace my ground turkey for the extra saturated fat content. Eat bull; not bird is the best manly sounding catchphrase I can come up with. I also bought some shrimp as its the only shellfish I can tolerate. I may branch out, but it’s a good start. I went back on the avocado train after getting off at EFA station due to avocado’s high Omega-6 content which kept throwing my ideal Omega 6:3 ratio off the tracks. But priorities man, you know how it is.
I replaced my typical salad with veggies from the cruciferous family. Broccoli and its cousins cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and a long list of relatives from the Brassicaceae family have an amazing property: they inhibit the aromatase enzyme I maligned earlier. So instead of spinach, I ate mustard greens. I threw in some cabbage for good measure. Instead of carrots, I used radishes. I ate an overflowing plate of broccoli and cauliflower, doused in olive oil (extra virgin for the added sex appeal) on which I threw chunks of elephant garlic and smothered it in the last of my ground turkey with some cockroaches of the sea (shrimp) mixed in. I will add that I had some GI distress yesterday which is still lingering. I’m not sure if it was all the vegetables or if it was the collagen powder I’ve started mixing into my water. Since I’ve always eaten plenty of veggies, I will nix the collagen and see if my stomach stops threatening to explode. While my tendon health is very important to me, having to stand near the bathroom door all day is a real quality of life issue.
I have very low expectations that dietary changes will make much difference. I tried that for years to get my LDL-C into normal limits, but it took a fairly high does of not one, but two different statins to get me there. Speaking of taking pills, let’s move into the exciting realm of supplements that may or may not work, but that I’m willing to spend some cash to try as the drugs that do actually work aren’t going to be cheap either.
The supplements I bought fall roughly into one of the three categories, acting either to increase overall testosterone production, bind up to SHBG thereby increasing free testosterone, or inhibit the aromatase enzyme. In no particular order, they are:
- D-Aspartic Acid
- DHEA
- Coleus Forksholli
- Ashwaghanda
- Fenugreek
- Astaxanthin
- Saw Palmetto
- Stinging Nettle Root
- Tongkat Ali
- DIM
Interestingly, I think the DHEA supplementation would already get me banned from the USAPL. I find it shocking that an innocuous little supplement you can buy at Walmart is on the prohibited list of substances along with actual anabolic steroids, but it seems to be. This is pretty asinine in my view, but I guess I won’t be competing in any USAPL meets. Well, I might anyway, but there’s a chance I could be busted and banned. Utter nonsense.
Anyway, it may seem like overkill to take all of them at once, and I did actually consider experimenting with one at a time to see if each one has any effect. But can you imagine how long that experiment would take, and how many blood tests I’d have to get? I figure I’ll throw the whole kitchen sink at the problem since herbals and powders don’t have anywhere near the potency of synthetic pharmaceuticals. I’ll give my “natural” plan a good three months of effort and have blood drawn again to compare against my current levels. I’ll tell you my initial reaction after getting the results was to go right to researching testosterone replacement therapy. I’m sure one of the online clinics would hook me up, but a local doc might be hesitant as I’m not hypo-gonadal yet. I’m close, but I haven’t started scrolling through Pinterest or Elle.com.
I will state unequivocally that I have no issue with using pharmaceuticals to improve the quality of one’s life. I was once in that camp, self-righteously opposed to pill-popping as some kind of character flaw or sign of weakness. I think my mother instilled that in me, along with guilt, undeserved respect for authority figures and a sense of always being in trouble for something. But my life was utterly changed by a simple 10MG dose of Lexapro every night before bed, and I am forever grateful to Dr. Mark Little for tolerating my hypochondria and diagnosing me with the debilitating anxiety that I was actually dealing with. He changed my life for the better. So if my future involves injecting myself with testosterone and taking anti-aromatase medications to keep me in the normal ranges, I’m all about it. If that means I’m no longer a natty lifter, I don’t give a rat’s ass. If I can’t find a doctor willing to do what needs to be done, there’s always the Dark Side.
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