Testosterone and Vitamin D
What if I told a $4 bottle of a simple vitamin will help optimize your
testosterone? In fact, the research shrongly suggests that Vitamin D will, for a
substantial percentage of you, likely increase your testosterone.
If you're
deficient in Vitamin D, and a huge percentage men are for a wide variety of
reasons, just a few cents per day will likely substantially boost your
testosterone levels.
Researchers have known from an earlier animal study that this was likely the
case. [1] This
study looked at mice that genetically could not produce adequate Vitamin D
levels. As I have mentioned in my link on Vitamin D, Vitamin influences
literally hundreds of processes and chemical reactions in the body and one of
them affects testosterone.
The researchers found that it does this through two primary mechanisms: 1)
calcium balance and 2) aromatase regulation. Vitamin D's primary purpose,
you may recall, is to control the amount of calcium in our tissues and, calcium,
as it turns out, is critical for everything from our bones to our neurons.
For example, the researchers found that by supplementing these mice with
calcium, they could partially restore their hormonal levels. However, a
complete restoration was not achieved because Vitamin D also affects aromatase
activity. Aromatase is the critical enzyme that converts testosterone to
estrogen.
The results were so pronounced that it seemed like an obvious connection, but
confirmation in a human study was needed. This occurred almost a decade
later in a human study of 2,299 men with signs of heart disease, i.e. had been
referred for an angioplasty. [2]Researchers found just what we would expect:
the men with the lowest levels of Vitamin D had the lowest levels of testosterone
and the men with highest levels of Vitamin D had the highest levels of
testosterone.
Of course, this is just one study but there are a hundred other Reasons to Take
Vitamin D, including muscle growth, fertility, cancer prevention and exercise performance as well In addition, you can do a simple at home test to
evaluate your Vitamin D levels, but I would recommend working with your doctor
of course.
Again, the bottom line is that there are a lot of guys out there wondering where
their testosterone has gone, when, in reality, it's simply that they are
deficient in this all-important vitamin. Being indoors a lot, using sunscreen,
having darker skin, being outside during non-peak hours - all of these things
can lead to deficiencies in Vitamin D and, therefore, lowered testosterone
levels.
1) Endocrinology, Apr 2000, 141:1317-1324, "Vitamin D is an important factor in
estrogen biosynthesis of both female and male gonads"
2) Clin Endocrinol (Oxf), Dec 29 2009, "Association of vitamin D status with
serum androgen levels in men"
