5 Foods You Should Avoid If You Want High Testosterone

Before we get started I want to make it clear that eating or avoiding these foods doesn’t make that much of a difference.  We’re at that point in the series where we’re addressing the details, the icing on the cake. If you have the basics in place, what we addressed in the first 4 episodes, then even if you ate all these foods you’d still have high testosterone.

But if you want high testosterone, in order to maximize results, it’s best to avoid them.

1. Trans Fats

There are very few foods that are actively unhealthy – meaning if you eat them, they hurt your body.

Usually what we call unhealthy food is unhealthy because it’s not nutritious and if it dominates your diet you develop deficiencies as a result.

Well trans fats really are actively unhealthy. And you should avoid them like these guys avoid that fog.

Trans-fats promote systemic inflammation in the body, and a recently published large review study concluded that each 2% increase in calories from trans-fats was associated with 23% increase in cardiovascular disease risk.

Secondly: trans-fats lower the amount of “good” HDL cholesterol which is a crucial building block in testosterone synthesis.

And a high intake of trans-fatty-acids is associated with lowered sperm counts and testosterone levels in male rodents and humans.

The foods you can commonly find them in are fast-foods, snacks that have a long shelf life and margarine and vegetable oil spreads:  

2. High-PUFA Vegetable Oils

A well-done study from 1997 looked at how different types of fat affect testosterone levels in males and found this:

Nearly all vegetable oils are mostly polyunsaturated fatty-acids. And the worst choice of all are those that are mainly comprised of omega-6 fatty-acids.

This is because the human body operates best if we keep the omega-3  to omega-6  ratio somewhere close to 1:1 or 1:2. The average American now has this ratio at 1:16 which increases systemic inflammation and oxidative stress.

 

We recommend you limit the use of vegetable oils in general and when you use them, go for coconut oil, palm oil, avocado oil, or olive oil.

3. Alcohol

Drinking alcohol of any kind has a significant trend of lowering testosterone levels.

It is well known that chronic alcoholics tend to have much higher estrogen levels and much lower testosterone levels when compared to their non-alcoholic peers.

However – low alcohol consumption isn’t that bad for male hormone production. In one study, two glasses of red wine produced a decrease in testosterone of only 7%.

So if your goal is to increase testosterone you should avoid drinking alcohol frequently and in high quantities. You don’t have to give up on it completely.

4. Soy Products

On multiple human and animal studies, it has been shown that high intake of soy (including soy protein extract) can suppress both testosterone and DHT.

On the other hand, many studies showed that increased soy consumption does not correlate with lowered testosterone levels.

The research is inconclusive but in theory it should be a food that lowers testosterone.

First of all soybeans contain high amount of phyto-estrogenic isoflavones (genistein, daidzein, glycitein). In-vitro research has shown that these substances can activate estrogen receptors and downregulate androgen receptors – eliciting a similar effect in the body as estrogen.

Aside from isoflavones, soy is considered to be highly “goitrogenic”, meaning that it can disrupt the production of thyroid hormones by interfering with iodine uptake in the thyroid gland.

Suppressed activity of the thyroid is considered to be one of the leading causes of low testosterone levels in men.

The third possible “hormonal problem” with soy consumption is an anti-androgenic compound called equol, which forms in the gut when the gut bacteria metabolizes the isoflavone – daidzen.

According to research, this only happens in 30-50% of men, due to the fact that not everyone has the “right”intestial bacteria to create equol.

This explains why Asian men eat tons of soy and don’t have any problems.

So the research is still inconclusive, but just to be sure, we recommend you avoid eating soy products.

5. Flaxseed Products

And finally, Flaxseed products. Flax products are incredibly dense in compounds called “lignans” – 800-fold over that of most other foods.

Lignans are highly estrogenic and also increase the levels of sex hormone binding globulin which binds into free-testosterone molecules making them “inactive” for the direct use of the androgen receptors.

Two studies showed that when men were given 30g of flaxseeds per day, in one month their testosterone went down by 10 to 15%.

I’m pretty sure you didn’t eat a lot of flaxseeds anyway, but keep avoiding them.

Make sure you check out the Testosterone Week page on AnabolicMen.com for your special event free ebooks. For this article we recommend reading “52 Ways to Increase Testosterone Naturally”