What if I told a bottle of a simple vitamin will help optimize your testosterone? In fact, the research strongly 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 of 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. This study looked at mice that genetically could not produce adequate Vitamin D levels. It is important to realize that this vitamin influences literally hundreds of processes and chemical reactions in the body and one of them affects testosterone.
Calcium With Vit D
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. 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.