The Worst Foods for Testosterone.

There are some foods that kill testosterone, decreases levels in your body and regardless of how delicious they may be, you may need to take a second look at them. A couple of them include soy and most dairy.

The great news is that there are also foods that boost testosterone production naturally in the body, having the exact opposite effect. With a well planned workout and eating these foods, you can raise and maintain your T-levels.

Testosterone is the primary male sex hormone that’s absolutely crucial for things like

• building muscle mass
• strengthening our bones
• improving our memory and mood and,
• increasing our sex drive and libido.

While certain testosterone boosting foods like oysters, pomegranates and ginger can all help increase your testosterone levels, there are also certain foods that kill testosterone and will hurt your body’s ability to effectively produce testosterone. Consistently eating these foods over time can even lower your testosterone levels.

Low testosterone can lead to a chain of negative side effects including a loss of muscle mass, insomnia, increased body fat, depression and low sex drive.

There are some foods that kill testosterone, decreases levels in your body and regardless of how delicious they may be, you may need to take a second look at them. A couple of them include soy and most dairy.

The great news is that there are also foods that boost testosterone production naturally in the body, having the exact opposite effect. With a well planned workout and eating these foods, you can raise and maintain your T-levels.

Testosterone is the primary male sex hormone that’s absolutely crucial for things like

• building muscle mass
• strengthening our bones
• improving our memory and mood and,
• increasing our sex drive and libido.

While certain foods like oysters, pomegranates and ginger can all help boost testosterone levels, there are also certain foods that will hurt your body’s ability to effectively produce testosterone. Consistently eating these foods over time can even lower your testosterone levels.

Low testosterone can lead to a chain of negative side effects including a loss of muscle mass, insomnia, increased body fat, depression and low sex drive.

Today I want to go over seven foods that decrease testosterone levels based on scientific evidence.

7 Foods That Kill Testosterone

#1. Flax Seed

The first on our list of foods that kill testosterone is flax seed. I know that flax seed products have gained a lot of popularity over the last few years. It has even been called a superfood but it’s one of the healthy foods that kill testosterone.

However, even though flax seeds are very high in fiber and ala omega-3 fatty acids, flax seeds aren’t that great for optimizing male hormonal health. This is mostly because they’re loaded with lignans. In fact they’re the world’s richest source of lignans.

Flax seeds contain about 75 to eight hundred times more lignans than most grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables. This can be a problem for two reasons.

First lignans are highly estrogenic. In other words they flax seeds are one of the foods that increase estrogen levels. Estrogen is the female sex hormone.

Second is that lignans increased levels of sex hormone binding globulin or SHBG. Now this may sound like a good thing but this hormone binds to free testosterone molecules rendering them inactive. When this happens testosterone won’t be able to be used for other beneficial hormonal functions.

We can see the direct adverse effects of flax seeds in a number of studies.

For example just two tablespoons of flax seeds were given to 40 male participants for only a month and their testosterone levels dropped by around 10 percent. In another very small but also very interesting study, a woman who had high testosterone levels was also experiencing excessive facial hair growth.

To combat that researchers told her to eat 30 grams of flax seeds per day for four months. After doing that her serum testosterone levels dropped by 70% and her free testosterone dropped by 18.9%. This may not be conclusive but if you’re looking for foods that lower testosterone in females, you may want to try flax seeds.

Yet in another study two tablespoons of flax seeds per day dropped total testosterone in men by around 15% and free testosterone by 20%.

However, it’s important for me to mention that the participants were also told not to get more than 20% of their daily energy intake from fat and a low-fat diet could have contributed to a reduction in testosterone levels as well.

In either case if you’re looking for foods that increase testosterone and lower estrogen levels you’re better off going with other sources of omega-3 fatty acids like salmon, fresh sardines and walnuts.

#2. Cooking Oils

Our next of foods that kill testosterone is cooking oils. These oils are high in polyunsaturated fatty acids. These include foods like soybean oil, vegetable oil, corn oil, sunflower oil and margarine just to name a few.

Most cooking oils used today are processed so many times they go through either bleaching, degumming or deodorizing. Couple this with the fact that these oils aren’t that great for high-temperature cooking and you’ll see why they’re not exactly the best choice for your health, not just lowering your testosterone.

But even if you don’t use them for cooking, their high content of specifically omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids decrease the production of testosterone. This is because most people nowadays already get way too much omega-6 fatty acids and way too little omega-3s.

Not only does this create inflammation throughout the body and increase your risk of various chronic diseases but a high omega-6 polyunsaturated fat intake may lower testosterone.

In a study where researchers looked at how different nutrients influenced hormonal health, they found that the more dietary fat the participants ate, the higher their testosterone was. Looking more closely this was found to be true for their saturated fat intake as well as their monounsaturated fat intake.

However, the results were the exact opposite for polyunsaturated fats. The more polyunsaturated fat that the participants ate in relation to their saturated fat intake, the lower their testosterone levels dropped.

If you’re looking for which foods increase testosterone the most and are plant-based oil, go for olive oil, avocado oil and coconut oil.

#3. Mint

The item on our list of foods that kill testosterone is mint. That’s right while herbs from the mint family like spearmint and peppermint smell great, they’re not that great for boosting testosterone levels. At least that’s what the rat studies and a very small human study indicates.

In the rodent study the rats were divided into four groups.

The control group received regular drinking water.

Group number two received 20 grams of peppermint tea. At the end of the study rats that received 20 grams of the peppermint tea had a 25% reduction in testosterone.

Group number three received 20 grams of spearmint tea. At the end, this group had a 69% percent reduction in testosterone.

Finally the last group received double so 40 grams of spearmint tea. This last group experienced 123% lower testosterone levels.

According to this study spearmint lowers testosterone significantly more than peppermint.

In another rat study, it was also found that spearmint drastically reduced testosterone in rats. The the researchers from this study said that it was likely because spearmint and possibly mint in general causes oxidative stress in the hypothalamus resulting in reduced testosterone synthesis in the testes.

Unfortunately there are no large studies on how mint influences male humans.

However, research does indicate that spearmint can lower testosterone in women that have elevated androgen levels which caused them to suffer from excessive facial hair growth. In one study 42 women drank spearmint tea two times a day for 30 days.

As a result both free and total testosterone levels dropped significantly. Now unless you’re a woman who suffers from elevated testosterone levels and you’re looking for foods that lower testosterone levels in females, or unless you’re a male rat, we can’t say for sure that similar effects apply to men until we have further research.

But this data is definitely something to keep in mind.

#4. Alcohol

Oh no! The booze is the next of the foods that kill testosterone in men. Not only do alcohol lead to a terrible hangover but can also cause a reduction in testosterone levels.

There are many rodent studies that show that alcohol reduces testosterone in a dose-dependent manner . This means the more you take in, the more it affects your testosterone.

When it comes to human studies there’s also a strong link between a heavy alcohol intake and reduced testosterone levels. Luckily there is some good news when it comes to drinking alcohol and testosterone levels in men. Low alcohol intakes don’t have all that much of an effect on testosterone. A big sigh of relief guys!

In fact one of the studies on alcohol found that drinking about half a gram alcohol per kilogram of body weight or about a quarter of a gram of alcohol per pound of body weight this was able to slightly increase testosterone. What?

For most people, this would be about two to three drinks. However other studies show that even small amounts like two glasses of red wine can lower testosterone by seven percent.

So the real key is to drink in moderation and when you do don’t binge drink where you’re having like 10 tequila shots in a night the dose is what makes the poison here. So guys do your best to limit your alcohol intake if you want to keep the fire of libido burning for as long as possible.

#5. Licorice

Our next food that kills testosterone is licorice. Sure licorice might taste amazing and can have the following benefits in certain situations like:

• reducing heartburn
• speeding up the repair of damaged stomach lining
• some anti-inflammatory and immune boosting properties.

The problem is that it also has one huge downside. It may lower testosterone levels. This is because licorice contains glycyrrhizic acid which is the compound that gives licorice its unique sweet taste.

Now even though it tastes great, researchers found that exposing isolated rat gonnit cells to a modest amount of glycyrrhizic acid significantly block testosterone production. The reason for this was because it significantly inhibited the activity of 17-Beta HSD which is an enzyme essential for testosterone production.

Unfortunately these negative effects of glycyrrhizic acid don’t seem only limited to rats.

In a separate study, researchers tested how glycyrrhizic acid influences human beings. In this study a group of men were given 7grams of licorice in the form of candy tablets and they contained about half a gram of glycyrrhizic acid.

Surprisingly, after just four days the average testosterone levels dropped from 21 to 15.9 in animals per liter.

The good news for all of you Twizzlers fans is that even though Hershey’s labels it as a licorice candy, the original red variety contains very little licorice. There obviously are other reasons to limit your intake of Twizzlers. Like them being high in corn syrups, sugar and artificial flavors.

#6. Soy Products

We come to soy products in our list of foods that kill testosterone. While this is still a debated topic soy may have negative effects on male hormonal health in general.

One reason for this is because soy contains a high amount of phytoestrogen ik isoflavones which can activate estrogen receptors and down regulate androgen receptors. For those of you that don’t know, androgen receptors are the ones that male hormones like testosterone and DHT bind to for them to be able to have an effect.

So without being able to bind to the androgen receptors testosterone can’t do its job. On top of that soy can disrupt the uptake of iodine in the thyroid and it can impede the production of thyroid hormones.

This is a big problem because poor thyroid function is linked to impaired hormonal health and lower testosterone levels. Couple that with the type of fat that’s found in soybeans which is mostly omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids.

As you can see soy can potentially lower testosterone. More than half of the fat and soybeans is made up of these polyunsaturated fatty acids. We’ve already mentioned before when this type of fat is consumed in excess it increases inflammation and hurts your testosterone levels.

However, with all that said not all research shows that these effects on paper are transfer over to human beings.

For example a meta-analysis published in the Journal of Fertility and Sterility suggested that soy does not lower testosterone but there are many individual studies that do find a negative effect.

So if you want to be on the safe side you may want to limit your intake of soy-based products like soy protein powder, tofu and soy milk.

#7. Trans Fats

Finally last but not least is a type of fat that most people already know is bad for your health. It also happens to be bad for your testosterone levels. We’re referring to trans fats. Now trans fats originally came about in 1901 while a German chemist was looking for a way to make cheap oils liquid at room temperature through a process known as hydrogenation.

Of course this really excited manufacturers but researchers ran into some issues that they didn’t expect. One of the main ones is that this processing led to the formation of trans fatty acids which could have severe adverse effects not only on testosterone production but on overall health as well.

One reason for this is because trans fats trigger systemic inflammation and that’s definitely not good because there’s a direct link between increased inflammation and reduce testosterone levels as well as a number of chronic diseases.

Aside from that trans fats also score high in polyunsaturated fatty acids which is linked to lower testosterone and sperm counts in both rodents and humans.

So it’s definitely best to avoid products that contain trans fats. Fortunately the FDA has put a ban on trans fats in June 2018 but even though they can no longer be produced, going forward some food in circulation still contains trans fats which in some cases can be sold until 2021. So if you’re reading this article after 2021, you can simply ignore this point and say we showed 6 foods that kill testosterone production in men.

Also interestingly enough some unprocessed foods also contain trans fats such as milk, cheese, beef, lamb, chicken and pork. However the good news is that data indicates that these natural trans fats are less harmful than the artificial ones.

Conclusion

That’s it for the list of foods that kill testosterone production in the body. If you’re concerned about the lowering testosterone levels (and which man doesn’t? ), then you may want to avoid these foods or at least eat them in very limited quantities.

It’s important to know there are ways on how to increase testosterone levels and there are also foods that will naturally boost T-levels production.

Some of the ways to increase testosterone production include getting adequate sleep, exercising, not overeating and keeping obesity away.

To find out more on foods that increase testosterone production read this article.

Finally what has been your experience with any of these foods discussed in the article? If you have any questions, concerns and recommendations, use the ‘Comments’ section below.