- 01Natural methods restore testosterone; they rarely boost a normal level
Every change with good evidence works by lifting a brake: extra body fat, short sleep, heavy drinking, a hard calorie deficit, or a vitamin D or zinc shortfall. Remove one that is pressing on your number and testosterone can rise by tens to a couple of hundred ng/dL 3; no trial has shown diet, sleep, exercise or supplements lifting a mid-range level by a similar amount.
Lifestyle changes mostly restore testosterone that something is pushing down; they rarely raise a level that is already normal. Extra body fat, short sleep, alcohol and a nutrient shortfall are the usual brakes. So the useful first step is working out which brake, if any, applies to you, and measuring testosterone properly so you can tell whether a change worked.
How to increase testosterone naturally: the short answer
The changes below are ranked by how much they moved total testosterone in controlled studies. Weight loss leads by a wide margin 3. Sleep comes next, because one week of short sleep measurably lowers testosterone in healthy men 2. Dietary fat, training and alcohol each have smaller effects, and vitamin D and zinc matter only for men who are low.
| What to change | Rough size of effect | Evidence | Who it helps most |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lose excess body fat | About +83 ng/dL with a low-calorie diet; about +250 ng/dL after bariatric surgery 3 | Strong | Men with overweight or obesity |
| Sleep 7 to 9 hours | 5 hours a night for a week lowered testosterone 10 to 15% 2 | Strong (short trials) | Men sleeping under 6 hours |
| Eat enough fat | Low-fat diets ran about 10 to 15% lower than higher-fat diets 4 | Moderate | Men on very low-fat diets |
| Keep alcohol low | About 3 drinks a day for 3 weeks lowered testosterone about 7% 9 | Moderate | Regular drinkers |
| Lift weights 2 to 4 times a week | Small direct effect; most of the gain comes through less fat and more muscle | Moderate | Most men |
| Correct a vitamin D or zinc shortfall | A rise in men who started low 1113; no change in men with normal testosterone 12 | Moderate, low men only | Men with a low blood level |
Set expectations by the numbers in that table. A man at 320 ng/dL who loses a meaningful amount of weight and fixes his sleep might reach the 400s or 500s. Lifestyle changes do not take a typical man from 300 to 1,000 ng/dL, and no trial of diet, sleep, exercise or supplements has shown that. The figure of 1,000 ng/dL sits above the top of the harmonized range for young, lean, healthy men, which is 916 ng/dL 5.
First, know your number (and test it properly)
Testosterone peaks in the early morning and falls through the day. In men aged 30 to 40, levels at 4pm were 20 to 25 percent lower than at 8am; the gap shrank to about 10 percent by age 70 7. That is why the Endocrine Society guideline asks for a fasting sample taken in the morning, repeated on a second day, before anyone calls testosterone low 1. Doctors call a confirmed low level hypogonadism, meaning the testes are making too little testosterone.
We recommend diagnosing hypogonadism in men with symptoms and signs of testosterone deficiency and unequivocally and consistently low serum total testosterone and/or free testosterone concentrations (when indicated).Bhasin S et al., Endocrine Society Clinical Practice Guideline, J Clin Endocrinol Metab 2018 1
The harmonized reference range (one range built by pooling results from four large US and European studies, so labs read the same way) for total testosterone in healthy, non-obese men aged 19 to 39 is 264 to 916 ng/dL, or about 9.2 to 31.8 nmol/L 5. Many US labs still flag below 300 ng/dL, so a result between 264 and 300 ng/dL reads as normal on one report and low on another. If your report is in nmol/L, the testosterone unit converter switches between the two.
Where an example morning total testosterone of 320 ng/dL fallsng/dL
Most testosterone is held by SHBG (sex hormone binding globulin, a carrier protein that grips it tightly) or albumin; only about 2 percent floats free and can act on cells. Excess weight and insulin resistance lower SHBG, so a heavier man's total testosterone can read low while his free testosterone is normal. When total testosterone is borderline, the guideline recommends measuring free testosterone too 1. The SHBG page covers what else pushes it up or down.
Read these three together
CalculatorFree testosterone calculatorHave total testosterone and SHBG? Work out your free testosterone and bioavailable testosterone (the free part plus the part loosely held by albumin).Work it out After you change something, retest in 8 to 12 weeks under the same conditions: same lab, same time of morning, fasting, and not after a short night or a heavy evening of drinking. An afternoon result compared with a morning one mostly measures the time of day. The blood test prep guide lists what else can skew a morning draw, and the male hormone panel guide walks through every line of the report.
Losing excess body fat has the largest effect
Fat tissue contains aromatase, an enzyme that converts testosterone into estradiol. Excess fat also brings insulin resistance, which lowers SHBG and dulls the brain's signal (luteinizing hormone, or LH) that tells the testes to make testosterone. In the European Male Ageing Study of men aged 40 to 79, being overweight or obese was linked with lower total testosterone, while age itself mainly lowered the free fraction 8.
The more weight men lost, the more testosterone rose 3. Waist size tracks the relevant fat better than BMI, because visceral fat around the organs drives most of the insulin resistance. A crash diet works against you, because a large, sustained calorie deficit lowers testosterone in its own right; a steady loss you can hold for months beats a hard cut you abandon. The TDEE calculator gives a daily target that keeps the deficit moderate. If your fasting glucose or insulin is creeping up, the insulin resistance page explains how it connects.
Sleep: 7 to 9 hours, and why 5 costs you
In a JAMA study, 10 healthy young men spent one week restricted to 5 hours in bed. Their daytime testosterone fell by 10 to 15 percent, roughly the drop expected from 10 to 15 years of ageing 2. Levels climb through the night toward the morning peak, so cutting sleep short trims the top of the curve. The sleep calculator works out a bedtime that gives you 7 to 9 hours, and the 5 hours of sleep page covers what else short sleep changes.
Exercise: lift, add some intervals, don't overdo endurance
Resistance training 2 to 4 times a week, built on compound lifts such as squats, deadlifts, presses and rows, is the form of exercise best linked with healthy testosterone. The rise you see straight after a heavy session lasts well under an hour and does not change your morning level. The lasting gain comes through body composition: more muscle and less fat mean better insulin sensitivity and less aromatase activity. Short interval sessions add to the fat-loss effect.
Past a point, more training lowers testosterone. Men who log very high volumes of endurance training can carry chronically lower resting testosterone, a pattern researchers call the exercise-hypogonadal male condition. Heavy training on too little food or sleep produces the same result, and is one of the signs of overtraining syndrome.
Food: enough calories, enough fat, the right minerals
No single food raises testosterone. What the evidence supports is eating enough overall, not cutting fat too far, and covering zinc, vitamin D and magnesium. A meta-analysis of intervention studies with 206 participants found that low-fat diets lowered total testosterone by about 10 to 15 percent compared with higher-fat diets 4. Enough protein and carbohydrate supports the training that drives body composition. Soy is a smaller worry than its reputation: a 2021 meta-analysis of 41 clinical studies found no effect of soy or soy isoflavones on men's reproductive hormones, testosterone included 10.
| Nutrient | Good food sources | Amount per serving |
|---|---|---|
| Zinc | Oysters (3 oz cooked) | About 28 to 32 mg |
| Zinc | Beef chuck roast (3 oz) | About 7 mg |
| Zinc | Pumpkin seeds (1 oz) | About 2.2 mg |
| Vitamin D | Sockeye salmon (3 oz) | About 570 IU |
| Vitamin D | Fortified milk (1 cup) | About 120 IU |
| Magnesium | Pumpkin seeds (1 oz) | About 156 mg |
| Magnesium | Almonds (1 oz) | About 80 mg |
| Dietary fat | Olive oil, eggs, nuts, oily fish | Keep fat at a normal share of calories rather than very low |
What drags testosterone down
The other half of raising testosterone is removing what lowers it. Most of these effects reverse once the cause goes, which is why it pays to check them before considering anything else.
| Factor | Effect on testosterone | Evidence | Does it recover? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regular drinking | About 3 drinks a day for 3 weeks lowered it about 7% 9; long-term heavy drinking damages the testes | Moderate | Mostly, over weeks to months of drinking less |
| Chronic stress and high cortisol | Cortisol suppresses the brain's signal to the testes | Moderate | Yes, as the stress eases |
| Opioid painkillers | Long-term use commonly causes low testosterone | Strong | Usually, after a supervised taper |
| Anabolic steroids | Shut down the body's own production | Strong | Often slowly, over months to more than a year; sometimes incompletely |
| Cannabis | Studies conflict | Weak | Unclear |
| Large calorie deficit or under-fueled training | Lowers it while the deficit lasts | Moderate | Yes, with enough food |
| Acute illness or surgery | Temporarily lowers it | Strong | Yes; retest once recovered |
Stress works through the same signal chain as sleep and fat. Sustained high cortisol damps the brain's release of LH, so the testes get less instruction to make testosterone; long work stress and hard training without recovery are the usual sources, and the effect fades as the load eases. A morning cortisol result can show whether it is running high. For how drinking shows up on other blood tests too, see alcohol and blood tests.
Testosterone supplements and boosters: which have evidence
Do testosterone boosters work? Mostly not. An analysis of 50 products sold as testosterone boosters found that 90 percent claimed to raise testosterone, but only about 25 percent had any published data behind their ingredients, and some contained zinc or B vitamins above the safe upper limit 6. The handful of ingredients with real trials are below.
| Supplement | What the trials found | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Vitamin D | About 3,300 IU a day for a year raised total testosterone from about 10.7 to 13.4 nmol/L (about 309 to 386 ng/dL) in vitamin D deficient, overweight men 11; no change over 12 weeks in healthy men whose testosterone was already normal 12 | Moderate, deficient men only |
| Zinc | Restricting zinc lowered testosterone in young men; supplements raised it in marginally deficient older men 13 | Moderate, deficient men only |
| Magnesium | Higher magnesium tracks with higher testosterone in observational studies of older men; no good trials | Weak |
| Ashwagandha | In overweight men aged 40 to 70, 8 weeks raised salivary testosterone about 15% more than placebo 14; one other small 8-week trial in young men lifting weights found a similar rise | Moderate but small and short |
| Tongkat ali | Small trials, mixed results, varying extracts | Weak |
| Fenugreek | Small trials of branded extracts, mixed results | Weak |
| Creatine | No meaningful change in total testosterone | No effect |
| D-aspartic acid | No rise in trained men | No effect |
Supplements with testosterone studies
Strongest evidence, if deficientVitamin DRaised testosterone in men who started deficient; did nothing for men with normal testosteroneIn our shop 
Good evidence, if deficientZincTestosterone rose when marginally deficient men took it and fell when zinc was restrictedIn our shop 
For what a low vitamin D result means, see vitamin D deficiency. Magnesium and fenugreek have their own pages, and the testosterone goal page gathers the supplements with the most evidence in one place.
How to increase testosterone in women naturally
Women make about a tenth to a twentieth as much testosterone as men, and there is no agreed cutoff for low testosterone in women; the Endocrine Society advises against diagnosing it in healthy women. The pill and oral estrogen raise SHBG, which lowers free testosterone, and levels drift down with age and through menopause. The same habits apply: enough sleep, strength training, and eating enough rather than chronic dieting. Only a few small ashwagandha trials have looked at women's testosterone, and they do not show a clear effect. For many women the more common problem is testosterone running high, as in PCOS, where the goal runs the other way. The hormonal imbalance guide covers how the female hormones fit together, and the female hormone panel guide walks through a woman's report line by line.
When it isn't lifestyle: signs you need a doctor
Common signs of low testosterone in men are low sex drive, fewer morning erections, erectile problems, tiredness, low mood and losing muscle; low testosterone covers them in full. Lifestyle is the first step for borderline results, but some patterns point to a medical cause that habits will not fix. LH and FSH separate the two main kinds. When testosterone is low and LH is high, the testes are not responding to the signal (primary hypogonadism). When testosterone is low and LH is low or normal, the problem sits in the pituitary or hypothalamus (secondary hypogonadism), which obesity, opioids, a high prolactin or, rarely, a pituitary tumor can cause 1. A raised estradiol can show how much testosterone fat tissue is converting.
| Pattern on the report | What it points to |
|---|---|
| Low testosterone, high LH | The testes themselves (injury, infection, genetic causes such as Klinefelter syndrome) |
| Low testosterone, low or normal LH | Pituitary or hypothalamus; often obesity, opioids or illness |
| Low testosterone, high prolactin | A prolactin-secreting pituitary growth or a medicine side effect |
| Total testosterone below 150 ng/dL with low or normal LH | The guideline suggests pituitary imaging 1 |
Related symptoms have their own pages: erectile dysfunction and low libido. If a doctor does prescribe testosterone, TRT blood work explains the monitoring tests.
How to tell if a change worked
Read your total testosterone beside SHBG, free testosterone, LH and your other results to see which brake might apply, then retest 8 to 12 weeks after a change under the same morning, fasting conditions. A single result can differ noticeably from the next draw, so trust a rise that holds on two morning tests more than a single number. If your morning results are low on two days, or you have symptoms, go over them with your doctor before relying on lifestyle changes alone.
Free, no accountRead your blood testGot a hormone panel with a testosterone result on it? Read every line of it, free.Read my results
Citations
- Bhasin S et al. Testosterone therapy in men with hypogonadism: an Endocrine Society clinical practice guideline. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 2018;103(5):1715-1744.
- Leproult R, Van Cauter E. Effect of 1 week of sleep restriction on testosterone levels in young healthy men. JAMA 2011;305(21):2173-2174.
- Corona G et al. Body weight loss reverts obesity-associated hypogonadotropic hypogonadism: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Eur J Endocrinol 2013;168(6):829-843.
- Whittaker J, Wu K. Low-fat diets and testosterone in men: systematic review and meta-analysis of intervention studies. J Steroid Biochem Mol Biol 2021;210:105878.
- Travison TG et al. Harmonized reference ranges for circulating testosterone levels in men of four cohort studies in the United States and Europe. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 2017;102(4):1161-1173.
- Clemesha CG, Thaker H, Samplaski MK. 'Testosterone boosting' supplements composition and claims are not supported by the academic literature. World J Mens Health 2020;38(1):115-122.
- Brambilla DJ et al. The effect of diurnal variation on clinical measurement of serum testosterone and other sex hormone levels in men. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 2009;94(3):907-913.
- Wu FCW et al. Hypothalamic-pituitary-testicular axis disruptions in older men are differentially linked to age and modifiable risk factors: the European Male Aging Study. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 2008;93(7):2737-2745.
- Sierksma A et al. Effect of moderate alcohol consumption on plasma dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate, testosterone, and estradiol levels in middle-aged men and postmenopausal women: a diet-controlled intervention study. Alcohol Clin Exp Res 2004;28(5):780-785.
- Reed KE et al. Neither soy nor isoflavone intake affects male reproductive hormones: an expanded and updated meta-analysis of clinical studies. Reprod Toxicol 2021;100:60-67.
- Pilz S et al. Effect of vitamin D supplementation on testosterone levels in men. Horm Metab Res 2011;43(3):223-225.
- Lerchbaum E et al. Vitamin D and testosterone in healthy men: a randomized controlled trial. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 2017;102(11):4292-4302.
- Prasad AS et al. Zinc status and serum testosterone levels of healthy adults. Nutrition 1996;12(5):344-348.
- Lopresti AL, Drummond PD, Smith SJ. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study examining the hormonal and vitality effects of ashwagandha (Withania somnifera) in aging, overweight males. Am J Mens Health 2019;13(2):1557988319835985.
- Feldman HA et al. Age trends in the level of serum testosterone and other hormones in middle-aged men: longitudinal results from the Massachusetts Male Aging Study. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 2002;87(2):589-598.
- Wu FCW et al. Identification of late-onset hypogonadism in middle-aged and elderly men. N Engl J Med 2010;363(2):123-135.
Educational context only, not medical advice or a diagnosis. Always discuss your results with a clinician.
