BUILDING SPARTAN WARRIORS + KEEPING YOUR MOJO

Modern stuff which is messing with your mojo.

T – boost me. Make me a beast, turn me into a spartan and keep my mojo…..

Eating disorders amongst men are up 25% these last few years. Defining the male images is clearly becoming more of an issue for some people to attain amidst the modern food choice and culture around eating.

It’s hard to put your finger on what encompasses the essence of man. Various qualities come to mind. Clichés often or elements of character I respect or emulate towards. Strength, compassion, wisdom, reason, experience, kindness….control in the face of temptation.

These traits are not achievable in a state of chronic stress.

These are indeed positive traits, some physical some spiritual / psychological. All are in part lead by our internal physiology. Lead by testosterone, dopamine, lower levels of stress hormones as well as a life lead on the right path, with the right people around you.

The right mind set is essential in attaining these qualities and the right food, nutrients and supplements can help you achieve these goals faster.

Working with World Class male teams for almost 2 decades has given me a lot of insight into these traits, what makes someone dominant, successful a winner.

In defeat what keeps people gracious, responsive and adaptive with bounce back ability – eventually through patience, performance and persistence becoming a winner in turn.

One of the key players in the essence of being a man is the hormone testosterone (T). Declining levels the past few decades along with Andropause or the sudden drop off some men see in their mid-life can wreak havoc with sex drive, health, wellness and maintaining your character. Andropause however is not an inevitability. Lifestyle and environment plays a bigger role in decline T levels than aging.

Lifestyle related declines in T-levels are much more likely associated with central obesity, excess alcohol, depression and cessation of smoking than an age-related decline. Men are also less likely to decline in testosterone if they are married. However T does drop when you have children, people say it makes men more caring and less likely to stray. As long as you are savvy you can boost your T married / children or not and still enjoy feeling fantastic and being a great dad.

Most of the drop in T levels as we age appears to be controllable through lifestyle factors, training with weights and taking the right kind of supplementation. You have to start with a strong mindset.

The saying where the mind goes the body will follow is never truer when it comes to keeping T levels high and avoiding depression. Maintaining a healthy brain chemistry is key. There’s links between lower levels of neurotransmitters and lower levels of drive, determination, happiness, sleep and testosterone levels. Specifically, lower dopamine lowers T levels and higher levels increase T levels, drive to train and compete along with sex drive. The cheapest way to increase dopamine is to purchase the amino acid tyrosine. If you want more overall brain support consider an all in one nootropic such as focus formulawww.aminoman.comwhich contains gram levels of aminos, botanicals and cofactors for optimum brain function, memory, healthy mood state and bloods flow. Of course the brain is primarily composed of essential fats DHA and EPA – so eating clean oily fish 4 x per week and sticking to genuine grass fed meat is also a fabulous idea.

A positive mental attitude and healthy brain will product essential neurotransmitters to keep testosterone levels high, in turn normal T levels help with all neurotransmitter production.

There’s a saying in the functional medicine community, good for the heart = good for the brain. It’s true that most habits and supplements which help with heart health also help with brain health. There’s a few ways to keep heart healthy, one of the best is to maintain great circulatory system. This by the way is also a great way to make sure you get daily wood. E.g. strong am erections. These rely on 3 things, strong circulation, high levels of dopamine and high levels of morning testosterone. In fact, morning wood often reflects directly on your daily free testosterone production. We’ll deal with T boosting supplements in a moment.

Right now, the best single way you can increase blood flow is by increasing nitric oxide production. The best way to do this is by increasing nitric oxide pre-cursors and facilitators. Really good nitric oxide production can be achieved with citrulline malate, an additive and synergistic effect can be attained by using vinitroplus a high dosed polyphenol complexmade from apple and grape skins. It takes 2.5kg of grape skin and 500g apple skin to make one single tablet.

Maintaining vascular flexibility and blood flow is a corner stone to aging gracefully and keeping morning wood going strong.

The liver the major organ of detoxification, the gate keeper – keep us safe and a key player in keeping us healthy and well. Why do so many people hammer this into the ground then?

There’s no doubt at your liver gains fat either with excess boozing or poor eating habits your T levels will take a plummet. Vigorous exercise helps keep the fat off the liver and away from the organs, but of course most of that depends on how much you eat in relation.

If you like to booze then you need to protect the liver wherever possible. My take home all in one herb for liver support is called milk thistle. There’s lots of other liver protecting habits such as drinking green tea and using higher dosed flavavoid rich foods, like spices, herbs and cocao. If you booze (too much) ultimately you might loose, especially if you are not using milk thistle and sweating regularly enough to burn off fat from this valuable organ.

My best go to supplement including milk thistle is called metabolic optimiser.

Inflammation directly lowers T levels, higher levels of inflammation stop the testes and ovaries producing T. This is why sometimes you get horney after taking anti-inflammatories (not recommended cause they also block muscle gain and wreak your liver). However, looking after inflammation is crucial for regulating normal T levels

Bones and joints;

Them bones them bones, them. If you’ve ever been unfortunate enough to suffer an injury or operation you’ll know first hand that T levels get a hammering in these situations. Partly the increased inflammation and pain will lower mood state, increase cortisol levels and thereby decreased T levels.

Partly also there can be a reversed link, low T can pre-dispose people to getting injured. Cutting calories and training very hard, guess what, lower T levels result – take care and be careful about niggles, pulls and strains. The muskulo skeletal system is only as strong as the sum of its parts.

We are built from proteins, minerals and collagen. Insufficient intake of these elements or the cofactors to solidify them, think vitamin D, K, magnesium and 16 other trace minerals – everything we need to allow the right amount of calcium into the rigid structure of the bone but allow some flexibility is key here. Vitamin D is probably the biggest player in this story. However, K2 – which is often deficient is also considered as important for BMD (bone mineral density) and of course we often lack sufficient intake of collagen rich proteins due to modern eating patterns, habits and poor digestive systems and assimilation.

Solution, stay strong with a vitamin D complex which includes cofactors, K2, magnesium, boron, zinc and manganese.. Drink plenty of bone broth and a diet rich in trace minerals. Include K2 (included in my vitamin D/K2 complex) in your supplementation regime. It’s so much more than a vitamin D formula. J

Muscle, energy, recovery and growth…..

Getting buff. Hench, ripped – all takes effort and resistance. You need to create power and bounce in your training. Sustaining muscle energy, recovery and recuperation are all obviously key to the ultimate principle – the principle of progression.

Providing amino acids in and around training is an essential part of switching on muscle protein synthesis the process whereby muscles tissue is rebuilt. Supplying certain aminos in the evening can also help augment optimal GH release, a powerful trigger for tissue remodelling and lowering body fat.

Take muscle protein synthesis building amino acids in and around your workout, these include essential amino acids (EAAs) and branched chained amino acids (BCAAs) one of these leucine acts as a ‘trigger’ for muscle protein synthesis (MPS). A mixed balance of aminos, both fast and slow release appears to be best for triggering buffness after training.

Chronic Stress

We need stress to induce adaptation. However prolonged exposure to stress is known as chronic stress. As we cannot distinguish between the different types of stress physiologically they all manifest in the same way; increasing the release of stress hormones and partial to full induction of the fight flight response. Managing stress though the mind is a powerful way to modulate the stress response and switch us back into the rest and digest part of the nervous system called parasympathetic nervous system. This can be achieved through following mindful techniques and practice, something in vogue at the moment. To assist our physiology we can also balance blood glucose with good nutrition and replace lost stress minerals such as magnesium and b-vitamins.

One of the fastest ways from a supplement perspective to resume balanced autonomic nervous system function it to use adaptogenic plants or adaptogens for short.

T – boost me. Make me a beast, turn me into a spartan and keep my mojo.

Summary;

If you think your T levels are low there’s a few ways you can try to increase this. You can contact me for a saliva kit to test this and your cortisol, DHEA and melatonin. matt@aminoman.com

A summary of the supplement routes above is one place you can start;

Blood flow (NO2) try citrulline malate and vinitroplus.

Inflammation; use fish oils, metabolic optimiserand optimized curcumin.

Optimise detoxification and liver protection with milk thistle and bioflavonoid complexes e.g. metabolic optimizer

Stress; take adaptogens

Brain energy + neurotransmitters (dopamine) use focus formula and additional tyrosine.

Body stimulus and recovery with weights and sufficient replenishment afterwards. Take amino acids around your workout and again at night to increase serotonin and GH release. The best support here is achieved by metabolic amino complex, amino power loader and R5 aminos used after training and or at night.

Body structure; use bone mineral density supporting nutrients from vitamin D, co factors and collagen rich foods and supplements. Make your bone broth and take vitamin D/K2 complex.

Increasing LH the brains drive to the testes to create more testosterone. LH can be increased using acetyl l carnitine in the morning.

Decreasing SHBG the piggy back molecule which can bind up sex hormones and decrease free T levels. This is the subject for a future article.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3731873/Herbal aphrodisiacs.

Key;

Testosterone (T) male hormone.

Cortisol (C) stress hormone.

Dopamine (D) Neurotransmitter.

Essential Amino Acids (EAAs)

Branched Chain Amino Acids (BCAAs)

Dopamine T boosting reference; Physiology and Behavior, 2005, 86:356-368, "Dopamine, the medial preoptic area, and male sexual behavior"

Citrulline; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27749691

Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care. 2017 Jan;20(1):92-98.

Influence of L-citrulline and watermelon supplementation on vascular function and exercise performance.

Figueroa A¹, Wong A, Jaime SJ, Gonzales JU.

Borotollo V et al. “Apple biophenol synergistic complex and its potential benefits for cardiovascular health.” Nutrafoods, vol. 12, no. 3 (September 2013): 71-79.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25087838Liver and T levels reference.

Injury references;

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/mi/2013/183041/Inflammation and T levels.

Vitamin K https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11684396

K2 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4566462/