Staying active is a key component of a happy and healthy life. It has been shown that exercise can have positive effects on your well-being — boosting your immune system and supporting your mental state. But exercise can also help you maintain good testosterone health. Ever tried running? Now might be a good time.
Physical activity is a broad term with countless health benefits: supporting your cognitive function, nourishing your body, strengthening your bones, and aiding your mental health.
But exercise can also help safeguard you from other illnesses, relieve stress, and improve sleep patterns. With that being said, the benefits provided to you through physical activity, like running, are an invaluable health asset — including the maintenance of your testosterone levels.
Whether you have a gym membership or not, running is easy, convenient, and doesn’t require you to own any type of fancy equipment. Let’s find out how exactly running can help your testosterone health.
Exercise and Testosterone
Multiple trials have been conducted to investigate the relationship between exercise and testosterone. Certain types of physical activity, such as resistance training, have even been linked to acute changes in testosterone, instantly increasing after exercise.
For acute changes in serum testosterone levels, researchers found that exercise needs to have a relative intensity — a threshold that needs to be crossed before your body ramps up testosterone production.
Another trial conducted on men who were either overweight or obese found that both low and high levels of exercise impacted their serum testosterone significantly. However, researchers found that the higher the number of steps, the more testosterone was produced.
What Happens in Your Body When You Run?
There’s nothing like a run in the early morning hours when you’re breathing in the crisp air and watching the sun begin to rise, marking the beginning of a new day. But you’ll feel more than just excitement about the beautiful backdrop as your body releases endorphins — also known as the feel-good hormone.
Endorphins can aid your muscles from feeling strained by the run but they likely have a limited impact on your mood, despite the stress-relieving nature of running. But your body also releases endocannabinoids into your bloodstream, which can cross the cellular barrier between your bloodstream and brain.
Endocannabinoids have been credited with a feeling of calm after you go running, eliminating anxiety and providing you with a feeling of being at peace.
How Can Running Potentially Help Your Testosterone Levels?
Besides giving you a warm and fuzzy feeling inside, running can provide you with many health benefits and strengthen your immune system. But running can also support your testosterone health, ensuring overall well-being and optimal health — which are imperative to maintaining your hormonal balance.
Maintain a Healthy Weight
Everybody is talking about how important your body mass index (BMI) is and how you should make sure you keep a healthy weight. But why? See, a healthy weight is necessary to avoid an array of chronic conditions and medical complications — which running and exercise can help you accomplish.
Running regularly helps you stay fit and burn excess calories. It can, thus, aid in maintaining a normal BMI — which is between 19 kg/m² and <25 kg/m².
With that being said, the primary benefit of running is that it can strengthen your overall health. And in light of rising obesity rates and a type 2 diabetes epidemic, the significance of physical activity, including running, has become more profound.
More importantly, both obesity and diabetes have been linked to low testosterone. So if running can support a healthy weight and help you avoid obesity and diabetes, your testosterone may be in much better shape.
In fact, type 2 diabetes and low testosterone are so strongly linked that the American Diabetes Association indicates that men with type 2 diabetes are actually twice as likely to develop low T.
Relieve Stress
Regular exercise, such as running a few times every week, can help you manage your stress levels, keep anxiety at bay, and improve your mental health and mood. Therefore, running can also indirectly impact your testosterone levels.
Research has shown that testosterone levels are associated with the amount of stress you experience. It was found that chronic stress can impact the production of testosterone by inhibiting synthesis in the Leydig cells.
With stress being a critical factor affecting hormonal health, using running as a stress relief can assist you in maintaining healthy testosterone levels. Running lowers the production of stress hormones, such as cortisol and adrenaline, while simultaneously producing endorphins to promote a feeling of calm.
And with the reduction in stress levels through running, you have taken a step closer to good testosterone health.
Sleep Better
All of us know how hard it is to get out of bed in the morning if you’ve had a rough night. That’s because your body needs a good night’s sleep to perform daily functions and processes and to maintain a healthy hormone balance.
According to research findings, physical activity, including running, can improve both the quality of your sleep and the time you need to fall asleep. This indicates that running may contribute to both quality and quantity of sleep.
Researchers also showed that sleep plays a key role in producing testosterone, which ultimately means that if you’re able to get more rest at night, you might be able to improve your testosterone levels — thus linking running and testosterone synthesis.
It’s Time to Put On Your Running Shoes
Ready to get those dusty running shoes out of the back of your closet? Whether you prefer to run indoors or would rather enjoy the fresh air, know that running is a great cardiovascular workout that can support your testosterone health, immune system, and overall health.
Running regularly can produce countless health-related ripple effects, including the maintenance of your testosterone levels. You will be rewarded with a feeling of calm and inner peace but could also find your cognitive function improved, your stress relieved, and your hormonal system more balanced.
So what are you waiting for? Get your running shoes and go!
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