Why Women Lack Energy For Work & Play

How do you know if your low energy is caused by underlying disease or is the result of lifestyle factors, stress, poor diet, lack of sleep, or normal aging? Or is there something else going on?

Although it is common, fatigue can be one of the more frustrating symptoms of menopause. It can negatively impact many aspects of a woman’s personal and professional life, and it can even take its toll on her overall health. Fortunately, by better understanding its causes, women can treat this frustrating symptom.

The primary cause of fatigue in middle aged women is unbalanced hormone levels, although there are exceptions to this rule. For women who are experiencing menopause, fatigue is typically due to hormone fluctuations.

Estrogen and progesterone, the two main hormones influenced by menopause, play a key role in sleep functions and when they are thrown out of balance, a woman’s sleep cycle is disturbed, and often leads to fatigue.

Another of these hormones, that many women do not associate with themselves is testosterone. Many of us might not consider testosterone, a hormone in the androgen (or male) category, as vital for women. However, a woman’s sexual health can be extremely affected by decreased testosterone levels and a sudden drop in testosterone can affect a woman’s libido, energy levels, and mood.

Hearing the words low testosterone (or “low T”) and you probably think “men’s health.” Yes, this usually attached to ‘men only’ term is a hormone also produced and required in women. Low testosterone in women has consequences that many women are not aware of.

Testosterone belongs to a class of male hormones called androgens. But women also have testosterone and Women actually need this small amount of testosterone as part of the mix of hormones that keep mood, energy levels, sex drive, and bodily functions working smoothly.

The ovaries produce both testosterone and estrogen. Relatively small quantities of testosterone are released into your bloodstream by the ovaries and adrenal glands. Once this production slows down or stops in a woman, she has options to work a natural program to increase natural production. The following suggestions will assist a woman in testosterone production with only good side effects.

9 Ways to Naturally Increase Testosterone Levels, Dr. Mercola

1. Lose Weight: If you’re overweight, shedding the excess pounds may increase your testosterone levels, according to research presented at the Endocrine Society’s 2012 meeting. Overweight men are more likely to have low testosterone levels to begin with, so this is an important trick to increase your body’s testosterone production when you need it most.

2. High-Intensity Exercise like Peak Fitness (Especially Combined with Intermittent Fasting): Both intermittent fasting and short intense exercise have been shown to boost testosterone.

3. Consume Plenty of Zinc: The mineral zinc is important for testosterone production, and supplementing your diet for as little as six weeks has been shown to cause a marked improvement in testosterone among men with low levels. Likewise, research has shown that restricting dietary sources of zinc leads to a significant decrease in testosterone, while zinc supplementation increases it — and even protects men from exercised-induced reductions in testosterone levels.

4. Strength Training: Strength training is also known to boost testosterone levels, provided you are doing so intensely enough. When strength training to boost testosterone, you’ll want to increase the weight and lower your number of reps, and then focus on exercises that work a large number of muscles, such as dead lifts or squats.

5. Optimize Your Vitamin D Levels: Vitamin D, a steroid hormone, is essential for the healthy development of the nucleus of the sperm cell, and helps maintain semen quality and sperm count. Vitamin D also increases levels of testosterone, which may boost libido. In one study, overweight men who were given vitamin D supplements had a significant increase in testosterone levels after one year. A few years back, the recommended level was between 40 to 60 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml), but more recently the optimal vitamin D level has been raised to 50-70 ng/ml.

6. Reduce Stress: When you’re under a lot of stress, your body releases high levels of the stress hormone cortisol. This hormone actually blocks the effects of testosterone,6 presumably because, from a biological standpoint, testosterone-associated behaviors (mating, competing, aggression) may have lowered your chances of survival in an emergency (hence, the “fight or flight” response is dominant, courtesy of cortisol).

In the modern world, chronic stress, and subsequently elevated levels of cortisol, could mean that testosterone’s effects are blocked in the long term, which is what you want to avoid.

7. Limit or Eliminate Sugar from Your Diet: Testosterone levels decrease after you eat sugar, which is likely because the sugar leads to a high insulin level, another factor leading to low testosterone. Based on USDA estimates, the average American consumes 12 teaspoons of sugar a day, which equates to about TWO TONS of sugar during a lifetime.

If you’re struggling with sugar addiction and having trouble dealing with cravings, I highly recommend trying an energy psychology technique called Turbo Tapping, which has helped many “soda addicts” kick their sweet habit, and it should work for any type of sweet craving you may have.

8. Eat Healthy Fats: By healthy, this means not only mon- and polyunsaturated fats, like that found in avocadoes and nuts, but also saturated, as these are essential for building testosterone. It’s important to understand that your body requires saturated fats from animal and vegetable sources (such as meat, dairy, certain oils, and tropical plants like coconut) for optimal functioning, and if you neglect this important food group in favor of sugar, grains and other starchy carbs, your health and weight are almost guaranteed to suffer. Examples of healthy fats you can eat more of to give your testosterone levels a boost include: Olives and Olive oil, Coconuts and coconut oil, Raw nuts, such as, almonds or pecans, Grass-fed meats, Palm oil, Avocados, Butter made from raw grass-fed organic milk, Organic pastured egg yolks and Unheated organic nut oils as some suggested foods.

9. Boost Your Intake of Branch Chain Amino Acids (BCAA) from Foods Like Whey Protein: Research suggests that BCAAs result in higher testosterone levels, particularly when taken along with resistance training.9 While BCAAs are available in supplement form, you’ll find the highest concentrations of BCAAs like leucine in dairy products – especially quality cheeses and whey protein. Food-based leucine is really the ideal form that can benefit your muscles without side effects.

Lifestyle and life choices can make all the difference in the world for women, and by choosing to opt-in for self-care, eating healthy, exercise, etc., we can find balance in all areas of their hormones, removing the consequence of low testoterone in women and rebirthing the required energy to thoroughly enjoy life, in both areas of work and play. Take Action!