Plaque is a mostly invisible  bacterial loaded film that clings to teeth and gums. Plaque is the soft, sticky layer of bacteria, which is constantly forming on the  teeth. Usually it is invisible to the naked eye, but when a person is not brushing adequately, it can build up to where it appears to be a thick whitish coating on the teeth at the gum line. This bacterial causes irritation of the tissues that support your teeth.  This irritation can lead to inflammations and infection that can destroy your gum and bone tissue.  When plaque is not completely removed it may harden or calcify into a rough deposit called tarter or calculus.  The only way to limit the damage caused by the tartar to your gum tissue is to have your teeth  cleaned regularly at the dental office.

What foods are best avoided to maintain good periodontal health? The top culprit chosen by periodontists was popcorn, because the husks can get caught in between the teeth and gums and cause abscesses.
Oral-disease-causing microbes like:  porphyromonas gingivalis bacterium are associated with chronic and severe adult periodontitis. The problem with calculus is that it harbors plaque. Bacterial plaque, or reaction to it, is what the problem is that causes gum disease.

Impacted food, alcohol, improper use of toothpicks and tobacco products may irritate gum tissue.
The results suggest that persistent alcohol abuse increases periodontitis , gum disease, development by heightening the loss of attachment through recession of gingival margins.

Badly aligned teeth, defective fillings, poorly fitting bridges or partial dentures and harmful habits such as grinding you teeth can cause problems.

Poor diet that causes nutritional deficiency and reduces the body’s ability to fight off infection.
There is increasing evidence that decay and periodontal disease are both contagious diseases. The causative bacteria can be passed from parent to child or from lover to lover by kissing. People who never had a cavity may suddenly have several (or more) because of the person’s new relationships! Practical advice—if your kids or your lover have active decay or gum and bone disease, you BOTH may need treatment, including the use of antibacterial rinses, for the disease to be controlled. This is a major paradigm shift in the treatment of dental disease.

Hormone fluctuations during pregnancy can cause pregnancy gingivitis.
Oral contraceptive, steroid, cancer therapy drugs and anti-epilepsy drugs will affect gum tissue.
Such conditions as diabetes, leukemia, AIDS/HIV..

Periodontal Disease can be spread through family members

Medications that can cause gum disease

Poor oral hygiene habits cause periodontitis. All the body needs is 0.05mm of calculus to allow for the formation of bacterial antigens that cause gum disease.

Low calcium intake is a risk factor for gum disease.

Women aged 20-39 with the lowest calcium intake had a risk of 54% for  periodontal diseases.  Women who took moderate calcium supplements lowered their risk by 27%.

Smoking

Smoking-causes calculus, deep pockets, bone loss, infection and chronic gum disease.  It damages the natural processes that the body uses to fight against gum disease, it reduces saliva levels, restricts blood flow, and damages your immune system.  The nicotine causes significant changes in the blood vessels and the tissue of the mouth are getting attacked by the heat and smoke itself.

Anger…see anger and gum disease.

Stage and ages in life.  Hormonally triggered life stages like puberty, pregnancy and menopause, where estrogen and progesterone levels climb, causing gums to react differently to the bacteria found in plaque.

Dry mouth.

It only takes 0.05mm of bacteria plaque to allow for bacterial antigen formation which is a pretty thin layer and EASY to accumulate in hard to get at areas. Dental plaque as a biofilm, just like in your arteries. Plaque is NOT chemically causative in the PD process, CALCULUS is.

Half of the population may be genetically predisposed to periodontal disease.

It is believed that gum disease may caused by a gene that causes a defect in the Il-1antibody. Periodontal. disease is now proving to be an autoimmune type disease, with bacterial toxins as the trigger. PD, Arthritis,

Cardiovascular Disease, Cerebral Vascular Disease, Diabetes, and a host of many more are all linked by the fact that they are immune disorders dressed up as “other issues” PD was almost totally controlled by 2 genes that controlled inflammation.  It is almost 100% a genetic disease that can be made much worse by smoking. It demonstrates itself in the mouth and  is nothing more then an Immune System Gone Awry. It needs a trigger to start but once started it only takes minimal forces to keep it going. U of Wash, Dr.Roy Page, stated that perio is a genetic disease. If you have the two bad genes that adversely effect the way your body responds to irritation with an exaggerated inflammatory response and smoke you will loose teeth early.

People with PD have a defective immune response to the antigens that the perio pathogens produce. Thus PD as an immune disease that is caused initially by poor home care and bacterial antigens but is propagated by a systemic defect that some have and some don’t. It is a bacterially induced immune response.

Stress-Smokers under stress have deeper pockets than non-anxious smokers Bacterial biofilm triggers periodontal infection, and stress can aggravate the situation. Past studies have demonstrated that people with psychiatric disorders have more periodontal  disease. High stress levels combined with  smoking may lead to more periodontal infection. High-stress levels combined with smoking may lead to more periodontal infection.

It is caused by mixed infection of bacterial + host response to bacterial infection= gum disease. It is the interaction of the host or your immune response with pathogenic bacterial that determines whether gum disease is initiated or whether disease progresses. It is important to recognize certain risk factors make certain people more susceptible to gum disease.

Start cleaning BETWEEN your teeth.  Periodontal disease begins between the teeth.  The area between the teeth are more prone to infection than facial or tongue gum tissue surfaces simply by anatomy.  This tissue is not keratinized like tissue found on the facial and tongue surfaces.  Non-keratinized tissue is more susceptible to breakdown. It is also a very protected area, NOT reached by brushing or rinsing.

Smokers, diabetics and those taking steroids, oral contraceptives and certain cancer drugs are a higher risk for developing periodontitis.

Alcohol is a drying agent and causes sloughing to occur so as it does the remnant cells are “food sources” for the antigen.   Decay requires a carbohydrate rich environment while PD needs protein. So if we have a diet high in protein and we are not exquisitely diligent on home care the remnant of the protein feeds the antigen reaction.

Since the disease starts between the teeth, it makes sense to start cleaning in between the teeth and than brush.  You can clean this area with interdental brushes, picks, floss, sticks, oral irrigation, and automatic flossers.  remember this disease needs to be treated both in the office and at home.

Gum disease is caused from an immune system that has gone off track and is linked to the causes of heart disease, cancer and diabetes via the immune system pathway.

Stress can cause Periodontal Disease- stress is bad for your teeth.

Psychological stress can lead to elevated plaque levels, while physical stress is linked to gingivitis (gum disease). What’s more, caregivers helping people under these physical and emotional stresses are also at increased risk for gum disease.Experts believe chronic stress may lead to a malfunction of some biological functions. Also, those who are struggling with stress and those who care for them often become depressed and slide on oral hygiene, if not giving up on themselves altogether.

Gum disease leads to more than bleeding gums. It can affect the integrity of your teeth and the bone that supports them. If unchecked, gingivitis can lead to loose and missing teeth. When this happens, teeth can often shift. It can be uncomfortable and painful for your bite (not to mention your smile). Brushing at least twice a day and flossing each night are the first step toward protecting yourself from gum disease. Regular dental check-ups and cleanings are also crucial. While these steps can help reduce the risk of stress-related periodontal disease, they don’t resolve the key problem – stress! Exercising and eating right can help, and developing a hobby can be a fantastic release. Talking about it can help as well.

Cigarette Smoking and the Periodontal Patient

Adult smokers are approximately three times as likely as non-smokers to have periodontitis. The association between smoking and attachment loss is even stronger when the definition of periodontitis is restricted to the most severely affected subjects. Smokers have a diminished response to periodontal therapy and show approximately half as much improvement in probing depths and clinical attachment levels following non- surgical and various surgical modalities of therapy. Implant failures in smokers are twice those of non-smokers, with a higher failure rate in the maxillary arch . Tobacco-induced alterations in microbial and host factors contribute to these deleterious effects of smoking on the periodontium. In longitudinal studies, the rate of periodontal disease progression is increased in smokers, but decreases to that of a non-smoker following tobacco cessation. Likewise, recent non- smokers respond to periodontal therapy in a manner similar to patients who have never smoked.  Use the five A’s: ask – identify tobacco users; advise – advise them to quit; assess – evaluate the patient’s readiness to quit; assist – offer assistance in cessation; and arrange – follow up on cessation efforts. The addition of pharmacotherapy to behavioral therapy, including nicotine replacement therapy and bupropion, can increase cessation rates. The most popular form of nicotine replacement therapy is the patch, and its use has been shown to double cessation rates compared to behavioral therapy alone. Use of bupropion in combination with nicotine replacement therapy may be particularly helpful for heavy smokers or smokers who have experienced multiple failed attempts at cessation.

Anger may be a risk factor of gum disease!

Stress is associated with poor oral hygiene, increased glucocorticoid secretion that can depress immune function, increased insulin resistance and potentially increased risk of periodontitis. Methods. The authors examined the association between social support, anger expression and periodontitis in 42,523 male.   Subjects who reported having at least one close friend had a 30 percent lower risk of developing periodontitis. Men who participated in religious meetings or services had a 27 percent lower risk of developing periodontitis. Men who reported being angry on a daily basis had a 43 percent higher risk of developing periodontitis compared with men who reported being angry seldom.

Transmission of Porphyromonas gingivalis and FimA Type in Spouse Relationship Recent findings suggest that the genotype of the fimbriae is one of the important factors in infection by P. gingivalis. The objectives of the present study were to investigate the transmission of P. gingivalis between spouses.  Intrafamilial transmission of infectious bacteria was significantly higher in couples. Conclusion: This study suggests that fimA type II,, may be an important factor in the transmission of P. gingivalis between spouses.

Clinical studies prove

Floss for life

Harvard Medical School researchers studied longevity and found one of the most important contributing factors was daily flossing. Because it removes bacteria from the teeth and gums, flossing helps to prevent periodontal disease and gingivitis. Another study found that men with periodontitis had a whopping 72% greater risk of developing coronary disease. Gingivitis was associated with a 42% increased risk for men.

Your liver has many functions; stores certain vitamins, minerals and sugars for use as fuel, cleanses/filters the toxins out of your blood and controls the production/excretion of cholesterol. Your overall health and vitality, to a great extent, depends upon the health of your liver. The thousands of enzyme systems that control virtually every body activity are created there. If your liver fails to create even one of these enzymes, overall body function is impaired, creating greater metabolic stress on your body. THE LYMPH composed of
Lymph fluid consists of; The ’tissue fluid’ in which all of our cells are bathed, and the fluid within the ‘lymph vessels’. These are ‘blood vessel’ like tubes, which connect the lymph glands of the body. The Lymphatic System is also called the Immune System.

Modern lifestyles can overstress your liver. Alcohol, tobacco, environmental pollutants, food additives, agricultural pesticides, popular cosmetic ingredients, common household products, stress, pharmaceutical and OTC (over-the-counter) drugs (including oral contraceptives
and caffeine), gallstones, home repair materials, artist materials, garden chemicals and building materials can all kill liver cells.

Symptoms of liver imbalance include headaches, bruising easily, anxiety, depression, confusion, fatigue, jaundice, impaired libido (sex drive) and mental function, food allergies, multiple chemical sensitivities and PMS, as well as conditions like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease. When your liver is damaged it cannot remove toxins, which then build up in your blood and eventually, your brain.

Try the following tips for a healthy liver and lymph:

1. Avoid any foods of which you suspect you may be intolerant: They will produce toxins in the gut that can cause stress to the detoxification mechanisms. Bacteria, viruses, too much alcohol, coffee and other caffeine-containing drinks, smoking and the medicines that have powerful effects on the liver, stomach and other parts of the body can prove toxic Chew your food well to help release the enzymes that aid digestion.

2. Consume plenty of foods containing: Consume plenty of foods containing folate, flavonoids, magnesium, iron, sulphate and selenium and B-vitamins 2,3,6 and 12, since toxicity in the body can be caused by deficiency of the nutrients that the liver needs for detoxification as much as by exposure to toxins. Think along the lines of salads, beans, fresh juices, stir-fries cooked in a little good-quality olive oil, nuts, seeds, yoghurt (full-fat is fine). Steaming is a quick and healthy way of cooking vegetables, and the only vegetables to avoid are potatoes. Aim for a diet build on complex carbohydrates (brown rice), lean protein (beans, lentils, eggs, chicken, fish and a little lean red meat) and organic fruits & vegetables.

3. Cut down on stimulants: such as tea and coffee, and depressants such as smoking & alcohol. Aim at drinking at least 2.5 litres of water a day.

4. Eat foods rich in antioxidants: Which aid the natural detox mechanisms like broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, and Brussels sprouts and Soybean products. Nutrients that enhance our immune system are Vitamin C, Vitamin E, the B-vitamins, Zinc and Magnesium. These nutrients are either potent anti-oxidants capable of stopping the free-radical cascade of tissue damage or are involved in the enzymes that help detoxify damaging chemicals.

5. Take a daily does of Echinacea , milk thistle or dandelion root: (as tablets, tincture or teas)  all herbs with a long  established reputation as blood cleansers and skin tonics. The usual recommended dose for milk thistle is 350mg three times a day for a couple of weeks.

6. Don’t use antibiotics or antacids unless absolutely necessary: Antibiotics can destroy the useful bacteria in the gut that eliminate toxins; antacids decrease the natural acidity that is necessary for complete digestion.

7. Take a dose of activated charcoal twice a week: This is a medical form of charcoal with the capacity to absorb whatever molecules it encounters, including toxins. Don’t take it with food or medicines though, or it will absorb them.

8. Take some gentle exercise: too, which increases lymph activity within the body, causing you to sweat and generate more urine, encouraging liver activity and stimulating the gut to get rid of waste products, all of which can help to detoxify your body. Gentle exercise is the key, however, because although you’ll find walking, swimming and cycling beneficial, you can really feel out of sorts when your body starts cleansing itself, and strenuous exercise will just make you feel worse. Wind up the exercise routine by carrying out deep breathing to use the Lungs more fully, this will get more oxygen into the blood, remove waste products from the blood - especially carbon dioxide - more quickly; and help to speed up the circulation of the blood.

9. Avoid excess of salt & sugar: Instead of excess salt use fresh herbs, pepper, chillies and lemon juice to enhance the flavour of food. Too much sugar isn’t healthy for anyone but especially those with an impaired immune system.

10. Laugh, Rest and feel good!: One more really good way to boost your immune system and it’s free. Laugh, Rest and feel good! A depressed mind can cause a depressed body. Laughter actually increases production of an antibody that is responsible for our first line of defense against bacterial infections. Laughter, lovemaking and exercise are the best medicine of all!

Over time, the health of the liver and lymph may be restored. Taking beneficial herbs regularly and following a detoxification process can help to provide protection to either the sick or healthy liver during the course of daily life. This stabilizes cell membranes and encourages the regeneration of liver cells destroyed during their normal functions.

Getting your best body can be as simple as counting to five every day. Really! No matter what goal you’re pursuing—shedding those 10 pounds that have been hanging around too long, toning your trouble zones or simply eating healthier. It’s so easy. I think of it as my five-star day. The five-star day is so simple—you just give yourself a star for everything you do right. You get stars for:

Sleep! Try to catch 7 to 9 hours each night. This, I know from personal experience, can seem like an unrealistic goal, but the amount of research that supports the connection between shut-eye and health makes me shoot for this star every day. For starters, catching enough zzz’s can help you lose weight. In a study of more than 68,000 women, those who dozed seven hours a night weighed 5.5 pounds less than women who slept five hours or less. Ample sleep encourages your body to make more of the fullness hormone leptin and less of the hunger hormone ghrelin, so you’re not as hungry. Snoozing can also curb anxiety and depression, both of which can lead to emotional eating. As if that’s not enough reason, too little rest can cloud moral judgment, too. Try going to bed just 30 minutes earlier each night to see how much you’ll benefit.

Exercise! Yes, breaking a sweat can help you lose weight, but it can also curb cravings, help you live longer, reduce stress, undo some of the damage of eating fatty foods—and those are just a few of the benefits. Aim for 30 minutes a day—even a walk counts toward your tally—and give yourself a star each time you fulfill that goal with any one of your favorite workouts.

Eat right! No, you don’t have to count calories. You can eat healthy and have delicious, filling and satisfying meals (snacks, too!). If you’re doing the 2009 SELF Challenge, give yourself a star for every day that you eat according to the Challenge meal plan and log your meals in your online food diary. If you’re not doing the Challenge, you can still snag a star when you’ve eaten in a way that makes your body feel good—and you feel proud. For me, that’s when I opt for yogurt with berries rather than a muffin at breakfast, have a salad with tofu for lunch and choose salmon over steak at dinner, then skip the ice cream pig-out late at night. Yes, it’s that simple! I’m not perfect, and there are definitely days when I have a second glass of wine or a too-generous square of my favorite dark chocolate bar, but I find that once I start building that five-star day, I get invested in it and want to keep it up.

Stretch! Limbering up is a way to thank your muscles for all the hard work they do for you each day. It can also help you increase your overall range of motion, making exercise seem less difficult. And when workouts are less daunting, you’ll not only enjoy them more, but you also will probably do them more often, too! To me, yoga and pilates count, as does just stretching at the kitchen counter as I watch the headlines in the morning. No need to set aside a huge block of time! However you choose to go Gumby, give yourself a star for treating your body to a break.

Talk yourself up! This might be the most important part of the five-star plan: Giving yourself a well-deserved pat on the back for simply being strong, smart and healthy. Even on days when you only notch one or two other stars, take a moment to give yourself credit for being a truly amazing human being. Talking yourself up carries over to other areas of your life: Not only will you feel more confident, but research shows you will also get sick about 30 percent less frequently, stave off emotional eating and reduce your cancer risk. There are plenty of other reasons to celebrate your body. Pretty impressive for a few pats on the back!

Create your own five-star days: When you join the Challenge, you can use our free online logs to track the stars you earn each day. Counting stars is motivating, and rewarding yourself for smart, healthy behavior is more inspiring than the negative mind-sets required by most “diets.” I had to create a system in my own head that was simple, easy to track and optimistic. The best part is that you get to start fresh every day, so even if you only manage one or two stars one day, you can stay with it by going to sleep early and telling yourself, like Scarlett O’Hara, tomorrow is another day!

Physical exercise is another important factor to consider for optimum kidney health. It is a major piece of the health puzzle. Unfortunately, many of us sit behind a desk for eight or more hours almost every day. Further, when we leave our work places, we are so tired that it becomes easy to simply recline in our favorite chair and look at television.

This sedentary lifestyle contributes significantly to many health problems including obesity, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes, and kidney failure. Without regular and consistent exercise, health cannot be optimized and disease cannot be prevented.

How can exercise help to optimize kidney health? Well in a number of way but especially by helping to lower or control blood pressure and increases insulin sensitivity, to prevent against type II diabetes (adult onset diabetes). As you might be aware, diabetes and hypertension are two leading causes of kidney failure. By implementing a program of regular exercise, you will help to prevent or control these two deadly diseases, and preserve and improve kidney health.

It just seems too good to be true. Study after research study consistently promoting the endless benefits of exercise. Couch potatoes everywhere are waiting for the other shoe to drop, telling us that all of those scientists were wrong and we should remain as sedentary as possible.

Yet four additional studies released recently each give the same prescription for improving some aspect of your health: exercise.

They add to recent evidence that regular workouts can improve old brains, raise kids’ academic performance and give a brain boost to everyone in between.

Better bones

One study illustrates the effect of exercise on preventing or limiting osteoporosis, which affects more than 200 million people worldwide. Researchers at the University of Missouri found that while both resistance training (lifting weights) and high impact exercise (running) both help build needed bone mineral density (BMD), running is the better choice.

“Exercise programs to increase bone strength should be designed using what is known about how bones respond to exercise,” said Pam Hinton, associate professor and lead author. “Only the skeletal sites that experience increased stress from exercise will become stronger. High-impact, dynamic, multi-directional activities result in greater gains in bone strength.”

The study was published in the February issue of the Journal of Strength Conditioning.

Less pain

In a related study, exercise seemed to be one of the few successful remedies for those that suffer from low-back pain. In the February issue of the Spine Journal, University of Washington physicians summarized 20 different clinical trials that promoted different solutions to alleviating pain.

“Strong and consistent evidence finds many popular prevention methods to fail while exercise has a significant impact, both in terms of preventing symptoms and reducing back pain-related work loss,” said Dr. Stanley J. Bigos, professor emeritus of orthopaedic surgery and environmental health. “Passive interventions such as lumbar belts and shoe inserts do not appear to work.”

Better eye health

Also, vigorous exercise has now been linked with significantly reduced onset of cataracts and age-related macular degeneration. In the study, detailed in Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science, researchers reviewed the eye health of 41,000 runners over seven years and found that both men and women had significantly lower rates of these two diseases than the general public.

Men who logged more than 5.7 miles per day had a 35 percent lower risk than those that ran less than 1.4 miles per day. While the correlation is strong, the reason is not clear.

“We know some of the physiological benefits of exercise, and we know about the physiological background of these diseases, so we need to better understand where there’s an overlap,” said Paul Williams, an epidemiologist in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Life Sciences Division.

Cancer prevention

Each year in the U.S., more 100,000 people are diagnosed with colon cancer. To see what effect exercise has on lowering this rate, researchers at Washington University and Harvard University combined to review 52 studies over the last 25 years which linked exercise and the incidence of cancer. Overall, they found that those that exercised the most (5-6 hours of brisk walking per week) were 24 percent less likely to develop the disease than those that exercised the least (less than 30 minutes per week).

“The beneficial effect of exercise holds across all sorts of activities,” said lead study author Kathleen Y. Wolin, Sc.D. of Washington University. “And it holds for both men and women. There is an ever-growing body of evidence that the behavior choices we make affect our cancer risk. Physical activity is at the top of the list of ways that you can reduce your risk of colon cancer.”

So, are there any studies out there that link exercise with a negative outcome?

In a recent study published in the journal Obesity, Dolores Albarracín, professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, did find that people who are shown posters with messages like “join a gym” or “take a walk” actually ate more after viewing these messages than those that saw messages like “make friends.”

“Viewers of the exercise messages ate significantly more (than their peers, who viewed other types of messages),” Albarracín said. “They ate one-third more when exposed to the exercise ads.”

You Can Restore Your Levels of Testosterone with LifeStyle Changes!

Although the most common reason for decreased testosterone levels is aging, levels also commonly decrease during acute and chronic emotional stress, over training, physical inactivity, after the use of anabolic steroids, excessive use of alcohol, prescription or recreational medication and certain diseases.

Testosterone levels are also affected by bio-social events. Your testosterone will go up before a sporting event (whether you are competing or not) and sexual stimulation (sight or touch). And interestingly, levels significantly decrease in both the competitors and fans of losers of athletic events. (So forget about having a strong sex drive if the cheerleaders don’t show up and your team loses the Super Bowl).

Normally testosterone is the 30% higher in the morning than the evening. This may explain why men are more interested in sex in the morning and is part of the reason for spontaneous morning erections. In fact, the loss of morning erections is a sure sign that testosterone is declining.

By eliminating or reducing these factors, improving you diet, beginning or modifying your exercise program , reducing stress and restoring nutritional status you can improve your hormonal balance and most importantly dramatically improve the way you look, feel and perform.

Diet

You are what you eat! If you want to keep “juiced with testosterone” it is extremely important to follow these dietary rules:

Eat moderate amounts of protein. Protein in Latin means “above all else.” Protein stimulates the hormone glucagon and the anabolic (muscle building) responses important for adequate testosterone release.

Eat more vegetables and fruit and limit excessive carbohydrate intake especially of simple sugars and starches (grains, potatoes, pasta). Excess intake of carbohydrates especially those that raise blood sugar rapidly create chronically elevated levels of the hormone insulin and cortisol. These two hormones oppose the action of testosterone and diminish it’s production.

Eat Fat! The reason, Jack Sprat was so lean was he ate no fat. Essential fats such as the omega 3 fatty acids found in fish and flaxseed as well as saturated fats are essential for normal testosterone production. All steroid hormones are produced from cholesterol and when fats are deficient in the diet, this process will be inhibited.

Studies clearly indicate that low fat diets results in lower testosterone levels while those higher in protein, lower in carbohydrate and moderate in fat cause the greatest sustained levels of testosterone and growth hormone.

A recent study demonstrated the influence of diet on pre and post exercise testosterone and cortisol. After exercise with bench press and squat to failure, testosterone and cortisol were measured. Those men who were on a diet with a higher protein/carbohydrate ratio and percent fat content had the largest increase in testosterone and the smallest rise in cortisol.

You must train and eat smart to minimize the catabolic and maximize the anabolic effects of exercise. If your diet is very low in fat and high in complex carbohydrates and fiber, your testosterone levels may remain very low and you will never make the changes in muscle mass and strength that you desire.

Exercise

Both the lack of physical activity and excessive physical activity (over training) will result in decreased levels of testosterone. Exercise effects testosterone directly by stimulating the pituitary gland and the testes and it probably also raises levels by slowing down the normal breakdown of testosterone.

The duration, intensity and frequency of exercise will determine the circulating levels of testosterone. Testosterone levels increase most with short intense bursts, while it decreases with prolonged activity especially that of frequent endurance training. During endurance training, testosterone is needed to maintain muscle but frequent extended training doesn’t allow for repair and recovery of testosterone and tissue damage occurs.

Studies show that testosterone levels will elevate with exercise for about 45 to 60 minutes. After this time period, cortisol levels begin to increase and testosterone levels will decline. This decrease has been detected for up to 6 days.

Because you require testosterone for repair and growth, do not train for more than 45 to 60 minutes at a single session. If you feel like you want to exercise or train more, split sessions are recommended. Also do not lift weights and perform aerobic training at the same time. It is also a good idea to vary your workouts and cycle them throughout the year.

Construction workers provide a real life example of these concepts. It has been observed for many years that men who lift moderate loads all day are frequently listless and tired as well as not as strong and muscular as their co-workers who perform less frequent but more intense activity.

Emotional Stress

As discussed in this site on the page on hormonal balancing, emotional stress is a frequent cause of decreased testosterone levels. When the “fight of flight” alarm reaction system is active, stress hormones such as adrenaline, nor adrenaline and cortisol are released. These hormones that are released to protect our lives have catabolic activity. This means they catabolize (breakdown) body stores of fat and protein to be used for acute resources of energy and immune response. They go even one step farther and inhibit all anabolic processes has well. Because in life or death situations the body does not need to build muscle, eat, have sexual thoughts etc. processes that require vital life energy, all anabolic (building) processes including testosterone are shut down.

This was a very effective system when it evolved. For hundreds of thousands of years the threats to the body were short-lived and very acute such as being eaten or attacked. Today stresses are not only prolonged but perceived in our mind. And this chronic stress causes an over activation of our adrenal system and the catabolic process. In fact, chronic catabolism is not only the greatest cause of premature aging and cardiovascular disease but it severely inhibits testosterone function making it almost impossible to build muscle and strength.

So if you want to really grow it is essential that you follow the advice, “Don’t sweat the small stuff and it is all small stuff”, stay well rested and take your time eating frequent small meals. This will help normalize cortisol levels and allow your anabolic system to take over again.