you could have like a th000 nanograms per deser of testosterone but if none of that is properly binding to the Androgen receptors you're not going to experience the benefits of high testosterone you need to be maximizing Androgen receptor sensitivity this way even if you have lower testosterone like 3 or 400 n per deciliter that testosterone can still bind very effectively to its receptors and produce all the benefits that you want to see so a really basic overview of how testosterone Works testosterone enters into a cell and it binds to the Androgen receptor the receptor then moves into the nucleus of the cell and it causes certain genes to be expressed leading to things like muscle growth facial hair growth higher bone density deeper voice Etc so that's the basics in this video I'll go a little bit into the science but obviously you probably don't have a degree in medicine or biology so I'll make it easy to understand and this video is going to be full of gold so make sure you really pay attention right to the end and you might even want to take some notes I would definitely be taking notes cuz there's some knowledge here that I almost guarantee you've never heard anywhere else so first let's start with things that you need to avoid in order to make sure that your Androgen receptor sensitivity isn't negatively affected the first one is cortisol cortisol is a hormone in your body that's increased when you're stressed cortisol and testosterone are both made from cholesterol so more cortisol means there's less cholesterol available for testosterone production so you have lower testosterone overall and also cortisol can prevent testosterone from doing its thing so testosterone usually activates certain genes that masculinize you but this can be blocked by cortisol and cortisol increases aromatase expression which is an enzyme that turns testosterone into estrogen so we don't want much of that so it's definitely important to try and keep cortisol low most of the time while you're not in stressful situations like working out or fighting you should be chill most of the time some things you can do to lower cortisol include deep breathing and meditation plenty of carbs especially around your training sessions 8 to 9 hours of sleep every night supplement with magnesium stop watching the news stop scrolling social media especially negative stuff listen to relaxing music and you can reduce your coffee consumption if you drink a lot of it the next thing to avoid is endocrine disrupting chemicals and these are dangerous chemicals that can block the Androgen receptor or activate the estrogen receptor so both things that we don't really want I made a community post recently saying Plus IC water bottles have enough endocrine disruptors to block up to 90% of Androgen receptors which is crazy these chemicals are extremely effective at blocking your Androgen receptors and preventing your body from becoming properly masculinized endocrine disruptors can also activate cortisol receptors making you stressed which as I just discussed is bad for your Androgen receptors so here's how you can avoid these endocrine disruptors drink out of metal or glass bottles instead of plastic and same for plastic food containers getting glass up away wear for your meal prep instead of plastic and definitely don't heat up plastic Tupperware in the microwave that will release all the microplastics and endocrine disruptors into your food which you then eat and all of that will get into your body second wear clothes made of natural fibers like cotton or wool instead of synthetic plastic fibers like polyester or acrylic or elastin and that's especially important for your underwear which is in direct contact with your testicles which make testosterone and the same for your bed sheets make sure that they're natural fibers cuz you'll be spending a third of your life in contact with them you don't want to be soaking up microplastics for 8 hours a day while you're sleeping ideally use a stainless steel or a cast Iran pan for cooking instead of non-stick Teflon cuz those little flakes of Teflon will end up inside your body and wreck your hormonal Health you can also use a wooden cutting board for preparing food instead of a plastic one and use a bamboo toothbrush instead of a plastic one basically you're just trying to avoid getting Plastics and other endocrine disruptors into your body a lot of hygiene products also have endocrine disruptors like phalates and parabens in them so be careful try and get like naturally derived ingredients in like your face wash moisturizer and all that stuff the next thing to avoid is non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or NSAIDs ibuprofen which is one of these drugs has been shown to suppress testosterone production I had no idea about this until recently and these drugs also cause the overexpression of a protein called C June which reduces Androgen receptor activity and the production of Androgen receptors in the cell so generally avoid NSAIDs unless you're prescribed them by a doctor the next thing to avoid is seed oils these contain unsaturated fatty acids like oleic acid arachidonic acid and doosa hexonic acid and all of these can block The Binding of andrens like testosterone to the Androgen receptor but saturated fatty acids on the other hand do not affect binding to the Androgen receptor so it's probably a good idea to minimize all seed oils like canola oil corn oil rape seed oil sunflower oil soybean oil for some reason people zealously defend seed oils as though they're some elixir of life and they're probably not the devil but there's not much good evidence to support using them over like olive oil avocado oil or just butter personally seed oils seem to irritate my gut and make me gassy and cause pain so I generally avoid them unless I go out to a restaurant or something in which case they're pretty unavoidable and this usually results in my stomach feeling very uncomfortable when I eat out fortunately another thing to avoid is excessive serotonin so serotonin is known as a mood booster and it's also involved in appetite digestion and many other things but it's not all good too much of anything is bad including serotonin serotonin decreases Androgen receptor expression anti-depressant drugs artificially increase your serotonin levels and people who take anti-depressants usually have sexual side effects like erectile dysfunction which could be linked to this decrease in Androgen receptor expression another famous one to avoid is soy soy contains five phytoestrogens which are plant compounds which are similar to the human estrogen hormone soy has been shown to suppress Androgen receptor expression and increase estrogenic activity and it's also used to assist hormone replacement in women going through menopause to increase their estrogen activity but people will still tell you that it has no effect on estrogen soy definitely isn't the worst on this list by a long shot and not all soy is made equal the natural stuff that you get in tofu and temper in Asia is not the same as the GM and pesticide sprayed soy found in the west especially in America Next is finasteride this is a drug that blocks conversion of testosterone into its more potent form DHT and DHT can cause hair loss in people who are prone to it so finasteride is usually used as a hair loss treatment and reducing DHT can itself reduce Androgen receptor expression another thing to avoid is sexual exhaustion so this is having too much sex in a short time period like a day and doing this can reduce Androgen receptor density in the brain leading to a loss of interest in sex and in rats it can take up to 7 days to fully recover from sexual exhaustion for them to start being interested in sex again certain polyphenols found in tea can reduce the number of Androgen receptors but herbal teas and polyphenols in general have so many benefits that I'm not going to tell you to stop drinking tea if you do already this is a pretty minor point and there are much bigger things that you should be focusing on and lastly benzo phenos which are chemical found in sunscreen these benzophenones can mix with chlorine from swimming pools to produce chemicals that block the Androgen receptor so try to use mineral sunscreen where you can instead of chemical sunscreen I just quickly want to mention there are lots of things that go into your androgenic activity it's not just testosterone it's like prolactin estrogen sex hormone binding globulin Androgen receptor activity like we're talking about in this video there's a lot more You Need to Know Than Just increasing your testosterone I have a more detailed guide on all that stuff in the description it's my testosterone optimization guide so if you want to optimize all of your hormones for building muscle getting stronger having more energy having better sexual performance all of that stuff is in the guide linked at the top of the description all right back to the video so now that I've told you the things that you should avoid to make sure that your Androgen receptor levels are healthy let's go into how to actually upregulate and increase your Androgen receptor expression and activity first off is strength training you should be doing this anyway but lifting weights for something like 8 to 10 reps per exercise this will increase serum testosterone that's testosterone in your blood and it also increases Androgen receptor mRNA in your cells which means that your cells are expressing more Androgen receptors so they're more sensitive to the testosterone that you've got floating around your body in your strength training sessions you can also choose to focus on body parts with high Androgen receptor density like the chest shoulders and traps which are the areas that grow quickest when people begin taking steroids and make sure you avoid overtraining because this will increase cortisol so make sure you're sleeping enough don't train like too often in the week uh to the point that you're really feeling drained and you're like struggling to sleep and you're just kind of feeling really beat up all the time try and keep your sessions to under 75 minutes beyond that point cortisol does begin to climb quite a lot so keep them short and intense if you can now I'll get into the supplements that you can take to increase Androgen receptor expression first is elar which is basically a type of amino acid that your body produces naturally but you can also get it from red meat but especially from supplements and the best time to take this is just after a workout to increase Androgen receptor density I take atile lartin or Alka at a dose of 500 Mig per day the next is to supplement vitamin D3 you should be having at least like 2,000 IU per day no matter where you're living especially if you live in places without as much sunlight like scand Avia other parts of norn Northern Europe or North America and you can safely go up to at least 4,000 IU per day and this is going to help your anden receptor help next is zinc which is a mineral that forms part of the Androgen receptor zinc deficiency can increase estrogen receptors and decrease the number of Androgen receptors and most people are deficient in zinc you need to eat either a lot of red meat and oysters or supplement with zinc try and get a good quality supplement with a highly bioavailable form of Zinc like zinc picolinate and always check the dosages when you're buying supplements you want it to be at least like the daily recommended dose and for most supplements you can go much over the daily recommended dose and you actually in a lot of cases need way more than like the recommended amounts that the governments and health organizations tell you that you need Korean red gin sang is a herbal supplement that prevents toxin induced down regulations in Androgen receptors so if you have M of toxins in your body you can get rid of those by taking Korean red gins and this herbal supplement has been used to treat erectile dysfunction and loads of other health issues for hundreds of years Glycine and glutamine are two amino acids which are core structural components of the Androgen receptors so taking them will make sure that your Androgen receptors can be formed properly glycine also upregulates five Alpha reductases which converts testosterone into DHT and DHT has very high androgenic activity much more than regular testosterone and DHT increases the number of Androgen receptors that you have so just makes you super sensitive to testosterone DHT any kind of androgenic activity and this is what glycine can do for you Tribulus terrestris is another herbal extract which is a natural DHT booster and like I just mentioned it can upregulate Androgen receptors have massive androgenic activity and lastly another herbal supplement called buta Superba which also increases DHT I'll probably make another video just on DHT because that is even more powerful than testosterone and most people should really be focusing on DHT rather than testosterone itself it's many times more potent than testosterone the only problem is if you're prone to male pattern boldness DHT might make that worse don't take all of these supplements at once start with just like one or two of them I would say vitamin D3 and zinc cuz they're probably going to have like the broadest health benefits uh see the effects of those on like your energy and Your vitality and then you can like dabble with one of the other ones like El cartine and then maybe try one of The herbal supplements so let's just quickly recap everything I've covered in this video in order to optimize your Androgen receptor expression and sensitivity you should avoid cortisol so stressful things endocrine disrupting chemicals mostly from like Plastics non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs seed oils excessive serotonin soy finasteride and other five Alpha reductase Inhibitors sexual exhaustion and benzophenones in chemical sunscreen and in order to upregulate your Androgen receptor you should be doing strength training like 8 to 10 reps and avoid overtraining and you can supplement with vitamin D3 zinc ELC cartine Korean red ginsing Glycine and glutamine Tribulus terrestris and UTA Superba and again don't take all of these at once try like one or two at the start see the effects and then add something else in I hope this was helpful there are a lot of things that go into your androgenic activity it's not just testosterone it's like your prolactin sex hormone binding globulin your estrogen level cortisol levels Androgen receptor activity like I've talked about in this video if you want to learn more about all of that and how to optimize that for yourself so you can get stronger build muscle faster have more energy better sexual performance all of that is in the testosterone optimization guide which I have Linked In the description and if you've already bought the toi physique program you can get 25% off the testosterone guide using the code test 25 when you add it to the cart and check out with that testosterone guide thanks for watching guys let me know if you learn learned something new in this video or if you know anything more about Androgen receptor activity that I haven't discussed in this video share it with us in the comments and I'll see you in next video