Boosting or Lowering Testosterone Naturally
There's strong evidence that your hormones play a part in the gender of your child. Will you get a baby boy or a baby girl? Which do you hope for? Testosterone is one of the potent sex hormones. It's present in both men and women — and you can probably guess that a woman with higher testosterone is more likely to conceive a son. Men with higher testosterone levels also father more sons.
Boosting your testosterone (and your husband's) is a strategy for a boy, while working to lower it is a strategy for a girl. Increasing testosterone is also useful if you're having trouble conceiving. Lowering testosterone can be very beneficial if you're trying to correct a problem like PCOS.
I'm going to cover how to boost testosterone levels or lower testosterone levels through diet and lifestyle in this article.
Increasing Your Testosterone Levels
One of the best ways to boost testosterone is through physical exercise. This is how body builders do it, and it's a sound strategy. Just lifting heavy things sends signals to your body to increase the levels of the hormone. Other forms of exercise, like sprinting, also increase testosterone. Go for exercise that is shorter in duration, but intense — exercise that builds muscle and power results in more testosterone.
Getting enough sleep will help your body to regulate all hormones and is shown to help increase testosterone levels.
Reducing stress levels helps to increase testosterone levels, but it's thought that higher stress levels may lead to more boy conceptions. I'm not sure what to do with on this one, but for overall health stress reduction is a good thing. If you're having trouble conceiving, lowering your stress levels is one of the best things you can do, hormones or not.
Getting plenty of Vitamin D is a good way to increase your testosterone levels. In fact, you want high levels of all vitamins, minerals, and nutrients in order to “sway” for a boy.
Zinc is another nutrient that has been shown to boost testosterone, and seems especially effective for male fertility.
Having higher glucose levels (as in blood sugar) seems to increase testosterone in women, but decrease testosterone in men. Based on this, it's probably a good idea for a woman to get a moderate carbohydrate intake in her diet, but avoid sharp blood sugar spikes. Eat plenty of fat with your carbs. Try to stay away from fructose (in fruit) as it causes huge spikes. It's best for husbands to keep low blood glucose levels, as research shows men with lower blood glucose have higher testosterone.
These findings seem to line up with the “high nutrition” theory in gender selection — that in times of plenty more boys are conceived. There's more access to carbohydrates in times of plenty.
Eat plenty of protein — protein builds muscles and it's important for high levels of testosterone. Protein and fat together make a powerful hormone booster. Try to eat meat and fat from animals that have been grazing on grass (not feedlot animals). Natural red meat boosts testosterone and doesn't have “extra” hormones from what farmers injected.
Being goal-driven, ambitious, etc also seems to help boost testosterone production. A “Type A” personality is more likely to have higher testosterone. See if you can work these things into your lifestyle to help boost your levels.
Reducing Your Testosterone Levels
If you want a girl, your goal it to work to decrease testosterone.
Short bursts of exercise that build muscle and power increase testosterone. Long endurance training and rigorous cardio routines may decrease it. These routines also have a tendency to decrease fertility overall (which is beneficial if you want to conceive a girl — anything that decreases fertility increases the chances of a girl… if you conceive!)
Herbal supplements can help balance hormones and decrease testosterone. Saw Palmetto is an herb that has been used by women who deal with PCOS — these women generally have too-high levels of testosterone.
A low calorie, low protein diet lowers testosterone. Essentially you want the opposite of the nutrient-dense, high protein diet eaten to conceive a son. Eat a “low everything” diet. You can get more information on this diet, as detailed by Atomic Sagebrush on the GenderDreaming forums. You want to be eating low fat, low protein, low carb! This is helpful for trying to conceive a girl.
If you have PCOS and simply want to lower your testosterone levels and increase your chances of conceiving, go for a low-carb diet. Keep moderate levels of protein and fat. This will drastically reduce your blood sugar levels and help you to conceive. It's also much easier to enjoy an stick with a low-carb lifestyle. A “low everything” girl diet is very, very hard to stick with long-term!
All of these ideas can lead to weight loss, which lowers testosterone!
Soy foods may lower testoserone (especially in men), but they have anti-nutrients in them. If you are trying for a girl, you may want to try soy for the months you're trying to conceive, then discontinue use.
Just How Long?
Remember that as with almost all natural gender swaying methods, you're trying to make changes to your body chemistry that will impact what gender you're more likely to conceive. These changes take time. I recommend you plan to work a gender selection diet and lifestyle over the course of three months or so before you plan to try to conceive. This gives your body a chance to adapt and really change. It also gives you a chance to chart your cycles and become familiar and comfortable with your fertility.
Determine an exercise, diet, and supplement regime, then stick to it. Sometimes these “swaying plans” can be hard to stick to because they often require big lifestyle changes. You will want to do all you can, however, boost or reduce your testosterone levels and change your body's enviroment to one that favors the gender you desire!
(NOTE: Want the Top Easy Steps to Boosting Your Fertility? Use these 5 simple, evidence-based steps to get pregnant and carry your healthy baby to term. Get them here.)
