Download file | Play in new window |
You’re rushing through the airport, late for a flight that you can’t miss. Turning the corner to sprint down the terminal, you find a moving sidewalk spanning the length of the hallway.
As you hop on, your normal running pace doubles or triples as it combines with the forward momentum of the walkway. It’s like you’re moving in fast-forward, except you’re not exerting a single ounce of extra effort.
Health multipliers for men are the moving sidewalks of your health journey. They exponentially increase the impact of your efforts, allowing you to embrace a life of longevity and vitality.
Consider these three health multipliers together the silver bullet of driven men’s health.
Strength Training for Men
Strength is a cornerstone of the masculine experience, especially as you enter your forties, fifties and beyond.
Strength training is a powerful multiplier that improves physical performance, emotional mindset, and metabolic disease prevention. Whatever goal you’re setting for self-improvement, you’ll fall short if strength training isn’t a part of your plan.
When you begin strength training three to four days a week in conjunction with other multipliers like hormone replacement and intermittent fasting, you’ll experience exponential change. The combined effects of these multipliers force your body to dig into deep visceral fat, the fat that standard dieting and exercising can’t address, and burn it away.
So though strength training alone isn’t the silver bullet of men’s health, it’s a core variable. You can’t feel strong and powerful unless you are strong and powerful, and strength training makes that possible.
How To Begin Strength Training
You don’t start strength training looking like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. You actually start by breaking your muscles down, forcing micro-injury after micro-injury as you push your body to lift heavier weights. These micro-injuries trigger a downstream response to help your muscles become incrementally stronger and create the momentum you need to feel powerful.
The more weakness you expose, the more strength you can build. It’s called “muscle failure,” but it’s not as negative as it sounds. At the point of muscle failure, your muscles have worked so fully that they’re too fatigued to complete another repetition. This is how muscle growth occurs!
Look Beyond Vanity Metrics
There’s nothing wrong with striving to look good and feel proud of your appearance, but the importance of strength training far surpasses vanity metrics.
Daily strength training builds a strong, resilient musculoskeletal system that resists injury and helps you preserve the active lifestyle you enjoy. It also prevents metabolic diseases like diabetes since lean muscle burns extra energy and heightens insulin sensitivity.
The psychological benefits of strength training can’t be overlooked, either. Lifting weights provides a non-toxic form of physically aggressive behavior that relieves stress, produces endorphins, and supports a healthier mindset.
Simply put, incorporating strength training into your routine will positively impact every area of your life.
Intermittent Fasting
No one can outrun a poor diet. Your eating choices influence how your body is nourished and fueled. As you’re navigating your health journey, the quality and quantity of your food that matter, but the timing of your meals matters most.
Intermittent fasting allows you to eat better (and typically less) by fasting for 16 hours and eating two meals in the other 8-hour window. We’re trained to eat morning, noon, and night, with snacks in between, but that’s not the way it should be. Your body needs time to thrive in an unfed state in order to burn the fuel it’s already received.
Intermittent fasting forces the body to use sources of fuel other than the glucose from your last meal or snack. This makes it easier to burn body fat and lose weight. Although most people experiment with intermittent fasting to lose weight, this strategy offers so much more. It can easily become your secret weapon to create an optimized version of yourself.
Intermittent Fasting Adds Fuel to the Multiplier Fire
Intermittent fasting is powerful on its own, but it adds incredible momentum when combined with other health multipliers for men.
When you strength train in a fasted state, you force your body to put metabolic and mechanical stress on extra stores of fat. This challenges your muscles to find efficient ways to burn energy and become even stronger. It also demands increased insulin sensitivity to respond to fasting, which in turn reduces the risk of diabetes and other metabolic diseases.
Other Benefits of Intermittent Fasting
Any method of eating that protects normal, stabilized blood sugar levels and limits exposure to insulin is powerful. This is why so many people want to try intermittent fasting using a 16-hour fasting window and compressed 8-hour feeding window. It only takes that relatively small fasting period to increase fat burning and build better habits.
Intermittent fasting offers many other valuable benefits:
- Optimized cell and hormone function
- Appetite control
- Long-term health results
- Improved insulin sensitivity
This method is so powerful because it allows the body to thrive without the burden of high blood sugar and chronically elevated insulin levels. Once those issues are out of the way, the body has a chance to embrace its natural instincts for optimal health.
Testosterone Hormone Replacement Therapy
A male body without testosterone is like a car without gas. As an essential male hormone, testosterone plays a critical role in a man’s sexual health, reproductive development, and overall well-being. This explains why the National Institutes of Health (NIH) labels testosterone “the most necessary male hormone.”
But we all know that testosterone peaks during the late teen years – early twenties, but then begins to fall through the following decades. Most men don’t notice the effects of declining testosterone levels until they hit their forties, and many have no idea that testosterone deficiency is the cause of their fatigue, unusually low libido, weight gain, and brain fog.
Fortunately, bioidentical hormone replacement therapy offers a safe and natural way to restore your body’s vibrancy and improve your quality of life.
How Is Testosterone a Multiplier?
Once you and your physician identify your optimal testosterone range, you can expect to enjoy many of these results:
- Increase in sexual desire and performance
- Natural antidepressant effects
- Reduction in visceral fat
- Increase in lean mass
- Decreased risk of heart attack and stroke
- Lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease
- Enhanced cognitive function and concentration
- Improved energy and drive
But the benefits of optimized testosterone extend even beyond this list because testosterone is a health multiplier for men. Testosterone provides the signals your body needs to build muscle as you strength train and zap fat while you fast.
Other Benefits of Optimized Hormonal Environment for Men
Testosterone helps you feel the fire in your belly that drives you through the day and helps you maintain your creativity, grit, resourcefulness, and desire.
While testosterone is best known as an essential male sex hormone, it’s more nuanced than its reputation suggests. The truth is that testosterone works intricately with other hormones in the male body to create a strong and powerful core infrastructure.
You can turn to testosterone therapy to enjoy benefits like renewed energy, a positive mindset, clear focus, increased lean muscle mass, and reduced risk of metabolic disease, heart attack, and stroke.
The Bottom Line: Find Your Silver Bullet With These Three Health Multipliers
Your silver bullet to better health isn’t a one-step process. It’s a combination of diligent strength training, intermittent fasting, and optimized hormones.
If you have the ambition to enjoy a long life unimpeded by disease and disability, start incorporating these health multipliers into your routine now. It won’t take long to see and feel the transformation that will carry you through the next two, three, or four decades!
Dr. Aaron Wenzel is a concierge physician specializing in the care of fast-moving entrepreneurs, executives, and public figures in the Nashville, TN area. Dr. Wenzel’s diverse life experience and extensive training in family medicine, emergency care, nutrition, and hormone replacement therapies give him the unique platform to provide unmatched care for his patients.
