Ok. I KNOW that the body is wildly interconnected. But some connections are too incredible to be believed at first glance.
I recently wrote a blog article about how weight gain is not one of the low T symptoms, but rather, weight gain leads to lower testosterone levels. So you know that hormone levels are directly related to lifestyle choices. Certainly the reverse can be true, where off-kilter hormone levels can create health problems. But more often, poor lifestyle choices throw off the balance of your hormones.
When it comes to your bones, as little as 15 years ago the view of what your bones do was limited to an attachment site for muscles so you can move. Pretty inert. They basically just sit there doing nothing, until, of course, they fracture and create a problem and pain.
Then all hell broke loose.
We now have a drastically different view of bone. It is a highly active tissue at the heart of some very important physiological processes. Here’s what I’ve written about in the past:
- Serotonin from the gut (the body’s main source of this neurotransmitter) will actually stop bone cells called osteoblasts from building more bone.
- Osteoblasts secrete a hormone called osteocalcin. More osteoblasts = more bone = more osteocalcin released.
- Osteocalcin has an effect on abdominal fat and lowers your risk of diabetes.
This is already a pretty impressive list. And it’s about to get a little bit bigger.
In this particular study (which was a mouse study, so keep this in mind), researchers found that osteocalcin had an effect on the Leydig cells in the testis. These cells produce testosterone.
Good bone health drives testosterone levels. Go back in time to 1995 and mention this to any researcher looking into bone and they would think you’re crazy. Heck–when I mention this to people today, they still think I’m crazy.
But look at what this means. We already know that healthy behaviors, as well as the opposite behaviors, affect testosterone levels as was described in a recent blog article that can be read by clicking here.
But just how deep this link is what shocks me. It’s not a matter of getting the right nutrients, vitamins and minerals so you can make testosterone. Rather, a healthy lifestyle may produce optimal testosterone levels through the gut-bone-testis axis.
Further, this means that merely taking natural hormone treatments will do absolutely NOTHING to the problem at hand. In other words, the poor bone health seems to drive low T levels, but the reverse is not true–giving testosterone will not miraculously improve bone health.
Which further reinforces the fact that, if you have symptoms of low T, lifestyle is your ONLY answer. Supplementation / replacement is a train wreck waiting to happen.