How to Increase Testosterone Naturally in Men Over 40

Somewhere in your forties the morning drive goes quiet, the afternoons get heavier and a hard gym session takes two days to shake off instead of one. If you're searching how to increase testosterone naturally in men over 40, the research points to a short list of changes you can make this month, and most of them cost nothing. Pine pollen comes last, after the basics, as the one addition to your mornings with its own pilot study in men over 40.

What happens to testosterone after 40

The Massachusetts Male Aging Study enrolled 1,709 men aged 40 to 70 between 1987 and 1989, then retested 1,156 of them seven to ten years later. Henry Feldman and colleagues published the results in 2002 in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. Total testosterone fell about 0.8% a year. Free testosterone, the part your body can use, fell about 2% a year, while SHBG (sex hormone binding globulin, the protein that keeps testosterone bound up) rose about 1.6% a year.

Two percent a year sounds small. Over a decade it comes to nearly a fifth of your free testosterone.

How to increase testosterone naturally in men over 40, starting with sleep

In 2011 Rachel Leproult and Eve Van Cauter at the University of Chicago (JAMA) had 10 healthy young men spend under five hours in bed a night for a week. Their daytime testosterone dropped 10 to 15%, with the lowest readings between 2 pm and 10 pm. The researchers put that on a par with 10 to 15 years of aging.

Those men averaged 24. At 45 you're starting from a lower number, so a run of five hour nights during a busy week takes a bigger bite. Fix the hours first. Same bedtime on weekdays and weekends, a dark room, and the phone out of reach.

Lift heavy things

William Kraemer's group put men with an average age of 62 through a 10 week strength and power program and published the results in the Journal of Applied Physiology in 1999. After training, their total testosterone rose significantly in response to a hard session. Build your sessions around squats, deadlifts, presses and rows, heavy enough that the last two reps are hard.

Body fat and testosterone

A 2013 meta-analysis led by Giovanni Corona in the European Journal of Endocrinology pooled 24 studies of men who lost weight. A low-calorie diet raised total testosterone by an average of 2.87 nmol/L, and bariatric surgery by 8.73 nmol/L. The single best predictor of the rise was how much weight came off. If your belt has gone up two notches since 35, losing that weight is the change with the biggest number attached.

How to increase testosterone naturally with food

Zinc has the most striking numbers. Ananda Prasad's team (Nutrition, 1996) cut zinc out of the diet of four young men for 20 weeks, and their testosterone fell from 39.9 to 10.6 nmol/L. In the other direction, nine men with an average age of 64 who were low in zinc took zinc gluconate for six months, and their testosterone went from 8.3 to 16.0 nmol/L. Oysters carry more zinc per serving than any other food, according to the US National Institutes of Health. Beef, crab and pumpkin seeds follow.

Vitamin D is the next one to check. In a trial led by Stefan Pilz (Hormone and Metabolic Research, 2011), overweight men who took about 3,300 IU of vitamin D a day for a year saw total testosterone rise from 10.7 to 13.4 nmol/L.

Then the drink with dinner. Dutch researchers (Sierksma and colleagues, 2004) gave 10 men aged 45 to 64 four glasses of beer with dinner every night for three weeks, and compared it with three weeks of no-alcohol beer. Testosterone was 6.8% lower during the beer weeks.

Pine pollen and testosterone

Every spring, male pine cones release clouds of yellow pollen. In 1971 Šaden-Krehula and colleagues found testosterone, epitestosterone and androstenedione in Scots pine pollen, the first time those hormones had been isolated from a plant. Chinese herbalists have recorded it as song hua fen since the Tang dynasty, and it sits in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia today. Our full guide to pine pollen covers that history in more detail.

Two pilot studies in men, 2024 and 2025

In 2024 Neil Wolkodoff and colleagues gave pine pollen tincture to 10 men aged 47 to 78 for eight weeks (Annals of Clinical and Medical Case Reports). Average total testosterone went from 362.5 to 448.4 ng/dL. Their qADAM scores, a questionnaire on drive, energy, strength and erections where a higher score is better, rose from 23.9 to 31.7.

The average man in that study was 63. If what you typed was how to increase testosterone naturally in men over 50, that's your group.

The 2025 follow-up from the same team enrolled younger men, aged 25 to 50 with an average age of 40, and 11 finished the eight weeks. Free testosterone rose from 10.48 to 11.72 ng/dL. SHBG fell from 29.1 to 27.4 nmol/L, the opposite of the 1.6% yearly climb the Massachusetts study tracked.

What men say after a few weeks

Men who take pine pollen tincture most often describe two changes. Stronger morning wood, and more drive, in the bedroom and at work. Our pine pollen review goes through what to expect from a first bottle.

Mara's spagyric Pinus radiata tincture

Mara's pine pollen is wild-harvested from Pinus radiata. The pollen is cracked-cell, meaning the tough outer wall of each grain is broken open so the extract reaches what's inside. It's made the spagyric way. The pollen is extracted, and the minerals left behind afterwards are returned to the liquid, so the whole plant ends up in the bottle.

Keep it next to the coffee. One dropper under the tongue each morning, held for 20 to 30 seconds, then swallowed. It tastes soft and lightly earthy, with a faint sweetness. The 50 ml bottle lasts 30 to 50 days at one to two droppers a day. If you're comparing bottles, dark amber glass is a step in the right direction, but dark Miron glass is the gold standard, and it's what Mara uses.

Pine Pollen – Spagyric Pine Pollen Tincture

50 ml dropper bottle. Wild-harvested, cracked-cell Pinus radiata pollen.

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Pine Pollen considerations

The recommendation on the product page: Contains alcohol. If you're pregnant, nursing or taking medication, ask your doctor before using it.

Questions men over 40 ask

What foods raise testosterone naturally?

The strongest numbers are for zinc. Low-zinc men in their sixties went from 8.3 to 16.0 nmol/L after six months of zinc in Prasad's 1996 study, and oysters, beef and pumpkin seeds are the richest food sources.

How long does it take to raise testosterone naturally?

Sleep moves fastest. One week of five hour nights lowered testosterone 10 to 15% in the Chicago study, and both pine pollen pilots measured their results at eight weeks. Weight loss takes longer, and in the 2013 meta-analysis the rise tracked how much weight came off.

Is it harder after 50?

The Massachusetts study found free testosterone keeps falling about 2% a year through the fifties and sixties. The men in the 2024 pine pollen pilot averaged 63 and still saw total testosterone go from 362.5 to 448.4 ng/dL.

When should I take pine pollen tincture?

Mornings. One to two droppers a day, held under the tongue for 20 to 30 seconds before or with coffee. A bottle lasts 30 to 50 days.