Alright, men, listen up, General "T" speaking here: Attention!
Huh, what's that?
What's that you say? General "T" is giving the order, but Mr. Private First Class is disobeying the order??!! He's not standing to attention?
How very rude. How to explain such insubordination?
Surely there must be a communication issue somewhere, a fundamental misunderstanding that results in Mr. Private First Class's failure to come to attention.
What could it possibly be?
I've Been Thinking About This Issue
First of all because I am myself a life-long,card carrying member of the male species and I've noticed that so many men just let themselves go, grow a big, huge belly, get soft and fat and flabby and out of shape and sit around and drink beer and watch sports on television and get old and weak and -- it's unsettling and self-destructive.
And secondly, because as my regular readers know, I was assaulted and nearly killed in the very last days of 2012, with the result that I nearly died of my injuries and subsequently was hospitalized for just over four months. I came near to death; I realize that now.
The ordeal tremendously weakened me. It was an assault on my entire organism. I essentially lost all meaningful function and feeling beneath my knees, and had tremendous weakness and lack of coordination from the waist down.
There was almost no there there. The doctors would pull me to my feet and tell me to walk and I would just topple over like a 100 kilo sack of rice. They would have to catch me to prevent me from impacting the floor face first.
Then they would prick me with sharp pins all up and down my lower legs. I could feel nothing.
In the early days, a traumatologist spread-eagled me on my back and tried (without success) to elicit a response from Mr. Happy with a cotton swab. I was in a provincial, public hospital, a Public Health Service teaching hospital and the doctors were perplexed by my case. They hadn't seen anything like it before. I was a medical mystery for them, and therefore a teaching opportunity for the young nurses and doctors. So the head traumatologist gathered the young trainees around, spread-eagled me on my back and proceeded to explain that my spine was injured and that this, that and the other nerve was not functioning and that therefore, there was not a normal reaction to stimulus in this, that and the other anatomical location. I was in enormous pain, scarcely able to roll from one side of the bed to the other, and had greatly diminished control and feeling over a large portion of my body. I was embarrassed, but beggars can't be choosers. I had no money. I was in a public hospital in a rural region of a developing country, and so I was a human lab rat for young, trainee medical professionals.
The doctors were surprised that I even had control of my sphincters and could control the excretory functions. I don't know why that was the case; so much else was not working -- at all -- but the sphincters were, and still are, so there is that.
After a few weeks of total disinterest, Mr. Happy suddenly roused himself. Early one morning as dawn's first rays lit up the foothills of the Andes, a very femme nurse came around to check the men's vital signs and note them down in each patient's chart. She had a soft, extremely feminine voice, an immaculately clean, freshly washed and starched uniform with a pert little nurse's cap perched on top of her hair, a delightfully subtle perfume and a totally female way of filling out the charts. I watched her fingers -- so long, delicate and exquisitely graceful. She was all woman.
Suffice it to say that Mr. Happy was well and hopelessly beguiled by the whole, mesmerizing production. Nurse Femme had his full, rapt focus. Perhaps it was her pheromones, who is to say? -- in any event, General "T" would have swelled with pride to see one of his long-suffering Privates-First-Class so abruptly "man up" and stand to attention with such impressive authority and vigorous devotion to duty.
So it was that I mentally checked one item off the list, and thought to myself; "One up, many others yet to go."
The Saga Continued/Continues
After a month of medical mystery, I was transferred by ambulance to another, still larger, public hospital in Quito. We went zooming along the Pan-American highway in the wee hours of the morning, along the spine of the Andes, en route to Quito. The air is clear and cold at 9,000 feet and the stars were spectacular. I laid there on my back and looked out the window at the Milky Way and wondered whatever would happen in Quito.
I am still wondering what will happen in Quito, seeing as I am still in Quito. The doctors at the larger hospital were even more mystified by my case, so they eventually decided that my condition was "degenerative." However, I pointed out to them that my condition could not possibly be "degenerative," because I was slowly improving. On the contrary, I told them, my condition must be "regenerative," because I was getting better. So they added another word to my chart: "idiopathic" -- cause unknown.
Because, you see, without any help from the MDs, I had been gradually improving, which completely flummoxed them. They ran almost every test known to medical science without being able to conclusively diagnose the cause of my ailment(s). Multiple MRIs, sonograms, x-rays, endless blood tests, thumping and pounding and poking and pricking, electromyography, urine analysis, spinal taps, diabetes and cancer screenings, heart exams, and more.
I repeatedly recounted to them the assault I had undergone, to little avail. The story went in one ear and out the other. It was like attempting to converse with a brick wall.
Months went by like that until one day they told me I would have to go. So I left, barely able to slowly and very feebly make my way, leaning on a battered aluminum walker of the sort that little old ladies with osteoporosis use to hobble along. With great, laborious effort I managed to cross the small hospital parking lot to the adjacent, side street where I had to hail a taxi. I could go no farther. I was completely spent.
By that point, I had realized that an awful lot of doctors don't know diddly-squat about nutrition or physical therapy. They really are not interested. I doubt that it is much different in the USSA or the USS-UK or the USS-Australia or the USS-Canada. The modern medical profession is a mafia, a drug mafia, a surgery mafia, an endless series of tests and examinations mafia. It is sterile, cold, largely unfeeling and in few words, an industry with a financial profit motive.
Even in the public hospitals in a developing country, a great many of the doctors are clearly only practicing medicine to make money. They do it for the money. Essentially, it is the same motivation that a hooker or an escort has. She does it for the money. Same thing. She screws this one and the next one and they pay her. If one guy drops dead the next day, what does she care? She just screws another one instead and he pays her. It's all the same to her. She's in it for the money. They could all die and it would not disturb her rest. She is as shallow and superficial and cold as can be. (And you can put so-called "married" women who marry well, i.e., for the money or for social status, in that same "whore" category. What is the difference?)
Same thing with the medical doctors. I saw this. I saw men die again and again. An hour or two later another patient is in the same bed in which another man just died. The recently departed is down in the morgue; his corpse is still warm and they've already put another man in the bed in which he just died.
What does it matter to the doctors? If the patient lives or dies they still get paid, which is their priority. They do it for the money. It's a hustle.
It is cold and unfeeling. It's a mafia. By the time of my discharge I realized that I was on my own.
If I were to heal, it would be up to me and me alone. That was real clear to me.
Don't even get me started on the "alternative" healing community.
Many of them are also in it for the money, and how! Buy their little machine -- it only costs $2K or maybe $15K. Or fly to their clinic. Such a bargain -- only $20K! Or just send them a payment with your credit card and they will remotely heal you with their special ***** or their esoteric, mystical method. Can I get a "hallelujah" brothers and sisters?
They may be even more superficial, greedy and whore-like than the MDs, because they are so silky smooth and "honey tongued." All whores know that most people would rather hear sweet lies than harsh truths.
What It All Comes Down To
You.
You are the most important factor in your life. Yep, that person who is looking back at you when you look in the mirror. That's the most important person you know. It all begins and ends with that guy.
Not to give General "T" short shrift. We are about to give him his full due, but as important as General "T" is, without your cooperation he's just spinning his wheels and going nowhere fast.
In my experience, the physical therapists in the hospitals were very helpful and healing. I want to mention their importance, because physical programming of your body is an essential part of the healing process, or of life in general. A healthfully programmed body will fare much better than a body with faulty physical programming.
That is so obvious it scarcely needs to be said. When you are coming back from a severely traumatic physical assault that brought you almost to the point of death, and you have lost control of a large portion of your body, the help of trained, physical therapists can be of very great assistance. It was to me.
But as you improve, the point comes when you have to begin to bear more and more of the responsibility of your own healing. Ultimately, your life is your life, not the life of the therapists(s), and if you are to heal, you must take charge of your own healing process.
That necessarily involves a mental and emotional focus that is centered on getting better, getting stronger, getting healthier, improving more and more, doing better and better, making steady improvement, every day, every week, every month.
That has to be your focus. It is not optional. It must be your focus.
The Essential Elements
The mental and emotional aspect is therefore crucial. But it is nothing by itself. You must minimally couple that with: 1) sane, healthful nutrition, 2) an intelligent physical therapy and exercise program and 3) a full night of sleep every 24 hour cycle.
You must do these things or you will not get better.
You must do these things or you will not be healthy, period, even if you have not suffered massively debilitating, life threatening, physical trauma as did I.
So whether you are recovering from massively traumatic, life threatening injury or you have just become the totally fat, weak, out of shape slob that you can't even stand to think about, you simply have to embrace the essential elements that I am going to discuss now. I mean to say that you MUST do the things that I am about to outline. They are not optional. None of them.
General "T" Is Counting On You
That would be "T" as in testosterone. It's what makes us Manly Men. If you don't have testosterone, you are not very manly, from the point of view of being a Manly Man. If your testosterone level is low, you will be weak, lazy, fat, tired, pathetic, pitiful, unmotivated, bored, etc. It's that simple.
Please don't argue with me about this; I'm giving you fair warning, or General "T" will have you down on the floor doing 20 quick push-ups, as a testosterone building, object lesson. Whether you are coming back from massive physical injury or are liberating your inner Manly Man, you absolutely have to optimize your testosterone level. There is no way around it.
But you need to do it naturally. I am not recommending that anyone use the various artificial products that are out there, some of which are illegal, to boost their testosterone levels. But if you will just follow the simple steps in this blog article you will absolutely, naturally elevate your General "T" levels and improve your prospects for a more healthful life. We are men. We are designed to function well with optimal testosterone levels. The Universe designed us that way. It's just how it is. So how do you optimize your "T" levels?
Sleep
You have to sleep every night. If you don't sleep at night, your testosterone levels are going to go down, maybe way down. So you can't stay up until 2 am doing paperwork from the office, or playing cards with your buddies, or tossing back one beer after another at the local bar/tavern/pub/club.
You must sleep at night. The Universe designed us to sleep at night and you have to do that. Our bodies are set up like that, and to have healthful testosterone levels you need to go to bed and sleep at night. Every night.
It's that simple. It is not negotiable.
Heavy Exercise
Many studies have shown that heavy physical exercise spurs the release of testosterone in the male body. I am talking about pull-ups, chin-ups, bench pressing, squats, lunges, dead lifts, rowing, pull downs, 40 yard sprints and strenuous jumping and hopping. That's right, strenuous jumping around will boost your testosterone levels. Where the weights are concerned, you have to use heavy weights (with proper form to avoid injury) and a few sets of maybe 4 to 8 repetitions. You have to do vigorous bursts of strenuous exercise for maybe 30 seconds at a time. Rest a couple of minutes and do another thirty second burst of jumping or sprinting or chin-ups or set of heavy weight lifting.
I am talking about weight training or serious exercise using your body weight. And keep your exercise sessions short -- maybe less than 40 minutes.
You will NOT get the same testosterone boost from long duration, cardio-based, endurance training, like on a treadmill or running 15 miles. You want short, heavy, near maximum exertion weight training or other heavily strenuous exercise, to build power, strength, muscle and to boost testosterone production.
Remember, your goal is not to be "Twiggy", the sickly looking, rail thin English girl who went around with the falsetto-singer named Tiny Tim, decades ago. Your goal is to be a Manly Man, in good health, strong, muscular and vigorous.
Want to be strong? You have to pick up heavy things, lift heavy weights. Yes, you have to go to a gym and work out, or buy a bar and some cast iron plates, or go to the park and use the exercise bars to do chin-ups and pull-ups. And do bursts of fast sprints on the lawn or lunges, quick sets of 20 push-ups, etc. You have to work your lower body and your upper body. Legs, trunk/body core and arms. It has to be heavy work, strenuous work.
And you have to do this regularly. It has to be a part of your life. It is part of who you are. Want to be strong, healthy and vigorous? You must exercise. Hard. Heavy. Strenuous.
It's not optional. It's not negotiable. It's not something you think about. It is something you physically do.
When I was in the hospital one of my therapists one day remarked to me that I was very weak. That off-hand comment served as tremendous inspiration to me. Of course, it was true. I was very weak, very thin, in a recuperative phase on the way back from the kind of near death experience you would not want to have, trust me on that.
It was not long after my discharge that I began going to the local parks to do what I could to build up my strength, coordination and feeling. At first my goals were very simple -- to be able to stand up on both feet for 15 seconds at a time without any physical support to hold on to and without falling over. It was a challenge. I was on crutches in those days. I depended on them. Then I extended the time out to a minute on both feet without physical support, then 5 minutes, then 15 minutes. Then I worked on being able to close my eyes and stand up without support and not fall over; or to be able to look up in the sky while standing on two feet and not lose my balance.
Then I ditched the crutches and worked on walking around without tripping and falling. I am now working on being able to lift my left foot. I can raise it a fraction of an inch. Two years ago, there was no reflex at all when I tried to raise it, no contraction in the tibia muscle whatsoever. Now there is a little.
I have now begun to do a little jumping. I cannot jump very high, a few inches maybe, and that with great effort. I practically cannot jump at all. I used to play basketball when I was younger and did a lot of running and jumping. I am nowhere near that level of physical condition now. But I am not deterred. So I have started to do what I can, and will build from there, a fraction of an inch at a time. What you can conceive of, you can achieve, with time and persistent, guided, intelligent effort.
I am telling you that you must never give up. You have to try again and again and again and again. For years, if necessary.
Failure is not an option if your objective is to be healthy, vigorous and strong. So you have to keep at it. You break your goals down into small increments of a fraction of an inch at a time, a millimeter at a time, a pound at a time. And you persist. There is no other way.
I also want to do pull-ups and chin-ups again, so I began using the exercise bars. All gyms have exercise bars and many city or municipal parks do, as well. At first, I would grab the bars and try with all my might to hoist myself up, and I wouldn't budge at all. Not one millimeter. I wouldn't even move.
But that has not stopped me. What onlookers or other people in the gym or park may be thinking is of no concern to me. They are not me. Their project is not my project. I simply determined to keep trying until I did move.
So I have kept at it over an extended period of time, and recently I have crossed the threshold of "one." I can now hoist myself up and do one chin-up or pull-up with good form. Now I will begin working on doing two chin-ups or pull-ups at a time, and then three, and so forth, until I can do fifteen or twenty at a time. When I was thirty years old I could do sets of fifteen pull-ups at a time with perfect form.
I am now sixty years old, in the process of a lengthy, painful, physical rehabilitation that is ongoing. My attitude is that I am on my way to once again being in excellent health, vigorous and strong.
The Nutritional Element
Do you have a motorcycle or motor bike? Do you have an automobile? A truck?
Would you fill the fuel tank with garbage or trash and expect it to run well?
The analogy to the human body is obvious. How is it possible to feed the body junk food and be strong, vigorous and healthy?
So you have to be intelligent about what you eat. You have to prioritize what you put in your mouth. There is no way around it.
If you want to have crappy health, then make sure you eat plenty of crappy food.
If you want to have excellent health, then make sure you eat food with high nutritive value.
When I was in the hospital, the quality of the diet was so poor that my health suffered as a consequence. The same was true for the other patients. Unfortunately, hospital food is notoriously unhealthy in many countries. It certainly is true of many hospitals in the USSA.
So when I was discharged from the hospital I began a nutritional program that is still evolving today, with the objective of giving my body the fuel, the nutrients that it must have to heal and be vigorous and strong.
I will give you a partial list of some of the things I now regularly eat. Notice that there is no crap on the list. These are whole foods, either minimally processed or not processed at all.
Gentlemen, please pay attention. There is no alcohol of any kind on the list. You want to make Mr. Happy sad? Want to get General "T" down in the dumps? Then be sure to consume plenty of alcoholic beverages and you will torpedo your mojo a little more with every swallow. I am telling you as clearly as I can that alcohol is poison -- beer, wine, ale, rum, whiskey, brandy, vodka, etc. None of it is compatible with excellent health.
I know what the culture says: drink alcohol and be a man.
But that is a lie. I'm suggesting that you avoid it. And if your woman has an alcohol problem, give her the heave ho, and find a woman without the alcohol curse, because if she has the alcohol bug in her, if she can't leave the booze alone, she's going to drag you down. Like Paul Simon says, "Make another plan, Stan. No need to be coy, Roy. Throw away the key, Lee. Just get yourself free."
You don't want Mr. Happy to be sad. You want to stay on the good side of General "T". So stay away from the liquor store and the alcohol aisle in the supermarket. And if the lady can't put down the wine bottle, just change the locks. You'll be better off without a little wino and her boozy breath. Don't worry, she'll soon find an "alky" pal to hang out with. That type is not lonely long and you have more important things to worry about.
Please note: many of the following foods are testosterone enhancers, in one way or the other. Additionally, the foods on this list are packed with a wide variety of healthful nutrients that the male body must have to be healthy, vigorous and strong. I have written a few notes. You can easily investigate the nutrient profile for any of these foods. In general note that I eat a lot of nuts, seeds, beans, some dairy products and eggs, a variety of fruits and juices, fresh vegetables and some oatmeal. My health is steadily improving with this kind of diet.
raw garlic
(It's first on the list for a reason. It boosts your testosterone and it also has a boatload of other health benefits. I went out to the store and got a small, hand-held garlic press. I put a clove or two in there and press down hard. I do that to physically break the garlic cells -- that releases the raw, sulfur compounds that are so beneficial. Yes, raw garlic is very strong; it burns in your mouth, but for Manly Men this is not such a big deal, owing to the Manly Man benefits they derive from eating a little bit of raw garlic. I just mix it with some raw avocado or something like that to make it more palatable and more comfortable to eat.)
oatmeal (yeah, it really does help you to be a more Manly Man)
mature cheese (cheddar, Swiss, Gouda, etc., has protein and fat, needed to make testosterone)
milk
butter (you need the fat to make testosterone)
walnuts (omega -3 oil, protein, fiber, zinc)
peanuts (protein)
Brazil nuts (zinc, protein, healthful oils)
almonds
cashews
filbert nuts
pecans
raisins (boron)
dried dates
broccoli
cauliflower
spinach
fava beans (really, really good to boost testosterone, have protein, fiber, vitamins)
lentils
carrot juice (vitamins A & C)
alfalfa juice (chlorophyll, magnesium)
orange juice (vitamin C)
raw 100% organic chocolate without sugar (excellent for boosting testosterone, heart health)
eggs (protein, lutein, omega-3 oil)
bananas
avocados
coconut water
sacha inchi oil (omega-3 oil)
olive oil
onions
squash seeds (B vitamins)
chia seeds (protein, omega-3 oil)
zinc picolinate supplement (zinc is essential for testosterone production)
sunshine for vitamin D-3 (essential for testosterone production)
maca powder (very good boost to testosterone production)
magnesium chloride (liquid form - you need magnesium)
sweet potatoes
watermelon
strawberries
bananas
sea salt (no added fluoride and full of trace minerals vital for optimal health)
These are not all the foods that I eat, though these are some of the foods that I most frequently eat.
Note that there are not any wheat products on this list. My system cannot handle wheat. It makes me very ill.
There are also no soy products on this list. Soy is the enemy of General "T". Soy depresses testosterone levels. So I stay away from it. Besides, most soy in the stores these days is GMO. Who wants GMO garbage in their body? Not me.
There is also no meat, poultry or fish or sea food on this list. I am a long-time vegetarian, ever since I left my mother's house, at the age of 21 years old, now almost 40 years ago. I understand that vegetarianism is associated with lower testosterone levels. I am, however, not vegan. I am a lacto-ovo-vegetarian, which provides me with additional protein that is vital for testosterone production. I might eat ten eggs at a time, or a pound of cheese at one go. I rarely eat anything after 6pm in the evening.
It is true that meat and oyster consumption will definitely boost your testosterone levels. In the case of oysters, they come out of coastal waters --places like coastal Louisiana, the Chesapeake Bay, Japan, etc. These are some of the filthiest bodies of water in the world, and given that oysters are water filtering organisms, whatever is in the water will be in the oyster -- toxic industrial sludge, agricultural chemicals, radioactivity, human waste, etc. For me oysters are not worth the risk. I do not eat animals for personal reasons and I will not argue with meat eaters about it.
Just will not.
Though I will say that the doctors kept pressuring me to eat meat in the hospital. I got real tired of that after awhile and pointed out to them that I was surrounded by very sick men on all sides who were life-long meat eaters, many of whom were dying, whereas I was not only not dying, but unlike most of the rest of the patients, I was steadily getting better on a non-meat diet.
The doctors then shut up. (Where do they come from?)
Manly Man Websites
If you have read this far, then you will undoubtedly find much interesting material in the following websites. Just click the links.
Which Vegetables Produce the Most Testosterone in Men?
Simply Shredded: The Ultimate Lifting Experience
Lift Heavy Weights To Boost Testosterone
5 Ways Strength Training Will Make You Man Up
Anabolic Men: 50 Foods That Boost Testosterone
Anabolic Men: 100 Ways To Increase Testosterone Naturally
Boost Peak Testosterone With Sleep
Sleep: Each Extra Hour Means 15% More Testosterone
How To Increase Testosterone Naturally: The Art of Manliness
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