DOES LOW CARBS SAP YOUR TESTOSTERONE LEVELS

The effect of Low carb diets on Testosterone has been heavily researched over the past few decades and there's clear evidence as to what the direct effect is.

When we look at all this info together it appears that extended LC diets (7-days of restriction) result in lower basal levels of Testosterone, but that training induced changes in Testosterone aren't significantly impacted by LC diets.

This means that LC diets may not directly reduce your "post-workout" anabolic window or response, but it can reduce your baseline anabolic environment.

When looking at the big picture, it may be that long-term reduced basal levels of Testosterone due to LC diets can impact your ability to make long-term muscle gains, especially when it's coupled with elevated levels of cortisol.

Cortisol is the number one enemy Enemy for LC Diets. Cortisol is released from the adrenal glands to mobilize amino acids from tissues (primarily muscle) to increase the availability of glucose through gluconeogenesis, making cortisol catabolic.

In the context of training, cortisol is released during high-intensity, anaerobic exercise to maintain normal glucose levels. The amount of glycogen you've stored directly impacts the release of exercise-induced cortisol. The more glycogen you have stored, the less cortisol is released, and the less glycogen you have the more cortisol is released.

Intuitively, this gives us reason to suspect that long-term glycogen depletion resulting from long-term LC diets may lead to chronically elevated cortisol levels.

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