Grape Seed Extract and Testosterone: Can This Supplement Increase T Levels?

Grape Seed Extract And Testosterone

If you’re a male, you’ve probably heard of all the benefits that come with having optimal testosterone levels.

Healthy testosterone levels have been shown to keep the fat off your body and improve your ability to build more muscle mass.

It has also been proven that optimum T-Levels improve your heart health which will help the blood pump through the body at an optimal rate; low testosterone levels are linked to a number of cardiovascular diseases.

Not only that, studies have established that high testosterone levels can also help improve your mood.

Researchers have found that low T levels are common amongst men suffering from depression.

Along with the improved sex drive, sharper thinking, and many other benefits, there’s practically no downfall that comes with having optimal testosterone levels.

In the past ten years, a supplement has been flooding the health market claiming it can help naturally improve your testosterone levels.

This supplement is called Grape Seed Extract.

Firstly, What’ So Good About Grapes?

The health benefits of grapes have been advocated for centuries, particularly by cultures in the Mediterranean.

Just to list a few, grapes have been said to:

• Contain extremely powerful antioxidants called Polyphenols. These antioxidants can help slow or even prevent many types of cancer including lung, mouth, colon, and prostate cancer.

• Help with heart disease. Mark Houston, an associate clinical professor of medicine at Vanderbilt Medical said that one of the best things you can do to reduce the risk of heart disease is to decrease your sodium intake and increase your potassium intake. Grapes happen to be a great source of potassium.

• Help with balancing blood pressure levels. Low potassium is also said to be associated with high blood pressure. Because grapes contain a substantial amount of potassium, they’re commonly recommended to those who have high blood pressure.

Even though the health properties contained in grapes are extremely beneficial, you’d still have to eat a ton of grapes to receive the desired amount of nutrients it contains.

For this reason, people commonly supplement with grape seed extract, rather than sitting at work, snacking away on a massive amount of grapes.

This way, you’ll avoid a lot of unnecessary calories while still benefiting from the health properties that grapes have to offer.

Can Grape Seed Extract Increase Your Testosterone Levels?

There’s an enzyme in your body called Aromatase that transforms your testosterone into estrogen.

Even though it’s completely normal and healthy to have estrogen present in your body (yes, even if you’re male), the thing that matters the most is the amount of testosterone and estrogen you have in your body.

Ideally, males should have more testosterone than estrogen, and women should have more estrogen than testosterone.

A key reason why grape seed extract is promoted as a natural testosterone booster is because it acts as an Aromatase Inhibitor.

This is because there are two molecules called Proanthocyanidin and Procyanidin that directly inhibits the body from responding to Aromatase, meaning the conversion of testosterone to estrogen is inhibited.

For example, a study was done to find the effect that procyanidin has on the estrogen biosynthesis process.

The researchers found that procyanidin from red wine and grape seeds displayed “…a potent inhibitory action on aromatase activity.”

Another study reached the same conclusion; the procyanidin content of the grape seed extract stopped aromatase from converting the participant’s testosterone into estrogen.

To obtain all the aromatase inhibiting benefits mentioned above, you should supplement with a quality grape seed extract.

As it relates to being an Aromatase inhibitor, Grape Seed extract doesn’t directly boost your testosterone levels, but multiple studies have shown that it does prevent your testosterone from being converted into estrogen.

At the end of the day, that’s still going to leave you with higher levels of testosterone than you had before.

Grape Seed Extract and Erectile Dysfunction

For us males, having a healthy sex drive is something that we should be proud of. Low testosterone levels are commonly correlated with erectile dysfunction.

That means, whenever we are not able to perform in bed, or better yet, even “get it up” in the first place, we know that something’s not right.

In order to get an erection, the blood vessels in your “man area” need to be able to dilate. This process is called Vasodilation.

People who experience troubles with this find it difficult to get an erection, and are slapped with the label of suffering from “erectile dysfunction.”

A key compound that has been scientifically proven to help with vasodilation (and therefore erectile dysfunction) is Nitric Oxide.

A large number of studies have shown a link between erectile dysfunction and low nitric oxide production.

This is where Grape Seed Extract comes in handy. It has been consistently proven that Grape Seed Extract can directly increase your nitric oxide production, which in turn can help to improve erectile dysfunction.

For example, this study was conducted by the department of nephrology and kidney center in China.

The researchers found that “GSE enhanced eNOS expression and NO release in H2O2-treated cells in a dose-dependent manner.”

Here’s another study conducted in 2006 by the department of medicine at the University of Chicago. The researchers found that “…GSE produces a significantly high level of NO…”

As it relates to erectile dysfunction (which is common amongst people who have low testosterone levels), Grape Seed Extract has been proven a number of times to help with vasodilation by increasing the body’s production of nitric oxide.

Other Grape Seed Extract Related Studies

As previously mentioned, Grape Seed extract can not only improve your hormonal health but also other areas of your health.

1) For example, in this study found in the Journal of American Dietetic Association, nine participants were surveyed as to how grape seed extract affected their cardiovascular system.

The researchers found positive results from the grape seed extract, concluding that “…grape seed notably reduces blood pressure and heart rate”

2) Another study conducted at the University of California found similar results about grape seed extract and how it relates to blood pressure. The study included 24 participants who were suffering from metabolic syndrome.

The participants were split into three groups, two groups had unrelated dosages of grape seed extract, and one group was using a placebo.

The study found that “…the groups that received grape seed had the same reduction in blood pressure.”

3) Another group of researchers wanted to test the correlation between grape seed extract (said to be a powerful antioxidant) and its effect on the oxidation process (oxidation in the human body is when the body is damaged on a cellular level caused by free radicals).

In this particular study, they tested twenty participants and found that the grape seed extract was able to increase antioxidative capacity after only one hour of dosage.

The Bottom Line

It’s clear that grape seed extract does have an impact on your overall health.

And even though there’s no direct evidence that grape seed extract can boost testosterone, there definitely are studies that show it can improve testosterone in an indirect way.

So, if you’re feeling a little bit “feminine” recently; perhaps you’ve had a bit of trouble getting an erection, maybe you find it difficult to put on muscle and burn fat, or maybe you’ve just noticed a tad too much fat forming around your chest area…

Whatever it is, Grape Seed extract is something that can indirectly improve your testosterone levels, and that also contains several other health properties that will greatly benefit your overall health.

[simple-author-box]