Testosterone is The King of Muscle-Building Hormones
Serum testosterone is your total testosterone level as measured in your blood. Free testosterone is the testosterone in your blood that is not bound to sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG). It is this free testosterone that is biologically active and able to exert its effect by permeating a cell and activating its receptor. Only free testosterone exerts anabolic activity on muscle.
Only 2% Free Testosterone . . .
Just 2% of your total testosterone is free testosterone. That means that only 2% of the testosterone in your body is biologically active. Only 2% of your body’s testosterone is available to help in the muscle-building process.
This goes to show you just how powerful testosterone is for building muscle. Just small increases can have a profound effect on muscle growth. Finding ways to naturally increase your free testosterone levels will dramatically affect your ability to add new muscle.
SHBG . . .
Now the bad guy here is SHBG – sex hormone-binding globulin or sex steroid binding globulin (SSBG) is a glycoprotein that binds to testosterone. By binding to testosterone, SHBG inhibits testosterone’s anabolic effects. Only unbound free testosterone is biologically active and able to attach to androgen receptors in muscle and deliver anabolic instructions.
Reducing SHBG will increase free testosterone, and a rise in SHBG will decrease free testosterone. Certain substrates, hormones, nutrients, and even food have an effect on increasing or decreasing SHBG. High insulin levels, as well as high IGF-1 levels, decrease SHBG. Estrogen increases SHBG.
So from a researcher’s perspective, if you can manipulate (decrease) your SHBG you will liberate more free testosterone for a greater anabolic effect. Can you see where we are going with this? Stay tuned as our product development team is coming up with some exciting stuff.
