That’s me yesterday, taking a break from riding my mountain bike in the 100 degree weather that we had in Denver this past weekend. The question is, “Why?”

For me mountain biking, and off-road triathlon are hobbies, and in the interest of full disclosure, I am not particularly good at either one. But I don’t care.

One of the biggest reasons that guys suffer from fatigue, weight gain and lower sex drive levels is stress. I see it all the time on the labs that I run on my patients. The stress hormone cortisol goes up, other hormone levels levels go down.

Money, relationships, and work are the 3 big external stressors that drive this (we’ll talk about the internal stressors like diet later).  Since most guys can’t just dump their jobs or trash their finances or fix their relationships to easily, the best thing to do is to find something to let you get away. Whether it’s fishing, mountain biking, hitting golf balls, brewing your own beer or collecting stamps, you need something to get away.

This is the quickest path to getting stress under control. So find something you like, even if it’s something you’re not good at, and do it.

Tags: cortisol in men, fatigue