Hormone Myths vs The Truth Pt 1

Hormone Controversy and Myths 0:00

So, you know, seeing how the news shapes our views is part of why we're here tonight talking about hormone controversy. Because, really, there is no controversy about hormones. We have very clear understanding of what part of hormones are dangerous and what parts of hormone are safe and how to make utilization of the hormones safe for you and without risk, without any increased risk. Do women get breast cancer? Oh, yes. One in seven, one in eight women will get cancer. Is it because she's on estrogen?

No. toxins in the environment, excess body fat, poor diet, no exercise, all of those things. Those are the reasons that feed into it. And so something like that happens very frequently. The question is, does the hormone cause it? That's the issue, not whether it happens or not. So we're going to talk tonight about some of the other confusions that people have about hormones and where they come from. So what we're gonna do is I'm gonna tell you some about hormones, and some of you have already found your hormone truth or myth quiz that's in your folder, we'll be doing that later.

And having a little like truth, or, truth? Or myth? Truth or Myth? And this is myth versus reality, but it's really myth vs. truth. So I want to tell you a little bit about what hormones are, because that's fundamental to understanding why we talk about them. The only way to get information from one part of your body to another is to send a messenger. And this was the messenger that ran the first marathon to, you know, to the tell the troops what was going on.

What Hormones Do in the Body 1:58

He was a Messenger. We have Messengers all over our bodies, so how does A gland in our brain tell our thyroid to make more thyroid hormones. How does the gland of our brains tell the adrenal glands to create hormones? And how does our Thyroid gland tell every cell in the body to speed up metabolism? With messengers. And the messangers are the hormones So there are many different types of hormones. We're gonna talk particularly about a few hormones tonight, the ones that are controversial. I don't think anybody has a big controversy about thyroid.

You know, we all know we need it and there hasn't been all this stuff in the media about it, but I wanna talk about the one that bring up questions and doubt in your mind. So hormones also function, am I standing in front of the screen for people? Can you see better now? Hormones also function as our thermostat and metabolism regulator. So that would be a lot thyroid. Also insulin, the hormone, controls metabolism of sugar. Hormones regulate aging, and this is the most important thing. And starting with when we're about 25, when were hormonally at our optimal, begins the downward So by the time we're in our mid-40s, one of the most important energy and vitality hormones, DHEA, is about half of what it was when we were 25. By the you're 60, it's a quarter.

So a lot of things that are felt to be changes due to age, you know, what do you expect at your age? Are really hormonal declines. And this is the other thing, you know, people say, well, we don't have like 20 or 30 year studies. Well, really, it's just been in the last 20 to 25 years that we've really started utilizing hormones for maintenance of health, slowing down the aging process, and aging what I call successfully, having healthy longevity. This is a new thing. You know, in 1900, the expected lifespan was about 45 to 50 years old.

Nobody ever lived in the latter part of their lives. Women didn't live in menopause. Men didn' t live during a time of life when their testosterone levels went down. And when people say, well, I think we should just let nature take its course, Well, you know before insulin, diabetics used to let Nature take it's course. It didn t have a very good outcome for them. Diabetes is basically a disease of premature aging. The sugar ages your blood vessels, ages you brain. Diabetics have accelerated heart attacks and strokes at a much younger age than the general population, and they have a higher rate of Alzheimer's disease.

So that's an example of accelerated aging, so if we can slow down the aging process, we will age more healthfully.

Hormones and Healthy Aging 5:14

We've done a whole lot to expand our lifespan, right? So it went from age 45 or 50 in 1900 to here we are 200 years later. No, 114 years. I'm not good at subtracting. And we've added another 30 years But we haven't improved the quality of the last part of those years at all. And that's come from academic centers that have looked at it. So people are living longer, but not better. The real question is how can we live better? And really, the baby boom generation is the first generation to have the opportunity to do something about their aging.

Because it's only like I said in the 25 years that we have an understanding of why we decline as we get older. And with that knowledge, you can do something about it. A large part of it is hormones. There are other things. there's oxidation, rusting from the inside out. It's diet dependent and exercise dependent. You know, there are a whole lot of different processes. Sugar abnormalities, like with diabetes. you don't have to be a diabetic. to undergo adverse effects from too much sugar. Don't wait till they call you a diabetic to control your sugar, even if your sugars elevated but not diabetic, you have a higher risk of dementia.

So we have this understanding about the aging process and that's allowed us to develop programs and supplements and approaches to slowing down that process, and decreasing our risk serious chronic illness. We know that all chronic illnesses, and what do I mean by chronic illness? Cancer, heart disease, including strokes, Alzheimer's disease. Parkinson's Disease. Those are all Chronic Illnesses. And they are caused by inflammation. What modulates inflammation? What you eat, your exercise, Your mental, emotional, spiritual part of you, And your hormones.

So all of those things modulate inflammation and you want to be on an anti-inflammatory path in everything you do. So that's what we're about and tonight we are going to talk about the hormone part of things. Hormones do regulate aging. Our wrinkling, sagging skin comes from diminished estrogen levels and growth hormone levels. our loss of muscle comes form diminishing testosterone levels Dementia, we have great evidence that estrogen and testosterone in women and in men decreases risk of Alzheimer's disease and dementia.

Depression. is very much hormonal in men as well as women and has other causes aswell. It's a really complex one. And cardiovascular disease can be looked at as a hormonal disease. Hormones like testosterone and estrogen help to keep the linings of your blood vessels in healthy condition. The linens of you arteries is where cardiovascular diseases start. That's where plaque starts. And you want that lining kept velvety and soft and supple. You don't want it stiff and hard like a pipe with calcium deposits.

Hormones help to keep it like that. So hormones definitely regulate our aging, not to mention Symptoms, you know, low libido, mood, energy, a whole variety of things that we're aware of. There's a lot that goes on that were not aware, but there's lot we know about in ways that don't feel well that is hormone related. So when we have somebody on a hormone restoration program here, we use a number of different products, eight of them.

Menopause, Andropause, and Environmental Toxins 9:26

We're going to talk about testosterone, progesterone, and estrogen, because like I said, that's where the controversy is. The other hormones that we use, pregnenolone which is a hormone that converts into a lot of these other hormone, but it also acts as a neurotransmitter in the memory center of your brain. So some of that diminishing of cognitive ability, of thinking ability as we age, oh well, it's just your age is diminishing pregnenolone level, something that can be restored. Thyroid is a whole other topic but huge numbers of people have low functioning thyroid that contributes to weight problems, energy problems mood problems thinking problems.

DHEA I talked about is this tremendous energy and vitality hormone. Melatonin levels diminish as we age and so people tend to have more sleep difficulties as they get older and sleep is absolutely foundational to your good health. And vitamin D, I talked about, which functions more like a hormone. And like thyroid, there is a receptor or a spot on every cell in your body for it to have an action. So a receptors like, a lock. Vitamin D is the key, or thyroid is key that goes into the lock, turns the locked, and causes something to happen inside the cell.

If vitamin is everywhere in you body, thyroid's everywhere you're body. Some of the other hormones are more targeted. They're not everywhere. They don't have actions everywhere, so we're going to talk about these three because that's where the big controversy is. Like I mentioned, hormones decline as we age. We're at our best at about age 25 to 30. You know, that when people are too young to know how good they have it, right? decline in midlife and continue declining and then of course women have this really abrupt change when they go through menopause and lose a bunch of hormones like all of a sudden, which is a very tumultuous thing to have happen for many women.

So, menopause, the average age is age 51, and there is this period that we call perimenopaus, which, when I got started in OBGYN, you know, 30 some years ago, there wasn't even a term. That didn't exist, perimanopau. And it's traditionally said to last two to five years, but quite honestly, the changes start happening to women in about their mid-30s. So women, in their 30s, their periods start changing, things start change. It gets more and more apparent in the 40s but it is probably more like a 15 year lead up.

In men, testosterone declines little bit by little every year. The young men growing up now particularly have a problem. Sperm counts are going down worldwide. Toxins in the environment have hormonal actions in our body, but not in a good way. And we think one of the reasons why young men have lowered sperm counts is because of these what are called endocrine disruptors. They disrupt proper endocrine function. All the things that are in plastic. The adhesive that's used to lay the carpet. The organic solvents that are in paint, all of that, are doing horrible damage to us.

So, best thing is eliminate plastics from your life. And then as far as men go, looking at who's affected, because a lot of times people think it's only very old men who have low testosterone levels, this chart shows about 2% to 3% of men in their 20s even have lower testosterone. 20%-30% percent of the men between 30 and 40, and more than 50% men of their 60s and 70s have a low of testosterone, so it is very prevalent. So in men, there's this new term that was developed called andropause, because andro is the Greek name for the male hormones.

Testosterone and some of the other male hormone are called Androgens. So this was called endropaus in man and menopause in women. And sometimes we call it manopaus. But we're going to talk about menopaths and manopath. It probably should be womanopas and manual pause, but anyhow. So these are a list of things, a partial list, and it's in your handout of symptoms. Remember I talked about symptoms? There are things that go on that you're not aware of in you body, but then there are symptoms you are aware.

And, you know, I know I see a skewed part of the population because people that come to see me come because they have a problem by and large.

Symptoms of Hormone Decline 14:34

Occasionally people come cause they want to maintain good health and they're feeling pretty good, But most people comes because their feeling terrible. and have any number of these problems with energy, sex drive, moods, they're not sleeping well, not as strong, thinking not clear, higher body fat, you know what happens is you get older is even if you don't gain weight you Shapeshifting, where you get more fat around the middle and your muscles start going away. So your body fat increases and then your muscle mass decreases.

And it is really, it's part of healthy longevity. You must exercise and maintain your Muscle mass. Low muscle Mass, there's a medical name for it. It's called Sarcopenia. And people who are sarcopenic, who don't have enough muscle mass, have much higher mortality. So you will die earlier if you don''t maintain your muscle math. Elderly people that are kind of bird-like looking, they're very tiny. For the most part, the have skin and they have bones. They may not have that much fat, but they don' have muscle, and you need the muscle.

And exercise performance, people notice, men a lot notice this, they can't do what they've been accustomed to doing as far as exercise on the racquetball court or playing tennis, you know, really active sports. They're not able to perform as well. And some women too, women that are more vigorous exercises will start seeing that they cant lift weights as heavy, it takes them longer to recover when they do exercise. A lot of this is hormonal, some of it is nutrient deficiencies aswell. So this is the reality of manopause, and it's pretty much the same thing for women in menopausal.

The risk of being in manapause with low testosterone is premature aging, Higher incidence of heart attacks and strokes. I think you guys will be able to answer this quiz really well by the time we get there. Increased dementia if you have low testosterone. Higher body fat. Like I mentioned, testosterone helps you maintain your muscle. Your muscle is the tissue in your body that metabolizes the nutrients that you take in, the calories that Fat is not metabolically active. So if you lose muscle and gain fat, what you eat is going to get converted to fat rather than getting used sufficiently by your muscle.

Is that clear? I think I didn't say it clearly. I'll say it again. Your muscle is your metabolically active tissue. So if you have lost muscle because you're not physically active, you can eat the same thing. You know, people say I'm eating the thing thing I've been, I always eat same amount, same kind of foods for the last three years and I keep gaining, gaining gaining because your losing muscle that would be metabolizing those calories. if you're not physically active.

Estrogen, Stress, and Cardiovascular Protection 17:58

And more of those calories are going to go on your body and get stored as fat rather than getting used by your muscles for energy. What you eat either goes, you know, some of it goes to your brain because your brains needs a lot of calories to function. But other than that, it either go to you muscles to provide energy or it gets stored here. And men also have risks of bone thinning. So men with low testosterone get into problems with osteoporosis just like women do with their low estrogen. And Menopause risks are essentially the same.

You'll age more quickly. We know that women before menopause have a relatively low amount of cardiovascular disease, and shortly after menoppause, we catch up with men. Estrogen is important in terms of people. For a long time, it's not so much anymore, but people used to say, I'm worried about being on estrogen because I am afraid it is going to make me fat, because they think about the chickens that are, you know, goosed up with hormones to makes them fat. And in fact, estrogen helps you keep from laying on this mid-abdomen fat and estrogen also very importantly helps make you more resilient to stress.

So all the changes that go on when you become stressed that make you store more fat are mitigated by estrogen, which keeps you from suffering those physiologic effects of stress severely. Estrogen is anti-inflammatory, like I said, in your arteries.