Living Libido Loca! Supercharge Your Libido at Any Age

Join Dr. Valerie Phillips as she discusses a topic many patients are not exactly comfortable talking to their doctor about… their libido. If you’re looking for insights on how to recover or increase your libido levels or address a frustrating problem with low sex drive, Dr. Valerie debunks the traditional notion that libido decreases as we age and provides her protocols to keep the excitement going!  Learn how to keep your libido health in optimal condition from the privacy of your own home.

When Women Think It’s Normal…

And do you find that people women may not say anything because they think it’s normal because none of their friends have libido. You know, it’s like, well everyone else has the same problem. In fact, a lot of men come in as well. And they’re like erectile dysfunction, libido dysfunction.

If you have high estrogen – you look at young girls, they have high testosterone, but they don’t get all the facial hair and stuff because they have high estrogen. And when you have the low estrogen, your SHBG, sex hormone-binding globulin, goes down so all the testosterone you get becomes free, so it’s much more potent. So it’s that ratio, right? A lot of times things are ratios.

And especially in post-menopausal women, their estrogen goes down and the relative testosterone is high and then they grow a beard. But then they still have no libido because they have no estrogen,

PT 141 – Peptides for Libido

So PT141 is fascinating physiologically. It’s a fraction of the melanocyte stimulating hormone, which is part of a big hormone system called the Proprio melanocortin system, which I’ve been calling, unofficially, the naked and afraid system, because it’s got all of the things. Basically, it’s a big pro hormone that separates out into all these little hormones, which is everything that you would need if you were naked and afraid.

So, the proprio melanocortin system, basically, will give them ACTH adrenocorticotropic hormone, which will kind of boost their immune system and kind of keep them going, I guess in running from bears or whatever survival hormones, and it gives them lypotropin, so they can burn fat for energy as they’re foraging for foods, it gives them endorphins so that they can, I guess manage any kind of pain or energy and injury and maybe feel a little bit better about being naked and afraid.

And then it stimulates melanocytes stimulating hormone, which darkens the skin and protects them from the sun exposure, protects the underlying dermis from like free radicals so that they don’t get skin cancer, hopefully. And it also, the melanocytes stimulating hormone also stimulates the libido and also stimulates weight loss. And the immune system of skin – Melanatan 1 and melanatan 2, the Malibu Barbie peptide.

But the negative to it is that if you’re young that stimulating melanocyte is great. Gives a nice even tan, protects against skin cancer. But if you’re older, it tends to bring out the age spots. And when I took melanotan2, I’m kind of ADD, this isn’t working. And then all of a sudden I am so dark. I’m like what the heck are you? And you can’t stop, and you stop and it keeps going. I looked like some foreign.

Another fragment tried is a KPB, which is even more anti-inflammatory, but it doesn’t have the Melanocyte stimulating aspects and seems to also help with weight loss and lower inflammation in the hypothalamus, which reduces that insulin resistance and appetite it has to do with. I think the biggest problem with like PT141 is nausea, right?

Nausea and cramping. That’s what finally kind of turned me off of it. The first time was fine, but then the subsequent times I was feeling flushed and crampy, but my patient that I was just talking about, she got flushed the first day, but then was fine after that. And is feeling great.

I did a review of all the literature on bio-identical versus synthetic, of the bio-identical hormone debate, and looked at every study head to head showed the bio-identical hormones are safe, lowers the risk of breast cancer, Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular disease while synthetic hormones, especially synthetic progestins. Then you add an oral synthetic to that, it increases clotting factors. And you look at the women’s health initiative, they knocked off most of the people in the first year, probably from a combination of the oral estrogen, going through the liver, increasing clotting factors and the progestin increases clotting factors. And that’s when they all died from a heart attack was the first year, and people and doctors don’t get the difference. And even the literature calls a progestin progesterone and they’ll say, or estriol, which actually is an estrogen that prevents cancer. If people can’t or don’t want to do the shots then my next go-to is the topical estradiol formulations, like a 1% oil and they just put it on the wrist and go like that and that seems to work okay. But a lot of people forget to do it, and so they get these unnatural or non-optimal fluctuations, the same with the progesterone. I like to do progesterone orally if possible. it’s great that Prometrium is bio-identical except that it’s in peanut oil and sometimes that’s a problem.

Hormone protocols should be individualized. That’s why, what I tell people, if they’re looking for a doctor where they’re moving is you’ll know that the doctor is a good hormone doctor if they’re going to individualize the hormone protocol to you and how you are feeling. Because some people need more estrogen. Some people need more testosterone, et cetera. .

Some people need really low doses of everything. Some people do great – Oh my gosh, I started using these bio matrix products, which is like a supplement product, which has really high concentrations of estradiol and progesterone. And I have this one lady who just does two drops a day and she’s like night and day. It’s perfect.

If you use too much estriol. It blocks the estrogen receptors. Estriol is great for urinary tract symptoms and things like that. Some biochemistry behind it, in general there’s two estrogen receptors A and B. So A is going to basically stimulate growth and is stimulatory, B is going to suppress growth and cancer. Now estradiol is balanced, right? So it’s neutral. You get Premarin, which is a horse estrogen which has Quinlin in it, which is a known carcinogen by the way, and it stimulates A so it’s just grow, grow, grow, and then estriol is a selective B. So it’s gonna dampen any excessive growth. So combining estriol and estradiol, now you get more, but if you do too much, basically you don’t get the activating effects of the estrodiol. So, so we found 50/50, in general, is good. I think the 80/20 I’ve seen we’ve had the people on huge, more and more, doses because it just doesn’t work. And I don’t think that’s good either. You’re going to get massive doses of this ratio

And you get a lot of aromatase on the skin, it’s like when giving men testosterone, especially overweight diabetics, they’re doing these testosterone creams and it upregulates in the skin. They rotase, so it converts it all to estrogen. So you’re giving them estrogen, basically, they’re getting man boobs and they’re gaining weight and it’s making them worse.

And I really like the non-aromatizable testosterones like nandrolone, which will not convert to estrogen, especially even a shot with testosterone, for men that are diabetic or overweight, they’re gonna make a lot of estrogen. So you kind of titrate, or you can do stuff to block the estrogen, but I figured just do a different testosterone. Everyone has their own, it’s like baking a cake, telling a chef how to bake a cake.

Blocking the estrogen is key. You don’t want zero estrogen because you need it for brain and bone and all that, but you want to keep it that healthy range.

Even things like BPC, Delta sleep, where if you get someone good sleep, they start losing weight, reduce inflammation of the hypothalamus because that’s what causes insulin resistance and leptin resistance. So, as you know, leptin goes up when you gain weight, to go back to the brain hypothalamus and tell the brain, Hey, we got too much stored fat start burning fat, lower appetite, increase metabolism, increase thyroid. But if it’s blocked, the body’s going, I’m starving, I’m starving, I’m starving. So it lowers metabolism, lowers your thyroid, increases your appetite. Tells your body to store fat. So for a lot of people, we lower that inflammation, then they start losing weight. And so the melanacortins, whether it be KPV, 141, [inaudible] do that as well. So there’s Delta sleep, [inaudible] and things like that. I think it is. I think it’s being young and vibrant and healthy you should have a libido if you don’t, there’s something wrong. I think stress is a huge thing, sleep, exercise, mitochondrial function, arterial and cardiovascular health, neurotransmitter health, I mean there’s so many things to it.

Plus all the psychological stuff and if you take, say ashwagandha, and your cortisol can then drop, then your hormone synthesis can shift from stress hormones to sex hormones. And you can be a little bit just more balanced.

And they might also have sub-optimal activation of the proprio melanacortin system.

Because according to that system it’s activated by stress and it should increase your libido, but there’s something that is not functioning that way in our society. I think it’s because our stress is of a particularly toxic. And I think it’s constant because we’re not made to be – what is it? We’re on our phones. And we’re like, Oh, someone texted me, someone texted me. Even growing up, we didn’t have computers. We sent letters. You’d send off a letter, wait a week. Now it’s why haven’t they text me back? Why haven’t they texted me back? And you’ve got traffic, you’ve got 10 things going on. You’ve got kids running around. I think everyone’s just ready for the circuits to break. And then you’ve got Roundup, plastics, pesticides, BPA, , all this stuff. They’re neurotoxic. Then you get mold. And kind of like neurotoxin, I found I started stuttering so bad that I wouldn’t carry a cell phone because I couldn’t say hello. I was going to go to a stuttering clinic, which happened to be one of my buddies on my residency rotation who stuttered, brilliant guy, but he just really had bad stuttering. And he started a stuttering clinic in Irvine. I was going to go, then I read an article on aspartame and then it showed neurotoxin. I went off aspartame and two weeks later. I didn’t stutter. I remember I switched from Starbucks to Coffee Bean. And they put in their sugar-free stuff, one was Splenda, one was aspartame. And all of a sudden I started stuttering again. And it’s hard to get off of it .It’s like diet Coke, I was addicted to it, because they’re excitotoxins. They’re toxins. And that’s just what they say is good for you.

Treating Mood Disorders

I find mood disorder is really related to hormones. One study on PMS in women, they looked at their thyroid through TRH testing, so much more sensitive, which the endocrine society says you don’t need anymore. But they found their TSHs were normal, actually a little lower, you’d think their thyroid was higher. But it was either all low or like 90%. And they all responded to thyroid treatment.

The Star Report, largest study ever done on antidepressants, compared all the different antidepressants and had an algorithm, this didn’t work, we have this…they found T3 straight thyroid special, not T4 which is synthroid, T3 the active hormone, giving that was a better antidepressant than antidepressants with less side effects. And it worked regardless of their baseline thyroid levels. So it had less side effects. It worked better. It also didn’t stop working after a year which most antidepressants do. Another study they had bipolar patients, 135, that were treatment resistant. They had tried on average 14 different medications without any change. They gave them all T3 again, regardless didn’t matter whether they were hyperthyroid, I don’t know the exact numbers, but it was like 80% responded and 25% total resolution of symptoms.

And then you add some hormones on top of that and peptides, we treat the sick of the sick, good or bad. I mean, it’s tough, but we’d love to have just some thyroid patients.

But you master those and you can get the sickest patients better.