From Fog to Focus: The Hormone Hierarchy with Dr. Francesca LeBlanc | 1105 | Dave Asprey

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Formerly you're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Today we're going to talk about one of my favorite biohacking topics. It's hormones. I'm particularly interested in this because, well, as a guy, I had less testosterone than my mom when I was 26, and I became an expert in anti aging, ran an anti aging nonprofit group, went on testosterone replacement, medically supervised to physiological levels, and it changed my life. And I recommend everyone, even if you're only 20, that you get your testosterone levels checked and your other sex hormones, whether you're a man or a woman, so you know what your baselines are. And I've talked about this in many of my books. But we're seeing more problems today in women and in my own life. When I decided it was time to have children about 17, 18 years ago, my wife at the time was infertile and had hormone problems and is a medical doctor. So we went deep on this. And that was my very first book was on fertility in Hormones and Women and Men. And it's been an area of passion ever since because hormones control your mood and your energy levels and your happiness, it turns out. I know this is news to some people, but women are not just little men and men are not large women. We have different hormone levels, but we do have similar hormones. There's very different levels. And women, as we all know, have a very different cycle than men. And there's life cycles as well. So I wanted to invite someone on who has a very interesting blend of being a board certified chiropractor, a doctor of natural medicine, and a clinical nutritionist. So. Oh, my God. Are we gonna talk about food and lifestyle and hormones in women? Yes, we are. And you could call this functional medicine, but it's a unique spin on it. And her name is Dr. Francesca LeBlanc. Francesca, welcome to the Human Upgrade.

Hi. Thank you for having me.

Tell me your story. I find a lot of my women practitioner friends who focus on hormones, they kind of had to learn it the hard way because they were dealing with it themselves.

Right. You know, and I think I'm no different than, you know, the dozens upon dozens of practitioners who started out on a journey to wellness when they didn't know that's what they were on. I mean, it starts with brain fog, mood swings, irregular cycles, insomnia, depression, anxiety, and being from a mostly medically minded family, I'm a very, very type A and a compliant patient. And I followed all of the normal standard courses of action in the allopathic model and would just split on wheels for years upon years upon years. And all I could remember was that one day, the last day, that I felt, quote, unquote, normal. I felt good, and I was chasing that. So when I really felt like I was just not getting anywhere, I started to shift my thinking. And, of course, schooling and career changes helped me to broaden my knowledge on holistic avenues of treatment. So then again, years and years and years of that and finally diagnoses of things like adrenal fatigue and pcos and estrogen dominance. And that's where I thought, okay, this is a problem. This is a problem, because these are things that are not talked about. And it's. Even in 2023, I'm still getting patients that these discussions still aren't happening, that there might be hormone imbalances at play. So. So that's really kind of what motivated me and led me to where I am.

We first met, I think, five years ago, but I'm trying to remember what conference it was. You were maybe just a little bit pregnant at the time.

I was. Gigantic whale, let's be honest. Yeah. So we met. I think it was Mindshare.

Oh, it was JJ Virgin's mindshare conference. I've been going for years.

California dry heat. And I was struggling to get down the steps of that certain meeting hall, and he came up right. Right behind me and helped me down the steps, and we started chatting, and my daughter, lo and behold, was due on your birthday. And that's funny. We were, you know, chatting away, and I had no idea who you were. I had never heard of bulletproof coffee before. I had never heard of biohacking before in 2018.

So you were living under a rock or something.

I know. I. For real, I'm not kidding. But then it. Let me tell you, it was like the gateway had opened, because once I had bulletproof coffee, don't tell anyone I was pregnant, and I drank that. But I was like, oh, wow, okay, something's up here. And then that is really where things change for me. P.S. she wasn't born on your birthday. She decided to come a week early. But I started consuming pretty much all of your content that I could.

Thank you. To be honest, it's an honor when people who are medically trained are willing to consider my ideas. I've lectured to, I think, 3,000 doctors at the American Academy of Anti Aging Medicine. And I just walked up and I said, guys, I'm an unlicensed Biohacker. And the benefit of that is you can't take away my license for saying something. And half the room was like, yes. And the other half the room was like, screw you, you unqualified hack. But they don't understand. If you call me a hack, you're still kind of saying, I'm a doctor. So, like, I don't mind it, or quack, I guess. But whatever the deal is, thank you for, with all of your training and working with patients, for being willing to give my stuff a try. It does help. Uh, it works differently, but similarly for men and women, you know, the amount of coffee, timing of intermittent fasting and all, it. It's different. And I. I really do my best because I started my journey as an author and now it's what, four New York Times bestsellers? But I started out with a. A book on pregnancy, fertility, and healthy babies. Because that's actually. If you were just like, really healthy in the womb, you probably won't need a lot of the biohacks that I teach, so. Well, let's start with hormones and pregnancy. Are you seeing in your practice hormonal changes that affect fertility? Are they better? Are they worse? What's. What's happening in the world of hormones and fertility?

Well, I don't actually see a lot of pregnant patients. I see them when they are, of course, frustrated because they've tried several allopathic treatments because there's so many. Right. And then when we start talking about things like pcos, which I feel like is one of the big drivers, it's really an unspoken silent cause that I don't think a lot of women are aware of. It's just so common because of insulin resistance, with 60% women or more walking around with it, the two go hand in hand. And when, you know, women between the ages of, let's say, like 30 and 37, spinning wheels, doing fertility treatments, we're not getting really to the root cause of why they got there in the first place. So it's frustrating. Frustrating and costly. Right. So I think that more discussions need to be had that are, you know, around what hormone imbalances have you been walking around with? Maybe since you were 18, maybe since you were 16. That's just. It's not the model. The model seems to me it's just, as always, the same. A band aid.

It has been the very profitable business model ever since Morris Fishbein started the American Medical association to create a cabal, or a trade group, or a monopoly on chemical based medicine, versus all of the other Types of medicine, like chiropractic, acupuncture, herbalism, like all of the stuff that now science really does show have applicability to humans. Like it works. There's different ways that you can solve a problem. But you mentioned pcos, Polycystic ovarian syndrome. What is it and what causes it and why is it so common in women in their fertile years?

Well, you have some different forms and a lot of, there's two schools of thought, people that believe that there are different forms of pcos. And I'm by no means a PCOS expert, I should put that up front. But I think that the inflammatory component to most hormone imbalances is really what drives, is the root and where is inflammation coming from? And, and you know, at the end of the day, whether it's pcos, whether it's pms, whether it's pmdd, where is this inflammation coming from? It's coming in the foundation, the foundation's broken. What is happening in the gut? What are you not absorbing, what are you leaking out? And why is your liver so sluggish? And I think if you can figure out where the inflammation's coming from, then you can start to break this down. Because again, a lot of the, what I hear, at least in practice, is the traditional, you know, abdominal ultrasound for PCOS that really then does nothing because doctors don't believe there's anything that you can really do. It's just the reality.

I, I have definitely spent a lot of time researching PCOS because that was one of the things that was preventing me from being a father. And that was in fact my, my wife at the time had and was a wife of 17 years and friend and co parent and things like that. Today a lot of listeners know, know of Dr. Lana because we co authored that book on fertility and just because, you know, you know, I talk about my life on the show and she had pcos and her medical colleagues had said, you're infertile, you're not having kids. And I'm like, now we can act that. So it was nutritional changes, it was detoxing, and it was the role of things like candida and mold toxins and oxalates and all these other things that happen. And it's funny because my hormones were broken for the same basic reasons, even though mine got broken in my own life before we met and hers got broken before we met as well. That was almost like 20 years ago. So what I realized is that if you want to be healthy, it doesn't matter if you're 19 years old, or if you're 69 years old, it just doesn't matter. If you cannot get rid of the toxins that are present, or you're absorbing more than you're supposed to, or you have these onboard infections, they're going to jack up your hormones and probably a bunch of other stuff. And it sounds like those are some of the common causes of hormone imbalance in your practice. What are the big things that are damaging? Detox pathways. Like, what's slowing that down?

I mean, I live in the Deep south, okay. I live in mold. So I have.

Yet, like, I live in the Deep South. You, like, got all southern on us right there.

So, you know, women that I work with here in Louisiana, nine out of ten have mold toxicity. And it's mind blowing every single time. And it's fascinating to me, but it is facts of the level of environmental mold. And, you know, it's always the same. Everyone panics. Is there mold in my home? And it's, it's scary because you want to associate black mold, that visible water damage mold, with what's happening, but it's simply environmental, and it's the mold that you can't see that's building up over time. So whether, you know, the chicken and the egg, the mold came first, or the heavy metals, we can't figure out what came first. We just know that one is slowing down detoxification and the other is complicating it equally. So heavy metals again here in the Deep South. Now, I grew up in the Northeast, and I don't think that the water quality was that much better. But here in the Deep south, the city water is rich with heavy metals. Women are literally taking metal baths and breathing in mold, and they feel terrible all the time.

Let's see, in my own past, I had actually brain damage from toxic mold, but it wasn't just that. Because some toxic molds make xenoestrogens that are a thousand times more estrogenic than the kind of estrogens that we make in our bodies. I had a really hard time losing weight. The hundred pounds I had to lose. I, I worked out, I dieted. I, I mean, I, I went to the ends of the earth. All of my effort and willpower, and I believed that it was because I just didn't have enough willpower to eat even less. I came across research on zearalenone. Is that one of the mold toxins you've worked with?

Yeah.

Talk to me about what that does with weight gain.

I mean, estrogen dominance is one of the leading hormone imbalances that complicate weight loss for women. And if its root cause is mold, Right. In this mold family, it's an emotional roller coaster for women. Because when you talk about the eat less, exercise more and all of that, when we get to this root cause of mold, this is a journey. This isn't a. We're going to apply these binders and in three weeks, four weeks, this is what you can expect. I mean, sometimes this is a three to six month process because we have no idea how long or how much of this mold has been in the liver and creating all this inflammation. I mean, brain inflammation. Right. That's kind of what you experienced as well. It's. It's a journey. It's frustrating. And it is so closely related to estrogen dominance. Definitely here in the south and the other moldier states like Florida and Texas. So we see a lot of that.

When I did the documentary on toxic mold. And guys, if you're new to the show, you might not know moldymovie.com, it's a gift. It's a professionally made documentary. The soundtrack is actually from the lead keyboardist and vocalist for Electric Light Orchestra. Like, it has its own soundtrack. And it was as professional as I knew how to do at the time. And I traveled around the country and I talked to leading experts in mold, and people were affected. And what you realize is that we think of the south as, you know, mold. A mold bomb, Moldville. And it's consistently moldy because it's just wet. But the mold there usually isn't that bad. I mean, the mold levels are there, but the individual species aren't that bad. But if you go to where I grew up, like in Albuquerque, or you go to Phoenix, that is desert mold. It's dormant until there's moisture, and then it's hyper aggressive. Like, everything in the desert wants to kill you. Rattlesnakes and scorpions, because it's a hostile environment. So if you go to a moldy place in Phoenix, it will trash you more than a moldy place in Louisiana. Except for New Orleans. New Orleans has its own unique species. After all the chemicals got mixed around, I generally don't want to go to New Orleans because you're just going to get sick. Even if you're highly resilient, like I am now, because there's just so much mold, and it's like mutated mold, like Spider man meets mold. Do you see that as well?

Yes. I don't go to New Orleans. I do not. I have to go to New Orleans if there is a family function. I, I, I'm literally, I'm pretty resilient as well. But I cannot wait to get out of there. I start to feel it. I really do.

The guy who did a lot of the air testing for moldy movie, let's see, this is John and Laura Riera from American Air Testing. If memory serves, they owned a bunch of rental properties in New Orleans. And after the hurricanes and all, they just said, you know, we're going to exit that area because we can't keep them mold free anymore. So we are changing the environment around us with things like glyphosate, which in studies makes mold worse. And just with things even like radio frequencies like emfs. You probably wouldn't know this if you're listening to this, but a lot of the citric acid that's in food comes from Aspergillus fermentation, which doesn't mean it's necessarily bad for you. But how do they make this modified form of Aspergillus produce more of its toxin? The toxin being, in this case, citric acid? They expose it to radio frequencies and emf that pisses off the mold, so it's more toxic. So I think we've got something going on in the world around us where you just don't want that. If you're near a military base, you've got all the metal pollution and go to San Diego and breathe the mold there, that's the worst place in the country, as far as I can tell. And that's where the most radar is from the, all the military stuff there. So there's something going on where our hormones are being disrupted by mold. And if you get mold, you're much more likely to get Candida. Talk to me about Candida and what.

That does I kind of explain to my patients. If you think about the way that the gut and the liver work, a lot like your kitchen sink, right? You've got your sink, that's the gut and you have your garbage disposal, that's the liver. And if one is clogged, how well does the other work, right? So we have to kind of understand, even if we're going to go through a mold protocol, that we are also going to go through some sort of intestinal permeability protocol at the same time. For that reason, Candida is, if not the most, the most common gut fungus in women. It's overlooked. Right? Because traditionally, you know, the symptoms that would be normally associated with, let's just say yeast infections aren't There it's not that anymore. For women to come to the realization that we have like a fungal issue when they don't actually have those traditional textbook symptoms again, it's a journey, it's a process, and it's a little bit of a rollercoaster because sometimes things have to get a little bit rocky before they get better.

There's also a major link between Candida infections and pcos. They go together. And there's also a link between, ooh, a plant based diet and pcos, because it turns out that if you eat a lot of these plants that are full of oxalates, which I wrote about in my most recent book, they can also contribute to pcos. So you end up getting Candida, which raises oxalate levels and causes inflammation. And then you get extra calcification there because you're eating spinach and all kale and those things you think are healthy. And then you're wondering what the heck is going on. Well, you've got toxic metals, you've got Candida. If you have toxic metals, the body will allow Candida to grow because Candida will store mercury instead of putting it in your brain. So your body's just swimming in toxins. Just saying, well, I'll let this bad thing happen because it's not as bad as this other bad thing and it's trying to balance all this out. And at the end of the day, you're anxious and you feel like crap all the time, your hormones don't work and you're infertile. And this is actually like the story of living in the US right now.

Yeah, well, yeah, because you jump to the diet, you, you, you panic, you're desperate and you say, well, I'm, I'm cutting out all meat. I'm going, I'm going plant based. And then I did that. Okay, so I'm one of them. And then I was vegan, just like you and, you know.

Kidding.

Yeah, because I was desperate. I mean, I was, I was sick and you know, of course for like six months I was skinny and it was great until my hair started to fall out.

Yeah, malnourishment is great for the first month.

It's all fun and games till your hair starts falling out. And that's the truth. You know, I think that that is what is happening in America. You know, we think that it's immediately dietary. If I take this all encompass, follow this protocol, everything's going to go away. And sometimes it makes us sick.

What do you eat today to keep your hormones healthy?

So I'm, you know, balanced through and through. I found balance.

What do you even mean? Like, like you have kale and spinach?

No, I actually don't. And I used to love kale chips. But following you, I stopped eating kale. I stopped doing a lot of things ever since I started following you. But I find that I feel I thrive at very high quantities of protein prior to, let's say, three o'. Clock.

So are we talking like bean protein and bugs or a specific kind of protein?

So I do, I can tolerate eggs, so I do an egg white protein shake. Then I eat beef, chicken, fish for my meal and I do eat some dairy, grass fed, high fat yogurt. And by 3 o' clock I've met pretty much what I feel like is my protein goal through a lot of trial and error. Now on the days when I don't do that, my blood sugar goes to hell in the hand basket and from there everything else starts to break down. It's, I'm so dialed in at this point, I can almost pinpoint what's happening. And I know, and you know, the truth is that sometimes we, we want to enjoy life too as well. So we might go to dinner and, you know, indulge a little bit, but I certainly pay for it. So I have to be very strategic about my protein, fat and fiber. That to me is most important and whatever you favor as your protein source. And I tell women that all the time because if they really, you don't want to eat a lot of beef, then it's just mix it up with what's left. But cutting out animal proteins entirely I don't think is smart when it comes to hormone balance.

What do you think about when you see these school boards mandating some vegan days at school for kids?

So I think it's a total disaster because most of these children are approaching those pubescent years. And I think that it is a little like Pandora's box, because in a way you're looking at it from a obesity standpoint. Right? That's probably why they're thinking this is a great idea, because we have an obesity problem because of these junk school lunches. So let's just go on the complete opposite end of the spectrum. And when you look at all the foods that you would consume in a vegan diet, especially for girls, I mean, in boys about to be in those pubescent years, I think it could be very destructive to proper hormone levels. When we talk about testosterone and estrogen and it's like paving the way for PMS and pmdd. I think in girls, I really do.

I've explained to my teenagers that politicians and school dietitians are made out of meat and that eating only plants is a really bad idea. And so, you know, if you're a politician or a school of nutritionist who believe you have any moral right or scientific reason to use your power to try and prevent kids from eating healthy animal protein, just remember you're made out of animal protein and you're not allowed to do that. And it is this big of a deal. So anytime someone tries to use policy or manipulation to try and stop you from eating the foods that make you thrive as a human being, they are not your friend and they just don't have the right. Like we didn't, it's not in the constitution. We didn't give it to them. And if they just try to sneakily do it, I'm sorry, it's people like you and me and the other thousand people have been on the show and the millions of people who've heard the podcast or, or read books or any other experts out there, the preponderance of evidence says you should have at least some ground meat every day, and it's affordable, and it's on us to make it affordable. If I had to choose between eating meat myself and feeding meat to my kids, I would give to my kids first, as all humans have done throughout all of recorded history until the last 20 years of propaganda. So I'm glad you're in alignment with that.

Yeah, I mean, you as a woman, I think most. I've had a lot of vegetarian vegan patients over the year and, and, and I've actually had to have a few conversations that went something like, perhaps you're better, a better fit, better suited for another practitioner, because I going to tell you my story and I tell them my story and when they start to incorporate animal proteins again, they can start, start to feel a little bit better. So I think as a woman, and I don't. Can't speak for men, but you just feel differently and I. You know it. You know it. Yeah.

You can't deny there's an inner, an inner calmness that comes from having enough minerals, having enough protein and, and good fats, where you feel like you can handle everything that comes your way. And if you're limiting your quality protein sources and you're eating bad fats, it just feels like everything is hard and, you know, maybe you're not going to be able to make it through the day and God, I Felt like that most of my life before I learned how to eat. That's why I'm so passionate about it. I know when it comes to hormones, I mean, clearly getting good fats and good protein is necessary there, but you have a way of thinking about it where you have, like, a hierarchy of hormones. That's a great analogy. Can you walk me through that?

So the way that I over the years, of course, figured out how to hack my hormone imbalances. Thank you for coming up with that. Because let's get credit where credit's due. I did not come up with hacking. I found that, you know, there's such a large focus on progesterone, testosterone, and estrogen. It's just what is tested in the office. So I started playing around with neurotransmitters, changing my diet to see what would happen, and researching how neurotransmitters work. So I feel like if you approach hormone balance like a business where you have administrators, every good company needs a strong administrative team, right? The administrators report to the managers. Those are your main hormones, and the managers report to the execs. And this is where things get interesting, because your admins are neurotransmitters that act like hormones. Gaba, dopamine, serotonin. Right. So GABA and progesterone have an interesting relationship, Right? A little bit bidirectional. So we know that if we're feeling down, if our sleep is junk, if we are very reactionary and we've lost our sense of calm, all roads can sort of, you know, point to progesterone. But there's that relationship there with gaba. So you think that you could just support progesterone by getting a bunch of vitamin C and doing all this stuff to boost it. But really, what is less lesser known is how progesterone acts in conjunction with cortisol. So cortisol and progesterone, you know, do this dance. If you're a stressed out, busy woman, chances are you produce a lot of cortisol and maybe you have for a while. And now you have this yo, yo where you go into states of high to low cortisol. Some people call it adrenal fatigue. Most people say that's not real. I do. I believe it is. Anywho, cortisol is that executive hormone. So if you're the CEO, you really have to be taking specific measures to support cortisol, because cortisol is going to act on progesterone, and progesterone is going to sure act on Gaba. Now, when you talk about dopamine, I mean mental health issues in women, okay, big time. Anxiety and depression and irritability. Dopamine is usually in the gutter and so is testosterone. Well, you know, of course, if you're going to go to the doctor, they're going to say testosterone pellets. This is going to change everything. And for some it does. But for most women that don't understand the relationship to insulin, because most women that have low testosterone, 9 times out of 10 are insulin resistant. If we're not addressing what is happening with our blood sugar and we just go on pellets. And I've seen this now, I can't tell you how many times that's the patient. That feels great for three months and it never felt better again. But, but they're still taking, they're compliant and they're on their testosterone pellets. Well, we've never addressed this relationship that insulin and testosterone have again, bidirectional.

So you as just to call that out, it's not identical. Yeah. If you're insulin resistant, you probably have low testosterone because you're insulin resistant, you have more white fat. White fat makes extra estrogen. It doesn't in women and men. So if you're carrying an extra 20 or 30 or like me, a hundred pounds around and you have high estrogen, you're like, I wonder what, why?

Right, right, right. So again, it comes down to you can still. And I, I actually still support the model of bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, especially with testosterone. But you still need to address this blood sugar dysregulation which is driving insulin resistance. So you, as the CEO of your hormone health, you've got to now manage cortisol appropriately. Manage insulin. But then the lesser known, which has been really fun over the years because this was a big one for me, was this relationship with serotonin and estrogen. So we know serotonin, right, happy chemical made in the gut, has to uptake to the brain for everything to work really well. Well, estrogen again and serotonin, you know, one can block the other. Estrogen in a dominant state is gonna suppress some of that. So again, you're going to the doctor and your estrogen is low, you're going to probably get prescribed that. But what is really fun is that you can kind of go in and support the mother hormone, which is pregnenolone, which a lot of people don't talk about. And this to me is your other executive hormone. So the mother hormone by which all the Other hormones come from. A lot of women do really well supplementing with pregnenolone and then addressing the dietary and the again, detoxification and absorption issues in the liver and the gut to get estrogen where it needs to be without having to go in with the hormone replacement therapy.

It's really interesting and it's so individualized. So if you go back, even starting in the late 80s, early 90s, the life extension foundation, which has published a magazine about longevity since before longevity was supposed to be possible, just to give credit to them, they said, well, you know, pregnenolone, there's evidence that it helps you live longer. And so they would make, you know, pregnenolone in multivitamins and stuff I haven't used in many years, but I tried it when I was young and trying to get healthier and it didn't seem to work for me. And I got my lab tests and if you think logically, well, pregnenolone can turn into anything. It's the mother hormone. So you might start there, but depending on your genetics and probably toxins and lifestyle factors, sometimes it'll turn into estrogen, sometimes it'll turn into dhea, sometimes it'll turn into testosterone, which then could turn back into estrogen. And I found that pregnenolone didn't do very much for me. And when I tried dhea, my levels are very low even now. If in fact I first tried DHEA when I was 18, it was just like trying to get healthy. And within three days of taking it, I had no Libido. And an 18 year old male without libido, something's going on there, right? And to this day, if I take either seven keto dha, regular dhea, within a day or two, just zero libido, wow. And I haven't figured it out to be like low dhea, but if you take it, it just doesn't work because I have some weird pathway that no one's figured out yet, including me. So the, the variety here is like, okay, get your lab tests. You know, they can work with you, they can work with, you know, lots of.