YIKES! Heavy Metals In Maca Root (Benefits For Hormone Health In Women & Men) | Deanna Minich

What is happening exactly is that we're not just talking a very simple estrogen deficiency. Right. And I think that a lot of talk on social media is just pigeonholing menopause and perimenopause into, okay, your ovaries are just going kaput, you're losing estrogen and progesterone. I think it's much bigger and broader from a functionality perspective that menopause is the declining function of the endocrine system. So, so that's why for some women, the tip off is more the thyroid, it might be more the adrenals where all of a sudden she starts to lose energy in her 30s and she can't explain why. And like, no doctor can really kind of get into the root.

Thank you so much for coming back on the show, Dr. Minich. I really appreciate you being here.

It's great to be back here with you, Jennifer. And I feel like this is going to be a very robust conversation about all things maca and horm hormones.

I know last time we talked about melatonin, which was an amazing, amazing. I, I would almost say, like, I just felt like my brain was exploding every time you kept going deeper and deeper into that. And then you had mentioned to me afterwards about MACA and that you actually know quite a bit about it and it really ties nicely into a lot of the research that you do. And I thought that's a great topic to, to talk about because I've never talked about maca. I think it applies really well for those of us who do have hormonal concerns, as you shared. And there's. Because thanks to you, I've been doing a lot of reading paper, like one paper in particular, which I'll link up, that you wrote about maca. I have learned a lot that there's a lot of things that you really need to know before you make a decision of what you're going to buy. And that might partly explain why if you just go and buy maca powder at the grocery store, you might not notice any change at all. So for those who do not know what MACA is, can you share that? Give us a little like Maca 101?

Yeah, that. That's a great place to start. And let me just say too, based on what you just said, you may not have any effect of the maca powder that you're buying, but you may even have adverse effects of MACA because of potential androgenic effects. And in women where you don't really want that, you know, you think of women with PCOS you don't really want more androgens coming in. So, yes, it's best to know your maca. So let's talk maca. What is it? It's an annual cruciferous root vegetable. Many people don't realize that it's a cousin to the brassica family. So if you think of turnips and broccoli and kale, they're cousins. So it's. They are all part of the brassica family. And when we think about maca and where it grows, it grows natively in Peru. And it's a pretty tough vegetable because it grows at high altitude. So it grows typically between 3,500 to 5,000 meters above sea level. So if you think of the Andes, you think of the mountains and all the things that plants are up against, we're talking about wind. I've actually been to Peru and, and I have witnessed this and I was thinking about maca and what these roots go through. So you've got wind, you've got altitude, you've got extreme weather conditions, so you have high heat. You also have bitter cold. And so the microbiome of the soil, the location of the maca and where it's grown can tell you a lot about its efficacy. So back in the 90s, when Maca became known as kind of a viagra, a plant based Viagra, okay, you started to see that there were other, I would say countries, other groups taking it and trying to cultivate and grow it in different locations, like in China, but not necessarily having the same outcomes. Right. So we always have to think about when it comes to a plant, where is its native origin, where is its location? Because many times location determines the actual phytochemical profile and hence its efficacy. One of the unique things. And I know we're going to get there, but let me just say it now, since we're talking about location, is that when you look at, even within the symphony line of products, they grow maca for women in a different location than they grow maca for men. So location truly is everything. It is everything. So if we look at traditional medicine, because maca is not new, it's actually very old, it belongs to botanical medicine, traditional medicine. If you look at what the native Peruvians used it for, it was primarily for enhancing energy and fertility. So it was seen as something for vigor and vitality. And when I was in Peru, I noticed that in traditional markets, you know, you just go on a Saturday and you can kind of see, I mean, they sell maca powder, they sell different Colors of maca in a powdered format. I know we're going to get into the different forms, like whether raw, gelatinized, but, you know, just in general, there is some appreciation of maca in the actual country that it's from. When it. When you look at it in terms of its. Well, you know me, I'm into phytochemicals. When you look at its phytochemical profile, what makes maca unique is that it's got some shared compounds as the cruciferous vegetable family, like you and I both know about. Glucosinolates. Right. Glucosinolates are used for a number of different things, and we see them traditionally, at least in functional medicine, being talked about for metabolic detoxification. And if you look at maca, maca has nine distinct glucosinolates that aren't shared by the cruciferous vegetables, the ones that we love. Yeah. And these have even been studied and shown to have other benefits, like being helpful with what's called acetylcholinesterase inhibition. So, in other words, that would help to promote levels of acetylcholine in the brain, which could be connected to things like cognition and memory. There hasn't been a lot of clinical work at all on that yet, but. But there is some cellular, some preclinical work that would suggest that these are unique glucosinolates. And then as far as the colors, as it connects to the phytochemicals, what we see and what you saw in that paper that we wrote is that we actually titled this paper, not all maca is Created Equal. And so in the paper, we talk about the 17 distinct maca phenotypes. You know, everything from. I would say that the colors are clustered into yellow, red, white, gray, purple, and black. And so each of those colors, and then you have shades of each of those colors. So even within the red, you can see shades that kind of resemble a pinkish color.

This episode is brought to you by my skincare line, Dermaquel. The beauty of these skincare products are that they are especially crafted for those struggling with chronic skin rash issues. Based on my research and clinical experience from my private practice, they focus on organic ingredients that are clean, like zinc, aloe, and hemp oil, that support and calm rashed, dry, angry skin. There's no unnecessary chemicals or additives that can further dry out your skin or mess with your hormones. And I'm so excited for you to add these creams into your routine. Check them out@quellshop.com and use the coupon code get 15 off to get 15% off your first order. I'll put a link in the description below. And now let's jump back to the video.

And just so everybody can think of what maca looks like, it kind of reminds me of the beat tuber. So I could, I could see that.

That is very similar to even a really nice graphic as well. You have a bunch of nice graphics in that paper. Again, I'm going to link in the show notes. But there was that, that was like. I was like, it looks like a combo of a turnip and a beat just somewhere in between with these leaves on the top. And it was just like very interesting. And it looked. It was also interesting that the version grown in China looks very different from the iterations of pictures that you showed that are grown in Peru.

That's an excellent point. That. And that really speaks to why plants grown in different locations will exhibit a different phenotype. It's like people, when you have people from Japan go and live in Hawaii, they exhibit a different interface based on that gene environment dynamic. Right. We would expect the same of plants. I like your analogy. Or that kind of likeness of the turnip meets the beet. And what's beautiful about maca as a plant too, so similar to the beet, as you were saying, you know, you've got the tuber that's called the hypocotyl. From the hypocotyl, you have the roots, the kind of the stringy roots that go down. And then above ground you have these leaves. And that's what you're speaking to as well in terms of how that even looks different in the Chinese maca compared to the Peruvian maca. And one of the things that I learned from one of the. The director of research that worked on a lot of the agriculture is that the traditional growing method of maca in Peru is to take those greens and then to put them back into the soil to replenish the minerals to enable the crop to come up the next year. And there's a certain type of crop rotation and how often they do that. But it's so beautiful to think of how that plant is continually giving. So when we think of the maca powder, it's actually more the tuber portion.

Right.

So when we think of the beet, it's like the beet root, the hypocaudal part. And many times in studies, one of the problems is that in the method section, which I know not a lot of people read, but if you Start to go into the methods to understand the clinical trials that have been done on the different kinds of maca. Sometimes you see disparate results and one of the reasons can be because the actual maca part has not been codified and classified within the methods. So are we talking about the root part? And in many cases you don't even see any color phenotype being called out. So we just have to, I think again, just have appreciation for the plant that it can be very diverse and give different effects based on its phenotype, how it looks, its color.

Yeah. And the other thing that I do want to mention quickly and then I think we should share, talk about some of the health benefits. But that, and this is something that is well known, it's not like it's a secret that if you are farming in soil that contains heavy metals, the plants, especially like a root tuber type plant, can take up the heavy metals. And I did not realize that there is a heavy metal risk if you are consuming maca. So is that a serious, like how big of a deal is that? How concerned should somebody be if they're taking a maca supplement or they're interested in that? Like are, should we be looking for some sort of certification from a company that at least are testing for heavy metals in the product?

Absolutely. And we should be thinking about that with all foods, quite honestly. I mean, if we look at this state of the planet and where we're at with the total toxic toxic load, we're inundated. Right. So heavy metals, which I, I like to refer to as toxic elements because we're talking about everything from arsenic, thallium, mercury, lead, you know, there's a whole spectrum of different toxic elements. And so when those start to accumulate in our soil, air and water, it could affect any food supply really. So when it comes to maca, yes, we do need to think about that. Hence where is it grown, how polluted is that area? And so when I think of the Andes and this kind of untouched, beautiful part of Peru where you don't have a lot of human inhabitants. Right. It's going to be relatively pure, but you could still have issues with the metals from mines or other types of industrial areas within a country. So making sure that the maca that you have has been third party tested for these toxic elements and again, that would go for any supplement. This is just, I think part of our daily lives. We should be asking that question of all dietary supplement manufacturers. Unfortunately, on the food side that, you know, it's so interesting to Me, because many times we hear that oh, dietary supplements aren't regulated. However, if you look at many of the different testing methods that need to be applied to a dietary supplement, they, they are definitely are at a different benchmark, a much higher bar than something like food. Because if you go into the market and just want to buy a maca powder, you're not going to know about the toxic element content because.

And, and you might not even know where it came from because I didn't even know there was a version that is now grown in China which a lot of supplements and raw ingredients come from China that are put into supplements. So if you don't know where the maca came from, where it was sourced from, you don't know if the company is, you know, I, that is a great question that I would probably ask a company. Where is the maca sourced from? Where did it originally grow? Yes, because the. Even if you are in a pristine environment, you can't account for what happens in the rain. The rain can pull down heavy metals into the soil. So I just think it was an excellent point to make something that we go and we see these organic bags of things in like Whole Foods and these, you know, on Amazon and these different stores and we don't think anything of it. But this, this actually like you said, the color, the heavy metal accumulation, is that in there? Is it being tested for and where is it from? Our three crucial questions. So that is really, really helpful. So in terms of, you mentioned how this was sort of came to light as this kind of natural Viagra and one of the cool things that I learned from reading your paper was that this can actually be really helpful for prostate health because I only really thought it was good for women's hormones. Hormones, to be entirely honest with you.

Oh really? Okay, I did.

That was all I had ever heard about it being used for. So like the whole thing, the whole amount of research that I looked at about help being helpful for prostate was like, oh that, that makes sense. But I didn't think of that. So can you share some of the research or at least can you share some of the things that can benefit from maca that research tell? It's not like from an old wives tale or something that traditionally it was used for. Right, because we know that. But what does research actually say at this point in time that maca could be helpful for?

Yeah, that's a really good point to start from. And that's where we focused in the article is it was a literature review of all the many Health benefits in the scientific literature. So you know me as a scientist, I think in mechanism because I think if we think in mechanisms, we can understand where it would be of benefit. And what we see there is anti inflammatory, antimicrobial, potent antioxidant, which we could attribute to some degree to those phytochemicals and the color chemo prevention even there is some work on that endocrine modulation. And we are going to unpack the prostate versus women's health. And it's kind of interesting because there was a main researcher in prostate health, his name is Dr. Gonzalez, and he did a lot on prostate and red maca. And then Dr. Henry Meissner did a lot of work with Dr. Gloria Chacon, who was a Peruvian researcher in the 1960s, very cutting edge, who established a lot of the early work on women's endocrine health. In fact, I even have a copy of her PhD dissertation which was all on looking at different maca phenotypes for women's health. And then Dr. Henry Meissner carried forward that research and continued to do some clinical work on it. So in the mountains, the other thing to be thinking about is sometimes we hear about maca in the whole world of endurance athletes because of its role in chronic mountain sickness, altitude sickness. In fact, when I was in Peru, I'm one of those people that is very subject to that. So thinking about using maca in that way, obviously reproductive function, even osteoporosis, there are some interesting, I would say some exploration in that whole area. Your interest is skin and there's even some, some application to skin health. I would say that has been proposed more along the lines of looking at UV radiation and perhaps it's because of the plant and where it grows and being that it needs to create phytochemicals to protect it from solar radiation. Right, yeah, right amount.

And it's interesting I was looking at a few papers of like the gosh, it was like a, some sort of preparation that was done to potentially use maca topically for its possible. And I'm using this very loosely but possible skin whitening properties and inhibiting the production of melanin and different things. I just thought it was interesting. I'll link up the paper in the show notes if anybody's interested. But I, I, I don't know that they can say for sure that it's really like great for somebody with eczema or psoriasis or anything like that. But it was interesting.

It is interesting and I think that there has been some Exploration with different colors of maca, and looking at whether it's oral intake, like you said, topical. I'm smiling, too, because the initial work on melatonin was looking at melatonin as a skin lightening agent, which is why it was named Mela Tonin, because it was thought to be connected to melanin. But.

Oh, wow.

A dermatologist from Yale was looking into it in 1958 for that reason, but soon came to find that there was no skin lightning. So I just want to make sure everybody knows that.

But, yeah, so with a lot of these, I think it would be great to understand the difference between what's happening for women. So in the women's camp, we have obviously pre perimenopause. So before that, that phase, perimenopause and then menopause, how can that potentially be helpful versus for the men who are struggling with prostate issues? And how does that. Is there any tie in that you're aware of to just, like, the modulation potentially of sex hormones in those groups?

I love this topic. Yeah. This is so intriguing to me because for years I've been focused on the endocrine system, kind of our psychoneuro, endocrine superhighway within. And if we can understand how to modulate the endocrine system, we can understand how to modulate communication in the body. We even talk about that in functional medicine, that endocrine is communication. So it's powerful because it oversees neurotransmitters, hormones and such. So when you're talking about sex hormone modulation, the prostate, which actually I include as part of the endocrine system, because the prostate is a gland. So if we just think of collectively all of these endocrine glands, whether it is the pituitary gland, the pineal gland, thyroid gland, we have the ovaries, the testes, and we look at something like perimenopause, menopause, post menopause, what is happening exactly is that we're not just talking a very simple estrogen deficiency. Right. And I think that a lot of talk on social media is just pigeonholing menopause and perimenopause into, okay, your ovaries are just going kaput. You're losing estrogen and progesterone. I think it's much bigger and broader from a functionality perspective that menopause is the declining function of the endocrine system. So that's why for some women, the tip off is more of the thyroid. It might be more of the adrenals, where all of a sudden she Starts to lose energy in her 30s and she can't accept, explain why. And like, no doctor can really kind of get into the root. So if we look at root cause approaches to menopause, I would say we need to nourish the endocrine system. And one of the beautiful things about MACA is that we know it to be an adaptogen. And you read that in the paper. I'm assuming you saw that section. Right. So we know that for sure that MACA belongs to the suite of botanical adaptogens, but it has other functions that other adaptogens don't have, like what you're asking about, which is helping with ovarian health. So one of the particular formulations that is tested and in the literature is called MACA go. The GO stands for gelatinized and organic. But it's just the nomenclature. Yeah, it's just the nomenclature that it. All of these phenotypes in this particular ratio that was studied by Dr. Meissner in animal studies, he found this modulation that was very gender specific. And when certain phenotypes of MACA were put together, it was able to modulate the hypothalamic, pituitary, thyroid, adrenal, ovarian access to the point that you could modulate things like FSH, LH, estradiol. So E2, we're not just talking estrone, which we typically see with menopause. Right. We're talking about estradiol, the active bioavailable form, the bioactive form of estrogen in the body, as well as progesterone. So he codified this blend of very specific phenotypes, which is proprietary, and that was studied in four clinical trials, looking at perimenopausal women and also looking at early postmenopausal women. And there were different. This is what is also really intriguing from his research, that there were different phenotypes for perimenopause than there were for postmenopause. So there was almost this life stage modulation of hormones in a woman. And what health benefits were desired based on these different MACA phenotypes. So we can unpack that a little bit. As far as prostate health, there is some exciting work that has historically been done with Dr. Gonzalez's research. So he's heralded again as more of the men's health expertise. And in a lot of his research, you know, it kind of mixed findings in some. In some cases, so much depended on the. The specificity of the color of the maca, the preparation of it, and in the paper, again, one of the critiques that I had, along with my colleagues that we. We wrote together on was that many times, a lot of these types of MACA preparations were not spelled out. So in some cases, you would find an effect on prostate. And then in some other studies, you may not find an effect, but one of the unique features, phytochemically, that we see with enhancing sexual function, especially in animal models, and also helping with prostate, would be some of the unique phytochemicals in maca, like maca es, maca mides, and there are certain fatty acids within MACA that seem to be modulatory. And also, Dr. Meissner, even though he was more specialized in women's health, he also did a prostate study and was looking at different phenotypes of MACA. And even though Dr. Gonzalez focused on certain aspects of red MACA, what Dr. Meissner had found was that it seemed like black and red MACA phenotypes, certain ones. And if. If I send you that publication, because it just came out, like, a couple of months ago, I would love that they looked at the size of the tuber. Like, that made a difference. So it wasn't just the color, but it was also the size of the tuber, like, if it was small or large. Whoa.

Oh, my goodness. So it's like you're really getting into the weeds with how you're picking your particular tuber. Yeah, in essence.

Yeah. And. And I wish that more people looked at the plant signature and how it looks, what it contains, because quite honestly, Jennifer, we see this throughout the botanical. I mean, there's. There's an appreciation of it for people who understand herbs. Right. But I think for the most part, when people go to a grocery store and they see apples, you know, there's a lot of difference between a Red Delicious and a Golden Delicious, even though there's still an apple. Right. So we need to think the same with maca.

Yeah. And I. I thought the one thing I did think was interesting from your paper, so for those of you who go to look at it, you'll see some of the different things that MACA can help with. And. And I thank you so much for also adding in all those citations with each thing, which is so great. And it helps. I think it just makes it easier for people to find the actual references for where we're getting these ideas from. But just for the guys to know, like, I feel like prostate hyperplasia is a huge problem. We do see that sometimes in even our clients, they may not, they may have skin issues, but they come back in their like 40s and into their 50s starting to have these issues and they don't know why this is happening. I think we kind of sometimes assume it's. It's potentially cancerous or a sign of pre cancer. It could be an infection, it could be inflammation. There's so many things. So I love the fact that what the research is potentially pointing to is that maybe this can be possibly helpful with that.

Yeah.

You know, even sperm quality and like you mentioned osteoporosis and for women, helping with potentially menstrual cycle regulation and reducing some of the perimenopause symptoms as well as potentially some menopause symptoms for women. Like, I thought that was just really fascinating and I wanted to ask you because I did not know this, but in your paper you mentioned something about the phytosteroids. So there's a specific group of different phytosteroids that are found in maca that you said are quote, structurally and biochemically related to cholesterol and steroid hormone such as estrogen, testosterone and progesterone. So okay, so like, okay, me, I'm perimenopause. My cholesterol now is like a little wonky. It's gone higher all of a sudden. I know this is like a trend. Does this mean that it would be helpful or is that what's. It's helping to fill the pool to then? I mean, I don't know if you know this. Like, I'm just. This is like really cool because I'm thinking to myself, wow, is this potentially helping to fill the. Well, the precursors so that your body can make these hormones or. And does that, how does that play in if you do have high cholesterol? Does it matter? I. I don't know. What's your thoughts?

I've never had that question before and I love it and I love the fact that it's personal for you. Right. And in fact I need to send you some feminescence pro peries, which is the formulation for perimenopause, to have you try it. What we know is that especially in looking at the maca geo, which is called feminescence, is that we see an 84% success rate with reducing menopausal symptoms. And to your question about these phytosterols and you know, can. Is this going to contribute to high cholesterol? What we've actually seen in the clinical trials is that triglycerides come down. HDL cholesterol goes up, LDL cholesterol and total cholesterol start to come down or at least normalize. So we are seeing the benefit of maca. And keep in mind that no plant, especially the maca preparation, it's not just phytosterols. In fact if you think about it, phytoestrogens, these plant like estrogens, which maca doesn't have per se, it doesn't work like a phytoestrogen. It's truly modulating the endocrine circuit. Right. It has a different type of mechanism. But those phytosterols which are in plants overall may actually be very protective. They seem to have some immune effects and they, like you said, they have kind of this sterile like structure. So they may be modulating through that particular phytochemical as well. But all I can speak to is the clinical research and what we saw with total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol benefits and improvements in HDL cholesterol. So I think that you know, it's, it's definitely helping to normalize and regulate whatever is connected to hormones, which would be lipids.

Yeah, that is definitely one of the biggest questions. Like, like I got my blood work back last year, fine. This year I'm like, what on earth? So it's something that is, it's a shared experience with my now fellow perimenopause women that I'm like, what is going on? So that is really fascinating. I think one question I would have, and I think other women would have this and maybe even men who are doing like testosterone replacement. So for women who are doing hrt, any type of like estrogen, maybe testosterone and some progesterone. Is there any contraindication between taking MACA and doing HRT that you know of, that you've seen in research or are they okay, do they play well together?

So the feminescence products have been out since you know, the early 2000s. And so what we hear from clinicians, and again we have a medical team and we hear all kinds of feedback. It plays very well with hrt. In fact, if you think about it, it's almost like you'd want to sequence your approach where it's like, okay, let's optimize my endocrine system, right. Because it's obviously declining. Estrogen levels are going down, progesterone is going down, lipids are changing. So let's see if we can re establish some of that communication in the body from a function perspective. Right. Very consistent with functional medicine. Get that working to its optimum and then looking at the gap, so doing whatever you can to bump up those estradiol levels, bump up those progesterone levels, and then if you. If somebody is still symptomatic, then bringing in some HRT to kind of fill the potholes if needed. However, and I know that you're very mechanistically minded, so I'm going to mention this because I think it's of interest, because if you look at the clinical trials, we do see elevations of estradiol, but within normal biological levels for that woman's stage of life. Right. So that's. Yes. So we see that estrogen levels are supported. We see progesterone levels are supported, you know, not supra physiologic levels. So some clinicians ask me, they're. They're like, well, Deanna, what. What happened? I thought that, you know, the ovaries are kaput and they're not putting anything. So how could this maca phenotype blend known as feminescence be changing? And if you look at the mechanism. So where does estradiol come from after you've gone through menopause? How do some women maintain some level? And how could feminescence be stimulating the endocrine circuit to. To produce more? And we see that in two places. One is the. The adrenal glands, which produce DHEA and androgens, which can then convert into estradiol through the help of certain enzymes. We also see that the depot of estradiol in a postmenopausal women's body is her adipose tissue. So within adipose. And this is why some women who.

Have more body fat, belly, belly fat. Oh, but look, it has a purpose, though, right?

Because you don't want so much adipose tissue where it becomes. Right. Inflammat. Right. It's just Land would say you've got happy fat, you have angry fat. The angry fat would be the more inflamed fat. It kind of depends on where it is on your body, too. But if you have a depot of adipose, that becomes your reservoir for creating this estradiol. So, and that is through aromatization. So you actually have two separate pathways, independent of the ovaries, to start to prime and to optimize and to bring in certain actives in order to mechanistically help that along. And being that the maca is enriched with glucosinolates, what else do you think you're impacting? Metabolism?

I was gonna say blood sugar. Etc.

Blood sugar too That's a really good point. In fact, we. I like to do some studies looking at feminescence and blood sugar because we do hear about benefits and how that seems to improve and, you know, just a lot of different markers. Right. Because again, if hormones are communicating to different systems, we're going to ripple through into a lot of different things. You know, I just want to go back to what you said about your. Your cholesterol going up a little bit. Right.

Okay.

So what makes sex hormones in the body? If we go back to our chicken wire diagram that we learned way back when. Right. Cholesterol is the mother. And so I think that for some perimenopausal women, they get that initial scare of like, oh, my gosh, like, we have been so ingrained in thinking that elevations and cholesterol bad for you. My mother is the same way. She's very postmenopausal. But, you know, she was asking me because her cholesterol has gone up. My response to that, and this is just my biochemical thinking response, is that the body has a way to. Again, if you're trying to prime hormones and to balance them, looking at elevating levels of cholesterol to funnel on into that sex steroid pathway to give you the mineralocorticoids, the estrogen compounds, and also looking at the androgens. Right. But you need cholesterol. So in a way you could say, is my body compensating? Should I just let this ride out? You know, obviously, if people have symptoms and they want to quell that and to balance their hormones perimenopausally, because you're kind of all over the place during that time.

Right.

I remember it. I'm like two years, almost two years postmenopausal now. But I clearly remember my perimenopause time of, you know, differences in cycles. And, you know, I just. Different issues in sleep. And that really led me to start looking into feminescence and, you know, evaluating do I do hrt? But there is a lot of flux during that time. So I think just kind of smoothing the signal with the maca phenotypes in order to enable the body to adjust better. But I do think that women, you know, rather than medicalize the body, I really feel like there's some beauty and art and really understanding and moving through that dynamic. You know, I told my husband 100.

I agree with you. Like, I'm like, I, you know, my doctor wrote me in the portal and was like, what are you gonna do to cut out of your diet to reduce your cholesterol levels. And I'm like, okay, hold on. I need to understand whether this elevation is truly as awful as you're saying. Like, what risk is there from a cardiovascular perspective? And can we run other markers that could help me better understand this? Can we dig a little deeper? And I gave her research and she was willing to do it. So it is what it is. I'm probably. I don't know if I'm a type of patient the doctors don't like, because I'm like, can we try this?

Just think of how many more patients you're helping. Actually, I know informing them, that's my.

Hope, but I want to know why. I want to know why is my body having this physiologic response, not just assuming that it's bad? And I think one question I do want to ask you around this, because there's this concern about maca and its play with hormones. Like, what about people who've had cancer in the past that is hormone sensitive, do you think? Or from what you've read, is this maybe something they might want to be cautious about? Or does it seem okay if you're, you know, cancer free?

Well, your question is a good one because I think we always have to look at all sides of the issue. And if you are increasing and changing estrogen and progesterone levels in the body through feminescence, then, yes, you need to reconsider the use of the product and or other types of maca as well. Or at least do that under the supervision of a skilled health practitioner who could monitor you. Because we know that feminescence doesn't introduce any hormones. So you're not taking hormones. This is not like taking hrt. It's enabling the body's endocrine circuit to actually work better. Right. And so you might actually balance certain hormones that could be helpful for looking at outcomes related to that. But yes, in general, I think we need to be very cautious and to be thinking about that as a contraindication, because you will be modulating hormone levels and hormone levels can change with the use of the product.

So, yes, so definitely talk to your doctor if you've got a history of that. I feel like, too, if you have active cancer, that's such a different story.

And you really need to.

There are some things, like even like l Glutamine, you should not really supplement with if you have active cancer. Like, there's just. So it's. It's more complex. Talk to your doctor. So before we wrap up, I did want to ask you the difference between raw fermented versus gelatinized maca powders. What do you think tends to show the best results? Because obviously we know now country of origin, heavy metal status, the, as you call it, the phenotype. A lot of these things do matter in potential efficacy. So what is the deal with the form that we tend to see or the labels we see on these different products?

That's another really good point. Right. It's almost like somebody listening to this could be thinking, oh my gosh, maca's so complex. How am I going to navigate this? And so whether it's the, the elements, the metals, the color, the shape, the size, all of that. Yes, it's true. So you might see out there with raw maca, you have to think about the different phytochemicals that you're getting in the different preparations because that will translate to different efficacy markers. So I can speak to the feminescence because in the research that Dr. Meissner did, the levels of certain phytochemicals that were responsible for the endocrine modulation were seen with gelatinized maca, with these gelatinized phenotypes. And so in that gelatinized format, you have a little bit more of a water soluble, more bioavailable format. And so that could lead to greater uptake or at least even greater metabolism of some of these compounds like glucosinolates. If it's in the raw format, you would have other phytochemicals. And in fact, some of the work on prostate health would suggest that perhaps you need some of the raw maca because of certain of the actives. So as far as fermented, I don't know as much about the fermented maca. I haven't explored that. And I think that that's relatively rare. But what you're doing is creating again, very similar to gelatinized. More bioavailability. Yeah. So being that. So let me just mention one quick thing on that, Jennifer, because if maca is gelatinized, such in the, such as in the case of feminescence, it's going to be more, I would say more vulnerable or more susceptible to breakdown because it's in a more active, bioavailable state. Which is why you want to also look at the packaging of maca.

Oh, okay.

With, with the feminescence, there is the. I just happen to have a box on my, my tape, my desk here. But you know, it's individually wrapped. So it's protected from oxygen. And so you know, if, if it's in a big bag of powder, let's just say again, you go to the grocery store and you get this big bag of powder. The mo. Actually we could say this about any kind of powders, protein powders, nutrient powders, plant powders. Anytime you've got this big bag, this tote that you're opening and you're allowing oxygen to get in, you can have degradation because you have a lot of different water soluble and light reactive type of compounds. And once those degrade, you lose efficacy. And we see that with things like vitamin C as a quick example.

Yeah, so I did think. So I was like, what does gelatinize imply? Because it sounds a little bit like processed, right? Because I mean I just was like, I don't, I don't know what I think of gelatinized. And it's like processed into this gelatin. Whatever. Anyway, I thought the fascinating thing that I picked up in your paper was that that process actually removing some of the starches that are considered fodmaps. So if you have reacted with GI issues because you might be, you might tend towards SIBO or have some bacteria that are producing gas within the GI tract, you probably want to lean more towards the gelatinized version because a lot of those starches are removed.

You know, I'm so glad that you brought that up because in general that raw maca powder, if I recall it correctly, is about about 68% water soluble. So it's very difficult to digest. You know, it's a classic tuber in that way in gelatinization. Even though you're wondering, well what is that? It's very simple because it's using a certain type of water temperature and pressure in the right amount. So it can't be too much or too little because that could change the efficacy and bioavailability and even destroy key actives. So it's just a combination of water and temperature and pressure all in a way that again helps it to be more bioavailable and can liberate and make some of those phytochemicals that are normally bound up in a lot of those starches more ready to go in the body.

Well, one last question because my fellow non pill swallowers, because I can't swallow pills like a five year old, there might be five year olds that can, I don't know. But for those of us who can't, is it possible to open the capsules and empty it into something and consume it like say In a smoothie or in yogurt or something like that, so that you can get like, does it. Is the capsule protecting it from being degraded within with the gastric juices? Or does. Is it just a form, like a delivery form and thus taking it out of the capsules won't hurt efficacy as far as you know?

Yeah, no, I do know this. And it has been tested, at least for effeminacens. It needs to be taken away from food. So on an empty stomach with 8 to 12 ounces of water, and that is part of the secret sauce of it working correctly. So if you take it and you just empty out the capsule into a big smoothie, you start to have more interactions. Remember what I said about that heat, light and oxygen. You could start to wait and change some of those actives. And you know, it's interesting because if you go on social media, what do you see, like people adding maca to their smoothies. And I used to do that, you know, coating their chicken with it, doing whatever. But I mean, I mean, ideally you want to preserve. At least I could speak again to the actives and feminescence because those are well defined phenotypes and it is known from a quality control standpoint how they interact. So you do want it away from food. You want to have it on an empty stomach and with water to ensure proper solubility and uptake.

So could somebody like me just add it to water, swirl and like down the hatch?

Yeah, if you're doing it quickly and you're just taking it in, yeah, absolutely, that would work because you're still taking in the water anyway. Like, the capsule is not the deal breaker there. It doesn't got it to be. But I would say you wouldn't want that sitting around that cup with the, the feminescence in it and just kind of sitting there and degrading. You want to drink it in short order.

Fair enough. I mean, these are the practical things. These are the questions that we have.

That are so important. I really do.

I like to really understand it because I know these are also questions that I'm going to get and these are questions that I would have. So I so deeply appreciate you putting maca back on my radar because I, I think I just like, was like, I don't know if this really works and put it to the side. And so I feel like this is a good time to revisit it, especially given the resurgence of interest and perimenopause issues and. And this could help the men too, which I, I think is so great. So thank you so much for joining us again. I really appreciate how much energy, time and passion you put into doing all this research and bringing all of these ideas to us and, and, and nerding out with me about it.

You know, it's very rare that I'm on a podcast where I get very thought provoking questions. Like when I'm on with you, it's like you actually, you read the article, you know the questions to ask like the deeper dive. So I want to thank you because you're bringing to the forefront things that yes, you will get asked later and it's good just to do your homework when you're on the podcast. So thank you for being again a deep thinker and probing and that really tickles my neurons when I can be more intellectually engaged and talk about the deeper science. Because often science doesn't get translated into clinical application very readily.

Well, I think this is the beauty of it that we have conversations like this that help benefit everyone and help them also wade through what is true, what is potentially false and also stay on top of new ideas. Right. Because sometimes we can revisit old ideas. Like this is an old, it's not an old ideas and like wrote it's. It's. It's like an ancient idea. Right. 2000 years ago they were using this, this is sort of ancient plant medicine that we currently can get access to now and benefit from. And so I so de. Appreciate your passion for holding space for the plants and the beauty of plants and all the nutrients that they, that they embody to potentially help us. I will make sure to put all of your links to your website. I know you've got an amazing book and all the different programs that you offer into the show notes and I hope that we can have more conversations like this in the future.

That'd be wonderful. I welcome it.

It.

We'll find some other plant to talk about in the future, I'm sure.

Well, thanks so much for joining me.

Thank you.

If you enjoyed this video, you need to tune in to this video next. Then make sure to hit the subscribe button so you get notified as soon as a new episode drops. I'm excited to see you there and dive deeper with you on your skin healing journey.