Testosterone and Brain Health

Hey, everybody. In this video, we're going to talk about brain health. We're going to talk about the hormone testosterone, and we're going to talk about how these types of things around testosterone and brain health are really related to chronic Lyme disease, mold toxicity, and a myriad of other types of problems that really lead to brain fog, cognitive impairment, and dementia. So one of the things that I see in so many clients that I work with, and I'm Dr. Diane Mueller, for those of you that don't know me, one of the things that I see is hormones are impacted. So whether your problem is a brain fog or dementia related issue that is related to, say, Lyme disease or another chronic infection or a toxin of any type, whether any of those things are true, what tends to happen is that due to the neurological inflammation due to the change on the brain, with a lot of these types of infections and toxins and problems, there's these changes on the brain. And when these changes happen to the, to the brain, oftentimes the signaling pathway of the brain to the hormonal system gets dysregulated. So it's very, very common that when we're dealing with Lyme, other chronic infections, other toxins, other root causes of brain fog, and cognitive problems, that we have a low testosterone, testosterone issue as part of the picture. Now, it's not the only part, but it's very, very frequent. I see this with my clients. And this is so important of a finding because testosterone is a building molecule, right? It helps us have more muscle, more energy, but it also helps with mood and cognition. So we do want to get to the root cause anytime we're dealing with brain fog, right. And cognitive problems. So we do want to do testing to see if there's a chronic hit, infection or toxin, you know, things that are commonly missed, oftentimes diseases such as Marcons, which is a infection, a staph infection that lives way far back in our sinuses, that can be a hidden cause that a lot of people haven't tested for, for example. So we want to find these, these hidden causes of what's actually leading to the cognitive impairment. And we also want to consider some of the damage that's frequently done to the body. So the damage that's frequently done when we have these root causes that are so common in brain dysfunction. One of the subquelae of all this really is low testosterone. So when testosterone goes down, that can lead to further cognitive problems and further mood disorders. So when you're testing testosterone, you want to make sure that you're working with somebody that's going to test total testosterone, which is the value, the lab value, of how much testosterone your body is actually making. You also want to make sure that you are testing something called free testosterone. Free testosterone is a percentage, it's a part of that total number, that production number. It's the part that your body is actually able to use. So your body makes this much and then your body has this much available for use, right? Two separate lab values. Total testosterone, how much is made? Free testosterone, how much is available for your cells to actually use? Now, both of these are important values because they both will tell you something about treatment. But you really want to make sure that you don't just get that total value because your body sometimes makes a lot of this and your cells are not able to use it. So it's good that your body's making it. But then the problem and the treatment plan is not about getting more testosterone. It's about helping your body turn it into the form and the availability to essentially use it. So it's a different way we would actually treat these two different problems. And sometimes what can happen when we're dealing with testosterone is if you get total tested and your doctor says, oh, you're making plenty of testosterone, you're fine. And you're like, okay, well, I ruled that out. That's not a problem. That's not always true. Right? Because if you don't have it available to your cells, you can be making it all you want. But if your cells can't use it, it's almost in your body functioning like you're not making enough. So we want to make sure we get those two different levels. And again, like, we want to make sure that we're doing this from a root cause perspective, understanding the whole picture. But there is a huge link of testosterone as a hormone and mood and cognition and brain function. There's research linking low testosterone to things like depression, depression for example, but like I said, also cognition and brain function. So make sure, when you're doing some of these root cause based tasks and you're working with your clinician, make sure you're working with somebody that really understands this whole picture because that's going to help you get the results you want. If you like this information, please don't keep me a secret. Please share this with any friends or family that could benefit from this. Subscribe to the channel and there's information about getting a free call with my team and I at the in the information in the show notes below to see if we're a good fit to help you at our clinic. All right, everybody, see you in the next one.