Estrogeneration: How Estrogenics Are Making You Fat, Sick, and Infertile.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness show, scientists have shown obesity can be passed on. And what I mean by that is, I mean, you can be skinny, you can have a skinny DNA, but you can be exposed to enough of these chemicals and change your epigenetics and actually pass obesity on to future generations. But it's not just obesity. It's cancer and decreased fertility. Also, guys like me are trying to study bacon or something, you know, in the lab, but then we're just going to the store picking up industrial bacon, and who knows if we're actually studying the fat or we're studying these artificial chemicals that are in the fat that are causing fat gains, that are causing depression, that are causing infertility.

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Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And I actually thought I kind of knew everything that there was to know about a horse that I thought has been kicked to death lately. And that is estrogen exposure, right? We're getting estrogen exposure. We're getting man boobs from our shampoo and our plastic bottles. Case closed. And you should wash your hair with coconut oil and drink out of glass Pellegrino bottles. And it turns out there is a whole bunch that I didn't know about estrogens. Kind of. Kind of shocking stuff. And I read this new book. It was written by a PhD and the President of the International Medical Research Collaborative, Anthony J. And the name of the book is Estrogeneration. Estrogeneration. See what they did there? How estrogenics are making you fat, sick, and infertile. And in the book, he goes into, like, lavender and cannabis and licorice and genetic triggers that can cause a parent's choices to make a child fat or have a higher risk of breast cancer. Hidden estrogen sources. I didn't even know about that. Food and cosmetic manufacturers can legally hide from us and a whole lot more. So I found this book so compelling that I decided I needed to get Anthony on the show. And like I mentioned, he's. He's got a PhD and studies. What's your what's your PhD in, Anthony, by the way?

In biochemistry.

Yeah, biochemistry. So he knows what he's talking about. Boston University, right?

Correct.

Yeah.

I actually did it in fats and cholesterol and hormones, so.

Oh, wow. Okay.

My thesis.

Yeah. So you know a little bit about this stuff, and I know you're up to a whole lot of other things as well, including this international medical research collaborative to train and educate medical students and doctors around the globe within American hospitals and labs. And you have this book, you have a great YouTube channel, all sorts of stuff that I'll link to over in the show notes. If you all are listening in, you can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com estrogen, that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Estrogen to access the show notes.

That's where you find me, huh?

That's where you will find Anthony J. On the estrogen page. That's right. I'll try to avoid making too many man boob jokes, by the way, because I don't want to offend people who actually have man boobs, but I mean, hey, this is. This is your chance to learn how to get rid of them.

Somebody. Somebody introduced me as Anthony G. G as in girl. J on a podcast recently.

So you know Anthony G. Well, isn't that your name? Anthony G.J. yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was just the G as in girl that was, you know, that they.

Actually said G as in girl.

That's right.

Yeah.

It was Vinnie Fordrich.

Yeah. Interesting. Okay, well, let's start here, dude. Obviously the book is jam packed full of stuff. And you actually talk early on in the book about two sources of estrogen that I personally use when I go to bed just about every night. So I had to ask you about this stuff right off the bat. First of all, I use lavender. So I sprinkle like lavender essential oil on my pillow, or sometimes I'll diffuse lavender. And you talk about the potential of that to be estrogenic. And then you also talk about cannabis and the potential for cannabis. You know, I use cbd, cannabidiol extracted from organic hemp in a capsule form. Or occasionally I'll vape that as well. Can you talk to me about. And I'm fine with you weaving into your reply. You know, why these estrogens would be a big deal in the first place. But tell me about lavender and cannabis. Like, if the dosage matters, if the source matters, why those two things we should be aware of, Because I know a lot of my listeners use that stuff too.

Yeah, let's start with maybe cannabis, because, you know, these are both kind of interesting stories, and they've done a really good research study on cannabis specifically, and they found that only the smoke is estrogenic. So they looked at. And by the way, when I say estrogenic, I just mean something that acts like estrogen in your body. It acts on the estrogen receptor.

Right.

So in other words, eating cannabis using cannabidiol, all these kind of things, they literally tested those against the estrogen receptor and found that those did not activate the estrogen receptor. Something in the smoke does. I think it's because when you smoke, when you heat something up, you get some phenolic compounds, and that's P, H, E, N O, lic, phenolic. It's just a chemical that, you know, if you combine it with other chemicals, oftentimes that activates the estrogen receptor. I'm not sure. I'm just speculating there, but for whatever reason, I would avoid the smoke. If you're concerned about estrogen once in a while, not a big deal.

By the way, I looked into it too, and it looks like the smoke is an issue. So if you're a weed smoker, and again, I don't want to give people the impression, especially if you're a new listener, that this is a pothead podcast. But I do know people are interested in cannabis as medicine, and I wanted to clarify because I read it in your book and I was like, gosh, is this something we need to worry about? So it looks like smoke is an issue because I checked out a few of the studies on this, too, like condensed marijuana smoke. And I don't know if you saw this, but you know how a lot of people are like, juicing hemp now?

Okay.

Are you aware of this? Yeah. People do it. They'll grow hump, and they'll juice it. It appears that the crude extract that hasn't been decarboxylated or perhaps treated in the same way that soy. And I want to talk to you about this in a little bit too, could potentially be more estrogenic if you don't ferment it or treat it properly. It appears that marijuana extract is similar to where if you're just juicing the leaves and it's not an actual extract of it, that's another source similar to smoke that can be more estrogenic. And it looks like for that it's similar, it's like a flavonoid or a polyphenol that binds to the estrogen receptor.

So that's right.

When something binds to the estrogen receptor, does that mean it's blocking the effects of estrogen or does that mean it is, it's compounding the effects of estrogen and producing estrogen dominance?

Usually it compounds the estrogen effect.

Okay.

And that's. Those are the chemicals I'm most interested in, especially the additive effects. So, you know, my book focuses on a top 10 list of estrogens. I try to simplify it for people because some of these things are quite complicated. But you know, let's say you're exposing yourself to a little bit of, you know, red food coloring, a little bit of phthalates from plastic, a little bit of bpa, whatever. You know, as you expose yourself to all of these, they, they add, they have additive effects because they're all acting on the same receptor in an estrogen like way. And that's the problem I have with. Okay, you know, most of these things, it's once in a while, not a big deal. Your body adapts. You know, hormones are. It's such a delicate balance for our body and we tend to jump back from an estrogen exposure. If we're exposed a little bit here and there, it's not a big deal. But problem is when we're constantly buffeting the estrogen receptor and activating it.

Yeah, yeah. Now, constant exposure. Again, this is something I wanna ask you about. Cause this is another thing that I do just about every day. You talk about lavender and how lavender is estrogenic. Are we talking about like lavender, like giving in drinking water to rodents? Are we talking about like lavender diffused and used as an essential oil? I mean, I've even put it on my kids pillows before they go to bed at night to help them relax. What are we looking at in terms of the issues with lavender and the source and the amount?

So there hasn't been a ton of studies. So I'm hesitant. I don't make any really strong recommendations. But from what I've seen, I'm concerned about it. At least based on two big studies they did. One of them was in the New England Journal of Medicine and you mentioned it before, they showed that it causes gynecomastia, which is breast tissue in males. Man boobs. And not only that, I mean, that was kind of a case study. There was a few other case studies that had the same exact finding. And that specifically those case studies were from people using lavender products. Lavender in their soaps and shampoos. But the study that was most compelling to me in that same Journal, New England Journal of Medicine article was they tested lavender, 100% lavender essential oil and they found that it activates the estrogen receptor. And that's kind of the basis of their claims that it has estrogenic effects. And here's some case studies that back that up. So in other words, at the molecular level they did find that it activates the estrogen receptor. It's been repeated in a different journal. I did a YouTube video on it. It's a little bit contentious. I mean some people say, well, the source is kind of questionable. It's 100% lavender oil from Sigma Chemical Company. The thing is, when scientists do these research studies, you could always question the source. If you buy 100% peppermint extract or whatever you buy, if somebody's going to say, well I don't know about that source, well, the best you can do Is use them 100%. And yeah, and you know, obviously the methodologies for extracting these things differ but, and by the way, there's definitely benefits to lavender.

So I, I looked into some of the studies too and, and like the, the one I know, the NIH reported on this one about how, how boys were getting gynecomastia from lavender. But, but they were actually, they were soaps and skin lotions and shampoos and styling products that they'd added tea tree oil, which was another one that they identified as estrogenic and lavender oil too. And there's a whole bunch of confounding variables. I mean, as you know, when it comes to these products that have a whole bunch of known endocrine disruptors that would give me pause. And then the other, the other one that I looked into because I asked a naturopathic doc who, she actually works with an essential oil company, admittedly, so maybe she's a little bit jaded, but apparently they use an extremely synthetic source. Like it wasn't actual lavender oil from the lavender plant. They use like a synthetic lab derived form of lavender which you can actually buy. I checked it out. You can buy it at Sigma Aldrich Labs and you can get like synthetic lavender oil that they use in lab studies. And I can drive an hour from my house and go out to these beautiful like purple lavender fills that they use to harvest like real lavender for essential oils. I suspect that a, when you add it to like a full on estrogen containing soap or shampoo or personal care product and then you use a synthetic source, that, that would probably be far different than just like a natural, like 100% organic essential oil. And I'll put a link. I'll put some links in the show notes because I totally don't want to just like, you know, use this as an excuse to say, oh, all lavender is good. Because I think there probably is a law of diminishing returns. But ultimately, there's a few interesting articles out there that this lady has written, Dr. Labisco, that I'll link to, as well as this interesting article called why lavender essential oil won't cause your boy's breasts to develop. So there's some interesting things when it comes to lavender. But there's one other I wanted to ask you about, too, before we get into some of these plants, like flax and soy and stuff like that. And that's licorice. You mentioned licorice in the book. And licorice is in a ton of digestive aids, and it's even in some things that I'll use to assist with digestion, like glycerinic acid. And there's this tea made by a former podcast guest of mine, John Douillard. He recommends this decoction tea that's like licorice and marshmallow root as a way to enhance the lymph system function. What is it about licorice? And does the source matter when it comes to that?

Yeah, sure. So licorice, it didn't make my top 10 list because it's not extremely high in estrogen. But I found a study that was done in Canada of over 100 food items. Just a huge study. It was a great study. And all they were looking at was phytoestrogen content, plant estrogen, how much plant estrogen are in all kinds of different food items. And just to give you some units, the units they used were micrograms per 100 grams of the food. And, I mean, you can basically ignore the units now. I just wanted to throw it out there, but with soybeans, they found over 100,000 micrograms per 100 grams. 100,000 phytoestrogen. So just really high. And then with flax, they found over 300,000 micrograms per 100 grams. And licorice, it was about 1,000 micrograms. So, I mean, it was noteworthy because everything else was way was. It was way under 1,000. I mean, like, for example, chickpeas were 9 micrograms per 100 grams. So, I mean, you know. Yes, yeah, chickpeas have a tiny bit of phytoestrogen, but it's certainly not 100,000. Right. It's not 300,000. So, you know, licorice showed up on the. It showed up on the study, but it's not. It's certainly not a concerning level.

Yeah, I've been asked about this before, about whether licorice could lower testosterone or increase estrogens. I ran it by that guy, John Douillard, who was the guy I had on the podcast episode where I interviewed about this tea that he really recommends. It's a great tea. It's called a decoction tea, and it just soothes your stomach, and it's amazing. And he dug into the research a little bit as well, and he said it was about 50 grams or so of licorice that could either lower testosterone or cause some kind of a slight estrogenic effect. And I believe the amount of actual glycerinic acid that's in, for example, like a serving of his decoction tea, and I might be pronouncing it might be glycerinic acid, anyways, it comes out to about one tenth of that. So, again, it's kind of like dosage matters, but it's certainly something to bear in mind, I think, you know, as you alluded to already a little bit earlier, if you're doing a bunch of lavender and you're smoking weed and you're using licorice every day, that's where a lot of this stuff starts to add up. But these still aren't the big players that you talked about. These are a few of the little things I want to get out of the way just so I'm not worrying the whole time that we're chatting, because then you get into the stuff that's most estrogenic. And two that you talk about are soy and flax as being two of the most estrogenic. Well, beans, slash seeds that are out there that we could eat. I know because I hear people talk about this all the time, that the processing matters and whether or not it's been fermented matters, et cetera. So talk to me a little bit about what the issue is with flaxseeds and soybeans. And then also, is there a way to eat them in the right format and a way to eat them in the wrong format when it comes to estrogenic activity?

Well, first of all, it depends how healthy you are to begin with. Right? So if you're struggling with fertility, if you're a pro athlete, I tell people to avoid these things, but certainly if they're fermented, there's no issue. I mean, the research is pretty clear about that these bacteria break up the phytoestrogens.

That's what happens when you ferment something like soy. Like if I were going to go buy soybeans and my wife will do this, sometimes she'll make natto out of soybeans, like the fermented natto as a source of vitamin K2. What you're saying is when you do that, the bacteria actually breaks down the estrogens.

That's right. And not only that, the metabolites, the broken down products of those phytoestrogens are healthy for you. And that causes a lot of conflicting research because people study these lignans and these isoflavones and these other phytoestrogens from soy and flax, and they find health benefits sometimes. But then you also find studies that are just totally the opposite. They find increases in breast cancer, they find fertility issues. I mean, a whole list of problems that you constantly see with these artificial estrogens, like immune system issues, low testosterone, like you mentioned. And again, so there's a lot of conflicting research. And when you start fermenting them, it changes the game. It's an entirely different thing. And like I said, in fact, I think it's healthy. The research indicates that.

Now, what about flax? Can you actually ferment flax?

Well, the thing is, I mean, people don't eat 100 grams of flax usually. But I mean, if you have a healthy gut, it breaks down the flax. There's really good, clear scientific research on that. But if you don't have a healthy gut, I think it's unhealthy to eat a lot of flax. I avoid it. I prefer fish or krill oil, actually. I eat a lot of hemp seeds and that sort of thing, protein powder.

Okay.

But yeah, I mean, it doesn't seem to have that much effect. And one of the kind of, the, one of the ways I think about this is, you know, our ancestors have been eating these things for thousands of years for eons. Whereas with parabens, you know, these shampoo products with high levels of parabens, which by the way, is bad because it acts like estrogen in your body and phthalates and bpa, totally artificial chemicals that, you know, our gut bacteria, we've never seen these things. Right. So you're rubbing them on your skin, they're going through your skin, they're acting like hormones. And even when you're drinking water with these artificial estrogens, you know, the natural ones, they definitely can be broken down. Our bodies have adapted to take care of them and kind of regulate the balance of our hormones. But these unnatural ones are the ones that really raise red flags for me.

Okay, got it. Now, going back to natural sources of estrogens, before we turn to some of the hidden things that you talk about in your book. I know there's this concept of phytoestrogens, right, which are these components that we find in plants that you've mentioned a couple of times that share a structural or a functional similarity to a mammalian estrogen, like the kind that we would make ourselves. And we would be talking about lignins, which you'd find in plant cell walls, like berries or seeds, like the flaxseeds you talked about, or grains or nuts or fruits. And then also these phenolic compounds, which include the kind of isoflavones that we talked about being in like, really concentrated amounts in something like marijuana smoke. And I know that there's this thought out there that, of course we know that they act on estrogen receptors and they can be classified as estrogen receptor. I believe the technical term would be like a modulator where they'll block excess activity if estrogen is too high, or mimic estrogen if estrogen is too low. Low. And so they almost have like an adaptogenic, like, effect in the human body. But I do know that those can also, because they modulate estrogen activity, and some of them can even increase the production of sex hormone binding globulin, which would kind of like bind excess estrogen. They may almost have like a regulating effect on estrogen and not necessarily be like this huge concern for men when it comes to man boobs or women when it comes to estrogen dominance versus synthetic forms of estrogen? Now, what are your thoughts on this concept that phytoestrogens in plants could be a good thing and not cause things like estrogenic effects on breast tissue or cancer risks or things like that.

Yeah, I agree. I think that's a valid way to think about this. Although I do get concerned. I mean, we have so much estrogen exposure, it's hard to tell. I mean, I wrote a chapter about scientific bias and spin within research because it needed to be done. I mean, a lot of people ask me about this. Why is there so much research that puts soy up on a pedestal and says soy is super healthy for you? And then there's also so much research that shows how bad it is for your health. And I think a lot of it's literally corporate, you know, corporate influence. It's. It's bias it's spin. So I wrote a chapter and I thought the, the editors were actually going to take that chapter out of my book, but most of them actually told me that that's their favorite chapter because there is a lot of that. So I do get worried, you know, with some of these, even the natural ones, although the natural ones, you know, I try and be really, you know, fair and just say, look, we've been exposed to these. Our bodies can handle them. The problem with raising shbg, sex hormone binding globulin, is that. Yeah, you bind testosterone also, so then you decrease your free testosterone. But, you know, so as you look at the research, that's a common pattern that you find. You find a lot of decreases in free testosterone and total testosterone. So, yeah, there's health benefits, there's sometimes.

You mean like excessive consumption of phytoestrogenic rich foods? The sex hormone binding globulin increase that happens in conjunction with those would decrease the bioavailability of free testosterone.

That's right. And that's been shown. I did a video on that also.

When you say that's been shown, do you mean that's been shown that high levels of sex hormone binding globulin could cause that? Or high levels of like, plant intake from these plants that have phytoestrogens in them can cause that? Right.

Well, the estrogens cause that. Yeah. Including birth control. Yeah. I mean, it's a common pattern, I think, with, with these estrogen mimicking chemicals that they increase shbg, which also concomitantly decreases free testosterone. Yeah.

Okay. And that's why I'm curious because, I mean, there's foods that contain phytoestrogens, like fenugreek is one example, and that's taken by men to increase testosterone or testosterone availability. And there's other ones out there. I know sesame seeds are a pretty big source of, of phytoestrogens and oats and barley and some of these things that a lot of times we'll find recommended as healthy components of a diet. So are you saying that those in and of themselves have enough of a phytoestrogenic load to be able to decrease free testosterone in guys? I mean, are there bodies in the streets? Has that been shown?

I think only soy and flax are the ones that were kind of on my radar based on the studies of just the. Just the amount that's in the foods. Okay. And just let me give you one other, you know, example. Brazil nuts have a lot of manganese. So there's a Lot of people say, you know, a lot of people tell you to eat a lot of Brazil nuts and you'll increase your testosterone because manganese is involved in creating testosterone. But what's interesting is that if you eat Brazil nuts and, or supplement manganese consistently all the time, you spike your testosterone initially, but then it actually goes lower after about a week or so. It actually goes below your initial level, so you actually end up lowering your testosterone. So sometimes too much of a good thing actually causes problems. So just doing something, especially with hormones, right? Hormones are interesting. They're regulated in really strange ways sometimes. Again, it's a delicate balance. But with the natural chemicals, with the natural compounds, our bodies have adapted. Just like I said, just constantly doing it, constantly having it is a concern for me. I don't think there's enough research to say to make a really solid argument one way or the other, but it's a concern for me.

Okay, so, so the way that I understand it thenand then I do wanna turn to some of these unnatural sources that I think are way bigger issues. We have phytoestrogens, and those can bind to estrogen receptors. And phytoestrogens are gonna be the kind of things that we would find in, you know, things likelike soy flax, sesame seeds, you know, licorice root, a lot of legumes. I know alfalfa and clover are other sources, and lots of leafy greens. But basically the idea is those would bind to estrogen receptors in the body, those phytoestrogens, and they would kind of like take up the parking spot of actual mammalian based estrogen and keep it from exerting its effect sometimes. And they could do that by increasing sex hormone binding globulin levels, which would bind to estrogen. I know that they could decrease aromatase to a certain extent, so they could prevent some testosterone from turning into estrogen. And, and a lot of them are recommended, you know, like diindylmethane from broccoli, for example, for estrogen detoxification. And so what you're talking about that we should avoid would be food sources of phytoestrogens that are orders of magnitude higher than most of the other foods. So we're talking about avoiding huge sources of flax while little would be okay, and then avoiding just about any form of unfermented soy like edamame and tofu and soy milk and things like that. Exactly.

Yep, that's exactly right. Yeah.

Okay, Got it. Cool. I just wanted to make sure that I could still have my, my natto And, And a little bit of flax here and there. And my. My cupo broccoli.

Yeah. Well, even. Let me just jump in because even some of the soy sauce, you know, soy sauce in, in Japan is totally different because they actually ferment it. Whereas in America, we have a lot of these shortcuts and we oftentimes it's like the sourdough bread. You know, we do these shortcuts where we're not actually fermenting things, and that can be a problem. I mean, you're making your own natto, so that's. That's all good, you know. Yeah, but I, but I want people to know that.

Yeah, you're right. A big part of it comes down to food processing as well. That's. That's what I always tell people is, you know, when you eat a food that's purportedly known to be a superfood or extremely healthy for you, you know, or many plants, you must ask yourself, has this been rendered digestible? Right. Like quinoa, for example, when you buy your organic quinoa from Costco and then complain that it gives you a stomach ache, or you got quinoa in your crap the next morning, well, it's covered in saponins, a soap like irritant that bothers the digestive tract and that plants have in there to ensure that mammals poop them out elsewhere. And so you can make quinoa digestible, right? You can rinse it and you can soak it. And I love to even sprout it. It makes for wonderful sprout. But then you could also just be a dummy and eat it without preparing it properly. So, yeah, a big part of it comes down to prep methods. Now, you talked about some things that might kind of fly under the radar when it comes to estrogen sources. And the first one that I wanted to talk to you about that you have in the book is actually a fungal compound. You call this zea. Tell me about Zea, because that's one that I hadn't heard of before. Why is that an issue? And where would we get exposed to something like zea?

Yeah, ZEA is a bigger issue than people think. It's just been. I think it's been getting worse in the past years. In the past decades. Recent decades. And the actual term is zero lino. But, yeah, I use the acronym ZEA throughout my book because ZEAR is just cumbersome. And some scientists call it Z E, N. They use that acronym. I just prefer zea. I think it sounds better. And other Scientists use that. But what that is, that's mycoestrogen. Myco means mold. So essentially, some of these molds actually secrete a lot of these molds. Surprising number of them secrete z e a zeraleno. And whether you're eating something that's been exposed to mold, whether you're breathing it in from the mold dust, whatever, it's acting like estrogen in your body. And it's really. They consider it immunotoxic. Again, reproductive toxicant. There's a whole list. And that's. I mean, that's. In short, that's what it is. And by the way, the reason mold is increasing is because we're storing our grains and a lot of these things in bigger and bigger facilities. And the, you know, natural estrogen in males is about 20 nanograms per liter. Tiny, right? Nanograms is 10 to the minus 9th. I mean, that's not that much. But get this, women have about 20 to 400 nanograms per liter. So it's, I mean, depending on the time of the month. So it's really not that. It's not like men are at 20 and women are at 10,000 or something. 20 to 400 is not that far away. And, you know, you start tampering with those levels. And so the difficulty with the mold is. Yeah, I mean, the levels are really low, but we're talking about nanograms per liter. Twenty years ago, we weren't even measuring nanograms per liter with our technology. So we're finding these levels and they're causing problems. These are bioactive concentrations. These are concentrations that mimic our natural hormone concentrations. And Europe regulates these things. Europe has incredible regulation on mycoestrogen mold estrogen. In the United States, absolutely no regulation. You can have as much mycoestrogen in your food. So what they do, actually is they ship it over here. If they find high levels of mold estrogen in their grains, ship it over.

To the U.S. oh, God bless the USA. But at least they're sharing. So what you're saying is that this would be a direct byproduct of packaging foods, packaging coffee, packaging wheat, packaging cereal. And what happens is we get like a mycotoxin, a fungus buildup when things are packaged and stored in dark or damp conditions.

That's right, yeah. Even under your sink or behind your fridge, you might have it.

But now that'd be different. You know, like, I took my kids out to the restaurant the other day, and we had like a charcuterie plate, right? And there was like blue cheeses and all sorts of different kinds of, like sheep and goat cheeses on there and cured meats. Are those sources. Are we more talking about, like processed and packaged foods?

Oh, that's a good question. Well, those, those sources of mold are vetted. You know, historically, our ancestors have kind of, you know, just. They've tampered with it, they've played with it. I don't know how they come up with these things, but our ancestors have found, you know, fermentation strains of molds, of bacteria, whatever, that are non toxic to humans that don't secrete these chemicals. Whereas a lot of the, you know, a lot of the virulent strains out in the, you know, in these big grain silos or whatever. I mean, we're spraying all these antifungicides and all these other things, so we're actually increasing a lot of the virulence, which essentially means their aggressiveness, how aggressive they are. And so the food, the ones that we've been using for who knows how long with foods, with cheeses, those things are perfectly fine. They don't secrete these same chemicals, especially microestrogen.

Now, is that one of the reasons that beer can give you man boobs? Is it because the Zea content in that?

Yeah, it might be, but I think it's because hops actually do activate the estrogen receptor a little bit. Okay, so, you know, so.

So hops would fall into the category of something like flax and soy as being a very, very high source of the phytoestrogenic compound.

It's a good question. I mean, I'm not sure. You know, it's hard to tell sometimes whether it's the hops or whether it's the processing or whatever.

Yeah, or the chicken wings you have along with your beer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I have noticed that there seems to be, perhaps this is just, just like a, an observational correlation, but there does seem to be a high proportion of men who drink beer versus men who drink wine having man boobs. But, you know, that whole gynecomastia effect may be related to other things, but when you're talking about grains, I know that definitely in terms of storage, milling and processing and cooking and grain products like breads and beers, and even the processed feeds that we give to our animals, in many cases, they can be sources. Because I looked this up after I read your book, and I found a pretty interesting NIH study on this Zea, and they call it an estrogenic mycotoxin. They actually go as Far as to call it an immunotoxic compound. So apparently can shut down some immune system activity and. Yeah, I mean, it's huge in terms of processed and packaged grains and beers. As far as its prevalence. That's right.

Well, and let me jump in for a second, because when women are pregnant, our natural estrogen regulates the immune system really carefully. Because, in fact, natural estrogen is considered immunosuppressive and immunostimulative, which sounds like it totally doesn't make sense. Right. Because it suppresses the immune system and it stimulates the immune system, but it has to. It has to stimulate the immune system to fight off, you know, diseases or path pathogens, but it also has to suppress it so that the body doesn't eat the, you know, the fetus. And Zea and a lot of these other ones, they'rethey alter your immune system because they alter that natural process.

Interesting. Okay, so Zea would be one thing that we'd want to avoid, and one of the best ways to do that would be to avoid, like, packaged grain and bread products and to be careful with our beer choices.

Yep.

Okay. Another one that you talk about is apes. What are apes and where are those coming from?

Yeah, so there's a class of chemicals called alkyl phenols. That's a L, K Y. Alkyl phenols. They're an industrial chemical. And apes. Alkyl phenols. That's just the abbreviation, the acronym for alkyl phenols. Apes are mainly found in soaps. So that's just big processing, manufacturing manufactured soaps. Not these natural soaps a lot of people are buying, but these big industrial soaps.

Okay, got it. Now, when you're talking about these apes, are there, are there other sources other than soaps, or is it primarily what we'd find in these, These. So I think they'll use them like surfactants. Right. For the, to get the suds and soaps.

Yep. Yeah. I mean, well, they're found in some other products. Like they're found in, I don't know, steering fluids and some of these things in the cars. They're. They're petroleum products, but they're not on the.

They're not on the label, I think is what you say in the book. Like, like we don't actually know if a soap does or does not have this in there. How could that be?

It's a huge frustrating thing. I mean, it's because of the corporate influence and, you know, you find that a lot actually, with with these chemicals because, you know, they don't want. What they're allowed to do is they're allowed to use this term fragrance, and put a lot of these chemicals under that term and kind of because they consider that their secret formula so nobody else can rip that off. So that's how they get away with it. They essentially consider it a secret ingredient, and they don't want other people to rip it off. But what it ends up doing is it ends up allowing them to put stuff in. I literally buy soap that has. It says it's alkyl phenol free. And there are soaps that say that. Or, you know, you can find soaps that are just made with really natural products like coconut and this kind of thing. And yeah, they're not gonna have alkyphenols.

Yeah, I just don't shower. I just use the garden hose on my backyard. That's how I avoid all those issues. No, yeah, there are natural soaps out there, obviously. I think. I'm pretty sure Dr. Bronner's is clean. I'm pretty sure I could be wrong. But not only is Dr. Bronner's free of the triclosans and the apes, but it's got some great reading material on the label. If you want to be blessed by the higher powers up in the stars and full of peace and love and joy while you're taking your shower, Dr. Bronner's is the way to go. Okay, so. So apes, they can't put those on the label. But if you see triclosan or if you see fragments, fragrances, it's a pretty good. Or if it's a very, very sudsy soap, it's a pretty good indicator that it has apes in it.

Yep, yep.

Good call.

And, yeah, and you know, they sneak a lot of parabens in those fragrances too, you know?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Which is, again, another estrogenic source. Yeah. So how about BPA free water bottles? Can a BPA free water bottle still be estrogenic? Because from what I'm seeing in your book, it looks like it may not be as clear cut as we'd think.

That's right. Well, first of all, with companies, I think the federal government hasn't done hardly anything with BPA. So a lot of states. There's 17 states that have made BPA illegal, at least in children's products. But what companies have done in those examples sometimes is they. They use bps, which is bisphenol S, or, you know, there's other analogs of bpa. I list a bunch of them in my book, which. Which literally there's scientific studies that say that those analogs like bps and these other bisphenols are just as astrogenic. In other words, they're just as harmful to your health. And even if they don't do that, even if they're not using any of the bisphenol products, phthalates are a huge concern. The name isn't quite as sexy as bpa, so people don't remember it, especially because it's spelled P H T H A L A T E S phallates. So it's a really cumbersome chemical term, but it's found in a ton of plastic, especially plastic number one, which is really clear plastic, which looks beautiful. You know, you see these clear jars of juice or oil or whatever, and it's look on the little recycling symbol on the bottom. It's usually plastic number one. And I tell people in my book, if you have to use plastics, go with 2, 4, and 5, because those are the ones that are the least toxic. And sometimes even those have phthalates. But it's definitely plastic number one that has a lot of phthalates.

Okay, got it. So is there an actual. I think the one that you talk about is bps as being something very similar to BPA in terms of estrogenic activity. But basically, if a water bottle says BPA free and you're trying to be careful with BPA and with plastics, it can still have BPs in it.

That's right, yeah.

Okay. And is there any way to know that, or will it say on the label if it has bps?

No, no, there's. Well, if it's plastic number. If it has a little recycling symbol and it says number seven and it's BPA free, that means it's BPS 99% of the time.

So number seven is the one you'd want to look for and be careful of. Even if the water bottle says BPA free.

Exactly.

Okay, got it. Good to know. Number seven, even if it's BPA free. Avoid.

Yep. And I like to say I have this in the back of my book in really simple charts and things. And I also, just so people know, as a reference, I have a lot of this stuff for free on my website@ajconsultingcompany.com especially the personal care products, because I get asked this all the time. I make absolutely no money on any of the personal care products that I recommend, but I do list the ones that I use on my website just in case people want to just say, oh, what soap does he use? I'll just buy that.

I do that, dude. But I use my Amazon affiliate link. So when people actually go to Amazon to buy that puts a few, few coins in my hat. But buyer beware. Yeah, I have a whole article called how to detox your home and that goes into some of the things I use for water filters and for air filters and for personal care products and stuff like that. But I'll link to that and I'll link over to your site in the show notes here as well over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com estrogen if you guys want to try out any alternative products. Another one that you talk about when you talk about frogs and princesses is atrazine. Tell me about atrazine and what that has to do with frogs and princesses.

Well, yeah, I mean, actually a lot of these, they have a lot of the same health impacts. But atrazine is a chemical herbicide. Again, totally illegal in Europe, but in America it's the second most used herbicide in North America after glyphosate of course. But I mean just hundreds of millions of pounds of this stuff was used. And it's really a stable chemical. It lasts a long time. Even in soil, the half life is about a year. So I mean, that's unbelievable. So it gets into your drinking water. We're spraying it on our grains, especially the corn. I mean, people should never compromise with corn. They should always get organic corn if they're going to be eating corn, in my opinion. And that's because the atrazine is just so high. But yeah, I mean, scientists have this term they use, it's called feminization of males. They also sometimes use a term called demasculinization, which essentially just means that they expose frogs or fish or other animals. Obviously not people, but they're doing testing with animals with these chemicals and they're finding that whether it's the reproductive organs or the brain or other kind of physiological signatures in males look feminine as you expose them to these chemicals.

Okay, gotcha. So this stuff, this atrazine, you say that there are levels that can turn male frogs into princesses. Have they actually seen sex changes in frogs from getting exposed to this stuff?

For sure, yeah. They say about 200 nanograms per liter is where you start seeing the reproductive abnormalities. And just to give people kind of a, you know, a reference number in cows, they did a study with corn fed cows, which is most of our cows Feedlot cows. And they found 700,000 nanograms per liter of atrazine in the cow's blood.

Holy cow.

So I don't know how much of that actually translates into the meat at the end of the day and the steak, but I guarantee you the fat is really toxic, you know, because these, all of these estrogens, these artificial estrogens, they store in the fat. And that's one of the problems that's confounding a lot of scientific research today because guys like me are trying to study bacon or something in the lab, but then we're just going to the store picking up industrial bacon, and who knows if we're actually studying the fat or we're studying these artificial chemicals that are in the fat, that are causing fat gains, that are causing depression, that are causing infertility. So that's a big problem. And atrazine is one of the key, the key kind of, you know, components to that problem.

Can you filter that out of the water?

Definitely. You can filter all of these. And charcoal is the, is the secret. I used to use it in the lab. I've, I've published peer reviewed papers using activated charcoal. It, it pulls out anything that's hydrophobic. So that includes all these hormones. Includes all these artificial hormones and it works.

Yeah, you're talking about an activated charcoal filter. You're not talking about activated charcoal capsules?

No, I'm not. But you can use those too. I just mean like a Brita filter. Most of these Brita filters, these other companies, I personally use one called Berkey.

But yeah, I have a portable Berkey water bottle, like a sport water bottle that I travel with. So when I'm at the airport, if I don't want to spend $6.99 on a Pellegrino, then I'll just go fill it from the water fountain and drink through this Berkey water filter. And that's very similar to a charcoal.

How do you do, like these long races that you do?

What do you mean, like, what do I drink when they handle it?

Yeah. Do you just use plastic or do you have checkpoint?

I literally run through the checkpoint and grab whatever that volunteer happens to be handing me. And I have come back with parasites and crap from Thailand and I've drank some of the nastiest water on the face of the planet that just gets shoved down your throat when you're in a race. And there's not a lot you can do about it. There's one supplement that I use called oral IV And I race with that. And I did a podcast with actually the doctor who designed that. I'll, I'll link to it in the show notes if you guys want to, want to listen in. Uh, but that allows me to drink about half as much water as I would normally need to drink during a race. So I can mitigate some of those damages. But yeah, I mean, you can't. I mean, when you're running through a race, you can't spend like 10 seconds filling up your little Berkey water bottle filter. Cause that, I mean, when you're in a race where, you know, you're running a five and a half minute mile and trying, trying to, to stay in the, in the heat, it means it's not like just stop and ask people if you can run the water through a charcoal filter real quick.

Well, what about training, though? Real. What about training? Because people ask me this all the time and I honestly don't know what to say.

What do I drink when I'm training?

Yeah, I mean, how do you handle long distance endurance training and carrying water?

Oh, well, for that I just fill up at home. I mean, at home, what my water is, because I like sparkling water. I order every month a big case of Pellegrino.

Nice.

And then I also have a well. And my well water gets filtered through manganese and an iron filter because those are the two minerals that were found in very high amounts in my well, which are okay in lower amounts, but they're pretty high in my well. Believe it or not, not all water running underground is pristine. And our ancestors would have got, you know, if I were, if I were one of our caveman ancestors, I'd have hemochromatosis from excess iron buildup. And yeah, it's, it's great for energy but, but bad for the heart. And then, then I also, because I'm still concerned about glyphosate runoff. Speaking of, of, you know, atrazine, glyphosate's another issue from, from nearby farms, from crop dusters overhead, et cetera. So there was another guy interviewed on the show named Zach Bush, triple board certified physician who developed this stuff called Restore, which basically it's a lignite based product that protects the gut against the ravaging effects of glyphosate. So what I do is if I'm going out for a long training session, I'll take my water bottle with me and that'll be full of, you know, or my camelback or how long I'm going of just water from My home. And then three times a day I do a shot of that restore stuff. And then when I'm off and I'm doing a race, when I get to wherever I'm going to be racing, I go to the local Whole Foods or whatever and buy a whole bunch of glass bottled water. I drink good water, but during the race itself, I take this oral IV and then I use little cups of water that they hand me during the race. And then I do use some of the mitigation strategies you talk about in your book that I also want to get into as far as de estrogenifying my body. And that's actually what I wanted to delve into in just a minute. But before I I can't neglect asking you about this epigenetic component that you talk about, about the obesity issues caused by estrogens actually potentially being passed on to future generations. Can you fill me in on how that would work?

Yeah, I mean, people are usually confused about the title of my book until I explain that and what that is. It's epigenetics and what epigenetics are. I like to use the analogy of musical notes, which is really simple. It's just basically, if you've got a staff with dots on it, musical notes say it's the song Mary Had a Little Lamb. You can pass that sheet music to somebody else and they can play Mary Had a Little Lamb. Super simple, super easy. That's like your DNA. But if you play chords and put notes on top of those notes, that's like epigenetics. Those are marks on top of the DNA. You can also pass that on to future generations or to somebody else and they can play that same song. So the DNA doesn't change, but those marks can change based on your diet and especially based on your hormones and your artificial hormones, like these artificial estrogens. They can literally change those marks. And scientists have shown obesity can be passed on. And what I mean by that is, I mean, you can be skinny, you can have a skinny DNA, but you can be exposed to enough of these chemicals and change your epigenetics and actually pass obesity on to future generations. But it's not just obesity, it's cancer and decreased fertility also.

Holy cow. So basically what you're saying is if mom is eating a bunch of edamame, drinking a bunch of soy milk, using a bunch of paraben and phthalate infused soaps and cleaning chemicals and things like that, that she could have a child who would basically be born with estrogen dominance?

That's Right. And in fact, they discovered epigenetics because of the Dutch famine back in the 1940s during World War II, the Germans, you know, there was this Dutch famine where these, the people literally didn't eat. And I mean, there was over a million people literally just had a total famine for a year. And all the babies born to the mothers that were pregnant during that famine, of course, were lighter and smaller. But that's expected, right? I mean, they were exposed to the famine. But what was crazy was recently, and by recently, I mean maybe 2003 or so 2005, somewhere in there, they discovered that the babies of those babies were also lighter and smaller, which can't be explained by DNA. So what they found when they started looking at it was the IGF gene, which is the insulin like growth factor. So one of these growth factor genes was actually the methylation. The DNA marks on the DNA were changed and that's been passed on to future generations. But you can also do the inverse of that. You can also, you know, increase your obesity, as opposed, in this case, that example, it's decreased weight, it's decreased size, but you can do the inverse of that.

That's crazy. You actually have a whole section in this where you go into a bunch of studies that have been done in fish and fish generations and fish fertility with estrogenic exposure. And I think the name that you give to this juvenile hyperestrogenism.

Yep, yep.

That would be. And that would also be. Would that be why a lot of girls now are going through their periods a lot earlier and. Or going through, going through puberty much, much earlier. Like girls at like 9 and 10 years old.

Exactly. And they're trying to define what's. What's really maddening about it is the doctors are literally proposing to, to redefine the normal age range of puberty because so many people are coming in at those low levels at those low ages with puberty, especially girls. And I did a YouTube video on that too, because it's so frustrating to me because rather than actually fixing the problem, we're just trying to redefine away the problem.

Man. It's crazy. Okay, let's talk about what we can do.

Yeah.

What are some of your top strategies to detox ourselves from estrogens? You talked about activated charcoal as being one thing that one could use. What are some other things that we could do to clean up our bodies when we know we've been exposed to estrogen sources or if we've just not been really paying attention to it for a Long time. And we know stuff is built up within our body.

Yeah, well, there's good evidence, really interesting evidence that actually omega 3 fatty acids help to diminish estrogen and artificial estrogen levels. It's not understood exactly why, at least I don't understand why, but it definitely happens. So that's one thing. And the other thing is again, these things are stored in the fat cells and I call it the estrogenic paradox in my book, because these estrogens, these artificial estrogens, they cause fat and they store in the fat. So it becomes real difficult. There's an interesting study about with mice. And they had two groups of mice, exact same exercise, exact same diet, but they put low dose atrazine in one of the group's water supply. Low dose. I'm emphasizing that because that's what humans are frequently exposed to. And the group with an atrazine exposure, drinking in their water, they had basically fat mice, they had fat gains. And so, you know, you can, you have to eliminate a lot of these estrogens, at least the ones that you're being exposed to on a daily basis. I mean, that's the foundation here. You've got to eliminate these things. Again, maybe an exposure here and there, not a big deal. You know, if you're traveling, if you're running a race, you know, you can take a charcoal pill and you don't want to constantly be taking charcoal, activated charcoal pills because you can get nutrient deficiencies, but once in a while you get exposed, you can take a activated charcoal pill. But the best, the best thing that I, that I talk about in my book, the best way to get rid of these is a sauna.

Okay, gotcha. I'll get into the sauna in a second because I actually have my own little protocol for that I want to ask you about, but I do, I'm pretty sure with the omega 33 fatty acids that basically there's two different ways that estrogens can get metabolized. One's like a C2 pathway and one's a C16 pathway, I think is the other one. And when they get metabolized on the C2 pathway, they get metabolized into what's called estrone and estradiol. And they lose a lot of their estrogenic activity. And from what I understand what a high omega 3 fatty acid consumption does is it promotes metabolism of estrogens via that C2 pathway. So you basically it helps your liver get rid of estrogens from the body a little bit more readily and converts them into a form where they're less extremely estrogenic. Which would mean, like, if you're doing a lot of, of, let's say, you know, even fermented soy or flax or a lot of these phytoestrogens that you should be prioritizing. One of the things that in my opinion goes along quite well with a plant rich diet, which is a lot of really good, like wild caught fish and, and eggs from, you know, pastured hens or, or you know, free range hens that are high in omega 3. So it's a really good, good one, two combo in my opinion. So, so we do our omega 3 fatty acids and we use things like activated charcoal and water filters. Sauna exposure. You definitely mentioned sauna exposure. I'm a huge fan of that. I, I hit the sauna like when I'm home every day. I, I get in the sauna like, and if I don't get, like, I didn't get in there this morning, I'll get in there tonight and I'll, you know, I a little incense stick and sit in there and I'll read books that I need to catch on until I've just lost a copious amount of sweat and then I'll get out and I'll replenish with some minerals. But one of the things, and I have a whole article about this whole protocol. It's@BenGreenfieldFitness.com hacked sauna. I talk about the use of like a niacin before you get into the sauna. Have you ever looked into that as far as detoxification is concerned?

No, but it would make sense. I mean, especially because that would probably even act on your epigenetics. It would change your epigenetics in a positive way. And that's something people forget, right? They think about epigenetics and how we're changing it in a negative way, especially in terms of my stuff. But yeah, you can actually change your methylation patterns in a positive way.

Really? That's interesting. I always did the niacin just because it improves cardiovascular blood flow and it actually increases lipolysis, which is the breakdown of the fats. And so when you first start doing it, you know, I used to get like rashes and little like zits and strange skin issues. And then eventually once my body detoxified everything, now I just feel like a million bucks. And I just do it because I feel amazing when I do it. But yeah, the niacin taken beforehand can really accelerate this detoxification. And as you mentioned, you know, a lot of these estrogens will store up in fat tissue. So if you lipolyze fats via something like the, the vibration of an infrared ray combined with the cardiovascular blood flow of something like niacin, it's a, it's a pretty good one, two combo.

So the B vitamins.

Yeah, yeah. And obviously, you know, exercise and anything that would promote lymph, fluid flow, rebounding, vibration platforms. As silly as it sounds, I mean the things actually work. But you're a big fan of sauna. Are there any studies on sauna by the way, that actually show sauna?

Oh, definitely, yep. I think it's a 20 year study actually they did over in Finland. A scientist did in Finland. He found that essentially anything under 11 minutes, or you can just say 10 minutes just to be able to remember it, but basically anything less than 10 minutes wasn't that efficacious. It wasn't that effective. But once you start going above 11 minutes four times a week, that's the sweet spot. I mean it's unbelievably changed. It improved all cause mortality, which basically means dying from just about anything you can think of. It improved that.

Yeah. And Alzheimer's by 60%.

Yeah. Neurological.

I know this research that you're talking about. I go to Finland every year for this biohacking summit over there which is just one of the most amazing conferences on the face of the planet. And we always sauna, but for like two to three hours every day. And you feel amazing. Now granted they don't do infrared over there. I like infrared even more for that detoxification effect. But for me, dude, every, every week I'm home, it's 30 minutes, five days a week I'm in that freaking sauna. And so it helps.

I agree. And I specifically said that in my book about infra. Infrared is definitely better because it heats up from the inside out. Heat and heat speeds up molecules, it speeds up molecular motion which pumps out a lot of these estrogen. And by the way, the scientist who did the big study on saunas that I was referring to, his name is Yaritza Laukonen and that's J A R I Yari. In case people want to look that up, I just want to throw that in there.

Yeah, he's got an amazing amount of content when it comes to the benefits of sauna, so. Absolutely. And you have an amazing amount of content in this book, man. Estrogeneration. For those of you who want to grab it, go to the show notes because over in the show notes. I've also put links to a lot of the stuff we talked about in terms of some of the things about phytoestrogens versus synthetic estrogens and that article I was talking about when it comes to lavender, Anthony's book, his website, my own how to detox your home article, my article about infrared saunas. I'll put a whole bunch of resources in there for you and it's all going to be@BenGreenfieldFitness.com estrogen so, Anthony, thanks so much for writing this book and for coming on the show and sharing all this stuff with us, man.

Thanks, Ben. Yeah, appreciate it.

All right, folks, well, until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield signing out with Dr. Anthony J. Check out the show notes BenGreenfieldFitness.com estrogen and have a fantastic week.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sam.