Podcast Episode #81: Could Low Testosterone Levels Be Affecting Your Health, Performance, Libido & Body Tone?

In this podcast episode all about testosterone, whether wheat germ helps you with performance, research on diet Coke, getting enough calories, duathlon training, leaning up quickly, saturated fats and magnesium.

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlois and wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill, cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Hey, podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield and yes, the results are in. I got my lab test back on my testosterone levels and hormone ratios. And so that's what today's podcast episode is about. Testosterone and how it affects your health, how it affects your performance, what the results of my testing actually were, and what I ended up doing to take care of my testosterone, which, if you listened to podcast episode number 62, you know, was pretty low and especially too low for the type of triathlon competition that I do. So we're going to get a great interview with Dr. Cohen about that. We've also got some wonderful listener questioners. You guys always challenge me with your questions, but I will continue to answer them. So let's get right into this week's podcast.

Special announcements.

All right, I've been talking about it quite a bit and I have decided that I am going to do it. I've asked you guys a few times whether it's something that you would like to see, gotten favorable feedback. So I am going to start a service called Ben's Body Transformation Club, and I am going to sit down every week and actually mail you, yes, physically mail you to your mailbox, in your home or at your home. Most people's mailboxes aren't in their home. I'm gonna mail you recipes, one recipe a week and a workout in which you get to choose a beginner, intermediate or advanced version and basically get full access to some private videos that I shoot online showing you how to prepare the recipes, how to do the exercises in the workouts, the recipes, you can put them right in your refrigerator. You can tuck your mealing for that week under your arm and take it with you to the gym. But it's called Ben's Body Transformation Club. And in the link to the show notes, this is podcast episode number 81. I am actually going to give you a link or you can go sign up to be one of the first members of the Body Transformation Club. It begins in March, Okay. This podcast is being released in February. This will begin in a couple weeks. I'm only going to start doing this with 50 people because it costs me some postage. I'm pretty much going to be breaking even on this thing. But I want to deliver you guys some value and give you an idea of how to eat and how to exercise properly and take a lot of the guesswork out of it for you. So what it costs you is $7 for a month of all the mail outs, and those are delivered every week. So like I said, we're going to be starting in March. You have to go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and click on the show notes for episode 81 to actually become a member and claim your slot. Like I said, there's only 50 people that get started in this thing. But I'm really looking forward to bringing those lucky people some pretty cool stuff every week. So the other announcement for this week is that I have another podcast really targeted to the triathlete community, and it's a completely free podcast. It's on itunes. It's the Rockstar Triathlete Academy podcast. It's released twice a month from rockstartriathlete.com and it's basically hosted by myself and Carey Sullivan, the other Coach over at Rockstartriathlete.com and it is different than the podcasts that are released to the members inside the Rockstar Triathlete Academy, but totally free iTunes podcast. You're definitely going to want to check that out. Full of kind of triathlon quick tips. So this first episode that was actually just released today, I believe is on swimming and juicing. So anyways, check that out and we're going to move straight into this week's Listener Q and A.

Listener Q and A.

Remember that if you have a question, you can email Ben greenfieldfitness.com you can call toll free to 877-209-9439 or you can Skype Pacific Fit. So for this week's questions, we're going to start off with a question from listener Deb. And Deb said, I've recently heard about a natural supplement called Octacosanol. I've read that it enhances athletic performance by increasing the body's ability to use oxygen during exercise. I've also read that it increases endurance by bolstering the oxidative capacity of the muscles and thus helps athletes hang onto glycogen stores. For those of you who absolutely do not understand what that sentence just said, essentially it means that you could use your fat utilizing muscles a little bit better and not go through carbohydrate quite as quickly. I'm wondering how accurate this information is. If this supplement is that powerful, why is it that it hasn't been provided or isn't promoted more for endurance athletes? I am a half ironman triathlete and would love it if this supplement is as fantastic as it sounds. Well, octacosanol is like you say, something that you can get out of wheat germ. You don't have to get it out of a bottle, out of a capsule. You can actually go buy powdered wheat germ and sprinkle a little bit of that on your salad or in your oatmeal or in some salt soup. But basically it's kind of a waxy substance. You can get it from other plant oils, but it's pretty prevalent in wheat germ, believe it or not. You can also get it out of sugar cane extract. It's called polycosanol. When you get it out of sugarcane extract. Not a lot of side effects that research has shown, but in terms of the actual research that has been done on its effect, specifically for the type of things that you're talking about, there's a few research studies that I'm aware of. One looked into the actual metabolism of these type of what's called a long chain fatty alcohol. And they found that it could possibly assist with cholesterol metabolism, meaning it could be something that could help you lower your cholesterol a little bit. And that study was not done in rats or mice, it was actually done in humans. So that'd be something to look into for that. But obviously it doesn't have a lot of performance implications. Those are more health implications. Now there was another study that was done back in 2003 that looked at rats and whether octocosinol supplementation in rats actually helped them run for a longer period of time. And the results actually did show that the rats could run about 184% longer when they were taking this supplement, which was very interesting. I'm sorry, 46% longer. 46% longer. 184% longer was in a control group of rats who weren't exercising at all, but 46% longer, which is pretty significant. And they did show some biochemical markers that suggested that the rats actually weren't burning through carbohydrate quite as quickly and were able to, like I said earlier, use a little bit more of that slow twitch fat utilizing type of muscle. Of course rats are different than humans, but it's a very interesting study and definitely would have implications in terms of suggesting that octacosinol supplementation could be something that would help an endurance athlete. There have been a few other studies that looked into things like lateral sclerosis and some other chronic diseases, and we don't get into those today. But essentially what it comes down to is that yes, there is some evidence in rats nonetheless, but evidence that suggests that that this wheat germ extract could actually help. So thanks for the question, and thanks for pointing that out to the listeners, and definitely something to look into. So the next question is from listener Christina and Christina says, I absolutely love your podcast and consider you a rare diamond in the rough among the health and fitness podcasts on itunes. Thank you, Christina. I'm a runner, just turned triathlete, and probably have some of the healthiest eating habits of anyone I know. I limit short sugar, empty calories and processed foods to special occasions only, like birthdays. My plate is always full of vegetables. I take recommended supplements, drink lots of water, limit alcohol to one glass or so of wine on the weekends, and cook my own healthy, natural foods. Here's my I love Diet Coke. In fact, I can't imagine a work day without it. On work days I typically have two, and on weekends about one or so. I never or rarely indulge in more than that. Looking at the ingredients, I find carbonated water, caramel color, aspartame, phosphoric acid, potassium benzoate, natural flavors, citric acid and caffeine, in that order. I have no idea as to what most of those are. Am I truly doing myself a disservice by drinking Diet Coke? And if so, how? I have not read any medical research that has convinced me to give it up. Well, the main thing, Christina, that you would want to worry about with the Diet Coke is not necessarily the carbonated water. Some of the acids are risky in terms of putting your body in a net acidic state, which has a lot of health and immune system complications as well as performance implications. But the main thing that you want to consider is the aspartame or the artificial sweeteners that are in diet soda. And there has been research that has been done on aspartame. Now, the idea is that the FDA approved aspartame back in 1981 for use as kind of like a food preservative, and they approved it for soft drinks in 1983. And the FDA declared it to be one of the most thoroughly tested and studied food additives that the agency had ever approved. And they claim that there were over 100 toxicological and clinical studies that confirmed aspartame to be safe for the general population. But there were some studies that have been done since then that suggest that that may not be the case. There was a study done in psychiatry where they had about 40 patients that were given 30 milligrams per day per kilogram of body weight of aspartame versus a placebo. And they found that the aspartame significantly affected mood disorders, which is interesting because one of the most moody guys in the PGA, John Daly, he drinks about 12 Diet Cokes a day, and he's all over the map in terms of mood. And the suggestion for this is that aspartame can inhibit something called serotonin in your brain, which can decrease the availability of a mood stabilizing hormone in your brain called tryptophan. Now, there was another study that suggested that diet soda consumption could actually increase your risk of obesity. And this study was done at the University of Texas, and they used 600 patients of a wide age range, 25 to 64 years old. And participants were 65% more likely to be overweight if they consumed one diet soda a day compared to if they drank none. And two or more of these diet sodas raise the odds of becoming obese or overweight even higher. Now, there's no evidence that suggests that all of those diet sodas were actually Diet Cokes, but there's definitely, and I'm sure that most of the listeners kind of have realized this, there's a little bit of an appetite stimulating effect when you consume diet foods. And that can even be said for something as simple as some of the gums out there. I've actually switched to chewing a gum that's primarily only like a xylitol based gum, still a sugar, alcohol still metabolized a little bit differently, but it doesn't have a lot of the other artificial sweeteners like aspartame and sucralose that some of the other gums do. Now, you'll find in addition to the aspartame or the NutraSweet that you get in diet sod or diet soda, there has been some studies that have been done on sucralose. And specifically animal studies have found that sucralose can shrink your thymus glands, which could severely affect your metabolism, enlarge your liver and your kidneys, atrophy some of your lymph follicles, which affects your immune system, reduce your growth rate, decrease your red blood cell count, and cause some gastrointestinal problems like bloating and diarrhea. So some problems with the, with the, with the sucralose as well, which obviously isn't in the diet Coke. But another study that was done on artificial sweeteners was again done on rats, where they gave rats one type of artificial sweetener called saccharin, and the other rats were given a natural high calorie sweetener like a sugar. And the rats that were given the artificial sweetener actually ate more in the meal after they had consumed the artificial sweetener than the rats that had consumed the regular sweetener. And so they were suggesting that there may be a little bit of an appetite stimulating effect there. So the two main things that I would be concerned about would be mood stabilization and appetite cravings. Now, there's a ton. If you were to go on the Internet and look tons of anecdotal research that people say that aspartame has given their kids seizures and resulted in a bunch of different, different neurological disorders, and people say that it's responsible for Alzheimer's. And there's just tons of kind of single case studies and anecdotal evidence out there that has gently pushed me in the direction of completely not drinking diet soda at all. Just because I figure even if there's not medical research that proves it, there's enough anecdotal evidence out there that suggests it may not be the best thing to be consuming for some of those more serious neurological disorders. So what I personally do is when I'm craving a diet soda or diet Coke is I do sparkling water with gum and usually I'll do this type of sparkling water that's like natural, lemon infused or lime infused and doesn't have the artificial sweetener. So great question, Christina. And the next question is from listener Jose. And Jose says, I have two questions for you today. The first is regarding a recent episode in which a listener asked you you about what would be an example day of your diet. I was surprised when I heard your answer because even though you didn't give the details of the amount of food that you eat for each meal, it seems pretty difficult to get the necessary calories that you probably burn each day from just almond butter, oats, once in a while, salads, fruit, a little yogurt, cheese, oil and protein powder. Did I miss anything in the explanation? Do you eat breads, cereals, meat all? Well, that's a great question, Jose. I have actually written a book about how to dump thousands of calories into your body without destroying your body. It's called holistic fueling or endurance athletes. And there's pretty much two places you can get it. There's a website called mindset triathlon.com where you can get it. And then Also my book triathlondominator.com or my package triathlondominator.Com and includes that book. And then all the members at the Rockstar Triathlete Academy get that book for free. But basically what I lay down in that book are a bunch of calorie dense foods that you can consume that make it so that you don't have to eat things like, you know, bread and oatmeal and cookies and bagels and all these type of sugar laden but nutrient depleted foods that a lot of athletes tend to eat as empty calories. What it comes down to, Jose, is that you could easily eat a thousand calories every meal and just be doing things like healthy fats, nuts, seeds, nut butters, potatoes, yams, parsnips, beets. There are all sorts of foods out there. The list goes on and on. But it really is a myth that you have to have bread and cereal to fill up your caloric needs. Now I do meat every now and again. You know, like last night I had about 8 to 10 ounces of halibut and I prepared that with mushrooms and onions and garlic. And my evening meals tend to be a little bit lighter like that, typically meat and vegetables. And I really kind of front load my calories and eat more of the carbohydrate based foods earlier in the day. And I would encourage you to do so as well. But what it comes down to is that yes, you can easily get as many calories as you need without consuming breads and cereals. Paleo diet is another fantastic example. So he has another follow up question. He says, This happened to me about four months ago. I'm recovering from an ankle sprain from running downhill on a mountain. Basically because I was going flat out in the trailer. Wasn't best for that anyways because my joints were kind of strong. I only got a grade one sprain. The problem is that following a recommendation from a friend of mine and adding the fact that I didn't want to stop training for too long, I only rested for one day and then began doing some low intensity cycling and walking right after. I also didn't wear any protection for longer than the first day. The consequence is that even though my ankle is now almost full, fully functional, I still feel some pain when doing certain movements. Is there any way I could make it heal Completely. Well, basically, Jose, when your body is healing, it lays down scar tissue and the scar tissue is laid down in not super nice little neat formations, but in a certain structured pattern. If you're trying to exercise or move a joint while it's going through the process of, of forming scar tissue, and for a grade one sprain that's typically about a one to three week process, then that scar tissue is not laid down properly and can become very immobile and inflexible and even produce pain. You can also get areas of hypoxia where the proper amount of capillaries aren't feeding that tissue the oxygen and the sugar the way that they should. So that area can cramp as well if it's not, not properly healed. That's why it's important to make sure that you really don't aggravate an area of your body as it's healing and try to train through an area. That being said, there are some options for you to go back and try to mobilize that scar tissue. Soft tissue mobilization is something that a lot of massage therapists can do. There's something called cross friction massage as well as trigger point massage. Another thing called myofascial release, which, and you also get kind of a scar management technique used by physical therapists which is a combination of massage with a silicone gel. Ultrasound therapy can help out a little bit as well. Most of the time it's going to be a massage therapist or a physical therapist who would be able to do this kind of work for you if you're overseas. That would be a physiotherapist. And there are also some other things that you could look into that are a little less established, but could also work something called Graston technique, which is kind of an instrument. Assisted soft tissue mobilization. Cold laser could help a little bit. Infrared light could help a little bit. So there's lots of things that you could throw at the issue, but ultimately what it comes down to is that you want to remobilize that scar tissue, try and break it up a little bit. And while you're doing that, don't be doing workouts that put a lot of stress on that joint. Try and stay non weight bearing on that ankle with things like, you know, water running. So great question. And then we're going to move on to a question from listener Jen who asks for a sufficient, sufficient type of drink for calories and nutrients. What is a good alternative to ensure. Since I no longer want to drink it after listening to your podcast on Suicide by sugar. Jen has a follow up question, but first I'm going to address this question. My answer Jen is I'm going to call you out on that one and tell you that you actually shouldn't really be drinking your calories and your nutrients. I find that my clients who do best at weight control and fat loss are the people who eat their calories primarily. And then any drinking is typically like an antioxidant beverage or a mineral beverage or an electrolyte beverage or something, something like that that doesn't have a lot of calories in it. Because the fact is that when you drink your calories and your nutrients you tend to consume too much too quickly and it usually doesn't satiate your appetite. I would really not be fueling yourself with a calorie laden drink unless you're right in the middle of exercise. Now if you are exercising, there are some drinks that I like. Hammer Nutrition makes a few like Perpetuum or Hedge Goo Sports which I use when I'm training for triathlon. They make one called Goo Electrolyte Brew. They also make one called Goo Recovery Brew. But for me I try to stay away from liquids as much as possible. Even after a workout I tend to go for real meals because they satiate my appetite and I tend to overeat a little less. So I would not be looking for a high calorie drink unless it's for during an exercise session. And then in your follow up question you say if sugar causes damage to arteries and imbalanced insulin levels leading to heart disease, does that mean saturated fats and regular fats are alright to eat in their pure forms that is not fried in vegetable oil? Well, yeah, there's a lot of good things about saturated fats. That's why I don't like the fact that butter and some of the fats that you'll find in meats and you know, coconut oil and things like that have been given such a bad rap. Saturated fats contribute to about 50% of your cell membranes. They're what gives your cells that that stiffness and the integrity that they need for proper metabolic function. So if you don't eat enough saturated fat, you aren't going to be able to form healthy cell membranes for calcium to be effectively incorporated into your bones. At least 50% of of the dietary fats used for that process are saturated. Saturated fats can lower levels of lipoprotein A, which is a substance in your blood that's highly correlated with heart disease. Saturated fats can help your liver to function properly. They can help protect your liver from things like alcohol and pharmaceuticals. You gotta have saturated fats if you want to properly utilize a lot of the essential fatty acids, like the omega 3 fatty acids and the omega 6 fatty acids that you hear about and get from, like the flaxseed oils or the fish oils. You also need cholesterol in your body. Cholesterol is a precursor to a bunch of different steroids and hormones, including one that we're going to talk about a little bit. You know, androgen, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone. It's a precursor to vitamin D, which is a super important kind of super vitamin, fat soluble, super vitamin. Your body makes bile out of cholesterol and you have to have bile to be able to digest food and properly assimilate nutrients. So there's a lot of benefits to cholesterol and a lot of benefits to saturated fats. And the trick is that you just need to make sure that you eat them in moderation, like half of a can of regular coconut milk. That's almost 100% of the of the average person's daily needs for saturated fat. So the trick is that you really have to moderate your intake of these. Okay, One marbly piece of red meat is probably giving you about two to three days worth of saturated fat. So the idea is that, yes, you can consume saturated fats, but just like about any good thing, it needs to be in moderation. So another question from listener Jeff and listener Jeff says, hi, Ben. I live across the pond in England. I came across you and your podcast purely by accident when I heard you in an interview on the Indoor Cycling Instructor podcast to which I also subscribe. Now, my question, which is a two part. I am, as you may have gathered, an indoor cycling instructor who teaches eight classes a week. As you can see, I'm fairly active and try to watch what I eat. However, I have just enrolled myself in my first duathlon. So I'm trying to shed a few excess, excess pounds and get to a lean race weight. But this is proving hard despite my best efforts, which draws me to the conclusion that my diet must need some adjusting. So can you give me some tips on the sort of diet I should be following and also at what sorts of time I should be eating my last meal? A few things that I'll do when I'm leaning up for a race. Jeff, is, is a. I completely quit eating two hours before bedtime. Okay. Enormously important that you not go to bed with high insulin levels or a lot of food. In your stomach when you're not going to be metabolizing that blood sugar or moving to enhance your sensitivity to that insulin. The next thing that I do is I really, really focus on something I talked about earlier in this podcast, Front loading my carbohydrates and eating more of my carbohydrates earlier, early in the day. Another technique that I use is I get up in the morning on an empty stomach and I do aerobic exercise for 20 to 30 minutes. Light walk, light jog, light bike ride, light swim, a little bit of elliptical work, anything like that. But it needs to be on an empty stomach. And I will enhance that by consuming caffeine like a cup of black coffee before I actually do that. And then the final trick that I'll use is I kind of shift to a little bit higher protein intake and especially in lunchtime in the afternoons, higher protein, higher fat intake, a lot lower carbohydrate intake. So my body has to dip into some of those adipose tissue stores for energy. And then the second part of Jeff's question, he says, as I mentioned earlier, I've enrolled in my first duathlon, which is in a little over two months time. It is only a short sprint distance, so I should be okay. I don't expect to place, but I don't want to place last. So the second part of the question is, could you recommend a good training schedule that would help me to hopefully complete the event in a respectable time? For duathlon, Jeff, I would really recommend that you focus on the most important component and that is making sure that you get bricks in. I would actually be doing one to two bricks a week where you're focusing on running off the bike, sometimes doing multiple bricks where you're biking and then running and then biking and then running. As far as actually putting, you know, a good training schedule together, shameless promotion here. But that's what people pay me to do, is actually write out training schedules. If you go to pacificfit.net what I do is I have a comprehensive form that you fill out. It tells me your family life, your schedule, what you have available to you to train, basically everything. And then I create a training program for you based off that. But it's really tough for me to do anything and give you some general recommendations on a question like that. So hopefully that helps you out. And then I had a calling question actually from one of my clients because I suggested the magnesium oil to him.

Hey, Ben, this is Bill Sutherland. I just wanted to let you know that I tried that ancient minerals, magnesium, oil, and it's really been great stuff for me in a matter of about five days. I started on the 28th. My wrist had arthritis or still has arthritis in it, but it no longer hurts. And I rub a little bit on there every day. The other thing I was going to tell you is I've had a kind of a skipped heartbeat and I've had it for 10 years and I've noticed since probably Sunday, which would have been the 31st, that all of a sudden it's not skipping anymore. So I've been monitoring that every day and every day it's not missed a beat. So anyway, just wanted to let you know that that was that I used that ancient mineral sp magnesium oil and works real well. Thanks a lot.

Well, thanks, Bill. And I'll put a link to that magnesium that Bill talks about in the show notes to this episode, episode number 81. And if you'll remember, we did have a listener who asked a question last week about restless leg syndrome and he wrote me back in. And after the podcast, he did find something that also helps helped him out a little bit. It's called Restful Legs. And he wrote me in and told me this. So I looked at the ingredients of this thing called Restful Legs and it is a homeopathic, meaning that it's a blend of different extracts. And this one in particular has an arsenicum extract, something called Pulsatilla, and then sulfur and zinc.

So there you go.

If you have restless leg syndrome and you listen to last week's podcast, then looking at Restful Legs. And thanks for the tip on that, Paul. So if you're liking this podcast, then please leave us a ranking in itunes. It takes me quite a bit of work to put this out there for you and, you know, help you out in the way that I do. But I really love to do this and I love to be able to get some of the people that like Dr. Cohen, who I'm going to be interviewing next on the show. And by you leaving a ranking, it truly helps me in those efforts. So go to itunes, do a search for Ben Greenfield Fitness and leave us a star ranking and even a comment. Love to see your comments as well. And I change things in the podcast if you guys suggest them in those comment areas. Just be nice, please. So let's move on to this week's interview on testosterone with Dr. Cohen.

Featured Topic hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield and I have a guest on the other line who you may be familiar with, the doctor from bioetics Dr. Richard Cohen. Dr. Cohen, thanks for coming on the line today.

Hey. More pleasure.

All right, well, cool. What we are going to be talking about today is or are hormones. And as many of you may know, I actually have been tested by Bioetics to find out some of the factors that are essential in terms of what are called internal performance factors. And you're definitely going to want to supplement this podcast by going back and listening to podcasts number 53 and number 62, if you really want the full picture of how to understand what's going on inside your body. And both of those podcasts were with Dr. Cohen as well. Today we're going to talk about how I got my testosterone levels tested, why I did that, and what the results actually were. And then we're going to talk about how we attacked some problems that were identified so that I could have better energy, be stronger, and get better performance as an athlete. So I think a really good place to start here, Dr. Cohen, would be for you to explain to the people listening about what hormones are essential to test and why.

Got it. Okay. So as Ben was saying, the hormonal, we call it the stress and recovery hormones, they're sort of a critical marker of these two phases of physiology. And one is anabolic and the other is catabolic. And in a real simplistic way, anabolic is growth, recovery, repair. And its use, you look at a teen is anabolic. They can continue to wear themselves down. And Even into our 20s, we have this huge anabolic reservoir. While there are other many factors that come to play, at least the messengers are the hormones. And we could talk a little bit more about that. We have anabolic hormones that signal the cells of the tissue to repair, recover, and to grow. And, you know, we can, I don't want to sort of misnomer of the anabolic steroids. And that's sort of, sort of a waste basket of a term anyway. But that's what the term anabolic is. So anything that will repair, recover, and grow has an anabolic nature, and that's youth. Catabolic is aging. You know, catabolic is the ability of the body to break down. And there are times we need to do that. You know, in the, you know, there's always a yin and yang in any process, but the key is, the key is the balance. So anything, any hormone that would have a catabolic or breakdown nature or inflammatory nature tends to be in that area. And predominantly the catabolic hormone of major is cortisol. It's the stress Hormone that we experience. And the predominant anabolic hormones are testosterone, growth hormone, and sort of variants or breakdown products of those, too. So in youth, we have large amounts of testosterone, growth hormone. Obviously, women will have a much lower percentage than men, but it's still relatively high as they get older. And in. As you get older, those begin to decline. And this ratio, this anabolic catabolic ratio will begin to lessen. And not only lessen with age, it'll lessen with training or the types of training. And that's sort of the key point there. And that's why it's an important marker of not only your training program or over training, but it's also a marker of how are those other factors involved helping the body signal these messengers. And that's what hormones are. They are messengers.

Okay. And so several months ago, you tested me for my anabolic catabolic hormones, and we found essentially that I was pretty low. I was disappointingly low, especially as an athlete.

Correct.

Now, when you tested me, and I've been tested twice now, once just a couple of weeks ago, and once a few months ago, you sent me a tube that I dripped saliva into, stood over it for about five minutes, and I smelled a jar of peanut butter.

To make myself salivate.

But you also include a little thing.

There that you can chew to include more saliva, which I discovered the second time. I didn'ti didn't find that in there the first time. I missed it.

Sure.

But basically, I dripped the saliva and then I sent it off with kind of the prepaid mailing box that you included along with the tube. And I know that a lot of people have asked me why I didn't just go to the doctor and get blood drawn to find out my testosterone levels when I did this. And could you explain to people the difference between getting a blood salivary test andor I'm sorry, a blood testosterone test or hormone test and a salivary.

Sure. Okay. Well, I'll try and whittle down an hour chat to two minutes here. There are lots of ways to look at hormones, and you can look at hormones through the blood, you can look at hormones through saliva, and you can look at hormones through urine. And each one of those has their personal particular benefits. The key benefit of saliva, without getting technical, is when the serum, where the hormones are present, gets into saliva. Actually, that process through the lymph acts as sort of a sieve. So whatever hormones are present in the saliva are the actual bioavailable. You see, when hormones go through the blood, they're Actually bound predominantly to proteins. So when you check a blood level, most people will have a blood level checked. They'll check total testosterone. What total testosterone is, it tells us how much hormone testosterone is present, but it doesn't differentiate between that that is bound to protein and that is actually freely available to actually make a difference. So while there's a correlation, if you're total testosterone is high, it's generally assumed that you're okay. But frequently that's not the case, especially for testosterone levels that might be mid range. And you could say, a doctor may say, oh, that's fine because it's within the range. But if there's a large amount of this binding protein, then the testosterone is not doing its job. Saliva sort of eliminates that factor completely because everything you see from saliva is bioavailable. So it just gives you a very clinically relevant level of hormones. While you can measure free testosterone in the blood, there's very few labs that actually truly measure it. A lot of times they will calculate it and that can give you erroneous results as baseline testing. Saliva is a wonderful tool. The other benefit to saliva is you do it at home, it's painless and you could do it multiple times. We're using a new lab from the one I. The lab we use for bioetics actually uses four tiny little tube spins. So you could do them through the day and the new assessments will average out the hormone levels which will fluctuate through the day. So you can sort of see peaks and valleys and they'll account for that. Or you could do series of testosterone on different days. So it's much more user friendly, it's much less expensive, and you know, generally it's more reliable and clinically relevant. Like I said, we could go on about, are there some downsides to saliva? If you're using topical hormones, you need to be aware of that because the levels change and that's a topic of a different conversation. But as a baseline assessment, extremely reliable, convenient, easy and inexpensive.

Okay, so I got my saliva tested a few months ago and I sent it off to you and the results were not good. I think I was at. Let me check my results. I think I was at 43 and I know you have a place online where I can go log in and check my results. I just don't have that pulled up. But you wanted that to be okay. I'm sorry. 46.3. When we talked, what were your recommendations for people who are wanting better energy levels or to enhance their performance in sports?

Right. That's a good question. And here's sort of one of these highlight points of what we try and do and sort of the bioetics concept. And you have to be wary of lab tests. So lab tests typically are set up to rule out disease at Bioetics. And what I did for many years in my practice was we looked for optimal health. So standardizations of labs don't necessarily distinguish whether you're healthy or not. It just distinguishes if you're not outright deficient. And that's the case with testosterone. Laboratory ranges again for saliva are going to be different than testosterone in the serum. We're looking at a different compartment, but the overall lab range that we've seen or the lab sees, and they'll vary depending on the lab you're using by a little bit. But in essence the range might be 35 to 120. So if you're under 35, you're outright deficient or it's a medical issue. It's hypogonadal. You're severe deficiency in hormones. If you had come tested this when you were 18, perhaps maybe your hormones were 100 or 110 at that point in saliva, it'll vary. I mean the same way. Every person's a little different. And believe it or not, there's studies that look at testosterone levels in orthopedic surgeons versus pediatric pediatricians. And guess what, the orthopedic surgeons have higher testosterone levels. Football players have higher testosterone levels than chess masters. There is a psychological biological link to that high testosterone with regard to competitiveness and combativeness and risk and threat. So everyone's baseline, where they were when they're youth is different. And that's sort of nice to know if in retrospect you can't go back. But if you ever had, if you're in your early 20s or mid-20s, get a baseline, know where you are. At least you know, training will throw that off and we'll get to that. So you were 46. So if we look at that range of 30 to 35 to 120, you're down near the bottom. Now, you're not outright deficient, but are you where you were when you were 10 years ago before you started training hard? No way. Maybe you were 80 or 90. So you're not at your youthful optimal level, your individual youthful optimal level. And that's, that's, that was the concern.

And I mean, I'm only 28 years old, so I know there's a, there's a lot of people a Lot older than that, that listening to this show.

Right. So my analogy always for guys was if you imagine again going back to hormones are messenger or, you know, it's almost like living life in. You know, I used to say to guys, it's okay, you're getting, the signal's getting through, but it's almost like the bandwidth is narrowed down now. So you know, your signal is in, in mono or it's dial up as opposed to dsl. So it's just a slower connection, not as much of a signal and you're not going to recover as quick. All the benefits of testosterone are just not going to be amplified the way they should be. And that's where you were. So the challenge was why, why is that the case? And that's where we went from trying to understand that.

So what we did over the past few months was kind of interesting because you had me start a few different protocols and basically I was doing three things and I was taking vitamin D, I was taking an essential amino acid powder. And then I was also taking the last thing, which I'm holding right now in my hands, something you sent me called a testosterone support formula. And that has a kind of a cocktail of ingredients in it that I'm looking over. But can you walk the audience through why you had me do what you had me do to get my testosterone levels back up?

Sure. Okay. You know, so let's look at some of the causes and just let me highlight, I was not that surprised that you were low. I mean, may have been more shocking to you. But we frequently see with doing more and more testing out at bioetics endurance athletes, low and less than optimal, we'll call it in their anabolic catabolic ratio, which highlights. The point is you can be very fit, but not necessarily healthy. So it's understanding why this occurs. So endurance training or high level endurance training is a major stressor on their anabolic catabolic ratio. So it's almost a given. So what we need to do is understand why, what's going to amplify the signal. And so the evaluations that we put you through, we're looking at some of these key foundational factors, these performance factors that will go into play to allow the body to do what it needs to do. In your case, vitamin D, amino acids, magnesium, zinc levels, mineral levels, essential fatty acids, they're all critical to be at an optimal level because they control the cells, they control enzymes, they control neurotransmitters. All these physiological biochemical parameters are necessary for that signal. To be released from the brain. And that's what happens. The brain releases this signal which tells the testes in men to produce testosterone and then that testosterone is released. It has to circulate through the system. It's bound to a protein as a carrier and then it needs to stimulate the receptor. So there's a number of different areas. The pituitary gland could be out of whack. The testicles, the testicles could be not producing, there could be too much protein carriers, the receptors could be down regulated. So, you know, it seems very complicated, but you know, the beauty of it is, is when the body is balanced, it figures how to fix it, you know. You know, and yes, you could do all sorts of biochemical blood tests to try and figure out where the imbalance is. And you know, if someone's very low, someone has severe issues and they're hypogonadal and you can't recover it. That's a medical workup to begin to identify the causes. But what we found is by restoring some of these optimal levels and addressing nutritionally, which you're pretty dialed in on. Although we did find that maybe dietary wise, more proteins were going to be important for you. But lifestyle training, stress, in today's world, a lot of the xenoestrogens, especially bisphenols from plastic water bottles and I'll highlight there any man who's drinking from a soft water bottle and putting in their bike in heat is getting a good dose of estrogen. So just throw them away.

And there are water bottles out there that are BPA free.

You can just check the, you can get BPA free now. So I mean we've actually seen BP estrogen levels up after guys drinking water out of bottles. It's a problem. So all these lifestyle, modern lifestyle factors are a major load within the system. So getting back to you is we knew you were pretty good, very good compared to everyone. With regard to the lifestyle factors. We made some tweaks and then we just picked off the three or four things that were not optimal. You know, your amino acids. I recall the D was pretty good, but we made sure that that was, you know, ideal. I think you're, we didn't do AFA with you, did we? I don't think we were doing that at that point.

No, we haven't, we haven't done much with the essential fatty acids yet.

Right. So that's, we had talked, we've talked about that. But you know, that was, that's a newer test of ours. But you know, by restoring Those few things. And then in your case we had an option of, okay, do we just do that and then wait and retest you or are you low enough? And certainly since you are in active training, do we just give you some support to cover you, some nutritional herbal support? And then I think that's the key point here is there are lots of ways to recover hormones. And primarily first thing to do is restore imbalances, restore these sort of blatant imbalances which we're assessing. And generally if the body's in a good place, you can see a boost in hormone levels. But if you're going to continue to train hard, that's still going to be a stressor on the system. So it's like, okay, what else can we do? Well, there are particular herbs and nutrients that have been well studied to have effects on these key pathways that we discussed. The brain's ability to release a signal to the testes, the testes ability to produce testosterone, the body's ability to not bind up too much testosterone in the serum, and then the receptors on the cell ability to recognize that. So there are four areas and the fifth one I consider as a major issue is not having too many estrogens in your system, because estrogens will actually down regulate or it serves as the body's natural feedback to stop testosterone production. Testosterone naturally converts to estrogen. So that's the body's thermostat system. It's like the heat in the house going too high, the thermostat shuts off the heat. So having too much estrogen, besides having side effects of too much estrogen, which would not be desirable for a man, it shuts down natural testosterone production. So the formula we use uses a number of different herbs that have the ability to support all those systems in a nutritional manner. So working with your body to help that process along. Now you can go out and go to bodybuilding stores and sports supplement stores and you can find pro steroids and pro hormones and things such as that. And they work differently. I mean, in essence those are just legal hormones in the fact that they don't. Some have direct receptor activity, meaning they sort of act like testosterone, some don't act directly, but they're one or two biochemical steps away. So you take them and they convert to a testosterone like molecule which directly stimulates the receptors. So in essence that's a testosterone replacement. And you know that, that has issues with testing, you know, and also has issues where you're not really working with your body at that point. You're just.

When you say that has issues with testing, what do you mean?

Oh, if you're a competitive athlete who might have drug testing.

Okay, gotcha.

So anyone who has drug testing and using a pro steroid or pro hormone product, they may find it works really well for them, but you're gonna probably be called to task on that because you'll test positive within their parameters. So that's a second or third line choice. And it's really in my book, someone who is very deficient can't recover by doing all these basic core steps. And the other risk of using some of these pro steroid prohormone is if you continually use those, you can further reduce your body's natural production. And that's why there's a place for that. But that's why people cycle them. Because if you use them for periods of time, you do shut down and develop some issues. But that's not our goal. We're working with the biology, and that's. So the herbal formula that used just natural herbs, none of them have any issues with regulatory racing testing, and they work to support those four different pathways. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah.

Makes perfect sense.

Yes. And, you know, and I guess the one other thing is, while you don't need to cycle them to be concerned about negative effects, you know, most herbs, when you take them, it's generally good to cycle them just to have a continued effect. Like anything, the body begins to recognize things and become familiar with them. So some of these active constituents in the herbs become a little less effective. So.

Right. And that's why I've been following your instructions that you sent along with this. I kind of have cycled through it throughout the week. So there's some days that I don't take it and some days that I do take it.

Right. And then take a break every four weeks or so for a week and then come back to it. So it's basically fresher to the body. And these phytonutrients that are present in the herbs have a greater likelihood of having a stronger effect. Yeah.

Okay. So I did all these things. This testosterone support formula, you sent the vitamin D and then the essential amino acids, and then I retested. And while I was actually on this protocol, I wasn't actually getting numbers. I didn't know what was happening to my testosterone, but I was feeling some of the changes that I guess I would have expected to feel if my testosterone levels were increasing. A little less sore after workouts. I actually was getting a lot more. I Did. I did a lot of basketball and.

Stuff in the off season.

I felt like I was getting a lot more competitive. Not in a bad way. I wasn't ripping people's heads off or anything or going Incredible Hulk in the grocery store, but I was just. I felt like I had a little bit more aggressiveness and competitiveness. Definitely noticed changes in terms of, like, bedroom sexual energy. I noticed changes in the. The amount of weight that I was able to or even wanting to lift in my weight room workouts. And then I also found that I was bouncing back a little bit quicker from my workouts in terms of energy. So I kind of knew that some things were happening. I just wasn't sure if they were placebo or if they were actually real. And then I retested the testosterone levels, and literally just a few days ago, you sent me my results back, and now from 46.3, my testosterone is at 74.2. And I haven't talked to you since I got these results. But is that good?

Yeah, it's much better. Correct. So you see 74 for that where you are not really concerned at all. It would be nice if we were 90, but we're ultimately. I don't know where you were when you were 20. So based on. I couldn't have said any better. You really just explained exactly the normal beneficial effects you're gonna get from having a good hormone level. So it's right on. So, hey, you're feeling the effects. Your hormone levels are up. I think it's not worth worrying about at this point. Whatever we're doing is getting the job done. And you have to. While we like to use numbers doing these assessments, ultimately it's also feedback, because a number is a number. And ultimately it's using those numbers to guide you and determine, hey, are you experiencing this or not? Where that may be a great number for you, but like, some guy who was 130, 76 initially would be a problem. Especially if you say, hey, I'm not recovering well and I'm flat in the bedroom, I might drive, I don't want to get out and race and et cetera. It's like, okay, so it's a little bit of. It's a lot individualized as well right now.

One last thing I wanted to ask you was some of the other hormones that I'm seeing on my results sheet. Obviously the one that we really wanted to focus in on was the testosterone. But you've tested some other things as well. And can you talk about that?

Sure. So the Ones you can test a number of different hormones. We try and Screen out currently 4. Testosterone, estradiol, DHEA and cortisol. So as we talked at the beginning, testosterone and cortisol are the primary anabolic catabolic hormones and for men and women, and while the ratios are different, you certainly can pick off women who it might be too low and similar type symptoms if testosterone is very low. The concern more so in men because we're not looking at estrogen or progesterone, which are present in both men and women, but at just different levels. We all have the same hormones, it's just the ratios and levels amount which are different. But my concern is anyone that might have a lower testosterone, I want to make sure that their estrogen isn't too high because as I said, estrogen can suppress testosterone and there's just so many environmental chemicals now that it's a problem generally seeing it less of an issue. Estrogens in endurance athletes tend to be leaner and estrogens tend to get stored in the body fat. And in fact, the more fat you have, the more estrogen you make, and the more estrogen you have, the more body fat you have. So it's a vicious cycle. So anyone who has trouble losing weight or feeling doughy or soft, generally it's highest estrogen, estradiols higher than they need to be and also cortisol because those will work together. So in men, estradiol acts as a catabolic breakdown hormone. It's opposing the anabolic testosterone. And then the other hormone we look at is dhea. And DHEA is sort of right in the middle. It's sort of, it's an adrenal hormone, but it can go to testosterone, especially in women, and it acts as a stress recovery booster. It declines as we age and declines with stress. So if I see DHEA low and although there's no cortisol shift, it's a definite sign that the body's under stress. And you can restore that or take some. We use a DHEA cream, actually different ones in men and women. One DHEA called seven keto DHEA that doesn't convert to estrogen. It's one of the problems with dhea and in men DHEA will not convert very readily to testosterone. But in women, DHEA can be a nice sort of precursor to enhancing testosterone. So we're not also prescribing testosterone that gets again into medical type issues. But if your DHA is low, you can, you can, that's some an over the counter, although again Someone who's racing is going to be testing, they'd want to probably not use DHEA or, you know, be aware of, of that, since that can go to testosterone in a small amount and that may shift some of the urine testing and come up as. And I think most professional psyching rituals, DHA is, is a banned substance. So the rules are sort of strange. So from a practical point of view, DHEA gives you a sign of that stress response. And in women, if their testosterone is low and DHEA is low, that's a good hormone to consider taking a small amount of. I think they'll get a nice. Generally get a good boost from that. And like I said, estradiol, definitely in men, you want that to be less than an average amount. And in your case, that was good. So we saw, I think your estradiol was 0.7 and good range is 0.5 to 1.5. And I like to see it one or under. You actually need a little bit because going too low is also an issue. Estrogen has some effects on the brain in a positive way for men. So it's all yin and yang, same thing. Anabolic, catabolic, you need a balance. So looking at that more, and we've actually added. We didn't originally do the estradiol and DHEA in both, but, you know, I started looking at the pictures, coming back and trying to understand the scenarios and, you know, we're just missing out some information. So we just get a more complete information from this so we can get a better sense of where people are. Right. So it's nice to sort of, to see that whole picture. And again, if we go back to blood, these are numbers that you typically are not going to get. So just doing a total testosterone in blood doesn't tell you, doesn't tell you where your estrogen doesn't tell you where the catabolic cortisol is. And actually cortisol done by blood is a stressor, so you actually could get a misleading result. So that's one of the benefits, again, from saliva. The best way to look at cortisol, because it's a hormone that has a very strong circadian rhythm, the levels will be 20 times higher in the morning than it will at night. Which just as an aside, if you're ever sick, sometimes you feel better in the morning and then at night you feel trashed out or you're tired. Well, your natural cortisol levels have gone down and part of the reason to sleep is to recover and you're recovering your Cortisol levels, it's that circadian rhythm. So you can do, if someone is truly having a stress response and not recovering, you can do four samples of cortisol with saliva through the day and you can begin to see where the rhythm is off and make some changes. So you're not going to do that with blood. So another benefit of saliva from a practical testing point of view.

Well, obviously a lot of information as far as hormones are concerned and you know, like I said, if you're listening in and you just want the full picture of everything, you know, after you listen to this, go listen to podcast 53, go listen to 62 and it'll kind of put everything together for you and you'll be an expert on what you need to know about as far as what's going on inside your body, whether it's just for your health, for your energy, for your performance levels, whatever.

Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, Ben, it's like a little bit of a little owner's manual to our body. Our body, our body never came with an owner's manual. We've relied on doctors to tell us how that works. And you know, unfortunately nowadays, you know, primarily disease oriented and you know, what we're hoping to. What I'm trying to do is give you a healthy orientation of some of the most important things you need to know about your body and you know, the ability to do your own monitoring, which is sort of cool. Right? Right.

All right, well, cool. I'll put a link to bioetics in the show notes so that people can go check out how to order a testosterone kit to get themselves tested. And you can go to the show notes for this episode, number 80 and check that out. So just go and read the show notes. There'll be the links for you to read a little bit more. I'll put a link to the other podcast on which Dr. Cohen was giving us more information. And Dr. Cohen, I want to thank you for coming on the line today.

Hey, I appreciate it. It's always fun.

All right, we'll catch you later.

Thanks, Ben.

Alright, bye.

So Biolytics is the place to go. Bioletics.com mention my name and they'll take good care of you. Trust me. A lot of my clients have been having great success by implementing Dr. Cohen's suggestions and obviously I have been enjoying his suggestions myself. Now remember to go to itunes and leave us a ranking. Write me a question if you have one. Check out the brand new Rockstar Triathlete podcast by searching for it in itunes. And then finally, my new Body Transformation club, Ben's Body Transformation Club, is available right now. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Click on the link to the show notes for this podcast, podcast number 81, and you can start getting very special pieces of mail from me beginning in March. Until next time, have a healthy week. This is Ben Greenfield signing out.

Sam.

Sa.