S3:E6 - Understanding Womens Hormones | Coach Jake Carter on the Wolfs Den

Welcome to the show that entertains and educates. Welcome to The Wolf's Den. My name is Mark Ottobre, your host, and in today's show we're gonna go deep inside the world of female hormones and female health. Please welcome our guest for today, Coach Jake Cardall. Welcome, Jake.

Thank you.

So welcome to Australia. How have you been finding Australia?

You know what? Pretty good compared to Manchester. Manchester, you just get cloud coverage from every angle. It's like Gotham City.

I'm a big Batman fan, so that actually sounds enticing to me.

That's pretty cool without being Batman.

Yeah, well, that's true. So you're going, you're hitting the, the states pretty, um, when I say the states, Australian states. You're hitting Sydney, Melbourne, Queensland, Perth, I think, yeah, with different topics in each seminar. So just tell us a little bit about that, what you're doing.

Yeah, so I've literally just finished day 2 of 3 for women's health, which I've been doing here in Melbourne. And then I'm doing like internships, you know, and then Sydney next weekend on gut health. And then we're doing some other things like learning to kind of read the body through physiological biofeedback markers, integrating a little bit of functional medicine, a little bit of TCM, like looking how to assess the skin, the nails, the tongue, and how to cross-correlate that with like blood work, for instance, just to really have a deeper insight into physiology, understanding of hormones and everything. So we can really fine tune the lifestyle, the training, the nutrition, just to maximize not just the physique, what we generally glorify, but also the health too.

[Speaker] So we're talking TCM, traditional Chinese medicine. Now for you, there's a lot of tools that I've seen you've been pulling from different areas. Let's just backtrack a little bit, talk a little bit about your origins, not go too far back, obviously, but talk about your origins. You started as a coach and then, and then from a coach, you got into comp prep. And then from comp prep, you got into the functional health. What was the pivot point from saying, all right, I'm not just going to do personal training anymore. I'm going to actually be more of a functional health practitioner or functional health medicine practice.

Oh, wow, okay. So it's, it's kind of done like almost a full circle because I started off in the industry young, like around like 15, just turning 16, self-employed and I got injured. I had a bulged disc in L3-4 and L4-5. So I couldn't really train and look how I wanted to look. So I couldn't really represent my business because I'm next to some big dudes, you know, which were like PTs. So I had to try and find a way that I could stand aside from the crowd and somehow represent or add value to my business. And that's where I fell into nutrition. But by doing so, I learned how to basically remediate and really speed up the recovery and get full recovery of my injury. So managing inflammation through, through certain mechanisms, you know, like your typical like ginger, your turmeric, your omega-3s back then when I was 16. And it really kind of, I fell attuned with it, you know, and developed my passion. And then I started learning more and more and more. And then, you know, from that you get into like your physique and stuff. And now it's kind of got to the kind of, kind of the point where my perception of the health and fitness industry is that it needs more, more of the health, the whole reason why I kind of got into it. So I'm pushing more the understanding of the dysfunctions, the imbalances, and trying to address that to get everything else as a byproduct, but it's like a foundational prerequisite for physique, but it's often overlooked.

Understanding the hormones, that is.

Yeah, and digestion and everything else.

So what were your go-tos to really delve into that world?

Originally, I didn't have much. So obviously I was young and I was self-employed. So I didn't really have much affordability. So I had to learn these physiological biofeedback mechanisms, how to read the body and understand it so I could fine tune it for myself and also my clients. Because back then being young and trying to tell, well, I didn't even know much about, I don't even think I knew about lab work, let alone how to read it. Complex, but back then I had to try and understand these symptoms and work with them. And that's what kind of made me go into that, that TCM approach.

Right, and when you started learning about TCM, so you haven't done like traditional degree TCM, it's more just short courses here and there.

Yeah, yeah.

And then a lot of self-learning and then actually looking at lab results and then applying.

Exactly.

So learning from, I suppose, the school of hard knocks.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Like learning from your own mistakes.

Yeah, so talking about lab tests, 'cause today we are gonna get into the female health and I will just, pause for just a second and just put a disclaimer on this is what we're going to cover today, it is not medical advice by any stretch of the imagination. Make sure you check with your doctor, check with your healthcare practitioner. Everything that we're going to share in this interview is strictly information purposes only, slash entertainment purposes only. So make sure you go to a doctor and work with someone who is qualified. Now that I've said the disclaimer, let's get into the good stuff. So what tests are you looking at primarily, not just females, but in general, what tests do you begin with?

So I always screen people subjectively first, okay? And I always, always like blood work, just a basic panel, you know, but the subjective questions, there's a lot what you can gain from that. And sometimes you can gain just as much as blood work. For instance, like if we talk about thyroid later on, I can explain why you may have normal levels of free T4, free T3, but you can still have hypothyroid from having low iron, for instance. But you 'cause you get all the symptoms. So that's why it's really important to actually understand the individual as well as the blood, you know, but as, as like, almost like a scaling system, I'd start everyone off with the subjective questions because they're free, you can do them remotely, and then a blood panel, you know, looking at your total protein, your albumin, your chloride, your MCV, MCHC, your iron, all the way through. And then, you've got two kind of groundwork to work on. You know, you've got, you've got your subjective questions, and then you've got your blood work, and then you can fine tune it. You know, do they need a CSAPX2, which is a comprehensive stool and parasitology test, but stool test, you know, or is it more Dutch panel to look at hormones, or, you know, is there some kind of issues going on where we may need an organic acid test? You know, so there's the two, which then help you guide to the others, and that's dependent on the individual, but the staple is just the questions.

Do you find yourself using, say, an organic acid test more over than the other ones, in terms of the go-to after you've done the blood work?

No, because the organic acid test is, I describe that as like a shotgun, right? Okay, you're looking at like neurotransmitters, your B status, how, and inside, how do they use carbohydrates, the fats, the biotransformation, the gut health, you know, but if you specifically know, okay, this person is suffering from, let's say endometriosis, then I would go for a Dutch panel. Because then we're gonna look specifically at your E1, your E2, your E3, so your different types of estrogen, along with their metabolites, so the 2-hydroxy, the 4-hydroxy, the 16-hydroxy.

Just explain the Dutch panel just a little bit more in depth. Is that, it's a blood test?

So the Dutch panel is a 4-point urine test, okay? So it's a much, much more accurate way to assess your stress chemicals and your hormones. For instance, if you're like me and a big pansy, when it comes to getting your blood taken, if you go to the doctors and you don't like it, you get your bloods done, they'll look at cortisol. Well, first of all, it's only giving you a snapshot in that moment in time for cortisol, but then also your stress chemicals are gonna be elevated because you don't like getting your bloods taken anyway. And then there was the salivary test, but that doesn't assess the complete picture of cortisol. So it's only representative of, some people say, 1%, you know, whereas when we look at the Dutch panel, it combines the free cortisol and the metabolized cortisol, and that gives you an insight to 80% of the cortisol, because it looks at stuff like the, the byproducts, the metabolites, you know, we've got factors such as cortisol binding globulin, which can bind onto it to render it inactive. For instance, if someone is obese, they can, they can appear to have a healthy adrenal pattern on the saliva. So when you do saliva testing, you know, it looks sweet, it's cool, but then if you actually did the urine assessment, the Dutch panel, it can be completely different.

Right. So the Dutch panel, you bring in a lot of the time as the second, for when you see, say, what are the telltale signs, I suppose, is what I'm really asking. What are the telltale signs from the initial subjective screening, to then go, right, I need to use the Dutch panel?

Okay, so for the Dutch panel, it's just hormones. If you wanna get fine-tuned with hormones, that's the one. Yeah, yeah, so.

And let's get into the female health side of things. Before we do, the comp prep, you see a lot of females for comp prep?

What I do, I did, but now it's more post-comp prep. Okay, so it's the flip switch, it's post-competition, they've had these issues and it's fixing those issues from the comp prep.

What are you seeing as a, like a pattern from that?

Issues with fertility, massive, massive through the roof. Hypothalamic amenorrhea. And there's a bigger rise more and more for female related kind of issues such as endometriosis or PCOS.

Are you running panels for the post-comp care?

Well, again, with the Dutch, That's just really good. You know, if someone does have endometriosis, they're gonna have increased 16-hydroxy metabolites. So then we could look to see if that is increased, because if that metabolic pathway for estrogen is increased, we know they're gonna be suffering more from the fibroids and other factors alike. So we could look to reduce that, you know? So that's, it's mainly, it used to be more before, but now it's actually more post-comp, what most people don't really think about. And females, yeah, it's again the Dutch, which is good, but the blood is good too, because it gives you an insight into the liver health, a bit into the methylation, you know.

[Speaker] So let's start with the, like before, so with the comp, there are a lot of girls who get up on stage and they say things like, well, you know, I can't get my legs lean, right? Everything else gets lean, but I can't get my legs lean. Now I'm a student of Charles Poliquin, I've done the BioSignature, then every BioSignature there is, all the CECs, and I've had some good results with some of the products and protocols that he uses, no doubt there. With that, and obviously for the viewers at home, the BioSignature is essential is essentially the correlation of hormones to your body fat. Now, when you do the blood work, what I at least found is it's not always a one-to-one ratio of perfect correlation. What have you found in terms of, well, I know it's kind of a loaded question, but what have you found in terms of women who come in, they're doing, they wanna do a comp prep, so they've got body fat on their legs, you do their blood work, what do you find there? And then how do you use a supplement protocol to get their legs lean?

So there's a number of factors really. So first of all, there's, you tend to find that with reverting all the way back to the ViyaSig, right? Okay, so that correlates a little bit with like meridian lines and other factors alike. So there is some aspects where like, for instance, if someone has colon issues, you know, if you palpitate the IT band bilaterally and they suffer sensitivity or pain, that can resonate with that. And then there's the, there was the later stages of the BioSig where they hypothetically said, if someone did have an excess storage of fat on the quads, that could be issues with the gut because the recycling of the natural estrogen. So there's some way it kind of crosses over, obviously like the pecs with aromatase, we know that for sure with bodybuilders when they're assisted, the gynecomastia will increase, or we can see like issues with cortisol Addison's. You know, so it does have some truth, but the truth behind it, well, yeah, yeah, it's like, I don't necessarily use the biosignature as a diagnostic. Not now. I used to, I used to, maybe 4 years ago, but now I try to understand the individual as opposed to what the calipers say.

So, say theoretically in your office walks in female competitor, hey Jake, I wanna get my legs lean, where do we begin?

Okay, so as with anything, you have to look at, what I do anyway, I look at the health handbrakes, I look at what metabolic dysfunctions may they have on their body, what stresses do they have? 'Cause if someone has, say for instance, issues with their cortisol, they're not gonna be sleeping, then the whole leptin and the ghrelin is gonna be off. Well, that's gonna, first of all, the leptin is gonna impact the thyroid, that's gonna create issues with the BMR, the metabolic rate, but also because they're not sleeping, the ghrelin goes up, they're gonna have more hunger and their adherence to the diet is gonna be worse. So looking and assessing these physiological biofeedback markers to address these health handbrakes, to kind of remove them, so you can actually kind of almost restore better efficiency. So before I even focus on fat loss, it's assess the individual, understand them, and then we're trying to work out, okay, after we've assessed them, you know, we, we look at what their current calorie consumption is, and then we gauge it from there. But we're not really trying to do anything with physique at the start, you know, because if you, if you start pulling them into deficits but they have underlying issues, you're just going to make matters worse.

Totally agree. And what we say here at Enterprise, and Rhys will attest to this as well, is that it's always build them back up to baseline. And that usually takes a good couple of weeks just to get them back to baseline. And obviously it's easier to diet someone at, let's say, 3,000 calories than it is to diet someone who comes in at 12,000 calories or 900 calories. Cause there's really, where do you go from 900 calories? You know, 800, that's no fun. So let's not do that. Let's take the time, build people back up to baseline. Then let's talk about dieting. So let's say, you know, they've got to that point, they're reasonably, advanced, they've, they've done the, they've built the base, their baseline back up, they're eating good, they're sleeping well, they're training hard, they're doing all the right things, but the legs still aren't coming in. What are the go-tos from there?

Well, you also have to look at circulatory issues, okay? So women, they can have more, well, they have more estrogen. Estrogen can basically create more viscosity of the blood depending on what type it is, you know. And but then with that, that can have poor circulation. Well then, if the training and the breaking down the fat, we really have to look at the mobilization of those free fatty acids to actually be utilized as energy anyway. So, that's technically how the estrogen could potentially increase the amount of fat storage on legs, plus then you have the beta receptors and other factors like which women, they have a harder time getting the legs leaner, you know, so, they'd require like, more like kind of your typical hip, followed by your LS, you know, your steady state, then rest and then going back into it. But you could really focus on the mobilization, circularization of the blood, intraset of that, or before and after workouts as well, which is good. But taking that in mind, looking at, okay, if estrogen increases the, decreases the circulation, therefore by managing the estrogen, we can improve the circulation. And by improving the circulation, then we can help with that mobilization of the free fatty acids to be utilized, to stop the re-esterification, yeah.

So is there a point where supplements do come in for lower leg protocols?

I try not to look at a body part, but I try to look at, right, let's improve the health per se, you know?

Yes, yes, which is much smarter.

But see, I've taken such a step away from looking at the specific body parts. Once you have all everything set in line, everything falls into place.

Yeah, I agree.

But there's theories behind it which support that potentially if the estrogen was higher, there could possibly be more fat on the legs.

I totally agree and get exactly where you're going. It's a case of, oh, my legs are fat, therefore my estrogen is high. Well, actually wait, wait up. Let's look at our blood work. Let's look at the science. No, it's actually a detoxification issue. Actually, you know, how often do you go to the toilet? Oh, every 2 days. Well, let's look at that first 'cause that's actually the issue. Even though, you know, you've got fat legs and people don't think, they think, oh yeah, well, let's go to, I think estrogen, right? Let's go to the estrogen blockers or let's go to things that are gonna detox estrogen. But actually, really, you really always have to come back to that helicopter view of things and go, right, no, this is actually your issue. And if you get this linchpin, it's gonna affect everything down from the cascade. So brilliant. With that said, things like DIM, calcium D-glucanate sulforaphane, let's begin with DIM. When do you use it? What is it about? How does it work?

Okay, so if, first of all, so dandromethane is derived from indole-3-carbinol. Okay, indole-3-carbinol we get from cruciferous vegetables. So it's a much more—

Which I hate.

What, the vegetables, your broccoli and stuff?

I hate, well, cruciferous vegetables specifically. Yeah, it's the cruciferous part.

Yeah, so it makes it much better, just take it as a supplement. But for the DIM, so first of all, some studies have shown, obviously the dosage, dosages are different because it was done in rodents, not humans, but in males, it can lead to atrophy of the testicles and decreased sperm quality. So there's, for guys, you know, you gotta be looking at where's your estrogen coming from? Largely it's aromatase. So then if for women, when we look at DIM, it's not gonna be beneficial for women with low estrogen, 'cause it's gonna decrease your E1 and E2. Now it favors the, the, the 2-hydroxy and the 4-hydroxy pathways.

Interesting side note. So basically DIM, really the only time you'd probably use it is if there's a guy who's doing say a cycle of steroids or something, and he's got too much testosterone, now he's aromatizing, you'd give him DIM to help the aromatization?

No, because you wouldn't wanna bring down, well, so he's got too much aromatase, you look at reducing, too much aromatase expression, you look at reducing his inflammation, his stress, his insulin, as opposed to reducing his testosterone. Right. So what's the example? So a guy's got too much testosterone.

Yeah, so let's say he's taking externally, right? And it's aromatizing now, he's not able to basically utilize it and he's getting gynecomastia. So in that case of gynecomastia, would you then use DIM?

No.

No.

No, you'd just inhibit aromatase. So you'd work upstream. So if this is, you've got testosterone and then you've got aromatase and you have estrogen, rather than addressing the issue here, you'd address it here.

Right.

Yeah.

So then in saying that, where does things like calcium D-glucanate fall in? Oh, actually, sorry, before we go into that, with things like prostate cancer then, that's a typical time when you would use DIM?

No, so saw palmetto.

Okay.

So saw palmetto would be good for prostate health. Yeah.

Right, so then now where does the calcium D-glucuronate fit in? And what is deglucuronization? Let's, let's start there kind of thing.

Yeah, so just quickly cover it. So DIM phase 1 of biotransformation of estrogen and then calcium D-glucurate phase 2. But calcium D-glucurate works by basically inhibiting beta-2-glucuronidase. So all these big words. Right, basically—

Talk dirty, please.

You've got glucuronidation pathway, which is a phase 2 kind of process for eliminating toxins, carcinogens, estrogen. So this is where we bind glucuric acid to estrogen, and we bind it with bile for removal of the body, so we excrete it out. Now, if we have stuff like dysbiosis or SIBO, we'll have an increased level of beta-glucuronidase. We know it's an enzyme because it ends in -ase. So that actually cleaves off the glu, gluconic acid, and then it basically allows the estrogen to be reabsorbed back into the body through enterohepatic circulation. So we reabsorb that estrogen. So by having an elevated level of this beta-glucuronidase, we can't really eliminate the estrogen effectively because we keep on breaking it off from what we need to be basically bound with it for its removal. So what we must do for this is we must understand why is beta-glucuronidase high? and that could be high from an excessive amount of protein or meat consumption, processed foods, dysbiosis, or antibiotics. So we'll look at those factors first, improve the gut health. Next, we look at inhibiting beta-glucuronidase. That's where calcium D-glucurate comes in. However, I always like to work upstream. So look at the cause first, but you have other factors too, like fenugreek seeds, cumin, apple, strawberries, almonds, which also work effectively. And you'd want to avoid black pepper because this can inhibit glucuronidation as well. Then on top of that, you'd want to implement foods with glucuric acid to then provide more of the molecules to bind onto the estrogen for its removal. Then you'd also want to support bile. So if someone does have issues with their bile production, bile's how we digest and assimilate fats, but it's also how we conjugate our toxins for removal, also our hormones. So if we look on bloods, for instance, and we see elevated AST, ALT, issues with ALP, bilirubin, low cholesterol, we know, okay, potentially their bile production is not gonna be that good. And then we could cross-correlate that with the subjective markers of, do they have a mucosal film on the surface of the water after passing stool? Do they have pain on the right side of the rib cage? Do they have difficulties digesting fat? If so, then we'd look to increase bile. So by increasing bile, we could implement bitter greens, radish, chicory, artichoke, And then if that wasn't working through foods, we do have the option of potentially looking at supplementation. So Oxbow, for instance.

So the link between calcium D-glucarate, 'cause I know you started talking about bile on that. What is the direct link between the calcium D-glucarate and the bile?

So calcium D-glucarate inhibits beta-glucuronidase, and that allows glucuronidation. But this pathway also requires bile for its, process to be removed.

So this is where you're looking at almost, well, you're not almost, you're looking at the digestion of fats before you're looking at using, if I understand it correctly, you're looking at the addition of how they digest their fats before you're looking at giving them calcium gluconate.

Exactly. Right. Because, you know, it may not be a beta-glucuronidase issue. It could be, it could be a little bit of a beta-glucuronidase issue, but you can manage that from addressing the causations. So the lifestyle and diet, and then you could implement foods, you know, so it's gonna be cheap and that's easier, right? So you've got almonds, you got your strawberries, avoiding black pepper.

What's in the, what are in the almonds and the strawberries that they need?

Well, that classification of foods help to reduce the activity of the enzyme beta-glucuronidase. So there's specific compounds in it, I'm not too sure.

Okay, so in a nutshell, often a step if they're having trouble, so before we go out like as practitioners and stuff, and it's like, all right, calcium gluconate, whoa, hold up, How do you digest your fats? And if the answer is poorly, would you then consider something like Ox Bile?

Well, I'd look and assess then why are the fats assimilation bad? Is it that they potentially like, there's many different things. It's like going down the rabbit hole. So for instance, we could have certain SNPs DNA, which prevents us from being efficient with saturated fat. So it could be, kind of gene reason why, or it could be a deficiency in nutrients. It could be that you have too much stress that's, that's creating a buildup of bile in the liver and gallbladder. So we try to look at what's the reason why, what's causing it, how can we address this through food, and then go through supplementation. So for food measures, for supporting bile, we've got artichoke, but let's say if you have IBS, then, which they may do, then we know that artichoke is is gonna be quite high in the FODMAPs and that could be creating an issue. So we could go with artichoke tea, and then we could implement foods such as chicory, radish, lemon, they all work well to stimulate the production of bile. And then in terms of supplementation, studies have shown that it's safe at 10 to 15 milligrams per kilogram of body weight.

[Speaker] So one supplement or compound that's been getting a lot of attention recently more so is sulforaphane. What's the deal?

Okay, sweet. So sulforaphane is awesome for basically, it does a number of things, but in terms of estrogen, this is pretty cool, right? So, well, for me and you. No one else, everyone's gonna be like, no. Right, so with estrogen—

It is cool, damn it. Make it cool.

Like you've got your different metabolites of estrogen, right? Okay, so you've got your 2, your 4, and your 16-hydroxy, right? You got the 2-hydroxy, which is beneficial, okay? You get 4-hydroxy, which is basically cancerous, you know, it can, well, can be cancerous because it basically can create these quinones, which bind to DNA and they create permanent mutations and that can increase the risk of cancer. And then you have your 16-hydroxy pathway, which causes cell proliferation and tumor growth. So it's not necessarily cancer-causing, but if there's cancer there, it will speed the growth of it, But that 16-hydroxy pathway is beneficial because it can help with bones. Okay. Now, when we look at—

The good, the bad, the ugly.

Oh, the good, the ugly, the bad. Yeah. So the 4 is the ugly one.

Right. Okay.

So when we look at this 4 pathway, this creates these kind of like compounds called quinones. Okay. So there's the 3,4-quinones, which are really bad, and these cause the damage to DNA. So what sulforaphane actually does is that it basically helps to neutralize them. But it also helps shunt the estrogen to that 2-hydroxy state as well. So it shunts the estrogen more down the beneficial form to the 2-hydroxy, which is more anti-cancerous.

[Speaker] So coming back to, I suppose, the original question, when you are looking at those compounds, either DIM, calcium D-glucanate, sulforaphane, really nothing is given out I suppose the word willy-nilly, like, oh yeah, just take some DIMM, you'll be right. You really need to really think about what you're doing. It's almost like you're saying the only one that you could safely take without doing your research would be sulforaphane. Do you agree with that or not even so much?

No, because it could create IBS issues.

Why does it create IBS issues?

Some individuals can suffer from the IBS. I'm not too sure as to why.

Okay.

Yeah.

So this is where, and I know you said something before that I wanted to just kind of backtrack, mucosa around the stool.

Yes.

And that's an indicator of—

The mucosal surface and the water after passing stool.

Right.

So you go to the toilet, looks like olive oil and water.

Right.

No fat, which isn't really dissipated. That would correlate to poor fat digestion. Touching on sulforaphane, you have broccoli sprouts, okay, which are really good, the best source, but there's two other tricks you can do. So you can, basically you get this from cruciferous vegetables. So in cruciferous vegetables, you have two different compounds. You have myrosinase and you have glucoraphanin. Now glucoraphanin is this kind of like this compound, then you have myrosinase, which is an enzyme. Now enzymes degrade. So when you cook the cruciferous vegetables, it causes the myrosinase to oxidize. So you lose that. Now, when those two mix together, you get sulforaphane, which is cool, right? So what you can do is chop up the cruciferous vegetables, leave it for 40 minutes to allow that enzymatic reaction. That's awesome, but if you don't have time, if you're lazy or whatever, you can cook your vegetables and then add mustard seed powder on. Now mustard seed is classed as a cruciferous vegetable. It contains the myrosinase, it will react with the glucoraphanin in the vegetables, what you cooked, and you can boost the sulforaphane.

Pretty cool. So is this where you talk, I know you talk about the seed cycling, Oh, that's another thing.

This is another thing, so you wanna explain. Yeah, okay, so you've got basically the menstrual cycle, you have fluctuations in progesterone and estrogen. So we can support this in a healthy pattern by taking, for instance, you got flaxseed, pumpkin, you got your, which one is it? Pumpkin, sunflower, flaxseed, I forgot the other seed. You basically take these at certain times throughout the cycle to support the rise in estrogen or the rise in progesterone. So therefore you can help manage side effects, which may have been like PMS or other factors.

Where'd you learn that?

I've done coursework with FDN, so Functional Diagnostic Nutrition, which they actually teach that, which is quite cool.

That is very cool.

But I've done other courses, FMCP, FMU.

Where does the, where does green, 'cause we're talking about, you know, obviously the theme is today, women's health, women's hormones. So we're starting the show, I suppose, with the supplement stuff. Last one I wanna talk about is green tea extract. 'Cause that sometimes that one's thrown out as an anti-estrogenic.

Right.

Yeah, but is it?

Well, when we, I'm just referring to this, right? This is my imaginatively. Oestrogen kind of thing, right? So we, we go, we can get these, um, these, this 2-hydroxy and the 4-hydroxy kind of metabolites, but we can make them badass by converting them into 2. So we've got the 2-hydroxy and the 4-hydroxy, we can convert them into the 2-methoxy and the 4-methoxy forms. So these are the sweet ones, okay? So the, the 4-hydroxy, which could potentially be damaging DNA and potentially cancerous, we can actually methylate that and convert it into your 4-methoxy, so it's neutralized. Then we have your 2-hydroxy, which is sweet, you know, cruciferous veg push it down this pathway, which is cool. But then we can make it even better by going to 2-methoxy instead of 2-hydroxy. So to get to these methoxy states, we require catecholomethyltransferase, COMT expression, C-O-M-T. Now green tea can inhibit COMT, which therefore prevents that beneficial conversion. So in terms of estrogen management, it could potentially not be that good, but on the flip side, it can also inhibit aromatase. So it depends what the issue is. Is it aromatase issue or is it a poor estrogen conversion pathway issue?

So the green tea extract, for example, would that then be the one that you'd use for the guy who's aromatizing?

Grape seed extract.

Grape seed extract.

Yeah, and zinc, and make sure his copper isn't too high.

Yes, 'cause otherwise they get too easy bruising and these kind of things.

Well, what happens is, so zinc and copper work antagonistically with one another. So when we have an excess of copper, that will facilitate the CYP1A9 enzyme, which is aromatase, and it'll increase estrogen binding affinity at the receptor. So that's gonna be pretty bad. Whereas when we have zinc, it displaces the copper. But also when we're deficient in zinc, aromatase is increased.

So I guess what you're saying, Jake, is just don't take any anti-aging supplements.

Yeah, it's looking at the lifestyle, making sure it's healthy. You know, I think the key thing, right, for each one is looking at, okay, is their stress good? Is their gut good? Are they sleeping good? Are they eating good? That's the basics. You know, make sure they're getting the basics. And you know, we have to really look and understand upstream rather than looking at the end product. You know, the end product is I've got a headache. Well, okay, why have you got a headache? Okay, you've had too many stimulants. Why have you had too many stimulants?

Do you ever use these products?

Which ones?

The calcium gluconate before a gym? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You do use them?

Definitely, yeah.

But it's, so if we can just go like cases, what would you, where would you use the calcium gluconate?

Calcium D-glucarate would be potentially good if someone has high estrogen-related symptoms and IBS. 'Cause if they have IBS, then we could hypothesize that they have an increased level of beta-glucuronidase. If they have an increased level of beta-glucuronidase, therefore the glucuronidation is gonna be impaired. We can inhibit beta-glucuronidase with calcium D-glucarate, but we'd look at other factors to implement that too.

I know this is kind of off topic, but on topic. Something I heard a while back was with glycine, with a lot of these products, you wanna add glycine in to upregulate the liver Is that a thing that you look at or?

So they're looking at like methylation and stuff, right? So glycine, first of all, you've got different types, okay? So you have your methylation process. So you've got your methionine, then that's using magnesium as a cofactor to get S-adenosylmethionine. You know, you can use that, get these methyl bonds there, and then you can get homocysteine, right? Now homocysteine, we want to recycle back into methionine. You can do so, through trimethylglycine, or you can do it through methylcobalamin, so B12. So that would be why people recommend that, and they're recommending the glycine to support methylation, and they're recommending that because methylation is how we produce COMT. Okay, so COMT, catechol-O-methyl, requires a methyl donor. We get catechol-O-methyltransferase from methylation, and that COMT is how we basically convert your estrogen into its most preferential form.

Excellent. When would you use the sulforaphane?

You know what, it is really good, really good to use for most people. I'd just say if you have IBS issues, then I wouldn't use it.

Okay.

But that one's gonna be great for managing if someone, the bad effects of potentially the 4-hydroxyestrone, so if someone is heavily estrogenic, then that's gonna be sweet, but also it's gonna help favor the conversion down to the 2-hydroxyform. So it's really, really good unless someone's got like IBS, for instance.

And DIM?

DIM, you know, PMS symptoms would be good for that.

Right.

But not menopause.

The estrogen's too high, you need to get lower. And the effects of the urine being discolored from DIM, what is that from?

I can't comment on that, I don't know. Yeah.

Right, let's talk about, switching topics completely, but breast implants. They have been, oh, I'd hate to be a cosmetic surgeon right now. It's like breast plants, you know, caused my IBS, breast implants caused my, you know, whatever, my calf to itch. No, but they do get a lot of heat today, especially in kind of the natural health community. Are they that bad?

Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, almost swore then. Yeah, they're really, really bad. So when we look at the studies, 'cause I've done a post on this, there's, I think it's a 6 times increased risk of arthritis. And I think it's a 4 times increased risk of a stillbirth. And then there's a dramatically increased risk for autoimmune conditions as well.

[Speaker] What is the mechanism for that?

[Speaker] It's a foreign entity inside your body. So your body's gonna stimulate the immune system to try and address it.

[Speaker] So it actually becomes an immune issue.

[Speaker] Yeah, yeah, it's like, well, there's gonna be many mechanisms, you know, 'Cause there's two different types of breast implants. There's one which is more autoimmune related, and there's the silicone and there's the, what's the other one?

I'm not sure.

Right, okay.

Yeah.

But the other ones could potentially be related to mold, you see.

Right, yeah. And then you get a mold infection, geez.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it goes moldy inside. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.

Mind equal blown just to that one. That puts an image in your head to think about something going moldy. Whatever the other one is, so the silicone and the other one, just think of the other one as mold and then silicone.

But if you check it out on my Instagram, you can look in the comments, there's a fair few comments, but you read all these different stories about it anyway. So it's not just me saying this, there's people which come forward to me with issues and experiences of their own and these horror stories, you know, so it's—

Can you give me an example of a horror story with it?

Oh God, there's just loads, you know, it's literally like people just being Tired all the time, weakness, brain fog, gut-related issues, developing autoimmune conditions.

And when they get out, they're back to normal or is there a—

Depends how deep down the line they've gone, you know?

Right. And I mean, is it, I mean the whole thing of correlation versus causation, is there enough, you know, evidence, so I suppose to say, yeah, look, this is actually—

I think the study was done on 99,000 people.

Right. So, like literally. It's a pretty big study. Yeah, whether it's causation or correlation, there's something there.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tattoos. You had an interesting post about tattoos.

What's the deal?

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So again, it's a foreign entity to the body. So it's linked in with heavy metals. Right. So, you know, the colored ones tend to be worse, you know, and they can degrade in— this is all from my knowledge, by the way, from what I know right now at this given moment in time. So, you know, it may be that it's different, but the, colored ink degrades from sunlight, and then you can release these, that's why they fade faster as well, right? And that you can absorb them into the body, kind of issues then with the lymphatic system in that surrounded area. You have increased levels of these heavy metals, such as cadmium, for instance, that can impair your detoxification pathways as effectively. So, you know, facilitate more of that 16-hydroxy conversion of your estrogen, if you have high levels of cadmium, plus it can inhibit not inhibit, decrease the activity of the specific enzymes, what you use in testosterone production. I'm not saying the reason why no one's making gains is due to cadmium, but it's a very small compounding factor, which you might as well address it, you know? But then we also look at the trauma, what it creates to the fascia as well. So by having all this scar tissue, it can create these adhesions and these biomechanical discrepancies.

Right, that is something I didn't even consider. I mean, like one of the things for me with tattoos, I was always, I'm one of those guys that's like, I'll get a tattoo, but what and where? And I go, I want to get a tattoo, what and where? And I could never answer that question. You've got a couple of tattoos, eh?

Yeah, a fair few, yeah.

And that's obviously before you knew.

Before I knew, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it.

So you're not recommending tattoos?

Like, this is the thing, right? So anything in life, you have your two foundational values. You've got your health and your happiness. So if it means you're gonna be happier, then sometimes that's more important than health, but that happiness may be short-lived. So that when it ties down to anything, you know, you got that, that the foundational kind of structure is your health and your happiness, and then you build everything up from that. So some people, they may have a tattoo as a cover-up. For instance, they may have had to have a breast removed from breast cancer, and they may have to have like a tattoo on, on the nipple, for instance, you know, it could be a cosmetic tattoo. It could be to cover a scar, like a cesarean possibly around that, or anything like this, you know, and that may give them more self-confidence and that may give them more happiness. And then we could argue, okay, from them being more happy, that's lowering their stress, is that improving their health more?

You know, so you really gotta look at the whole picture.

Yeah.

So, you know, I know we're gonna get into some hot water now, but contraceptions, how do they affect the body? That's kind of a broad question, but.

Yeah, okay, so, so we've got the oral contraceptive pill, that will really, it's got strong correlations for poor thyroid function. So it can increase RT3, so it can decrease the T3 kind of like reception working effectively. Then you have increases TBG, so that can bind onto the thyroid hormones to render them inactive. It can then deplete your B9, B6, B12, your selenium, your zinc, your magnesium, your vitamin D, vitamin E and CoQ10.

So that is quite empirical in that, the sense that, that is what happens. It's not a select case. You take it for long enough, that's what's gonna happen.

Yeah, I mean, we look at the studies and when you stop taking the OCP, after 10 years, you start an increased risk of breast cancer.

When you stop taking it?

Yeah, so 10 years after, you've not touched it for 10 years, you still have an increased risk.

Wow.

Yeah.

And what's the, well, how much, how long do you have to take it to be in that category?

I'm not too sure, but we can look and understand, okay, It's depleting stuff like your B9, B12, so obviously that's impacting your methylation. Selenium, you've got your superoxide dismutase and stuff, which falls into that category.

Right, and the things like the IUD?

So you've got the copper IUD, so that's heavily correlated to depression. Oh really?

Why is that?

So we require copper for proper management of your dopamine and breakdown through with your norepinephrine, but in excess, it just creates issues with the neurotransmitters. So, so we can, there's a number of things. So first of all, with copper, it increases the estrogen and high estrogen can inhibit your serotonin production. So the high estrogen can stimulate stuff like the IDO enzymes, the enzymes which break down your tryptophan. so we have less of the tryptophan going through 5-hydroxytryptophan through serotonin. But then on top of that, we have issues with your dopamine, you know, but then we have the inflammatory kind of model as well, which ties into that too. So it's strongly correlated to depression, yeah.

So you've got the IUD, the oral contraception, am I missing anyone, any on that?

The Mirena, but I talked about it earlier today, but it's gone from my head now.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

So moving on from that, how does estrogen high or low, how does it affect body composition?

Okay, sweet. So estrogen is beneficial for fat loss. So when we actually, I know it's, okay. So it's like most people, we tend to discredit estrogen. Okay, we tend to put it on the bad side, but that's simply because we largely suffer from mismanaged estrogen. So we have all these xenoestrogens, these poor lifestyle patterns, which, Generally across the board, it promotes that of estrogen dominance, and estrogen dominance is just a relative term based on estrogen in relation to progesterone. So estrogen may not be high, but progesterone could be low. Now, when we look at this, it's essential for fat loss when it's at healthy, good level with good conversions, because it helps first of all stimulate stuff like GLUT4, so we could actually get better absorption of the glucose into the muscle. It's used in the, many of the chemicals required for the digestion and utilization of your glucose and in the citric acid cycle. And it can aid with the facilitation of the carnitine palmitoyltransferase, which is that shuttling mechanism of the free fatty acids to be utilized as fuel. And it has protective properties for the mitochondria. You know, and then we'll look at estrogen deficiency when a female goes through menopause, she shifts more towards that kind of andro kind of body fat disposition, where it's more around the midsection and they can increase in the fat because that estrogen deficiency. But estrogen excess could also create issues too.

So with things like PMS, what, what are, what's the problems? What's going on there with PMS?

So with PMS, largely that is estrogen excess. Yeah, but it could be a number of things, but largely it's, the studies were done, they looked at 200 females and found 100% of them had at least one symptom of PMS. So this is where we look at estrogen and make sure we manage that effectively.

Right, right. And things like with, with cycles or menstrual cycles, things like heavy bleeding, light bleeding, missing periods, where do you go? What's your like tools of arsenal? What do you use? Back to the Dutch test? Looking at that, and then what are the lifestyle factors that are considered?

Okay, so for estrogen excess, you know, you're gonna have increased stuff like mood instability, more water retention. With estrogen deficiency, there could be symptoms of like painful intercourse, vaginal dryness, there could be weaker skin, weaker hair, nails, this sort of thing.

Right, let me rephrase the question just a little bit. When you do get a client who, let's say for example, comes in and they, let's say, got an irregular period or let's say heavy and quite painful, what are some, for the folks watching, what are some actionable steps that you would say, yep, look, this is what you, you need to be doing more of, or this is what you need to go? Is it, is it actually like when you distill it down, is it they actually need to go see someone, that's the only way through it, or is there some actionable steps that they can start to change today to get better?

Rather than directly recommend people per se, I could hypothetically say in a situation, so I'm not getting my ass busted.

Yeah, correct, it's hypothetical, purely hypothetical, yeah, correct.

Studies have shown like vitamin E can help reduce breast tenderness, iodine deficiency exacerbates that, but topical iodine can help reduce the tenderness as well. Then you have stuff like bergamot, and peppermint essential oil, which you can actually rub onto, if anyone does have like endometriosis and they've got like these lesions which create the pain, that can help reduce the activity there. So that can also help, increasing stuff like magnesium, and clary sage aromatherapy can work effectively, but that's more if someone's got lower estrogen. Then we've got red raspberry leaf tea, the seed cycling is gonna be good. Increasing the vasodilation is gonna help too. So if they have, for instance, this abdominal pain, it could be simply from the blood being pulled through the capillaries and through all, through all the vessels basically, and it's hitting these nerve sensors. So what we'd wanna do is increase the vasodilation, so you're not getting that abdominal pain, because we're diverting a lot of blood to the wound to feed this whole process, which we're going through. So if we increase stuff like your beetroots, your dark chocolate, and then even like melons rich in citrulline, which can then support the eNOS pathway. So that could potentially help too. And by implementing that, you know, keeping it warm so you can help with the vasodilation, we could potentially reduce the, the menstrual cramping.

With all of this, is the liver or supporting the liver, does that need to, is that a, I suppose, you know, it's always, where do you start with a person? You know, it's always, this is where the blood work and this is where the conversations come in. You know, is it, is it, I suppose it is oversimpler to say gut, liver, hormones, but how much is the liver considered when, you're looking at estrogens, 'cause fundamentally the liver is gonna be involved at some point. So what, do you support that actively or you just let it do its thing and—

No, I always try to support it. So, you know, through hydration first, you know, essential, but then we have like managing blood pressure because blood pressure will tax the kidneys, taxing the kidneys could potentially also affect then the liver. But then we also want to look at making sure we've got all your micronutrients covered and then foods on top. Your chicory, radish, your artichoke, your lemon, your beetroot, apples, these are all good to support liver health. Then you've got your different pathways within that where you could look at like sulfation. So we could increase the, the sulfur-rich amino acids basically meat, and then we've got methylation. So, okay, how are we gonna support methylation, methylated B vitamins, where can we obtain them? Organic liver, that's gonna be awesome. Where does the word—

Except it's not awesome.

Yeah.

Disgusting.

Chop it up in small pieces, mix it in with some mince.

And lots of bacon.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we'll move into the word association game. So every guest that we have on, we play the word association game and basically word association game is essentially, you know, if I was to say superhero, you might say Superman.

Okay.

Right, simple, right? So ready to play?

Yeah, I'm ready.

Supplements.

Okay, vitamin D. Okay.

Functional tests.

Okay, bloods.

Competing as an athlete.

Arnold's.

Hormones.

Oh, fucking blank. I just thought of hormones. Back at you.

Yes.

Estrogen.

There's also an estrogen. Comp prep as a coach.

Long.

Long?

Yeah, because you want to spend time doing it.

Oh, yes, very good.

Training? Hard, you're supposed to train hard.

Yes. Go-to supplements?

Ooh, okay. Multivitamin mineral. And then, ah, I don't really like saying this, this go-to supplements thing, but like, is this just the word association game?

Word association.

Okay, multivitamin mineral. Yeah. Okay, well, that's the first thing I thought.

So favorite supplement, if you could say favorite.

Magnesium.

Right. Comfort food?

I like carrots and parsnips. Yeah, yeah, weird. Seriously, like, I chop them up, right? And like, I just cook them a little bit too much. Yeah, in the pan. And I love them.

You put honey on it?

No, no, no.

Maple syrup?

No, it would be nice, but that's what I like.

Butter? Salt?

No, that's it. Honestly, honestly, that is it. I know it's weird.

Oregano at least?

No, seriously, dude, nothing. Just that, you know?

Right.

Yeah, you'll know once you do it. Yeah, that's it.

Maybe like, you know what I have heard that When you crave these certain foods, it's a deficiency in your brain, gives you that dopamine response to actually eat more of it. So I don't know.

Well, I've also got like, say for instance, with my methylation, I've got certain genes which impact that. So parsnips at the quantity I have, there's all okay folate there. And then with the carrots, it's good for gut health too.

All right. Least favorite supplement?

Oh, fuck. Oh, I'm not sure if you're supposed to say that.

Yeah, whatever.

It doesn't matter. It's fine. Oh wow, dude, I'm gonna pickle. Yeah, word association game, don't know on that one.

The first, the best answer I've ever had on this one is anything flavored Tropical Punch. Yeah, I don't know if you've had one of those workouts back in the day, the pre-workouts that were flavored Tropical Punch. They were horrible.

But the worst best one was the stuff with 1,3-dimethylamylamine, the DMAA.

Right.

The stuff where you felt like you were floating, but you were gone for days after.

Right, yeah, I never touched it 'cause I'm very sensitive to even coffee.

Yeah.

So I'm just like, whoa, I had 2 coffees, wow, you know, I'm good, you know.

This was like, I was training chest and I couldn't feel my legs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was good. It was good, but bad, you know?

Yeah, yeah, very bad. So that's probably the hated, disliked, whichever. Something you can't live without?

I'm gonna be really cheesy and say my partner. Oh, getting the good books.

Yeah. Something you want to see more of?

The sunshine. Yeah, yeah, I love the sunshine. Looking up and not seeing clouds.

Yeah, always a good thing.

Yeah, escape from Gotham.

Less of? Something you want to see less of?

I think way too much much for this, don't I?

You do.

Just, yeah, fire it out. I want to see less, like, egotism and vanity in the health and fitness industry, more people supporting one another and helping people, not trying not to put each other down.

Yeah, I actually said today to Paige Hathaway exactly that, and I said most people in the fitness industry, they focus on their slice of the pie. This is my slice. When I really think you should focus on making the pie bigger. Because when you make the pie bigger, everyone gets a bigger slice, including you. So let's just make the pie bigger, and if you're successful, I'm successful. And high tides rise all boats. Sorry, I'm passionate about this one. But a resource that you go to?

Oh, PubMed. PubMed. Yeah.

A respected peer?

Oof, Koon, my friend, my business partner.

Someone who has mentored you? And not in training. Let's go.

Not in training.

Yeah, like life mental.

Life lessons. Yeah, life lessons. God, go deep on this. Hang on. Ah, can we come back to that one?

Okay, yeah, it's here, it's here. It's like we can go down like, oh yeah, just give me all the names.

You can say one, um, but outside of business. But directly or indirectly, whichever, what's coming to mind in terms of like changing how I perceive a lot of things? There's Stephen Covey's book, which was good, you know, "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People." That was really good. I read that at a young age. And then, you know, there's stuff like Robin Sharma. He's awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But he's not been direct, you know, but again, yeah, it doesn't have to be direct.

Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome.

That's why I like to ask these questions, see where people— for me, it's Anthony Robbins, like in the car, just constantly listen to him. I just love it. Even like, if I don't listen to radio, listen to Anthony Robbins, but sometimes obviously I listen to other stuff other than Anthony Robbins, but you know, I'm fangirling on Anthony Robbins right now. So we'll move on. Biggest lie in comp prep?

The exercises women do on social media compared to what they actually do.

A motto or quote you try and live your life by?

You're the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.

Music or an artist you like?

Oh, okay.

You don't have to say one, you can just go through several of them. Yeah, whatever comes to mind.

You know what, I really like, from me growing up, you know, we used to go to like a lot of like raves in the woods and stuff, you know, so I love D&B back from the old days, you know, a bit of jungle.

Dubstep?

No, not that much now, but like jungle D&B. But then I love stuff like Giggs, Drake, you know, that sort of stuff. And then going through to Biceps, Carl Cox. Yeah.

Biceps?

Biceps. Yeah. Interesting, right? But it's, yeah, it's like house sort of stuff.

House music, right.

Solado as well.

Yeah. A good movie?

Oh, right, you got the classics, right? So you got Pulp Fiction. Yeah, Snatch. I've got this one on lock. This is the easiest one, right? Okay. So right, you've got Layer Cake, you've got Harry Brown. Wow, these are all English movies.

Some English.

Yeah, so Snatch. We're at the castle, mate. Yeah, all those.

We got Kenny. We got all the good ones. Australian movies, you got some work to do. Something you're grateful for.

Oh, the sun. Genuinely, the sunshine.

Yeah, awesome.

It's nice. It's a good sunny day.

Well, this has been an absolute pleasure, Jake. We're going to take a quick break and be back with audience questions. Hey, hey folks, I hope you're enjoying this episode with Coach Jake Carter. And if you are, make sure you subscribe to us on YouTube and ring that bell for future videos and updates. And if you want to listen to this on the go, iTunes is your hookup and we'd be totally grateful if you would leave us a review. If iTunes isn't your thing and you're on SoundCloud, we're on there as well. So check us out and follow us on SoundCloud. So for the personal trainers watching this episode, personaltrainermentoring.com is your hookup. We've put up the first 5 e-classes to Wolfpack up on there. It's all about how to structurally assess and screen your client, and I know that you're going to get a ton of value from them, especially in the If This, Do That section. It's going to give you a great amount of practical tips to program and periodize training programs for your clients. So make sure you check that out. It's personaltrainermentoring.com. Just going to leave your details there. Let's get back to the show. I'll see you on the other side of this one. Welcome back to the Wolf's Den. We're with Coach Jake Carter. Just a reminder, make sure you subscribe to us on our YouTube, check it out, just the button below, subscribe and make sure you ring that bell for all future updates. And hey, if you wanna listen to these great podcasts in your car, do check out our iTunes. Everything is syndicated to iTunes. So just go search Enterprise Fitness Podcast on iTunes And while you're at it, also make sure you check out our Instagram accounts. For Jake, it's Coach Jake Carter. And obviously for myself, it's Mark Ottobre. So check those out. Now we're gonna go into the studio. We're gonna go into the Wolf's Den and we're gonna get the studio audience to ask the questions that they have. So let's pass it over with our first question of today.

Hi Jake. So my question is mainly around, especially just gen pop, and even female athletes who are above 40 come into contact with a lot of them. And of course, the 3 main things that face is either the aging, menopause, and then hysterectomy.

Ooh, okay. So yeah.

So yeah.

What do you want to start with?

So when it comes to that, of course, it's tied into depletion of strength, tiredness, and then weight gain. So how do you do— where do you, where do you start? How— what do you, what do you think about? What are the things do you want to address? And then when you talk about training and nutrition, you know, just, just along that lines, because guys have it easy, so they just don't know sometimes where to start.

Okay, cool. So the first thing what you want to do is look at what stresses stresses they have, you know, be that from psycho-emotional stresses, physiological, physical, or dietary, you know. So we wanna, we wanna assess what stresses they have, look at the severity and the frequency, and then try and see what the biggest hitters are. And we work to kind of address them through stress reduction management methods, because we really need the adrenal function, the whole stress HPA axis to be working effectively, 'cause this is where they're gonna be producing a lot of their estrogen now. So if we're talking about menopausal women, so we want to look at minimizing the stresses and then we, there's a lot we can do with lifestyle, you know, and behavior. So we want to make sure that they are, first of all, work on the attitude, the gratitude. And then, because when we look at the types of stresses, we know that psychological stresses pose the biggest threat when compared to physical stresses because it can be self-perpetuating. You know, and we can ruminate on these thoughts day in, day out. And these could be anything from insecurities, it could be from lack of self-worth, it could be lack of social support, it could be anxiety, you know, heartbreak, distrust. These are all stressors what we don't really acknowledge. So looking at the attitude and gratitude is gonna be key. Then we have to look at their rest. You know, are they resting effectively? Are they having downtime? Are they having me time? So are they doing stuff which they enjoy? What makes them laugh? Makes them smile, they're having fun. You know, this is their day-to-day life, what we could look at doing. If they are, got a lot of like work stressors, you know, we could look at delegation. So Upwork or anything like that, we can inform them of. And then a lot of stress with potentially menopausal women could be due to their libido dropping. Okay, so their libido could drop, that could create friction in the relationship. So, you know, really making sure, Making sure they understand their partner's love language, for instance. So you got the different types of love language. So you got the ones where it's praise, you got gifts, you know, and making sure they're communicating to their partner on that level because of the potential disconnection, what they may have from the lack of libido. When you look at that, the lifestyle, then we look at stressors. Though we could look at increasing the carbohydrates to mitigate the stress because, 'cause we don't want their HPA system, like, reigning dominant over, like, the production of their estrogen. So, you know, just minimizing that is gonna be key.

Just carrying on from that, I'm Judy. From a stress point of view and with women this day and age in the Western world, you know, you get up at 5 o'clock in the morning. For me, I've got two jobs. I work full-time in IT, part-time in PT. By the time I get home, my husband has to cook the family dinner because I get home from work late and then the second job. And then you fit training into that, pre-prep all my meals to make sure I've got good nutrition. But when you've got, you know, work stress family stress, sleep stress because you're not sleeping, you've still got good nutrition but then you've got compromised gut, leaky gut, HPA dysfunction, cortisol dysfunction, what's, you know, what's the— and you can't get rid of the stress, you just have to be able to cope with it. So what sort of protocols, whether it's exercise, nutrition, supplementation, tapping into the parasympathetic nervous system more so than the sympathetic, you know, what sort of protocols are there to help with that?

Okay, cool. So first of all, it sounds like time management's an issue to focus on. So reframing that from time management to priority management is gonna empower you more because time's an external stress which is continuously passing on, right? But you have no control, whereas priority management, you are controlling what you delegate into that time. So most people have a distorted time quality, more so in females than males. So females think they can get more done in a specific time than males, males think they can't do as much, right? Okay, so that's another compounding factor. So reframing how an individual would see their management of time and looking at it as priority management empowers them. Now, in terms of what we could do is, in terms of training, we really want to go for a kind of like a maximum stimulus kind of approach. I mean, it depends on the goal, right? But when we look at the studies, volume created a bigger level of cortisol during the session and post-session, as opposed to intensity. So therefore strength training is gonna be better for someone if they're overly stressed. Now that also means that they can actually have more time to focus on resting intercept, you know, because you have bigger rest periods anyway. And in terms of stimulating that parasympathetic response, there's a lot you can do in addition to what you're already doing in terms of your food, your lifestyle, and your behavior. So stuff like lavender aromatherapy is gonna be good, chamomile tea, drinking that's gonna be great, really maximizing sleep quality, which is a big priority, but listening to stuff like delta stimulating binaural beats, we've got diaphragmatic breathing, alternate nostril test technique. You know, all these things will help stimulate that yin response as opposed to having a yang kind of lifestyle.

Yeah.

Hey Jake. My question is around sort of adult acne and women who are in their 20s and 30s who struggle from bad skin and whether or not milk thistle and NAC is something that you, would recommend for that. That's something I've been taking recently, milk thistle, and it's made a big difference, but I can't put my finger on whether that's actually helping or what you would recommend for that, because I have been on quite heavy antibiotics before, and then as soon as I go off them, it's just masking the issue.

Sure. So the outer skin is a reflection to the inner skin's health, the inner skin being the intestines. So we must look at that to see if there's any disturbances on the skin and see if that is represented from some kind of gut-related issue. So when we look at stuff like, I know you didn't say this, but when we look at eczema, psoriasis, generally that's related to gastrointestinal inflammation. Now spots, acne, that could be correlated to some kind of issue what you got going on with the gut health. It could be what sounds probable for you is maybe it was just an issue with your, your clearance of your toxins. So your, your, your, your, biotransformation pathway. But might usually, let's say if a woman's going and getting, she's getting more acne, and she's suffering from irritability, and increased facial growth or hair growth, for instance, then that could be related to 5-alpha reductase pathway, where it's going down towards stimulating too much DHT. And then you'd have to look to reduce that activity with saw palmetto. You know, so it totally depends on zinc can work as well, to what reason why the spots are there. You know, it could be liver, it could be gut, it could be 5-alpha reductase. But in your case, it sounds like if that's worked.

Yeah, the milk thistle is working, so that's liver, isn't it?

Yeah, you know, and then we have to understand, okay, what toxins or issues did you have? And then did you take the antibiotics, then you had acne? Or did you have acne before?

So I would take the antibiotics and then if I stopped taking it, it would come back. Did a few doses of that and then I stopped taking the antibiotics and I was taking milk thistle and I've continued taking milk thistle and it's improved a lot.

Okay, so the antibiotics, well, that's gonna kill bacteria obviously. So when we kill bacteria, we create a release of these lipopolysaccharides, is this highly inflammatory kind of, kind of compound which we release from the exterior membrane of the bacteria. So it seems like there may have been some underlying bacterial issue and that you are having an excess of these lipopolysaccharides from having that there. So when you take the antibiotics, it was kind of managing it, you know, managing that bad bacteria. Bacteria in a bad way, you know. We'd much rather do it through selectively acting antimicrobial agents. But then it looks like you're supporting your liver health to deal with those lipopolysaccharides. But you could also look at, you know, like, did you mention NAC and acetylcysteine?

So I haven't had it, but I've been recommended that.

Okay, so it totally depends on what biotransformation pathway it's related to. You know, you've got your methylated B vitamins, which is gonna be really good, but I'll definitely look at reinoculating your gut anyway. You can't, well, I say the word reinoculating, but probiotics don't actually inoculate the gut. The only effective way to do so is through a human fecal transplant, but you can modulate that gut environment. So you can do so using the selectively acting antimicrobial agents. You could look at implementing polyphenols just to have that kind of modbiotic regulation onto the microbiota. You could look at fermented foods if you don't have any bad reactions. If you do, then we know, right, you might have a CBS mutation, you might have some bad bacteria still inside. And then once you've implemented the fermented foods or the probiotics, making sure that we keep a good level of prebiotics in there, not too much, but just enough to keep that population going.

Hi, Jake. My question's about bruising and I guess the healing process and whether or not does it suggest that you've got some deficiency. And I ask personally because I bruise like an apple. And it gets quite intense. And the healing process behind it is also quite lengthy. I've got a bruise here and that's probably about 2 weeks. And, you know, I train quite consistently and I eat healthy and I, you know, get the recommended 8 hours sleep. So I'm— I guess I'm doing all the right things. But I'll walk into a barbell and I'll bruise and it's— yeah, it's not necessarily very painful, but, yeah, I thought that maybe by implementing all the right techniques, you know, the healing process would be a lot quicker. Do I have a deficiency? Without, you know, doing the appropriate blood test, does it suggest anything?

It can suggest a number of things, you know, but it can correlate to stuff like vitamin D and see if it correlates to stress-related issues as well. So are you tired and wired or?

Not really, like I tend to get 8, 9 hours sleep. Maybe at work I'm stressed every now and then, but it's not like a daily occurrence where I'm stressed and I tend to be organized with my meal prep. So I don't think there's anything that's really kind of creating additional stresses. So I'm just thinking, are there are there other underlying causes or issues? And can I implement certain supplements to maybe alleviate that or to help recovery? Or should I actually just go and get blood tests to determine if there's, I don't know, iron deficiency or—

Does the— well, first of all, you're taking a multivitamin and mineral.

Yeah.

OK. Which one?

So I've gone to a natural practitioner path and they've just recommended like a multivitamin. I'm taking magnesium. What brand is it? Sorry?

What brand is the multivitamin mineral?

She's just made up her own little batch for me.

Right, okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, there's a number of things what it could relate to. However, just from one symptom, it's hard to say what exactly it is. But it could correlate to vitamin C, you know, but then it could be that you're if you've got issues with actually your own vitamin C because it may be stress-related or it could be from other factors, like you say, it could be iron. And then if it is, if you're, for instance, consuming red meat and if it is, if you have low iron, for instance, on your bloods, you have to look at why is that the case? Is it low HCl? Is it intestinal inflammation? But it could be a number of things. So I'm sorry that I can't give you a good answer, but it's hard to say.

But it's like, this isn't just a race thing. Like over the years growing up and you know, you'd bruise and you kind of just, you know, it's part of life. But I'm thinking now because I'm training quite, you know, consistently and doing all the right things and it's still quite, you know, just the recovery of it also is very lengthy.

What's your resting heart rate?

I couldn't.

Okay, find out your resting heart rate. And then I'd definitely look to assess stress more.

Okay.

Yeah, and see what that is.

Yeah, awesome. Hi, my name is Steph.

Hi Steph.

Hi Mark.

So how has traditional Chinese medicine shifted and improved your approach to body composition or women's health? Okay, yeah, awesome, sweet. So first of all, you can only train as hard as you can recover. Okay, your recovery is based on your adaptive reserve. Adaptive reserve is basically the equilibrium or the homeostasis of your body. So anything which challenges that is a dysfunction, right? So understanding how to assess those dysfunctions and remediate them through efficient ways without compromising health basically allows you to recover or perform better. In a nutshell, that's how, you know, we could look at you can relate it to anything really. So like if we look at sleep, there's ways or just, there's so much, there's so much like, let's look at HCl, okay? So if you look at the nails, if they're weak, the vertical ridges on the nails, we could potentially say this is either a zinc or low, zinc deficiency or low stomach acid. We'll look at, okay, we can then use that tool to assess further, do they suffer from upper abdominal bloating? Do they have, undigested food in the stool, have the loss of taste for meat, have issues digesting meat, to have bad breath, you know, then if so, we can look to optimizing HCL. If we optimize it, we can digest and assimilate our food better, we absorb, we break down and absorb the zinc, you know, we have breakdown from B12 and we can therefore possibly have more efficient intrinsic factor working so we can assimilate it better. And then we'll just look, okay, so just from looking at the nails, it's led us on this, this down the rabbit hole, and we're now addressing HCl. So why is that good? Because we're actually getting more of the nutrients from our food, we're actually digesting more of the protein because the HCl converts your pepsinogen to pepsin, which is protein digestive enzyme. So that's gonna help your protein utilization. And then the zinc, we use that for luteinizing hormone, we use that in males for stimulating the production of testosterone. Testosterone, you know, which is then gonna help with your anabolism. If you're in a surplus, obviously. But, you know, it's assessing the, the body and making sure it's working efficiently and optimally.

So is Chinese medicine more a holistic approach to the body? Or if you have a condition, you try and look at very specific factors?

Oh, definitely, it's holistic. It's looking at, looking globally. Rather than locally. Yeah.

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