The Testosterone Truth: Unlocking Vitality with BHRT

Welcome to the Balanced Body Podcast, where Sherri Griggs, owner of Balanced Body Health and Wellness in Omaha, talks to us about health, wellness, and balancing hormones. We are talking to Sherri Griggs with Balanced Body Medical in Omaha, Nebraska, hormone replacement extraordinaire. And what we've been doing is we've been going one by one through The different hormones that really affect how well you really live your day-to-day life. And we break it down like a car, right?

Yes, absolutely. You know, that's one of the things that we here at Balanced Body Health and Wellness do different than some of the other practitioners. We look at all of your hormones. So if you've missed any of our podcasts and you haven't heard the car analogy, I'll, I'll tell you again quickly. If you've heard it, just can never hear it enough, right, John? He laughs. That might not be right. Well, for those of you who haven't heard it, here it comes. It's like a car. We have hormones. Our hormones— think of cortisol like your engine, thyroid like your transmission. And we all know about estrogen, progesterone, testosterone. Many don't know about DHEA. That's also one of the androgens. Those are your Androgens, those are your 4 wheels. So just like a car, I can give you 4 new wheels, but if your engine isn't running properly, you're not getting around very well. If that cortisol is sitting on your hormone receptors, not working so well. Transmission, same thing. Might have a great motor, but if that transmission isn't shifting up or shifting down when you need it to be, what if it's running in low all the time? You're not going anywhere very quickly. If I don't, we don't have good wheels on the car, motor might run good, transmission might run good, but you're still not getting around very well. You're having some difficulty, you're not running efficiently. And that is how we look at hormones and a car.

And I love that analogy because it brings it down to my level of understanding, even though I'm not a mechanic in any way, shape, or form. But like, I understand that you need the engine to run, right? Your cortisol needs to be right. Your thyroid needs to help you shift up, shift down. Correctly. And we're getting into something that might be a little, um, exciting to talk about— testosterone, one of the wheels, right?

Right. You know, testosterone is the one that everybody hears about. Testosterone is the one that you really see all of the advertising for, because unlike our other 3, men are affected by testosterone The most. So we hear about those others, but not as much because only women are affected by their estrogen and progesterone as far as their symptoms of menopause. Men's symptoms of andropause are all wrapped up in testosterone.

Got it. And that— it's one that, because I've seen so many different ads for, I've definitely heard of.

Right. And what's interesting is most of those ads— now correct me if I'm wrong, John, I do somewhat pay attention to them— but aren't they mostly all about how you're performing and being young again, right?

Absolutely. Not just, not just signs of showing low testosterone, but, you know, they— it's like a salesman got behind it and they're like, what is the effect? The one that anybody will pay attention to Is that they're terrible in bed, right?

Erectile dysfunction, right? It's not working. Yeah. Here's the issue. Sadly, by the time it gets to that point, you've probably been miserable for years because your first symptoms, gentlemen, of andropause tend to be fatigue. You're tired. You don't have the energy you used to have. That's starting to go away. The next thing comes up is you just kind of have the humdrums, right? So not only do you not have the energy, you don't have the desire to do much. You just like, yeah, I used to enjoy doing this stuff, but you know, I don't have the energy. I don't really care. Some people call it depression.

Hmm. Yeah.

And then there's the memory loss. Then the mind starts to go and you forget to do things and your significant other is like, what the heck? I told you 3 times. Well, guys, it's probably low testosterone.

And those, like you said, are kind of all before the big one that they talk about in all the commercials.

Quite, quite, yes. Because most of the time, in addition to testosterone possibly being the cause, it's blood flow that erectile dysfunction is mostly related to in that case. Now, some people would disagree with me, but You can replace testosterone and give a man a sky-high level, but if the blood flow isn't working, it doesn't matter.

Which makes sense. That totally makes sense.

And so, if they're just suffering, just starting to suffer from low levels of testosterone, they're not usually seeing erectile dysfunction full out. They might start to see that their erections are not as As hard as they used to be, but they're still getting them, right? It might be a little more work, it might be a little more time, and they may not be what they used to be, but they can still have them. And testosterone can help improve that without question. Okay. So mainly, most of the time, I'm seeing men before the erectile dysfunction. I'm seeing them, and what's happening is one guy's telling his friend. Hey, I feel amazing. I haven't had this much energy in years. Well, what did you do? I got testosterone. Did you need it? Right? Yeah. Let's talk about that. But did you really need it? Were you having— no, the issue wasn't there, right?

Yeah.

This was my issue. Well, now everybody wants to have energy again. Everybody wants to feel young again. Any of the guys go to the gym, they want to have their strength and their muscles back because testosterone is what supports your muscles. Supports your strength. And, and that's one of the things they notice, but they're just gonna chalk that up to getting old. And they do with the fatigue too. I'm just getting old.

Oh, I was gonna say, like, one of the things when you first started talking about, you know, being tired and losing energy and all of that, I thought maybe that could also be you have young kids that is dragging you down.

Well, John, it can be. It isn't always low testosterone, right?

Right.

I mean, there are other things in life. Could be you burned your adrenals out. Okay, your adrenals could be burned out. You have young kids.

I, I think that that could be totally true. Right.

Well, and that's the nice thing about what I do is I check it all. Okay, you know, we're not just going to assume that because you are a man of a certain age that your energy, your low, your low energy is because of testosterone. Right. Um, you know, there are things that men and women both can do to naturally keep that testosterone up. And so you'll find that athletes, people who exercise a lot, tend to have less symptoms of low testosterone because working out and exercising helps raise that level naturally.

Okay.

Because your adrenals also help. I mean, your adrenals also make testosterone and help with testosterone. It's not just the testes, sex organs. That's something that working out is also good for your adrenals, as long as you're not working out too hard and burning yourself out. But that's— that was another podcast, wasn't it? It was. But testosterone is one of those that it's very important, like I said, to understand that some of the symptoms, the symptoms that you That it does warn you early on that it's coming. But it isn't until later when you've just like, you've been so low for so long and you're in the dumps. And of course, what happens? You stopped exercising. So you stop your body helping make that natural. And it becomes this cascade of, I'm tired. I'll drag myself to work out. Well, now I'm tired and I, I just don't feel like it. I'm depressed. Now I'm depressed because I'm tired. I think I'm getting old. I'm not going to the gym. And then it just keeps dropping. So I'm not going to work out as much anymore. And I see it. I do see that. And that's exactly how it, how it works is what happens is somebody, they stop working out as much.

Hmm.

And then it just keeps, it keeps going down the line to the point where they finally do something when it starts to affect their, their sexual function.

Do you think that that's something that with men in particular is just, it's something that a lot of people don't wanna think that they're a part of, or like it's a men thing to feel weak. So it couldn't be my testosterone. I can kickstart that myself. Like, I mean, what, at what age does it start just dropping because we might not be taking some sort of action like that?

Well, on average, it, it really starts to drop at the age of 40. And then it can drop. It drops more and more each year. I, and I feel, you know, part of the issue we run into, I know part of the issue we run into is that our allopathic or traditional medicine says, oh, well, your testosterone level is 300. You're fine. You're perfectly fine for someone your age. And we've talked about this age thing, right?

Mm-hmm.

We are meant to have these hormones in our body. Why do we need to live the last half of our life without them? Well, because we weren't supposed to live this long. So it's something we've always had. It shouldn't hurt to replace it. I don't, you know, there's such a stigma about it at times. They're like, oh, we shouldn't do that. That's dangerous. Oh, testosterone is going to cause prostate cancer. Studies have not shown that it causes prostate cancer. It does not cause prostate cancer. We do keep an eye on things just to make sure. But, but again, we fight that, again, a stigma from our allopathic traditional practitioners that this is an issue, the cancer issue, and it's not. If that were really truly the case of it causing cancer, then why don't we have prostate cancer in 20-year-olds when their testosterone couldn't get any higher? I don't— I'm sure there's somebody out there, but I don't hear about prostate cancer in 20-year-olds.

No, not generally.

No, you know, you might hear testicular, but not prostate.

Yeah.

So now we're afraid to give men who are older testosterone because it causes prostate cancer. Well, what if it did? Why didn't it? Right.

So it could be one of those things too. And I'm talking so far out of my own lane here, but you know, and, and I feel like there's an elephant in the room is when people talk testosterone, I have this mental image of somebody who's just completely ripped and huge, like a big Like you see those guys that are like big bears just walking around the gym.

Right. And they can barely move because they're muscle bound.

Right. They're not taking hormone replacement. Let's boost your testosterone levels. They're, they're jacking it up pretty extreme. But like, that's the mental image that I have anytime I've talked to anybody about testosterone.

About testosterone. And I understand that because that's all we used to know. So, look at it this way. When we are replacing your testosterone, we are replacing it back to the level it was when you were in your 20s.

Which is a natural level.

Which is a natural level. And we're replacing it back to a natural level. Obviously, we don't want to replace it above and beyond that natural level because then you can get some of the side effects that those same people get. You're not going to become muscle-bound. And a big bear unless you are out there lifting weights and building the muscle to do that. That doesn't happen just because you take testosterone. I wish it did, because then I wouldn't have to go to the gym. I don't want to get that big, but trust me, you know what I'm saying? If I just build a little muscle, a little shot here, and woohoo, look.

So I didn't know this about you, Sherri, that you want to be one of those like muscle-bound—

I don't want to be one of those.

Going through the gym.

No, no, no, no.

Sideways through the machines.

Right. If you could see John right now, he's showing me what that looks like.

Mental image. Mental image.

Mental image. That's right. No, that's— and that's not what I want to be. But I'm saying if I could, you know, keep my muscle without going to the gym, I wouldn't be sad.

Yeah, no, definitely.

All I had to do was take a shot.

I can appreciate that. I mean, definitely. Make our lives easy. Boost it and get, get ripped.

Right. But what you don't want to have is if you are being overtreated, you can get some of the same side effects that they get. You ever heard the term roid rage? Absolutely. Talking about, you know, they're taking roids, they're angry. Well, too much testosterone can make you aggressive. Men and women both. You will have some people, and and and this can happen with women more often. It happens with men because we keep men's testosterone levels higher than women's because men's testosterone levels in nature are naturally higher. Okay, we don't want a woman's testosterone to be the level of a man's because that's not what happens in nature. But what can happen is some men. They tend to, as a side effect of taking additional testosterone, their, their blood tends to thicken.

Okay.

Oh. And meaning that they have a little bit, they have more red blood cells than they normally would have because the testosterone has, um, had, is, has increased the red blood cell levels.

Interesting. Okay.

Now, that used— I will say used to be the thought was, well, you're getting too much testosterone. Somebody's giving you too much testosterone. That shouldn't be happening. But that's not necessarily true. It's just how the body reacts. Everyone is different. We know so much more about it now that— and studies have shown It's not— I mean, we can give one man 1,200 milligrams of testosterone in a pellet form, right, that dissolves over months, and he's fine. He doesn't turn too much of it into estrogen. He doesn't get— he doesn't, you know, make too many red blood cells. He's great. Everything's perfect. You can give it to the next guy, and he'll go and turn it into estrogen. Hmm. And now he's— and I had a patient come to me today and say, this is kind of embarrassing, but you know, like, I'm in the middle and things just decided they didn't want to work anymore. And he goes, and I know I should be peaking on my testosterone. I got it 4 weeks ago. Well, that sounds to me like your body decided to turn more of it into estrogen. There are some practitioners that will give a prescribed Medication, the prescription medication, to every man who gets testosterone to prevent that from happening.

Hmm.

They just automatically do that. Some of them will prescribe the medication, some of them will have it put in pellets. Um, many of my patients tend to want to go a more natural route. They, they don't want to take any more prescription medications than they have to. So what we do is we, we just— we're aware that it can happen. There are supplements. In fact, I said to him, well, we want to check your peak levels in 2 more weeks. If you'd like to come take the supplement that helps— it's actually called DIM, D-I-M— that will help dim down— that's one of the ingredients in it— help dim down the estrogen. You can take that for the next 2 weeks, and then we'll check your blood levels. Now, you might say, but wait a minute, Sherri, don't you want to know if he was turning into estrogen? Well, if the supplement took care of it, then he could just stay on the supplement because it's also going to take care of the other issue, right? Estrogen level is going to be normal and the other issue will be gone.

Okay.

Okay. And then he doesn't have to go 2 more weeks suffering.

Now, is that, is that the worry? Is that why somebody wouldn't want to like explore doing, you know, adding testosterone to their Hormone balance because they're like worried it'll throw everything out of whack.

Not that I know of. Okay. I mean, it's always, and even men that still have natural testosterone are at a risk of turning it to estrogen. And you'll see them. Those are the guys that generally, and I mean this in not a disrespectful way at all, but they have man boobs. They call them their breasts. Literally fat tissue. Their breast tissue has enlarged. They'll do a mammogram on them because they're afraid maybe they have breast cancer. You know, that wouldn't— that's not normally so because usually that would be one side or the other. But it's— they've just got more testosterone turned to estrogen. And they're just— they have a little bit more fat. They're a little more softer. They don't have as much muscle. And, you know, now that I tell you this, you may start looking at people, looking at guys walking down the street and going, oh, he's turning too much testosterone to estrogen. We're all experts.

We're all experts all of a sudden. Yeah.

Start to realize that some of those things, you know, the guys that say, I really leaned up and I got thin and I've still got this tissue. It might be that you have too much estrogen. Men need estrogen. We don't want to get rid of all of it.

Right.

So even taking the prescription medication. So in this guy's— let's say this guy does the supplement, problem doesn't go away. We recheck, we do check his estrogen and it's high. Then I know he needs the prescription. I just had him on a supplement for 2 weeks. It didn't take care of it. I need to give him the prescription, but he'll only take it a couple of times a week.

Hmm.

And then I still have to watch that estrogen because just like women, if I steal all that man's estrogen away from him, I could give him osteoporosis.

That's definitely something we want to avoid.

Correct. And, and, you know, you know, like a man with osteoporosis, right? Men don't usually get it because they don't lose their needed amount of estrogen like women do when they go into menopause. So that makes sense.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah. So women, let's say women in testosterone, we've been talking about the guys. Because that's usually what you hear about men and testosterone, right?

Yeah. I mean, that's immediately where my head went when we talked about this last time. Yep.

Women need it too. Women naturally have testosterone as well. Not quite sure why the FDA has not approved testosterone for women. They've decided— they've decided, mind you, not Mother Nature— they've decided women don't need testosterone after all.

Yeah.

That they do. Testosterone helps with their libido. It also helps with their pelvic floor muscles. Pelvic floor muscles for women, what is what helps them from becoming incontinent. And so it helps with their— also with their energy and their muscle. And we need our muscle to keep our metabolisms up. So we need testosterone just as much as men do. Just because it's not our main hormone doesn't mean we don't need it.

Right. Well, and so just like you said, you need to have all 4 tires hitting the road at the same level to make sure you're balanced.

And so I tell women all the time, it's not approved by the FDA for women, but evidence-based standard of care Is to replace testosterone in women.

Hmm. Interesting.

We all do. Unless you find somebody online who gives you hormones, and they won't give you testosterone because they can't, because it is considered a scheduled drug because of the abuse.

Yeah.

The way it's been abused, it is a drug that I have double locked in a cabinet. I have to keep special records, and you know the DEA has me on their. Most watched list.

And oh my God, that sounds insane, doesn't it?

Just for a hormone, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, um, so yeah, so, so women need that too. And the difference women also feel in the energy that they get back, um, the libido, what a difference that can make. That can be just an Absolute night and day difference. And even though they keep saying, honey, it's not you. I just don't feel like it. You know, it's like, well, the kids are all gone, and we don't have any more stress. And I don't understand why not. Because they're missing the main hormone.

I'm only laughing because of the we have no stress. I feel like that's one thing that you just who has no stress? Right, right. I don't know.

I look at some people and think they don't look like they have stress.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We don't have the kid stress anymore. That makes, that makes sense to me. Right.

Yeah.

So, oh, I'm so sorry. I was gonna say, so what makes this more controversial? The fact that it's testosterone is misused or the fact that it's not something that the FDA recommends women do?

Well, I would say controversial, it depends in what realm, okay? Controversial in the medical field are what's a proper level, right?

Uh-huh.

Because again, a normal lab level is less than what we would normally be at, but norms are based off of, I want to say, sick people. Okay, so you are normal for your age, right? Oh, your testosterone is 320. That's, that's great for your age. Why do we have to throw that for your age? Because again, and this is again a man, 320 for your age. You're a woman, your testosterone is 20. That's normal for your age. Well, you know what? I don't, I don't want 20.

Right.

I don't want for my age. If I can feel better, I want it back to where it was when I was in my 20s. Why not?

What's normal for me?

What's normal for me, right? Because as I am aging and things are breaking down, they're not working as well. My blood pressure goes up because my vessels aren't as elastic, don't have the elasticity they had. Do you think my doctor says, oh, your blood pressure of 180 over 90 is normal for your age? No, they don't do that. What do they do? They give you a medication to try to bring your blood pressure back to what was normal when you were in your 20s.

Hmm. Right?

They want to bring it back down.

Yeah.

So why don't we do that with hormones?

That's a great question. Maybe because Medical things are just for, like what you said, for people who are sick.

We do. It is our traditional medicine is sick medicine, right? We don't treat you till you're sick. We treat your symptoms too. Now, a lot of our providers are starting to figure out, you know, I don't just want to treat people for symptoms. I met a cardiologist at the functional medicine conference a year and a half ago, and he said, I am tired. of seeing people when they're dying, when there was so much that could have been done to keep them from getting to that point. There's medication, there's, there are supplements that can help your nitric oxide. What's nitric oxide? Something we start to lose as we age. That's elasticity of our vessels. So if we started replacing that before our vessels got hardened and our blood pressure went up and it ruined other things and we had a stroke, We could prevent it. We could give hormones for women. That's why most women over 50— heart disease was a huge problem because hormones protect you. Your estrogen is your anti-inflammatory. So traditional medicine doesn't just necessarily learn this preventative stuff. They only know when you're sick. And then In defense of our primary care providers, and I will defend them, hormones are a specialty and you need to learn a whole nother specialty. And our primary care providers, even our urologists, our gynecologists, they are specializing in their own field. Primary care has to know a little bit about everything. They don't have time to go learn another specialty that they were never taught in medical school.

Hmm. That's fair.

Yeah, it is. You know, some of them dabble. They know a little bit, right? And they'll do a few things. Yeah, they'll dabble. And they'll do a few things. They're not always right. I have a heart attack every time I find out a doctor's given— or any medical provider has given a woman an oral estrogen. I about fall off my chair and say, oh my God. You're, you're at high risk for blood clots. You've got to stop that. And then I say to myself, you've got to stop saying that. Because I might have just said your provider's an idiot. And that's not true. They aren't. So I have to stop saying that. Um, so, you know, it's just, and it's changing every day, John.

Mm-hmm.

Every day, what we know, and what we're learning is changing. When hormones are concerned.

Well, and that, I mean, you explained quite succinctly why go to a specialist about hormones. And, you know, if you have questions, comments, concerns, ideas, or you're researching it and you're just wondering, in this case, why do I feel like my libido's down? Or why am I tired all the time? Or what's going on? I feel imbalanced. Could it be testosterone? Could it be my thyroid? Could it be something else? I mean, that all makes sense to me.

Right. And, and, you know, see somebody that specializes in this stuff because there are certain tests that, that, you know, the thyroid— we did the thyroid, didn't we?

We did. We did.

That is just, you know, I had a talk again with somebody today and it just— in fact, I was listening to a thyroid specialist, The Thyroid Fixer, and I don't remember who she stole this from, but she gave him credit and says he calls them endocrinologists. Because they don't check all of the thyroid numbers, but I digressed. So, yes, a specialist, and that's the best thing you can do. You know, I offer free 15-minute discovery calls, phone consultations. Frequently, they're more than 15 minutes, but You can just go to my website at www.balancedbodymedical.com and sign up for a free discovery call. You know, you, you have nothing to spend but 15 minutes of your time.

Yeah. And get answers to your burning questions of what might be going on. What are some possible outlets? And then maybe you have a burning question about What the positive use of testosterone, or if you're like me, you're like, are you just gonna hand me a vial and I'm gonna go to the gym and start cranking out reps?

Right?

Yeah, I don't, I don't think that. I don't think that, Sherri, but it is where my mind went first.

And it does. And a lot of people do because they don't know. That's all they know about it. And like when we talked about the estrogen, they only know about the Women's Health Initiative study that's now, you know, 22 years old, and they've since said They made a mistake, right? Um, they just, they don't know. Times have changed and we've learned a lot more.

It also seems like times are changing much more quickly, like at a ferocious level. Like you were saying, there's just always updates. There's always something new that's coming out because of some research or somebody has an idea or testing or whatever. So when you are a specialist as you are in hormones and BHRT. I mean, you have a bigger knowledge base and can answer those questions that somebody like me might have.

Absolutely. And it's daily, it's daily learning. I'm daily listening to something new. And I know we're probably getting close to running out of time here, but I'm going to throw this out because this is testosterone. There is a doctor out there, and I should have prepared myself to talk about this because her name has slipped my brain. But she did a study, and I have photos of this, and I do this— I use these photos and I talk about this in every one of my hormone presentations. She implanted testosterone pellets around breast cancer tumors.

Oh.

And in weeks, within weeks, the tumor shrinkage is Unbelievable.

Wow.

It is amazing. And this woman is still a practicing, uh, doctor, and she treats hormone replacement. But what she does is she gives women much higher than natural amounts of testosterone, like considerably higher amounts, and allows their body to turn it to estrogen. So she never replaces estrogen. She just gives them mega amounts of testosterone and counts on their body turning enough of it into estrogen to protect, do the other things that estrogen does.

Now, I would have never thought that. I mean, obviously I'm not a specialist, a hormone specialist, right? That makes sense now that you say it, but I didn't think about that before.

Now, She can do that all day long because she did the studies. And when the medical board calls her up, she's got everything right there in front of her to tell them that they don't know what they're talking about and she does. But the rest of us who are giving testosterone that is not approved, we're going to give it the normal way. But I'm very intrigued because I went to my mentor. I said, I find this very intriguing. She goes, I wouldn't touch that with a 10-foot pole.

No.

Because it is so far out of the norm. Right?

Yeah.

What I do is still evidence-based practice. I am practicing within the parameters of what we hormone replacement people do. I don't experiment. I don't guess. I don't— well, maybe this will work. I don't ever do that.

Yeah.

So, but she's doing, and she feels very strongly about this, um, but she did the studies. She, she's, she's watched these tumors shrink to practically nothing.

Wow.

Doing that.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

And I mean, look, hormones and being in balance with your hormones not only gets you back to the feeling that you had before, but it's— your body is able to run correctly. You have more energy. You're able to do the things that you once did and have better mood. Like, just in balance is important. So that doesn't surprise me at all.

Right. For men, if they leave their testosterone low, next thing you know— this is, again, this is not everybody, take that with a grain of salt, it's not everybody— but next thing you know, they have high cholesterol, they're borderline diabetic. Then they go and they replace their testosterone and all that goes away.

Hmm.

That's why it's all related.

It is. Well, there you go. I think that, that I, I don't know why, but I feel like I just get a fountain of knowledge every time we talk about something like this. I feel more and more strongly that just making sure that you know where your level's at for you, again, that's one of the most important Parts. It's like you're looking at it as not just general numbers, but John, how are you feeling with this balance?

Yes.

That's, that's so important. And like you said, fill out the form on the site and get that 15 minutes in.

Yeah. Yes. Get those questions in. I, I love questions. I love to be challenged. Um, it's, yeah. Email me, info@balancedbodymedical.com. Shoot me a question, sign up for a call. I'd love to hear from you.

And we will catch you next time. We're talking about— did you say estrogen or progesterone? Which direction did you want to go for next week?

We hadn't done estrogen yet. We started with testosterone, didn't we? The most exciting one. Well, then we better go to estrogen because that is the next controversial Hormone.

It seems like all these hormones are controversial. Is that actually what's happening here?

Progesterone isn't, and neither is DHEA.

Maybe we can find the controversy within them.

Right. Estrogen next time.

Okay.

We'll do estrogen.

This has been the Balanced Body Medical Podcast with Sherri Griggs, owner of Balanced Body Health and Wellness. If you're looking to find Sherri, go ahead and look for the website, balancedbodymedical.com. If you're looking for the business and you want to find Sherri at her office, you can find her at—

10815 Elm Street in Rockbrook Plaza. Thank you.