Jay Feldman 0:12
Welcome to Episode 49 of the energy balance podcast, where we teach you how to live without constant hunger and cravings, fatigue, brain fog, poor sleep and all sorts of other low energy symptoms by maximizing your cellular energy. I'm Jay Feldman. I'm a health coach and independent health researcher, and joining me again today is my good friend Mike Fave. Mike and I have been studying health and nutrition for a long time now, and Mike also draws on his experiences from working within the healthcare industry. In today's episode, we are going to be talking about men's Hormonal Health, and in particular, how to improve male reproductive health from the bioenergetic view, and we'll be dispelling some myths surrounding increasing testosterone and building muscle, improving libido and other aspects of men's Hormonal Health. And we'll also be discussing why things like low carb diets, intermittent fasting and fasting cardio are inherently harmful to Hormonal Health. We'll be talking about why eating enough food is paramount for increasing libido, gaining muscle and improving Hormonal Health. We'll be talking about the problem with treating lab values rather than treating the entire person. We'll also be discussing how carbohydrate deficiencies can decrease androgens and drive hormonal imbalances, as well as how eating too much protein can decrease your metabolism and harm Hormonal Health. And we'll also discuss the ideal amount of protein for Hormonal Health. If this is your first time listening to this podcast, then after listening through this episode, I'd highly recommend you go back and listen to episodes one through seven, where we take some time to build a foundation as far as the bioenergetic view of health. To check out the show notes for today's episode, you can head over to Jay Feldman, wellness.com/podcast where I'll link to any of these studies, articles and other things that we referenced throughout today's episode. And if you are struggling with any hormonal imbalances, any issues with reproductive health, whether that's a lack of libido or weight gain that you know is stubborn and you're having trouble losing it, or an inability to gain muscle, or if you're dealing with other low energy symptoms like chronic cravings and hunger, low energy or fatigue, chronic pain, digestive inflammation or other gut symptoms, brain fog, insomnia, or any other low energy symptoms or various chronic health conditions, these issues really come down to a lack of Energy. And if you head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, you can sign up for a free energy balance mini course where I will explain how these different symptoms and conditions tie back to a lack of energy. And I'll also go through the main things that you want to do to improve your ability to produce energy on the cellular level, so that you can resolve these symptoms and conditions. So to sign up for that free energy balance mini course, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, and with that, let's get started.

So these are obviously very important topics, questions that we get a lot and just a huge part of of health. For for men, of course, and then, you know, for, for any women, obviously, who have men in their lives, as far as male hormones, libido, hormonal balance, being able to build muscle, lose fat, fertility, all those things. You know, we did have a couple of episodes discussing these things for women. I'll link to those, but yeah, so there's, there's a lot to dig into as far as, as far as Hormonal Health goes for for men as well. Obviously low testosterone or low androgens is pretty prevalent now and leads to a lot of these issues. So we'll dig into that a little bit, and the balances between these hormones, and just kind of keep a broad overview before you know, maybe in the future, we'll dig into some of the more specific questions here, but at least the basics, the most important things to consider when somebody's trying to reverse any of these symptoms related to a lack of these pro likely to reproductive hormones or imbalances in the reproductive hormones. And I think just to start, it's helpful to remember that whenever we're talking about reproductive health, it's, it's only a facet of our overall health, yet the it's, it's one piece of this whole system. So when our when overall we're doing well, when our metabolism is high, when we have a lot of energy available into in our internal environment, and our external environment is is ripe for producing energy that's going to allow us to increase the energy. That's basically directed towards our reproductive systems, and that's going to eventually increase the reproductive hormones, and then vice versa as well. So anything that we're doing that's going to decrease our energy availability is going to basically decrease the amount of energy we have available for something like reproduction, which obviously is not necessary for our immediate survival, but long term survival and and so that's always kind of the most important perspective to have. Or the first place to start is just looking at energy availability in relation to these things, raising metabolism, and then kind of digging into some of the more specifics. Is there anything you want to add there?

Mike 5:40
I just, as always, I think the context is important, and so you can, because you can easily get stuck in reductionist pathways or ideas where it's just like, if you use this supplement or use this compound, you'll raise your testosterone X percent, and it's like, there's so many things that are that. And the other thing is, it's not just about testosterone, right? There's, and I guess we can get into that, but there's so many other things involved in raising or increasing overall androgenic tone in the body, or androgenic function, including testosterone, that you can't just, like, limit it down to one thing. It's really got to be a lifestyle change for too large extent. And it's not going to be one magical supplement, unless that is actually injecting testosterone, and then that's a different story.

Jay Feldman 6:27
Yeah, and even within lifestyle change, again, as you pointed out, for whatever reason, this seems to happen a lot with with reproductive hormones. What happens with anything where people get so zoned in on some particular receptors, on particular hormone, and it's just all about doing anything you can to upregulate these androgenic receptors or these angiogenic hormones, or down regulate estrogen, or down regulate prolactin. And, you know, big picture, those things make sense. But when you get so caught up in some of those individual pathways that can definitely lead to, I don't know, using certain supplements or certain paradigms, certain even lifestyle interventions that I would say are not not ideal big picture, even if maybe they have some pretty cold showers, sure. Or intermittent fasting is another one that's that's pretty common, yeah. Or, like fasted cardio, all sorts of things. I mean, especially when you consider that, and we'll dig into this a little bit, but one thing that's talked about a lot is that body fat increases estrogen, it increases aromatization. And so you can kind of considering that, you can just say, Oh, well, anything that'll decrease body fat will improve your Hormonal Health. And obviously there's a ton of ways to decrease body fat that will make your hormonal health a lot worse. And a lot of people experience that, and we'll dig into it a little bit. But I mean, I see that very commonly from people coming off of low carb diets, where a lot of times they've been or intermittent fasting, or normally a combination, where often they've been the leanest they ever have, and yet their hormones are tend to be in worse places ever been. Yeah,

Mike 8:01
I've seen that with a couple people as well. And I mean, and you can people post about it, like, proudly online, I've seen as well in the low carb community, like posting testosterone labs and saying, but I'm still, like, functioning well, and then trying to basically rationalize other pathways as to why they might be doing a right despite what are the low testosterone or high cholesterol or whatever it is, and it's not to bash the low carb community or anything like that. It's just an example of of taking things out of context, I guess, where it's like, oh, if I if I'm very lean, then my testosterone and I have less body fat and more aromatose in the estrogen, and therefore I'll have higher testosterone. And it's like, Yeah, but there's so much more to the picture besides that. So like, yes, taking body fat off is important, especially if you have an excessive amount for your androgenic tone, but that's not the determining factor of things. That is one factor in a larger system. And so that's why, I guess just to boil it all down, it's important to always keep the larger system in line. It's important to always keep the big picture in mind and look at the small minutia or the or the reductionist pathways in the context of that big picture, so you don't get lost. And that's something that I know I've had to do, like consistently remind myself for so that I don't get stuck in because it's very easy to, like, look at the pathway and, oh, it's just so simple and just like, try and plug away at the pathway. But a lot of times it doesn't really work out the same way in reality, at least in my experience. Yeah, but yeah, the context is always the context. Big picture is always important. And I think you got to look at, you have to, if you're going to look at the trees, you still have to keep the forest in mind.

Jay Feldman 9:50
And you had mentioned like injecting testosterone before, and obviously that's not that. That's everyone's first thing that they'll do, but a lot of people, whether they're kind of mainstream or even in. In some of like the bioenergetic communities, using some of these androgenic type hormones can be common or popular, and they're in the right context. I think there's a place for them. However, just adding them onto a diet or lifestyle that's not supportive is often going to make things worse in the long run. And a lot of people see that, especially this is more the case in the mainstream, where people will use testosterone generally, or other angiogenic hormones, and then getting off of them, will have a ton of symptoms and problems. And it ends up they end up in a way worse spot than they started.

Mike 10:38
Yeah, or even just having problems when they add them on. And the way I like to generally think about anything like that is it's sort of an escalation process. So you change your diet, you change your lifestyle, and you give it a little time, which is important, because it just doesn't happen like tomorrow. You give it a little time, and then essentially what you'll see is that, okay, you see if your testosterone comes up and you also, again, something I think that's really important that's become very evident, I guess, to me recently, is the idea of treating a lab value. I think that it's important to stay away from treating a lab value as a in isolation. You want to look at the lab value, but you also want to look at things in context. In context. You know, if you're if your testosterone is not 1000 but it's 700 and your libido is great, and your motivation is great, and everything else is going well, you know, you may not need to go on these tangents of correcting this, that maybe it's not just the testosterone. There's so again, even with the lab values, there's like that all has to be put into context with what's going on in on a symptom level, what's going on subjectively. Because I think the empirical and objective values are important, and they help track progress, and it's something that's very useful, but that has to be conjoined in with the subjective the subjective points of view, the subjective feelings about things, the symptoms that are present. And then the other thing is also with those lab values, you know, looking at just, and I have a lot of people, a lot of friends, a lot of guys, I know, they'll ask me, oh, my, you know, what's the, what's the testosterone value? Like, Oh, are my testosterone is this, and I should be fine. There's a lot more to the system than just testosterone. You have. I mean, you have, you have what's going on with cortisol, what's going on with DHT, what's going on with estrogen, what's going on with sex hormone binding globule, and what's going on with the thyroid. So all of those things become important. And again, that that's talking about the bigger picture. So and the other thing with the labs is that to keep in mind is is all just a snapshot in time, and it can be adjusted by time of day. It can be adjusted by what you did yesterday. You're sleeping with you, ate something that bothered you. All these things can, can, can adjust these values on a moment to moment basis, and a lot of the hormones are are adjusting continuously to what's going on in the environment that it's not it's not like you get this one lab value and that's where you are. You can get a sampling of lab values from different periods of time within the single day and get different results. So and from day to day, you can have different results. So just those are important to keep in mind. But as far as, as far as as the injecting testosterone or using exogenous hormones, in my experience, the process has to be the escalation. So you would start with diet and lifestyle changes, and then you can, you can move into supplementation, and then after you after supplementation, then you can start supplementation with, you know, minerals, vitamins, etc, collecting, correcting deficiencies. You know, whether you have an iron deficiency, whether you have something going on with your vitamin D, whether you have something B, vitamin issues, sleep issues, whatever it is. And then from there, if you're still having an issue, depending on age context, everything that's going on, then you can talk about adding in a little exogenous hormones and seeing if that will adjust the system in the right direction. And it's usually not just putting testosterone to start what's going on with thyroid first thing, things along those lines. So it has to be an escalation process. It has to be built up. It has to start with the lifestyle changes, the diet and sleep, and then move towards the more, I guess, entailing processes, or the more corrective or potent processes, in the sense of like, you have an individual, you know, actually injecting testosterone or using something like progesterone, so it's you have to get the foundation, and then I guess work your way to the pyramid, is the way I sort of have seen it.

Jay Feldman 14:47
sure, yeah, and we'll get to some of those details a little bit later on. But so just big picture here to kind of wrap up this, this general context for looking at Hormonal Health. We want to remember that again. All this does come down to energy. When our bodies have enough energy available, and they shift out of that stress state, shift out of that starvation state, things like reproduction become a kind of a more of a priority again, because they can be supportive. And our bodies are recognizing that the environment is is rich enough to to support, you know, healthy reproduction. And so that's kind of what we're what we're getting at, as far as the context here, and then the way that looks generally would be, you know, raising metabolism, improving thyroid health, which would then also go along with increasing a lot of the angiogenic hormones, lowering stress hormones, which involves just the basic stress hormones, like cortisol and adrenaline and glucagon, but also a lot of the estrogenic hormones as well, which really fall into that, that stress hormone category. And again, big picture here we're, you know, you mentioned a bunch of different supplements and hormones and all of that. But it really should be very simple. Ideally, this should be a very simple picture. We should be able to have, you know, a good libido, easily build muscle and maintain muscle, we should be able to, you know, feel strong, vibrant, confident, all those things should be able to happen, ideally without any, any sort of obscure, particular supplement or anything like that. It's kind of like how we're how, I don't know if I would say design, but how, like, our bodies are set up. And so the big picture things are always the most important. And then, yes, there are particular, particular scenarios where we might want to, we might want to use some of those supplements, and we'll talk about that. But as far as those big picture things go, some of the the factors that would say have by far the largest impact on Hormonal Health. The first one always comes down to eating enough food. So when we're talking about having enough energy, there are a lot of things that affect our ability to convert food to energy, but one of the biggest ones is one of the biggest limiting factors is going to be how much food we have coming in. And I think so both of us have some background in in fitness and wanting to build muscle. And I know for me, I never understood how much food I needed to be eating to be building muscle and having healthy hormones. For you know, for a long time, when I was younger and spent a ton of time at the gym and a lot of hard work, not not getting a lot of results because of that, and eating more allowed for for much easier muscle gain, and we'll talk about that also in the context of carbohydrates, but this was just eating enough calories as a whole, eating enough food as a whole. So I would say that that's one of the biggest factors, for sure, kind of one of the the first bottlenecks, the first limiting things, is always going to be how much food we have taking coming in. And of course, one of the major concerns here is always weight gain. So I'll link back to a bunch of episodes where we've talked about how taking in more food does not equal gaining body fat if we're converting that food to energy, and if we're in a good energetic state, which leads to a good hormonal state, which means that that excess fuel would end up more going would be going towards energy and be going towards structural components, like muscle mass, as opposed to body fat. So I'd say that's just biggest piece. Part one is always to be eating enough food. And I it's extraordinarily common for women to not be eating enough, but with men as well, I've very rarely seen, seen anyone where they're really, where they're coming to me without, like with health issues, and they're eating enough generally. And obviously, it's not always as simple as just eat more. There's more factors here, which we'll get into, but that tends to be a huge component or key piece.

Mike 18:45
Yeah, I think, and I think a lot of the eating enough stuff comes with not eating the right things, not or eating foods that are impairing metabolism to some extent. And I've seen a lot of people come with really, really low intakes, like and so what I usually do is I just to get a basic sense of where metabolism should be. I like to use the the calorie calculators that they use for the fitness stuff. And it's, it's just an estimate. It's not an exact. It's, it's sort of a low cost method to determine where someone's metabolism should be based on X amount of activity, based on their size, etc. And in lieu of doing something like an actual body fat percentage testing or bio electrical impotence, testing to see what your the actual metabolism is and whatnot. So I try and state, just because it's in that's a little more entailing. It's a little harder to do. It's not really readily available. So I like to do that in most I think almost every single person I've worked with I've found to be like, either. Severely eating under that number that was determined by the formula, one of the main ones uses, like the catch McArdle formula, just in case anyone's interested. So most people I find are severely eating under that or they're, they are, they're, they're eating just below it, and that's just for maintenance. And oftentimes, when they're eating below maintenance, supposed maintenance, based on the formula, they're still gaining weight. And then I think a lot of it comes down to food choice. So and I give this I've I just had somebody I saw recently who was pretty significantly overweight and eating like 500 calories below maintenance level on a regular basis, and still gaining weight, and it's just based on his food choices. And the food choices consisted of cookies, um, just sort of whatever was around, a lot of fast food, and still, like, like, some days would be one meal a day, you know, other days would be just two meals a day. And so, you know, fasting and eating below whatever like, all this essentially doing all the strategies that were required to lose weight, which was fasting, eating below maintenance calories on a consistent basis and still gaining weight, and it was dependent upon the foods that were being taken in. And this is, you know, this is where I think a lot of the idea that we formed with, you know, the lack of calories in, lack of calories out, and like that model not being exactly perfect, be taking center stage. And so you can expect, when they were eating, when you're eating low, because I have labs from some of these people eating way below. You know, cortisol was on the higher end, and testosterone was for some of these people were in their 20s, men in their 20s, like, absolutely bottom of the barrel, um, and they just adjust. They just adjusted the ranges down for testosterone. So there's eating enough is very important. But I think what a lot of times, what dictates that is eating the right foods. I guess a long winded way of just saying that.

Jay Feldman 22:08
No, no, it's a great point. Also, I just want to mention a couple things. One is that, yeah, I It doesn't mean that he was lying if he was eating less than his supposed maintenance amount, and he a lot of the people who are, I see it all the time. I don't think I'm ever going to not see it, but it's but you know people who are dogmatically in favor of the calorie equation, who just accuse anybody who is not losing weight and saying that they're eating under however many calories are supposed to eat, just accusing them of lying, which I think is insane, especially when you have people that are eating far below maintenance or baseline and still gaining weight or not losing weight, or seeing them eat more and lose weight. I mean, it's just, we've talked extensively about the problems with the idea of calories in, calories out. So I'll link to those episodes. If we talk about it now, it'll take up a whole episode. Yeah.

Mike 23:00
I mean, I've seen this. I've seen this. I've seen this in the medical field too, where a patient is not getting a patient, I mean, is not getting the results as are expected. So the first thought process I've seen come from some medical professionals, is, oh, you're not, you're not compliant, right, right? Yeah. And it's like, well, and I've seen there's been certain, I'm trying to think of what the medication was. Oh, it was. We were talking about the in talking about some of the vitamin D stuff. One of the articles that I was reading about it, there's, they were saying that, you know, all these patients are coming with low vitamin D. And then they were talking about the conversion pathways, and some people were still showing like, I think it was obese people with vitamin D supplementation were continuously showing up with low blood results for their 25 ohd. And the researchers were just they eventually figured out, because a lot of doctors were saying, Oh, the patients are just non compliant with supplementation. That was like the first thought process. But the researchers eventually figured out that, oh, when you have an excessive amount of body fat, vitamin D can get shunted into storage, and it makes it more difficult for people of a heavier weight to get their 25 ohd levels up. That was that's eventually what they figured out. But I just thought it was in relating to what we're talking about. I thought it was interesting that the first thought process was automatically non compliance. It was literally others not compliant, right?

Jay Feldman 24:26
Which really is a nice way of saying they're they're lying about taking what they're saying, that they're exactly or doing what they're saying they're doing. Yeah.

Mike 24:34
And I've the with these people that I've worked with. I've had them. I mean, I guess you could for some of them, they were actually close friends, so I knew what they ate on a regular basis, because I was hanging out with them on a regular basis. But for some of for other people, for in general, I have people just write down everything they eat. And it's just like, after they eat it, just write it down in a note in their phone, and then at the end of the three days, just send it to me and everything, include everything. Every. Thing they drink whatever it is and and then I will put it into chronometer. And what I'll see on chronometer is that they are severely eating below their caloric intake.

Jay Feldman 25:07
I bet they just forgot to put a whole box of donuts on there that they ate Mike.

Mike 25:11
Yeah, I'm sure that's what it was, especially when, you know, like, they would tell me, Oh, I ate a sleeve of cookies for breakfast. It's like, if they were trying to, if they were trying to seem like they were like lies, so that they could seem like they were eating better, you know, you wouldn't put something like that. So, right, right, especially with people who are trying to, you know, get better or make a difference for themselves, right? I don't see the point in them having a having, like, an interest in lying about it. You know, if we're going to make the adjustment, Why would you lie about it? I can see the because a lot of people like, oh, food questionnaires aren't really reliable. And the reason I'm going at length of this is because in a lot of the studies with the food questionnaires is like, there's no, they're not. They're not. The people who are doing the food questionnaires are not trying to get better. They're just being the data is just being collected to look at what they're eating for the study, and maybe, depending on how they're incentivized for the study, whether it's like the nurses study of the NHANES studies, maybe they're getting a payment or something like that. And the food questionnaires are getting is a 24 hour recall, right, right, not a three day Hey, write down everything you eat for the next three days, and then their food the food frequency questionnaires they were doing for 24 hour recalls on like, six month or X number of year basis apart. Whereas this is like, write me what you ate for the past three days going forward, and then we're gonna adjust the diet, and then you're gonna telling me what you're writing down on a regular basis. Like, there's, there's not an ability there. I mean, I'm sure you can have some memory issues for what you ate, but this is, this isn't dependent on memory. This is when you eat it, write it down, right? And, like, in the interest of getting better. So I, like, I don't see the incentive here to lie about it. Um, if the if that's the worry. So I and it just goes to the point that a lot of people that we're working with are eating a lot of foods that are causing issues and they're severely under eating and from a basic sense, I think it makes sense, because if you're eating a lot of things that are gumming up your metabolism or or irritating your intestines, your body's going to put the brakes on it, exactly.

Jay Feldman 27:13
Yeah. And so just to clarify also, for people who aren't aware, 24 hour recall means that they're recalling what they ate the previous day, as opposed to doing it ahead of time or as they're going, Yeah, so, but so that's a huge part. I mean, when it comes to eating more, that does not mean just force food down what it in certain scenarios, it might mean having to make an effort to eat more. But as you're getting at, the limiting factor in eating enough often is not just making yourself eat more. Sometimes it is. But a lot of times, the limiting factor can be digestion, where as you're saying, if you're eating foods that you're not digesting, well, got a lot of endotoxin, you've got a lot of serotonin. Those things are going to suppress appetite, block your ability to convert, convert food to energy, which can also suppress appetite, suppress your metabolism, which can suppress appetite, and then, as also, just not eating very much for an extended period of time will lower your lower your metabolism so much that your appetite will be suppressed as well. So yeah, when we're talking about eating more a lot of times, what that also means is making the steps to be able to eat more, which, as you're saying, comes down to changing the types of foods, which we'll get at in a second. Another thing I wanted to come back to really quickly was you were talking about the calorie calculators as like a baseline to start. And I think those are a helpful baseline to start. Just to get some picture of how many calories do they say somebody my size should be eating because so somebody can go have such a skewed idea of what a normal amount of food is to eat.

Mike 28:39
It's definitely not 2000 calories for everybody. Let's just put it that way.

Jay Feldman 28:43
Absolutely and so, so that's so important. The other thing I would say there is normally that, using those calculator equations, I would say that's like minimum, that's like low baseline for most. Again, it's all context. Because for somebody who is who has a depressed metabolism, doesn't have, you know, they're eating hard to digest foods that maintenance might be 500 or 800 calories lower. And for them, we're not saying force it above that, but I guess what I would say is that as far as somebody who is functioning well, metabolically, generally, those calorie calculators are under estimating, if you want to put it that way.

Mike 29:15
Those are about breaking even and right. Those calorie calculators still come from the model of calories, and calories out, right? And you have to use the correct they number one. You have to use the correct activity multiplier. But when you're using an activity multiplier for those calorie calculators, you have to understand that, for example, if you they and they go up by number of times working out, or, like, if you're having light activity, or whatever it is. So the calorie calculator, you'll get your basal metabolic rate, which will just, I think, for the catchment article, it's 21.6 times lean body mass, plus 370 and that gives you your basal metabolic rate. And then you do like whatever it is at 1.3 times, 1.4 times whatever it is. And that's about breaking even. This is how much calories you need to according to this model. Little intake just to maintain your weight and and so and that it's, again, this is only an estimate. It's just to see a ballpark of where we want to get to, where we want to be, to maintain our weight based on our activity. That's all that is saying. It's not saying this is how much you need to eat. This is how much you should eat. It's, it's literally just and I use it for people as just a starting point, and then you we adjust from there are you. Because what winds up happening is, a lot of people, when they change the foods that they're eating, and they start eating, you know, an adequate protein or adequate carbs, they actually start getting hungrier, and they start eating more. And then when they start eating more, then they start overshooting what they're taking in from those calculators, and what, what winds up happening is they wind up eating more than that and either losing weight or maintaining weight or recompositioning their body, whatever it is, it's just, it's just something as a ballpark. It's something as an early estimate. And that's this is important to keep it there and not use it as gospel, because there's no way that some random formula is going to dictate what your caloric needs are from a day to day basis. It's just, it's just a starting place. That's it.

Jay Feldman 31:09
Right, right.Yeah. And so, just to clarify, you can maintain your weight on higher calories depending on what you're doing, what you're eating, all of that. So just, just a starting point, just as an estimate. But onto the one of the next major components, I would say here, as far as just eating enough goes, is some of the particulars, as far as the different macronutrients go. So we had mentioned low carb diets a little bit, which in the past we've talked about extensively as a good way to drive stress hormones up, decrease thyroid hormone, decrease our metabolism, which is a really great way to cause a lot of issues when it comes to reproductive hormones, because those same processes will also lead to a decrease in testosterone, all the androgens, all the pro reproductive hormones, which, again, as I was trying to say earlier, are not just reproductive hormones. They affect everything from our immune system to digestion and keeping our our keeping healthy microbiome, all of that is affected by these quote, unquote reproductive hormones, which are really systemic hormones. And so anyway, carbohydrates are extremely important for that, for keeping the stress hormones down, keeping these reproductive hormones up by essentially raising our metabolism and keeping our blood sugar steady and acting as as that extremely important fuel source, and one of the or I guess a set of symptoms you'll tend to see on in people who are on low carb diets is extremely high cholesterol, low thyroid. And those things go hand in hand. We've talked about that in the past, but basically that buildup of cholesterol tends to be the result of a lack of conversion from cholesterol to steroid hormones like the androgen so basically, thyroid is necessary for that conversion. When you have low thyroid, you have high stress hormones, you're not going to be converting the cholesterol to those downstream steroids, and that's going to cause a lot of these symptoms. So you'll see high cholesterol very commonly on low carb diets, partially due to that. There's some other factors as well, and then it's also very common to see low libido and decreases in body fat, but also a lack of ease in building muscle. Tends to be a lot harder to put on muscle mass with low carb diets, which just as I mean, if you ask anybody who's a bodybuilder who is focusing entirely on building muscle, they'll, they'll tell you how important carbohydrates are for that.

Mike 33:27
To the extent that their diet is literally carbs and protein, and they keep fat extremely low.

Jay Feldman 33:32
Right, right. Which is not ideal either. We'll discuss that, but, yeah, but at the very least that's a good kind of example, as far as how important carbohydrates are, and we both experienced these symptoms to some extent. I won't speak for you as much, but I know when I was doing low carb, I had high cholesterol, I had it was much harder to maintain or build muscle, and everything hormone related was definitely decreased. And all of that reversed pretty intensely and quickly. When bringing in carbohydrates and eating more cholesterol, went down by like 80 plus points. It was about 100 points, actually.

Mike 34:11
Yeah, that was crazy. I remember that, yeah, your first panel was insane. And then it dropped like 100 points just by adding carbs.

Jay Feldman 34:18
yeah, yeah, yeah. It was. It was, it was pretty crazy. And along with that, too is how easy it is to build, and this isn't just carbohydrates, this is based on a lot of things, but how easy it is now to build or maintain muscle without really working out very much at all as far as weight lifting goes. So that's and people are very surprised by that, and I see that with clients too, especially ones who I work with over time and have and are relatively have gotten to a point where they're pretty lean and their metabolism is doing really well. Is they'll all talk about how easy it is to maintain body composition, as far as low body fat, but also building muscle, just not like not in the gym, sometimes not even with intense exercise, just by maintaining a good energetic state. Which leads to a good hormonal profile, which is the main thing that's going to determine where fuel is going, and whether it's going towards muscle, or it's going towards fat, for example, or any of the other places. And just a quick, short study that I want to mention here also has to do with even just type of protein, the type of protein that we're eating. So there's a study looking at rats where they gave him whey protein versus, I think it was a wheat protein, so like gluten, and they tagged the protein to see where it was deposited, and found that with the whey protein, much more of it was used to build muscle, and then with the wheat protein, much more of it went to body fat. So that, and we haven't even talked about protein yet, but it just just wanted to use that as an as a way to show how what we're eating, the effects on metabolism, the effect on our overall health, will determine where food is stored, and has a lot more to do with these things than just how much you're eating. And yeah, because of that, you can maintain muscle mass very easily, for example, without needing that stimulus, even of intense exercise, which we'll talk about in more detail.

Mike 36:06
Yeah. I mean, I think if you actually look through the research, you basically see that what I mean macros, the macronutrient ratio, or not ratio, but the amounts are important. But then also, if you basically look through any of the research, you'll see that the idea of, If It Fits Your Macros is just what's the idea of, like, just eating X amount of protein or X amount of carbs or whatever just is completely invalidated. And with that, the whole idea of calories and calories out could probably go as well, just because you can see, like, the effects of different foods on the body, like what you just talked about with whey protein, or using different type you know, the difference between saturated fats or unsaturated fats and their effects on uh enzymes in the testicles and their production of testosterone, which there's, there's a rat study basically coming that coconut oil versus soybean oil, the coconut oil caused a greater increase In androgens by because it changed the oxidative stress within the testicles. The other thing you can see is in studies that carbs are actually sparing of protein, so eating adequate amounts of carbohydrate in the diet will allow you to not have to burn through so much protein. And this was basically understood through gluconeogenesis, where when you don't have adequate carbohydrate intake, your body will take its protein stores and turn that into carbohydrate for for the body. And This partly explains the differences in, I think, I think in our cholesterol levels, when we were both doing low carb, was I started out doing low carb with you, and, you know, keeping my protein at a certain level, so that we were essentially trying to get into ketosis. But I I couldn't handle it. My I didn't like it. So what I essentially wound up doing was eating massive amounts of protein to make up for the lack of carbs, and just doing a ton of gluconeogenesis. But I think I was eating like 200 to 300 grams of protein a day, just which is, obviously, is not how you get into ketosis, and basically making up the carb deficit with protein, which is not recommended. I think, I don't think that's a good thing at all. I think it's better to just eat your carbs. But essentially, all the different nutrients and the different components have differing effects. And so, you know what, as you talked about the protein, or as we talked about with carb sparing protein, or the different types of fats, like all those things become very important in the function of your hormones and the different and the building the structure of your body. And so as far as, I guess the I guess the first point you made there was the importance of having adequate carbs, and that's not only to allow for the conversion of cholesterol, which is something you alluded to with high cholesterol and a low carb diet, but the conversion of cholesterol via thyroid hormone into the production of steroid hormones, but it's also to keep cortisol lower, keep gluconeogenesis lower, so essentially sparing protein and allowing for lean tissue to be maintained, and then driving energy metabolism at the cell directly, which is basically taking glucose and oxidizing it through the Krebs cycle and the electron transport chain all the way to carbon dioxide and water, and basically powering the whole system. So carbohydrates are for male hormones and for female hormones and for hormonal profile in general, besides testosterone and progesterone and anything along those lines is are extremely important, just for metabolic health overall, through multiple mechanisms. We touched on a few, but through a variety of mechanisms and just and so from there, the importance of what types of carbohydrates, it's not just, Oh, you just eat enough carbs and you're good. It depends on, you know, you have to is, what are you absorbing? Are you absorbing the carbs that you're eating? And so from there, it's, you know, the most easily digested sources are. Going to be, you know, your tubers, your fruits, fruit juice, any types of starchy fruits, which would be like your plantains or bananas. And then this is also depends on individual tolerance. What are you tolerating? You know, for example, I don't tolerate plantains well, but I can drink a lot of juice completely fine, and maintain my body composition, my hormonal profile very nicely, just with juice and different fruits. And then the other thing, a modifier, this is what's going on in your gut. Are you having gut issues? Because I didn't start out able to digest a lot of different types of fruits and different juices? Is over time, as I addressed issues that I had going on in my own gut, where I where I wasn't producing toxins, or basically endotoxin or bacterial products from the carbs that I was taking in. And I think for a lot of people, when they come off low carb, they come off heavy diets, depending on where they came from, or even a standard American diet, they have gut issues and a lot of things. They start to realize, when they pay attention to themselves, that they're unable to digest certain things, and that's a big one. And I, and I see this with a lot of people, as far as under eating, they their carb sources, I think very heavy grain based starch diets, I think directly lower appetite. And I've noticed this in myself, for me, with starch in general, when I have any type of, not any type, but when I have, like, a grain based starch or a lot of beans or anything, it'll really lower my appetite, and I will. And for me, I get bloated, and then I don't feel well, and then I don't really want to eat. Whereas if I stick to just, you know, fruit juice, whether that's orange juice, pineapple juice, pomegranate juice, any mixtures of those juices, I seem to do just fine, and I'm hungry again within the next three hours or so. And, you know, I don't feel bloated, I don't feel overly full, I don't get lazy after I eat. I don't get sleepy or anything like that. No, I'm pretty and my blood sugar is that's not. Another important point is, blood sugar stays pretty well maintained. So I think types of carbs, the amount of carbs, very important. I just gave it a couple ideas. I don't know if you want to summarize or add anything.

Jay Feldman 42:07
Yeah, yeah. So just to clarify, you mentioned tubers. So roots and tubers would be potatoes, sweet potatoes as the main ones. But also, like parsnips and rutabaga, I mean other root vegetables and white rices. As far as grains go, white rice is, yeah, the safest right as all the harmful aspects of the grains, for the most part, are taken off. I mean, there's still some potential issues, but for the most part, much better. So from and I would emphasize also, starch can definitely be helpful when it comes to building muscle, especially if you're exercising intensely, where starch is better at refilling muscle glycogen. So that doesn't mean you need to have starch with every meal, or, you know, you don't have to do the chicken breast and white rice diet, you know, the bodybuilder diet. I do think that's probably far too much starch relative to what's ideal. I think getting a lot more from fruit and juice and a lot more sugars is is important, and that's for refilling liver glycogen, for the brain, supporting liver health, and also nutrient density and all of that. But some starch tends to be helpful for building muscle mass if you're working out intensely and recovering from that sort of exercise. So that's something to keep in mind. Also some other just another category of semi starchy or carbohydrate based foods that are decent would be squashes and zucchinis and pumpkins, which are all the same family, but.

Mike 43:31
And they're all technically fruits as well. They're all starchy fruits, right? Like plantains, bananas, pumpkins, squashes, zucchinis, which are squashes, all those are, as long as you tolerate them are, they're pretty good sources of of not only fiber, but micronutrients and some carbohydrate, right?

Jay Feldman 43:47
Yeah. And so those you had mentioned also the protein sparing effects of carbohydrates, which I think is a really great transition, where, having, I think sometimes it's helpful to talk about it in reverse, where so much of what we're told when it comes to building muscle or supporting hormones or anything is that you need enough protein, and because of that, people often end up taking in huge amounts of protein. You know, they need to get their 30 grams in every you know, six times a day or more you know, or you know, more than 30 grams, sometimes maybe 50 grams or something, especially if they're eating a ton of chicken breast and the amount of protein that ends up being used for structural purposes is far less than that. Our protein needs tend to be. And, you know, looking at research as far as how much is needed to build muscle, what seemed, you know, the general conclusion, and we've referred to these studies before by mental henselmans, Hensel penselman penselmans. Penselmans, yeah, he like, did the whole review. And I think even future papers that have come out have sort of just like, agreed with that point of view. Which is that what? Yeah, what you're gonna say, Yeah, which is that about point seven grams per pound of body weight is really where you're getting. About the maximum effect as far as protein intake, even with training, yeah, even with weightlifting. So all all the people saying you need to get one gram per pound, or one and a half or two grams per pound, all of that excess protein is not really helping with building muscle, at least according to this research and our experiences as well. And so what ends up happening is it ends up getting converted to carbohydrate, which you which you mentioned, but it requires stress hormones in order to do that, and those stress hormones are not really helpful for building muscle or supporting Hormonal Health. So instead, keeping protein around that point, seven grams per pound is a good range. It doesn't have to be exactly there. If it's a bit over, that's fine. If it's a bit under, it can be okay. I mean, test out different levels and see how you feel. But what a lot of people find is that when they decrease protein, they're much less full, so they can eat a lot more, which is one of those things that we were discussing, not even about the types of foods, but even just the macronutrient ratios. So decrease and proteins always talked about as being very filling. So this is one way to decrease that filling effect and be able to eat more and digest your food better, keep your metabolism up, is often by dropping protein down a bit if you're having more than that point seven grams per pound, as well as then replacing that with carbohydrates. Because essentially, that's what those that protein is ends up being used for. And often, when you do end up doing that, you have less like when you start to shift away from that gluconeogenic state where you're converting a lot of protein to carbohydrate, which, as just to clarify, can be the protein that you eat. It doesn't have to be stored protein. But if you're not eating enough carbs, and you're not eating enough and you're not eating protein consistently, then you will be pulling stored protein to convert to carbs so it can depending on the context. And so often, people will find that when they move out of that state, their stress hormones are decreased, and they're eating more carbs, their desires or appetite for protein decreases. And that's again, because your body's starting to use those carbs for energy and moving out of that stress state and so realizing that it doesn't need as much protein. So I would say that excess protein is actually one of the biggest, not, I don't know, maybe not one of the biggest, but a major issue with a lot of the popular diets for supporting male Hormonal Health and decreasing it, decreasing protein intake and sticking to good quality proteins, not the vegetarian protein sources, which generally are much less bioavailable, have a lot of anti nutrients, much less vitamins and minerals and even phytonutrients, and yeah, a lot of other digestibility issues there with the non animal based proteins. So sticking to animal based proteins and sticking to that range of about point seven grams per pound is as the maximum effect for building muscle.

Mike 47:45
Yeah, so Exactly, and I agree with that pretty much 100% the only thing I'll say is the guys eating ridiculous amounts of protein and building muscle. I think that strategy probably works better for if you're going to use steroids, just because your protein synthesis is, so it's increased so much.

Jay Feldman 48:02
Yeah, that might increase your protein needs, yeah, yeah.

Mike 48:05
So I think I'm, I think that's where you really see, you know, the Jay cutlers of the world eating ridiculous amounts of chicken breasts and things when, and he's still, the other thing is, he's still eating high amounts of carbs, right? Um, very high. He's eating high amounts of carbs and high amounts of protein together and having a low fat diet. Fat diet. However, he doesn't need as much fat because he's taking his oxygen, his hormones, right? And that's, I think that's a very important modifier to keep in mind when we get to the fat section. But with the protein stuff, yeah, there's basically the point. It was the research that, or what I think metal conclude, or the research, research concluded was that point, six grams per pound was the amount of protein required, even in people who are training, and even who are people I think were training at a caloric deficit, to maintain, or it wasn't to maintain. It was to put the protein, or, I mean, maintain, like a positive nitrogen balance and not oxidize the protein. So I think after I converted to carbohydrate, exactly, they were showing that the protein was being converted into carbohydrate after that point, and then it was 2.8 was they gave it, I think two standard deviations above to be safe. That was, I said, I think that's where that where the point six to point eight came from. So when I work with people with their diet, depending on what's going on, so if I have somebody with a fatty liver, I'm going to put them on the higher end at that point, eight grams per pound, because I want to use the amino acids from their from the animal sources of protein to defat the liver, or help defat The liver. Whereas, if I have, you know, if I have a smaller woman who's not really working out, and who's sort of just, you know, she's working or she's, she's, she's just like, living her life regularly, no hard exercise or anything like that, I'll put her more towards point six, because it's not necessary. She doesn't need that much protein. If I haven't, if I have a 20 year old male. Wants to build muscle, I'm going to put them closer to point eight, so it's, I use the range, and then sort of keep it depending on the context. So yeah, I think, and again, I think the best source of protein is going to be the animal proteins. And the most nutrient dense and the highest availability as far as amino acids go for proteins, is going to be your beef, your fish, and your eggs, and then dairy, if you tolerate it. Chicken is chicken and lean turkey are very bio, bio available proteins. But as far as nutrient density goes, they're not extremely nutrient dense. So that's why I didn't include them there. But if people don't tolerate any of the dairy, the beef or the fish. Very lean chicken or very lean turkey are good options. As far as meeting protein intake, they just don't have a lot of micronutrients. It's like white rice for some people, is great for carbs, but it just doesn't have a lot of nutrients. So it's, it's not to eliminate them entirely. And you know, it depends on the context, depends on what you tolerate, and then it also depends on, you know, how you're using them. If you're using to build muscle, maybe some lean turkey and chicken could be helpful to or some white rice after you work out.

Jay Feldman 51:11
So, yeah, and there are some micronutrients in turkey and chicken. I mean, it's all kind of relative, and I would use, you know, you can check it out on chronometer. A lot of those things are still gonna have a lot more nutrients than a lot of the protein powders people use. You people use. So considering that the protein needs are much less than we had discussed, I would also, you know, keep in mind that that means you don't need to have all the kind of synthetic or highly processed protein powders compared to eating whole foods. So that's just another important point to consider.

Mike 51:37
I haven't had anybody be unable to meet the protein intake based on, you know, the point six to point eight, and require protein powders for it. The only thing I'll add for people sometimes is a collagen hydrolysate protein, and that's just to adjust amino acids for them, especially in older people, to help maintain their body's collagen stores and things like that. And the last point I want to put on protein here is, if somebody is severely overweight, like morbidly obese, or super obese, or whatever it is, point six to point eight grams per pound may be an overestimation as far as how much protein they actually need, but having a higher amount of protein in those people, not as much as the point Six to point eight. You know, if somebody's 400 pounds, they they don't point six to point eight may be way too much protein, but having on the higher end, not the point six to point eight, but maybe, like 150 grams, 200 grams may 200 grams may even be too much, but may be helpful for losing that weight and helping to to defat the liver, because the amino acids are very helpful for helping the liver restore itself. Essentially.

Jay Feldman 52:44
Yep, exactly. All right, we're going to pause this conversation right here and pick back up in part two of this series discussing men's Hormonal Health, where we'll further discuss how you can use nutrition, lifestyle and supplements to restore your hormonal health or improve your Hormonal Health, and we'll also be dispelling further popular myths regarding men's Hormonal Health. If you did enjoy today's episode, please leave a like or comment if you're watching on YouTube or a review or five star rating on iTunes, if you're listening elsewhere. To check out the show notes for today's episode, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast where you can take a look at the studies, articles, other podcast episodes, and anything else that we talked about throughout today's episode. And if you are dealing with various hormonal imbalances, if you're dealing with various reproductive symptoms, whether that's low libido or an inability to gain or maintain muscle or an inability to lose stubborn body fat, or if you're dealing with other low energy symptoms, whether that's chronic cravings and hunger, fatigue, brain fog, insomnia, digestive symptoms and gut inflammation, chronic pain, or any other low energy symptoms or chronic health conditions, then Head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, where you can sign up for a free energy balance mini course, where I'll explain how these symptoms and conditions really come down to a lack of energy, and I'll also walk you through the main things that you can do to maximize your cellular energy and reverse these symptoms and conditions. So to sign up for that free energy balance mini course. Head over to Jay Feldman, wellness.com/energy, and with that, I'll see you in the next episode.