Jay Feldman 0:12
Welcome to Episode 50 of the energy balance podcast, where we teach you how to live without constant hunger and cravings, fatigue, brain fog, poor sleep and 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 together for a long time now, and Mike also draws on his experiences from working within the healthcare industry. Today's episode is part two of our series on men's Hormonal Health. In part one of the series, we discussed calorie deficiencies, carbohydrate deficiencies and protein excess and how these things are extremely detrimental to men's Hormonal Health. So if you did not listen to that episode, I'd highly recommend you go back and do that. In today's episode, which is part two of the series, we'll be discussing how you can increase testosterone with saturated fats and by decreasing estrogen. We'll be talking about why eating more protein doesn't increase your metabolism. We'll be talking about the ideal fat intake for increasing testosterone production. We'll also be discussing which fats support androgen production and metabolic health. We'll also discuss how the estrogenic effects of soy and alcohol impact Hormonal Health, and whether this means that we should be avoiding these foods. And then we'll also talk about how you can improve estrogen detoxification and support liver health, and also the estrogenic factors in our environment that we should be aware of and what we can do about them. If this is your first time listening to this podcast, I'd highly recommend that after listening through today's episode, you go back and listen through episodes one through seven, where we create a foundation as far as the understanding of the bioenergetic view of health. Goes and to check out the show notes for today's episode, you can head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast where I'll be linking to the studies and articles and anything else that we discuss throughout today's episode. And I do have a big announcement to make, which is that Mike's website is live. You can check out his website at regenerative dash, vitality.com and that's regenerative hyphen, vitality.com where he'll be posting various content, and he's also offering coaching. So if you're interested in working with him, you can contact him at his website. And if you are interested in any of my content or my coaching services. You can find those at Jay Feldman wellness.com and if you are struggling with any of the hormonal imbalance type symptoms that we've been discussing throughout this series, whether that's a lack of libido or trouble putting on muscle or body fat gain or trouble losing body fat, or any other low energy symptoms, whether that's chronic cravings or hunger, fatigue, chronic pain, digestive symptoms like bloating or inflammation, brain fog, poor sleep and insomnia, 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 walk you through some of the main things that you want to do, as far as diet and lifestyle are concerned, so that you can maximize your cellular energy, and also explain why this is the key to reversing 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 in talking about protein and its effects on androgens and Hormonal Health and all of that, there's also this myth that protein will increase your metabolism. And we've, of course, talked about at least partially, that relationship between metabolism and and Hormonal Health and how, of course, raising your metabolism, increasing thyroid hormones, decreasing stress hormones, is going to be the key to result or to improving Hormonal Health and androgens and everything. But doing that by increasing protein is not really what we're looking for. And part of this is a nomenclature issue where there's a lot of things that you could talk about that increase metabolism, which is just anything that will like, that will basically increase your what I would say, or what I would consider your energy demands. So anything that's going to increase the amount of energy your body needs, whether that's a lot of exercise or even, like psychological stress, or, in this case, protein, or people talk about it with water as well, where those things will increase the amount of energy used. And people will say that that increases your metabolism. Your metabolism. But that's not really what we're talking about when we're talking about metabolism. So for one, when we're talking about metabolism, we're really referring to the amount of energy that we're producing without stress, and drinking a ton of water or eating excess protein won't do that. We talked about that in. Terms of water in a previous episode, how drinking a lot of water basically causes stress due to some intestinal irritation, and also by diluting the minerals relating to like a stress response that uses energy. And then there's a basically a similar thing with with protein, where there's two main reasons why. You'll see what people will say is an increase in metabolism from eating protein. One is what's called the thermic effect, which is basically just the amount of energy required to break down and absorb the protein, which is higher than other macronutrients. And again, this doing something like that is not going to increase the amount of energy available to your body in a way that's going to decrease stress hormones or increase thyroid hormones or signal that things are okay or or have excess energy to repair or regenerate, which is what we're going for. Instead, it's just requiring more energy toward digesting protein, which is not at all helpful, not not that we never want to eat protein, but it's just not going to do anything to support us metabolically, it's just using some energy. And then the other effect is increases in gluconeogenesis or protein turnover, which tend to happen if we're not eating enough carbohydrates, as we talked about. And again, that will increase metabolism, if you want to call it that, it'll increase energy expenditure, which I would prefer to use that terminology. And the reason for that is because it's not very efficient. So converting protein to carbohydrates is going to lead to a greater energy expenditure and less energy available, and that's because it's much less efficient than just using carbohydrates. But that's wasting energy. It's not increasing the amount of available energy we have, and that's not going to help move us out of that stress state. That's going to help to increase our androgenic hormones or thyroid hormones or anything like that. So this idea that protein increases metabolism is based on these basically wasting energy, which I would definitely say is not increasing metabolism in the way that we're discussing it.

Mike 6:54
Yeah. And as far as the some other components that come into play with having an excess amount of protein is in the process of gluconeogenesis, the when you're turning that protein into sugar, you have basically left over nitrogen groups that are turned into ammonia in the liver, and that ammonia has a toxic effect. The body's pretty good at detoxifying it, but an excess amount of protein and ammonia production isn't helpful. The other thing is, an excess amount of protein consumption, if it's not digested, does go to the colon, and in large amounts, especially especially large, large amounts of animal proteins, there is a putrefaction component of the from the microbes in the colon on protein, and they do, they can produce some toxic metabolites. So overall, the goal with protein is just to get an optimal amount, you know, the necessary amount that allows for positive nitrogen balance to make sure all your amino acids are taken in, so that you can rebuild tissue and also support the liver, support methylation processes and also allow for detoxification. Provide those groups for detoxification of different compounds in the liver, like estrogen, specifically, but then also to not be oxidizing that protein, not be having a lot of that protein go into the large intestine and undergo future faction and then not they spent having, not having the body expend so much energy on digesting the protein. It's especially when, after a certain point, you're just better off having more carbs or more fat, depending on your context, to oxidize through the electron champ, through the mitochondria, beta oxidation, oxidative metabolism and the electron transport chain. So ideally, that's that's where we want to be with protein. We want the minimum effective dose. We want to get the most bang for our buck going over. That is not necessarily helpful in, I think, a health context we already talked mentioned in, maybe somebody who's using high amounts of steroids and really driving protein synthesis to be a high level bodybuilder, then a higher intake of protein may actually be helpful. But and and in your average your average person who wants to look good, feel good, who's been trying to improve their health context, who's trying to just eat enough protein so they can be strong in the gym that we I think we set our minimum dose that we talked about was between point six grams per pound of body weight and point eight grams per pound of body weight. And we mentioned that these sources should be from animal sources, mainly, whether that's beef, whether that's eggs, and just because those protein sources are more digestible dairy if you tolerate it. So I think that's that should pretty much recap or cover the basics of where, where we want our protein intake to be, and some of the problems with having an excessive protein intake.

Jay Feldman 9:57
Yeah. And just to clarify also. So you had mentioned basically wanting more digestible foods, foods that we don't have to waste a ton of energy digesting. And again, the idea here is we want that energy for other things. There's some interesting research suggesting that that's one of the well research. And also just compared to physiology, which we've discussed a little bit in the past, that use it basically, the usage of less energy for our guts has allowed for more energy available for our brains, for the rest of our bodies, which is, you know, has basically accounted for our ability to have increased intelligence and all of that. But along with that, if we don't have that energy available, if we're starting to waste it on all, on digesting harder to digest foods, then we'll have less available for for our brain, but also for the things that will allow us to increase our androgen production or balance outer hormones, all of that. Yeah, and

Mike 10:46
that's called that theory is called the expensive tissue hypothesis, the and the theories basically, uh, looking at energy expenditure in the gut versus the brain and showing that there's a it's not perfect, but an association between larger brain animals having more optimized digestive tracts that basically are function of absorptive capacity, particularly within our species, where you'll get the higher higher apes, right? Gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans. As you go up in intelligence, you see smaller gut and a focus on eat more or easily digested foods, right? So? And the other thing to point out is, in the plant the with the importance of focusing on ease of digesting, a lot of these plant proteins that are people are discussing now are the protein in those plants are extremely hard to digest on purpose, and they also can have some pretty negative effects on the gut and on the intestine in general. And I've just as an anecdotal I've seen quite a few people move to this plant based diet ideology and start focusing on soy and beans and wheat gluten and rice like, like brown rice and whole grains, and really tear up their gut and not really getting to the bottom of what's going on, because they're thinking, all that's plant based is from plants. It must be healthy. It's organic. It must be healthy. Um, and just it, whether it's organic, whether it's a plant, whether it should be healthy, by guidelines, it has to fit with our physiology and what we're capable of digesting, and that's why that's where looking at the comparative physiology is really important. And we can actually link a pretty cool video from a guy named Dr Barry groves discussing the physiology. Now, just as a caveat, his focus is in more of a Keto area or a low carb area, but that doesn't discount the benefits or the information that he's presenting, as far as the comparative physiology. So we will link that in the show notes.

Jay Feldman 12:50
Yeah, and I'll link back to some of the episodes where we talked more about our gut and digestion, and which foods are much easier to digest, just in more detail, and why that's so important. I also wanted to just clarify, you were talking about mitochondrial respiration, and you had mentioned beta oxidation and fat oxidation and the importance of having enough fat, which is true, but just to clarify also, we definitely want to be relying on carbs for for our energy needs, especially for our brain and some of those organs with higher energy demands, but that is kind of a nice transition to talking about how much fat we want to be eating, because this is another component that will affect our hormones pretty considerably. And so there's and it's funny, because there's diets based around decreasing any macronutrient for the most part. I guess there's not very many low protein diets, but a lot of vegan and vegetarian diets end up being low protein diets. But you you know, low carb diets are extremely popular and low fat diets are extremely popular, and we talked about the problems with low carb diets, but low fat diets can have issues as well when it comes to hormones, and we've both seen that with ourselves to an extent, not as much. I never went quite as low on fat, but I know you've talked about that a lot, but I've definitely seen that with clients as well, where eating too little fat tends to do a couple of things. One, it tends to reduce hormone production, steroid hormone production, which is what we're talking about, and it also tends to cause an excess reliance on carb oxidation. And the problem there is that when you're relying on something like carbs at at rest, and you have a lot of muscle mass, for example, or even if you don't, but especially if you have a lot of muscle mass, you end up basically wasting or or burning using a lot of the Yeah, you end up burning through a lot of the carbs that you already have available and running out of them very quickly. And then you end up having to eat very soon or very frequently, because you can't go long enough between meals, because your whole body is just using these carbs up very quickly. And that's part of why having some fat or a decent amount more fat with your meals is helpful, because basically the areas that don't need that carbohydrate to run on at rest May. Million muscles, we'll just use the fat and be perfectly fine with that lower amount of energy being produced, which saves those carbs for your brain and for those the basically for the places that need it. So with that in mind, having enough fat in the diet is extremely important. We've referenced these studies before, which I'll link to again in the show notes, showing that about 40% of calories from fat seems to correlate with the highest level of androgenic hormones and the lowest level of estrogens and stress hormones. So generally, that can be a good place to start, especially with men with a decent amount of muscle mass, if you have less muscle mass, or maybe if you're less active, or if you're less active, you might want to drop that fat and take down a little bit, but I would leave that up to experimentation and seeing how you feel and going from there, as always.

Mike 15:51
It's just, it's a guideline where we're starting here. I usually so there's a couple areas around fat. I usually have people start at between 15 and 25 grams of fat per meal in a day, just just so that they're not eating too much at once, because that can there's with all the macronutrients, there's a sort of Goldilocks zone, at least in my experience. And essentially, if you have too much fat, especially not adapted to eating that much fat, and you can see this pretty much on any keto or carnivore forum, that what they wind up seeing is that they develop nausea, or they can get diarrhea, or they can get, like stomach discomfort and cramps when you take in too much fat to start and you're not digesting it. That could be from starting to ramp up bile acid production in the intestine, not being used to it. It could be an issue with digesting that much fat, causing some nausea, and not having, not having enough enzymes to, like lipase from the pancreas and also bile acids to start to digest. So I usually have people start between 15 and 25 grams per meal, and that's dependent upon size. You know, if I had a if I had a smaller woman, 110 pounds, I would probably start her at 15, and if I had a larger man, I'd probably start him at 25 and then adjust from there. And then, obviously, it's dependent as however much meals you have. The other thing that's really important with that is types of fat, um, actually, before I get to that on, specifically about the blood sugar effect of fat, or the Maintain maintenance of blood sugar effect of fat.

You could almost call it like a car we talked about like a carb sparing effect, or protein sparing effect of carbs, where having enough carbs leads to protein sparing if you have enough fat, it's almost like a carb sparing effect.

Exactly. And I think that's a great way to put it. And there's multiple mechanisms there. Jay already mentioned about the fats, basically allowing for the muscles to have something to burn at rest, and then the carbs can be spared for the brain and the organs and whatever other tissues are heavily dependent on the carbs, like the thymus or something like that. But essentially, the fat also can slow down digestion a little bit and not cause that rapid spike that you would get with in blood sugar that you can get from just having a pure carb meal. So it's actually really helpful in that sense that it usually what I would do is with the fat, is adjust it based on how long I'm gonna go between meals. So if I know I have, like, four hours, five hours between meals, I'll increase the fat a little bit because it'll slow down the digestion and keep me full a little longer, maintain my blood sugar a little bit longer. And that's also, you know, if you if you have a complete meal, if you have carbs, protein and fat together, all of the as as well as fiber, all of those things together, maintain blood sugar. So we can parse out all these studies looking at, well, what if you do this on blood sugar? What if you do that on blood sugar? What if you eat pure glucose? What if you eat white bread? And this is where all the glycemic index, glycemic load comes a lot of that can sort of be tossed out the window when you throw that into the context of having a mixed meal. So that's so but fat specifically can be used to extend out the length of the meal and maintain blood sugar a little bit longer, but also on the context of taking in actually sucrose, rather than just plain glucose, which is what you would do as starch. That's helpful for maintaining the blood sugar. The starch will spike the blood sugar, the plain glucose will spike it fast and then and have it come back down. But the sucrose can maintain it a little bit longer. So those are all things to keep in mind. Now onto sources of fat. What's really important with sources? Do you want to add something in there?

Jay Feldman 19:29
Yeah, just in addition to sucrose, just any fructose source. So if you're getting free fructose in fruit, as well as sucrose with glucose, that'll help to balance the blood sugar there. And having protein with meals also helps to slow the digestion a bit and lead to that slower blood sugar release, and it helps to stimulate insulin a little bit more, which will also prevent that spike. Again. Also, starch is not inherently a problem just for regulating blood sugar. Sometimes favoring sugars, or at least having a fructose source, will help to keep it a little bit more balanced. But as we talked about, starch can be really helpful when it comes to refilling muscle glycolytic. Kitchen and recovering from workouts.

Mike 20:01
Right after workout where you want that spike, where having a spike of insulin with with some amino acids actually is helpful. So like having white rice with if, if you tolerate dairy, like whey protein, or even just plain milk, or if you don't, then eggs or some type of animal protein, like steak or chicken with white white with white rice is actually very helpful. And then some fruit juice as well would also be helpful there, just for minerals and whatnot, to basically process the glucose that you're taking into the muscle. The other thing I want to point out here that before we get to types of fat that people often worry about, at least in the peat sphere, is this idea of the Randall effect, that if you take in your fat with your carbs, you won't be able to use your carbs. And we've talked about this previously, so we'll, we'll link into the show notes that episode. But basically the idea here is that the Randall effect is discussed on the cellular, cellular level. When we take in food, that's going on a systemic level. So it's not like the carbs and the fat are all competing at all the cells all the time. Essentially, the body has a partitioning effect where you can the different sorts of macro micronutrients will go to different areas and be used. You know, the brain may use the carbs that you have taken in. And your glycogen may be taken into the muscle tissue to refill the muscle glycogen, but you can still burn the fat in other in other areas may go to forming hormones after you worked out, or something like that. So it when there's a difference between cellular level effects and then, like a macro, systemic level effect.

Jay Feldman 21:39
And yeah, and definitely, and also just looking at anything in an individual cell, if, like, you also aren't considering time. You know, when you're taking in carbs and fats together and they're being digested slowly and absorbed, you're you have enough time to burn through some store others, and then for those to be oxidized. It's like, even if, even if a muscle, because obviously a muscle is going to want to take in some carbs as well after a workout. Well after a workout, to to refill glycogen and and also to repair and reduce inflammation. So you also have this time effect where taking them in together, even if they're going to the same tissues, it's not, it's not like you're you're necessarily having any issue there as well. It's just, it's just so easy to get caught up on a cell. Can't use both at the same time, but you don't only have one particular moment, like we have a lot of time so haha

Mike 22:28
yeah, yeah. And basically what you mean by time is that the muscle can take in glucose, first, refill glycogen, oxidize it, whatever it has to do, lower lactate, whatever it's going to do, and then also, then, minutes later, take in fat and then oxidize the fat so it can happen over especially because the meal is not all absorbed all at once. And that's exactly the point of talking about having fat added to the meal to help with the blood, with blood sugar. So the end, the reason we're, I think we're harping on fat so much here, is because, with all the different groups, whether you're vegan, whether you're carnivore, whether you're just new to repeat and you're doing low fat, whether you're just low carb, paleo, every sort of group wants to sort of look at one macronutrient and and try and cause it, say it has an issue, or it's the cause of this, or it's the cause of that. And essentially, what we're trying to say is that each macronutrient has a Goldilocks zone, has an optimal zone for for different people's context, and can be adjusted based on those contexts and to not sort of trash one macronutrient as the problem for things. Rather, look at it all all together in the whole picture, and find out what those ranges are. And so that's what we've tried to do here. And while these are perfect for adjusting hormonal profiles, it's also for many health issues, not just raising testosterone or anything like that, these guidelines apply. So we're looking at Goldilocks zones. We're looking at what's the most bang for our buck for each macronutrient, and then with those macronutrients, what types of macronutrients provide the effect that we want? So with that said, the different types of fats.

Jay Feldman 24:13
Before that also just just real quick...

Mike 24:15
yeah.

Jay Feldman 24:16
In addition to just like, finding optimal ranges for each one, it's also tends to be pretty clear that having too little of any macronutrient is inherently stressful, because we have needs for all of them as fuel, but also as structural components. In the case of Right, yeah, in the case of fat, we have, like, cellular structures made up of fats. Hormones are made up of fats or derived from fats. There's all sorts of lipids that are used throughout our bodies. So when we in the same way that if we have low blood sugar, and in the same way that low blood sugar will trigger a stress response to lead to gluconeogenesis, or the glycogen olysis, the release of sugar, low free fatty acids in the blood will do the same thing to raise the free fatty acids in the blood. On. So beyond just Goldilocks zones, and yes, there's a certain amount that will be ideal for different people, it also, there also seem to be issues when you have deficiencies in any of these and you can't have a fat deficiency in the same way you could have a carb deficiency, you know.

Mike 25:15
Yeah, and people have this, we've, I've seen this personally, and I think people have seen this as well. When they go on really low fat diets and they can't manage their blood sugar, they're constantly in up and downs, and they're constantly having adrenaline rushes, and they're hungry all the time. And that's that's from not having enough fat, your body will release adrenaline to basically supply the fat that you need from your stores if you are not taking in enough fat and in my experience, I don't think any amount of carbs is going to compensate for that, especially just in terms of just in terms of how much food is possible to eat to maintain the amount of calories that I currently eat at 3500 to just do it with carbs and protein is extremely difficult. Now that doesn't mean I want to go on a extremely high fat diet, but also, I've found a level of fat that works for my diet, that that provides me with an optimal amount so I'm not and hungry all day long, needing to eat every two hours, and able to, you know, have libido and and want to work out in the gym and put on muscle. All those things are are important, at least to me. So with that said, I will go on to types of fat and the breakdowns of fat. So you have three different types of fat, and it's dependent on double bond and the structure and which basically dictates how saturated they are with hydrogen, that's polyunsaturated, monounsaturated, and then saturated, our saturated. And we've gone over this in multiple videos, so I'm not going to go too more in depth there, but our saturated horses, your butter, your beef tallow, your chocolate monounsaturated olive oil, macadamia nut oil, avocado oil, and polyunsaturated is pretty much all your vegetable oils, most of your nuts and seeds, except for macadamia macadamia nuts and fit fatty fish and cold water fish. So those are all your polyunsaturated fats. What we really want to focus on is monounsaturated and saturated fats, and that's just because of their effect. The basically the physiologic effects that we see with them, they directly have been shown in different studies or associated Well, they've actually been directly shown in animal studies to increase testosterone, and that's by changing not only providing a precursor, but in certain studies, basically showing that having monounsaturated and saturated fats protect the testicles from oxidative stress from the polyunsaturated fats and allow the stereogenic enzymes in the testicles to produce the steroid hormones like testosterone, that whole bunch of oxidative damage products that you would see with PUFAs. So just as far as maintaining your tissues and not having enough not having too much oxidative stress, saturated and monounsaturated are key. But then saturated and monounsaturated are the precursors to multiple components in your body, whether it's building membranes, whether it's building hormones, whether it's providing the cholesterol, like butter directly has cholesterol, shrimp directly has cholesterol, but also for production of cholesterol, all of that is extremely important, especially when you recognize all of the components and all the functions that cholesterol has in the body, whether it's immune and calcium regulation, with the formation of vitamin D, your all of your steroid hormones, your bile acids, or your digestion, uh, structural components of your brain and for the production of myelin for your nerves, is just it's extremely vital and necessary nutrient, and we've talked about this in other and other podcasts. But cholesterol is essentially been demonized as an associated factor because it's, it's elevated in pathological states because of some of its protective effects. So that's, it's really important to focus on the monounsaturated and saturated fats and for multiple different functions and to avoid the polyunsaturated functions. And I'm going to let you discuss the issues with PUFA polyunsaturated fats, because I've been going on for a while.

Jay Feldman 29:13
Sure. Yeah. One other thing just along with this is those studies I referenced earlier, with the 40% fat intake being ideal for high increasing androgens, decreasing estrogens and and stress hormones. They also found that the higher the the higher ratio of saturated fats to polyunsaturated fats led to increased androgens and decreased estrogens and stress hormones as well. So and you referenced, you mentioned some other studies. There's a lot of them showing this relationship where saturated fats tend to be pretty helpful when it comes helpful when it comes to these sorts of hormonal effects. And yeah, polyunsaturated fats, I mean, there's several reasons for it, but at the kind of biggest, biggest picture reasons, and we've talked about this in detail with PUFA, so I'll reference those episodes. But PUFA are really good at. Getting damaged, they're very unstable, and that leads to issues with energy production. It directly causes inflammation and oxidative stress, which, as you mentioned, the saturated fats help to protect, protect against. Also when they're used structurally, those polyunsaturated fats, they basically lead to much less efficient energy production, and they also lead to, they have basically metabolites that drive inflammation, further amplify inflammation. There's a lot of issues with them, but that would be kind of the big picture things that end up leading to that's that shift in hormones that they tend to increase, the stress hormones tend to lead to decreases in the pro metabolic hormones, and they have some direct effects too, on the thyroid and thyroid hormones as well that prevent production or release and conversion. So all around basically the polyunsaturated fats are basically like hibernation type fats. They slow our metabolism and which is the farthest thing from ideal when it comes to wanting to increase our reproductive function. Obviously someone's someone or an organism is hibernating. That's really the last of their concerns, is reproducing at that time. So yeah, I mean, that would be kind of bigger picture reasons why we want to be avoiding the polyunsaturated fats, and I do want to clarify that includes fish oil. So when it comes to a lot of these supplements that are used to to, I don't know, for men's Hormonal Health, or for male health.

Mike 31:27
Or lower inflammation, or something random like that.

Jay Feldman 31:30
Yeah, fish oils is used for lowering inflammation. We've talked about this before. I'll link to those episodes and articles. But the short answer is that while omega threes can which are found in fish oil. While they can decrease inflammation in the short term, they basically do it via immunosuppression and metabolic suppression. So it's kind of like just decreasing that symptom, and then the long term it leads to, leads to problems. It leads to, kind of very similarly to glucocorticoids, which are main stress hormones, they suppress or metabolic function. They suppress things like a reproductive activity, in order to deal with basically short term stressors. And this does lead to a decrease in inflammation, but it also leads to a decrease in function over time, increase in dysfunction over time.

Mike 32:17
Yeah. Another thing I want to point out for people is, and some of the spheres, people talk about the PUFA being essential, and just the caveat there, it's you'd have to go on a lab based diet to become deficient in these, in these polyunsaturated fatty acids. So the essential, the essentiality function, is not necessarily something to really worry about when you're especially when you're fully grown, and you're eating a regular diet that's not, you know, a bunch of synthetic or purified lab ingredients.

Jay Feldman 32:52
If you're getting 40% of your calories from fat, even if that's mostly those saturated fats, dairy and beef and lamb and and chocolate, you're going to be getting beyond that essential amount of PUFA, which is fine, but you're just kind of, it's just like a huge argument that people place a lot of emphasis on, and you're kind of saying, even if they're like, whether they're essential or not doesn't really matter, because if they are essential, it's such a small amount that you'd be getting that amount anyway. Probably, you know, even if you were trying not to, you probably still would, unless, as you said, you were on a lab diet.

Mike 33:23
Even on 2020, even on a low fat diet, like a research defined low fat diet, you would still be reaching your required intake. And then, as far as the fish oil thing goes, we we recommend eating fish. I mean that with it, and not necessarily cold fish, yeah, not necessarily cold water, fatty fish, but shellfish, and a lot of seafood like shrimp or scallops or mussels or oysters or sole or cod or any or any of those types of foods, and you're going to have omega threes in there. So if you're worried about some type of deficiency, we're not recommending those foods for omega three, but they do have a lot of other benefits that it just cut, and it's unavoidable. So part of a like a regular, normal diet, or within the paradigm that we discussed, there's going to be, even based on the research, or at least a large portion of the research, adequate amounts of Omega three is enough to not really have to worry about deficiency or or whatever, not getting not lowering your inflammation enough with Omega three, whatever the argument is, it's just there. We recommend those types of foods, particularly for their other beneficial effects and the PUFA. To a large extent on a normal, sustainable diet, it's unavoidable.

Jay Feldman 34:42
And in small amounts, it's fine. It's especially if you're having a lot of the saturated fats, your metabolism is functioning well, such small amounts shouldn't be an issue. Adequate

Mike 34:50
fat soluble vitamins, like vitamin E and all that. It Right. It's unavoidable. It's what it is. I mean, it's, it's, we're not recommending you to go like completely crazy about it, but. Want the whole or wanna in the context of the whole diet shouldn't be a problem.

Jay Feldman 35:04
And the reason you're mentioning that is a because some people go to really great lengths to avoid them entirely, and and to an extent that can be okay, but it just we don't see it as particularly necessary. And also, there's a lot of argument about, no, they are essential, they aren't essential. And again, yeah, I think you can argue against the essential essentiality. I mean, there's decent arguments on both sides. I I don't, I don't know, as you're saying, like it doesn't, it's not worth taking into all those particular studies, yeah, showing the essentiality, because if you're eating these good quality foods for all their other benefits, you're going to be getting a small amount of the of the polyunsaturated fat.

Mike 35:39
So enough to meet the essential requirement, right? If there was one, yeah, if it was essential, yes, exactly. So.

Jay Feldman 35:48
So did you have anything else to add as far as fats go?

Mike 35:51
No, I think that that covers it for fats.

Jay Feldman 35:53
Okay, so one other component here that I figured was worth mentioning from the dietary side is estrogenic foods, and part of this is because it's just something that's talked about frequently. I don't I don't find it particularly illustrate or illuminating as far as what foods we would eat, because the foods that would be deemed estrogenic tend to have a lot of other issues as well. And as we've talked about before, estrogen is a very basic, big, very basic stress hormone, as opposed to it just being like a female hormone. There's, of course, a role for it in the female reproductive system, but it's, I would definitely say it's not the female hormone, and it tends to be increased with stress. And so because of that, a lot of foods that have issues will increase estrogen, and this is in the same way, a lot of things that are stressful, not foods, will increase estrogen as well. I know that Ray Pete has talked about that and how that's part of why the estrogen industry has grown so much is because there's a lot of ways to increase estrogen. There's a lot of compounds that are estrogenic, and that's because virtually anything that's stressful will be estrogenic. Anything that's carcinogenic tends to be estrogenic. And so with that in mind, some foods that are harmful also happen to be estrogenic. Soy is one that's talked about a lot due to its phytoestrogens, although it already soy is a legume which already has its own issues. We've talked about seeds and beans and legumes being a problem due to their anti nutrients and due to their polyunsaturated fats and the hard to digest fibers, or fibers that block cholesterol absorption, things like that, and just our digestive anatomy and physiology, right? Yeah, it's, you could say it's not built for that, not built for those types of foods. It's definitely going to require those foods would require a lot more energy for digestion, and that means that's energy diverted away from things like our brain health and all of that. So if you were to eat those foods, soaking and sprouting them or fermenting them is ideal. And when you look at cultures that ate soy, it seems like it was almost always fermented or treated in some way, which would help to reduce a lot of the harmful compounds. But as far as using soy as a main source of protein you had mentioned, like plant proteins being a problem, and soy is one of the main plant proteins that's used, and it will, you know, I would be is worth noting as as something that would have some estrogenic effects. But it's almost those things are almost aside that beside the point, because anything that's going to be less than ideal here would have estrogenic effects, even if they're not directly caused by phytoestrogens in soy.

Mike 38:26
Yeah, just another nail in the coffin. Coffin for soy. Essentially, there's just, I don't, I don't really see the point in eating it like there's right. There's not much value to it, besides the fact that countries produce large amounts of soy right now, and there's an agenda to push soy. But besides that, like, just because it's readily available doesn't mean that's actually, I don't even consider it food. Like, would you go out in the field and eat grass? Would you go out in the field and eat just regular soybeans? No, so?

Jay Feldman 38:54
That doesn't mean that, like, having soy sauce is a problem. And if you have soy sauce, your testosterone is going to be tanked, and you're going to end up with gynecomastia. Or something, but, yeah, but I wouldn't be eating it as, like, a protein source that that's as a main food.

Mike 39:10
Yeah, like, soy sauce is a condiment. You know, neither here nor there, really. And especially, even if you looked at phytoestrogen content, soy sauce is like, one of the lowest, and that's because of the fermentation process. And this soy, any other grains or beans or legumes you can look at, there's tons of research on it, basically, sprouting them, fermenting them, soaking them eliminates a lot of their negative components. And ancestral or cultures of the past used to do all of these things. They cook them in certain ways. They prepare them in certain ways because of the known problems with them, and a lot of that has been lost. It also doesn't mean that they are great foods. Just because people were eating them in the past and that's how it was done, doesn't mean it's the best way to go. It's just if you're going to choose to eat them, then they should. Should be processed in particular way. And soy, specifically, from what we've seen it being used in in previous cultures like the Japanese or the Chinese, is it's fermented. Often you have Natto, you have tofu, you have soy sauce, all of that is fermented soy and very heavily processed, because there's problems with it as a food by itself. So that's something to keep in mind. I get and do you want to move on to another one?

Jay Feldman 40:28
I was just going to say, also, you mentioned heavily processed and you're saying that in a good way. And we've, I think we've talked about this a bit, but this idea that processing is inherently bad is, I don't want to get too much on a tangent here, but just to clarify the way you're using it. Processing a lot of times. The way that we process foods helps to make them more digestible, more absorbable. And that can include fermentation. It can also include extraction. If you're extracting, extracting the oil from a coconut, that doesn't mean that because coconut oil is more processed that it's harmful. So anyway, but yeah, let's, let's move on.

Mike 40:56
Well, there's just, there's nuance with that, and it's important to realize that now it processing depends. It's not just processed food is bad. Are some processed foods bad? Yes. So that's right. I think that's very important distinction to bring up, um, because you have the whole Whole Foods thing now too. And while there for a lot of foods being holes and raw and raw, whole and raw foods, right? Yeah. So while some of that stuff is important, you know, like, raw fruit has a lot of benefits over like so. Or even fruit juice, freshly pressed has significant benefits over soda. It doesn't automatically mean that processing is bad. So so another actually pretty estrogenic food, besides soy, can sort of cover, you know, beans, legumes in general, but you also have alcohol, which is a pretty big one, and this is it's estrogenic in the sense of the effects that it has on the intestine and on the liver by increasing endotoxin and then damaging the ability of the liver to detoxify things. So alcohol is like a pretty alcohol sort of goes hand in hand with endotoxin and the metabolites that that it produced when it's being detoxified. And just like a pretty potent liver toxin, and your liver is like one of the main sources of detoxification of not only estrogen, but numerous negative compounds. So drinking alcohol on a regular basis is as far as testosterone goes and estrogen is probably one of the worst things to do, especially in large quantities. I mean, there's statements about having a shot, like once in a while, or like a beer here and there, but even then, I still don't think that. I don't see the benefit of that, particularly if you want to increase androgens or lower estrogen, or lower cortisol, or anything along those lines, right?

Jay Feldman 42:45
Yeah, yeah. And so just like, kind of clarify what you're saying, or add to it, our liver is one of the main, or really the main, avenue of detoxifying estrogen, and we always have some amount of estrogen circulating and alcohol via endotoxin and some direct effects of the detoxification of alcohol directly can damage the liver but also just impede its function. It depletes B vitamins, in particular, and depletion of B vitamins, or deficiency of B vitamins, also decreases the liver's ability to get rid of estrogen so and of course, gut health is also a major component of detoxifying estrogen, where, if you have you know, there are particular bacterial issues that can prevent estrogen detoxification as well. Yeah, in the colon, right? And so alcohol is between those couple of effects, really one of the best ways to increase estrogen and prevent our ability to get rid of estrogen, which is not a good idea if you're trying to support your metabolism and prometabolic androgenic hormones.

Mike 43:50
Yeah, there's one one area. It's semi tangential about alcohol, but I think it's important to bring up a lot of people really enjoy alcohol, and especially after a stressful day or something like that, and it was because it does have some GABA properties, where it has a relaxing effect, and it helps people to unwind, and it helps people to fall asleep after their high strung so we, I think both of us understand that, and we understand that it's sort of a coping, coping substance. And so we, I think both of us think there's better options to coping with things than alcohol. Um, I don't know if you want to talk about them here, or if you want to, we'll talk about that at another time. But, um, yeah, I think, like the alcohol component. I mean, even with family members I've I've seen and friends and people that I work with. It's like a pretty ubiquitous substance, and it's just because it helps people chill out after, like a stressful day or something happened with relationships or monetary whatever it is, it just helps them to unwind, take their mind off it. And for a lot of people, like even, particularly for my dad, he can't sleep, sometimes drink. Can a bunch of wine, we'll put them to sleep for a couple hours. But again, there's research, and we would this will be a leeway into sleep, but there's like, a lot of research showing that while you do go to sleep, you don't, you're not able to reach the reparative parts of your sleep if you're under the influence of alcohol. So there are other things to use in to help you relax, as well strategies that were decreased requirements and alcohol. And so we just, I think for both of us, it's important to recommend that is a coping thing for a lot of people. And we get that it's just as far as ideal health goes, it's just not ideal, and especially with the goal of increasing testosterone or anything like that. And then I guess, another indication people use it for socialization, help with anxiety.

Jay Feldman 45:45
So yeah, and we will later on in this, in these episodes, we'll talk about stress as well. And so I think we'll leave some of that discussion for then, because stress is a huge component separate from alcohol, just a huge component when it comes to Hormonal Health. But yeah, there's in the future, we'll definitely have to talk about, like, those sorts of coping strategies and yeah, and also how they can lead to certain addictive tendencies, and what can maybe be done in place of those things. But big picture, you know, doing a lot of the things that we're discussing just from the physiological level, will help a lot, and a lot of it, as you said, also has to do with lifestyle, sort of things, or work or monetary stress. And those things are all legitimate concerns and understandable, and there are better coping strategies that again, we'll discuss it another time. Maybe we'll discuss a little bit when we talk about stress as well in this series. But yeah, it's not, by no means is it a simple recommendation for a lot of people. But what you're basically saying is, yes, decreasing alcohol is a good idea, but we understand that that can be much easier said than done. I definitely know quite a few people who have been trying for a long time to kick their alcohol habit and have not been able to very successfully. So yeah, maybe some of the other strategies we talk about in terms of sleep and stress and all that will help too.

Mike 47:04
So I guess were moving to sleep?

Jay Feldman 47:05
Before we do that, I wanted to talk a little bit more about endotoxin, and then also, okay, how we can decrease estrogen, other than just avoiding things that increase it. So you had mentioned endotoxin as being a major contributor to impaired liver health, in which case it's probably the primary, like largest factor that's going to cause liver issues. And then additionally, it directly increases aromatization, directly increases estrogen, the conversion of of hormones to estrogen. And because of that, things to decrease endotoxin are going to be really important. Some of this comes back to the digestibility that we talked about before, where a lot of the harder to digest foods are going to be more likely to feed harmful bacteria, and so sticking to the easier to digest foods will help to decrease the endotoxin load. Sometimes this also has to involve addressing gut health more in a more targeted way, which we've talked about before. Different strategies. There antimicrobials, different ways to support digestion, whether that's increasing bile production or stomach acid production or the migrating motor complex, gut motility. So a lot of the big picture things should help there. But it's worth mentioning that eating a lot of irritating foods or having a lot of gut inflammation or endotoxin production is going to pretty dramatically increase estrogen and decrease androgenic hormones, and it's one of the major factors decreasing metabolism as a whole. So it's definitely worth considering there.

Mike 48:40
Yeah, yeah. And I just want to go through real quick, just to give context, endotoxin is, and we've talked about this before, basically a lot of things, endotoxin is a component of gram negative bacteria cell wall. So basically they're protective covering, and it that simulates the immune system pretty strongly in a negative way, but it also has direct negative effects on mitochondrial function. It like directly impairs energy production so the body, it's like a pretty ubiquitous and significant stressor in the absence of other toxins going on, say, you had eating the most organic, clean diet ever. If you have a bacterial infection going on in the gut, that's going to be a huge component that's impacting the liver directly. And so while endotoxin, while we talk about endotoxin, specifically, there's a bunch of other bacterial components from different bacteria, from gram negative bacteria, it's sort of just bacterial toxins in general, from the gut are a problem, or fungal toxins too, or even fungal or parasitic, but any type of microbial issue in the gut has like pretty can have pretty drastic negative effects on people's health, and they tend to develop in chronic health states, or drinking excess alcohol over time, or any of the chronic health states or. Excess stress will modulate basically the gut, fauna and flora, and then you can get sort of pathogenic or growth. Sometimes you could pick it up from food poisoning, and you could get it from using antibiotics, from a whole host of things, any pharmaceutical drugs, too much of that poor diet over time, like, for example, going on a heavy soy plant based diet can really break people's guts. So all all of that can lead to these issues that linger even after you change. That can be allowing these bacteria to produce toxins from the food that you're eating and then damage your liver. And so even if you're doing the most organic, low stress lifestyle with whatever, if you still have a problem going on that developed after going through stressful state, you can still have an issue. And while we use endotoxin as like the primary one to focus on, because a lot of the research discussed endotoxin, specifically, there's other bacterial components that are pretty much just as damaging, and they directly attack mitochondrial energy production, a lot of them or enzyme systems within the body that metabolism is dependent. Metabolism is dependent upon and that will stimulate immune response. That will up regulate cortisol production and upregulate like humoral immunity, which is what we don't really want to upregulate that too much. You see that a lot with autoimmunity and chronic stress. And then that also will increase estrogen, and it will lower thyroid, the thyroid function and the gonadal function, because it's basically like the system all works together. The body's saying we're under stress, we have a problem. And then the primary directive is managing that problem, rather than managing reproduction or optimal Hormonal Health or brain function, or things like that. The body gets geared towards dealing with this problem overall. So we want to eliminate those types of underlying problems. We want to, if you having gut issues, things that could be addressed. And I think it's really important to realize that a lot of these things, especially even in our experiences, they developed not only with the for ourselves, but for other people, after periods of chronic stress that involve trying, for example, really low carb diets or really high fiber diets of plant based foods, those have been issues so and we can directly go over a lot of this stuff. I mean, we're we have a lot of content, I guess, but we can go over some of this stuff, more in detail and at a later at a later time, and have some episodes discussing having a stressful stay in your life and then developing the issue after maybe something like that.

Jay Feldman 52:30
So yeah, and it's, it's worth mentioning as well. You were kind of saying that when that happens, you can have gut issues that linger, and kind of, even if you've changed, other factors can still be caused, kind of holding you down or causing some problems, and that can be the case. And in those cases, it can be helpful to address your gut health directly. And again, we've talked about antimicrobials you could use or or antibiotics or other compounds that can help with gut health. Is also also worth mentioning that a lot of the time you it's I found that a lot of the time you don't have to address it directly. If you're doing other things properly, if you're raising thyroid activity and metabolism, a lot of times, the gut issues will resolve on their own over time. It just depends on what's kind of the limiting factor. And so it's an important one to consider as it as a possible limiting factor, but..

Mike 53:19
It's always comes down to a root cause, right? So there needs to be a root cause and addressing multiple because for some people, it could be like they develop, they had a stressful period in their life, they developed a gut issue. For other people could be they developed, they had a stressful period in their life, and now they because of the state they were in at that time. They developed emotional triggers. And so addressing the state, you know, their physical state, can help to to address that as well. But, and most people, once you sort of get them on the right track, the body adjusts, and it's like, Oh, wow. And it sort of alleviates itself. But some of these can be sticking points, right? And that's when we that's more of like somebody, I'd say, you would need you or I would either work with one on one and say, Hey, let's sort of break down and see what exactly happened, and get some lab work and get a full assessment and say, like, where's this pinpointed where are these pinpointed issues that we can address to sort of allow the body to correct its course once you start doing everything right. And for some people, they could develop allergies, even develop allergies after a stressful period, or they can have like, a serious they went out, they went partying when they were in Mexico, or something, picked up some type of infection, or just got really sick, and then that's lingering. So it there's a lot of things that could happen most people course correct with the adjustments that we're talking about, but just there's some certain circumstances where things can linger, and it's some of these minor things that have to be addressed, and then they sort of make the difference after that. And I guess an example for me would be like after having surgery, having adhesions in my stomach after addressing those things, of course corrected for me a lot. So yeah.

Jay Feldman 54:59
And that's a great example. Well, and I'll say also, I've definitely seen with clients where the gut issues have had a direct effect on Hormonal Health and libido, and a lot of times psychological health, mental health, triggering anxiety or other symptoms and so depression, brain fog, yeah, yeah, for sure. And again, some of these cases, you don't have to direct, directly address the gut, but in other cases, it is helpful. So something worth considering in the big picture, and also in the hormonal picture, and picture of, you know, raising the pro metabolic hormones along with that one thing. So we just kind of circling back as as these gut toxins are, looking at these gut toxins as a major damaging factor or stressor on the liver one other or, I guess I should say, there are several supplements that can help with restoring liver health, which is really important for Restoring restoring the ability to detoxify estrogen and get rid of estrogen, keep stress hormones down. One of the most noteworthy is vitamin E, which also happens to help with the with protecting against the effects of PUFA. Yep. So Vitamin E is particularly healthy helpful. There other fat soluble vitamins are also helpful for liver health, like vitamin A, B vitamins are extremely protective here as well, and help to upregulate detoxification pathways in the liver. If there are B vitamin deficiencies, which are pretty common, glycine and taurine are particularly helpful for liver health. Caffeine and coffee are really helpful. Theanine can be helpful. There are there any others you want to add? Methylene blue.

Mike 56:44
I was going to say adequate protein intake, or branched amino acids, can be really helpful in people, especially if they, you know, their liver is really beat down. Those can basically help with like methylation processes or detoxification, because all of the phase one phase two detoxification that occurs in the liver is a basic basically involves phase one is like your mitochondrial enzymes, p4 50s, and then phase two involves addition of different groups, whether it's glutathione or glycine or acetyl groups or whatever, and that's dependent on having adequate amino acids and B vitamins and also energy metabolism. So vitamin K, specifically, is also really helpful for fixing electron transport chain issues in the liver. So a lot of these can be really helpful substances. They can be pretty potent, and building a stack out of them for a lot of people can be really helpful as well. And then I think something that is helpful for people in certain contexts, if digestion is really impaired from the liver, sometimes tudka or bile acids can be helpful for people. Sometimes, like digestive enzymes, may be helpful for people, and that's just to help clear out the small intestine, in conjunction with eating adequate amounts of monounsaturated and saturated fats. So a lot of these things can really help the liver for people, especially if the liver has been impaired and you have small intestine digestive issues, and then obviously targeted antimicrobials for the small intestine may help the liver, but direct liver health helpful things is what we already talked about, what we just mentioned.

Jay Feldman 58:12
yeah, and you mentioned vitamin K. Just want to clarify, that's k2 that we're talking about, not k1 and aspirin is another one that can be pretty helpful for liver health. Yeah. Health. And again, the liver just being kind of one of these major highways, major detoxification areas when it comes to stress hormones, also a major area of conversion for thyroid hormones from the inactive t4 to the active t3 so we don't want to consider liver health, necessarily, as like purely on its own. It's not a separate system from the rest, but it is. It can be helpful to do things that might be slightly more targeted there, when you're looking for some of these effects on hormone health, and all of the things that are targeted towards liver health are systemically extremely beneficial as well, when used in the right context. So Exactly, yeah, I would never say, you know, to use, I mean, can't even think of anything that would be help, like, quote, unquote, healthy for the liver, and not healthy systemically. But these ones were just worth mentioning. Is particularly helpful for the liver.

Mike 59:13
And the liver is target specifically, just because it's such an interface for all of our hormones, our blood sugar, and then what is coming into our body from our gut, and then what it's dispersing to our tissues. So the liver is like this huge interface, this huge regulator. It's like a distribution center, I guess, if you want an analogy, where things are coming in, coming out, and sort of regulating how everything is is being in, being like food in different components and toxins are being metabolized and and detoxified, or being distributed to tissues, and then managing the hormonal profile based on those what it's sensing there. So it's like, it's like a key one of those key areas, one of those key turning points that can if you're having issues over a long time, over a long term, can really gum things up. This. Is a little bit tangent, like, a little bit separate, but I just want to just for, like, one last thing for the estrogenic stuff that I want to touch on. And it's, it's already big in the alternative sphere, but I think it's important to mention it's just like, different environmental toxins and like plasticizers and BPA. It's like, it's pretty important to avoid a lot of that stuff, because it is really it is pretty prevalent, and it has a negative or a potently negative effect on multiple hormonal systems, not only androgens and liver health, but it can also have really negative effects on thyroid function. So BPA, bps, the plot different like plastics in general are a huge problem. The polyvinyl chloride, I would, as much as possible try to avoid those things, like, for example, instead of bottled water, maybe a Berkey filter.

Jay Feldman 1:00:52
Or glass water bottle.

Mike 1:00:55
Or, well, I'm saying yeah, or glass water bottle, but you, or even if you're going to have your juices, as much as possible. Like, Lakewood has glass containers. This is, like, more nuanced, like, way down the line, stuff that's not like 100% like the big picture stuff to focus on, but these things are really prevalent and can be a serious issue. So trying to, like, if you have a bunch of water bottles out in the sunlight, or you like the water bottles in general, it's probably best to stay away from from that if what like things that you're drinking out of those are those can, those can be an issue for people.

Jay Feldman 1:01:31
So yeah, those kinds of environmental factors definitely add up, and especially if you're not in an optimal place metabolically, then those things are going to have even greater of an effect. So yes, it is worth at least examining those aspects of of your life, trying to use less plastic, which, as you're saying, has all these different estrogenic components in there, especially when it's heated up.

Mike 1:01:52
It's also just good for an environment in general to stay away from as much. It's so ubiquitous, but it is such a problem, especially bottles. Yeah, plastic bottles are terrible. Yeah, just in for and like that is something that's important to us as well. Is what's going on with the environment? Not, well, I won't even go there, but like, the pollution and stuff like that with plastics, and if we can avoid it as much as possible, I think it is important. I think that is a serious issue, regardless debates on global warming and climate change, like pollution from micro plastics, pollution from macro plastics, which is bottles and soda can rings and stuff like that. Like, all of those are problems, and all of those, while they maybe, it's affecting a third world country now, like, it also directly affects us physiologically, and it affects the food that we eat, like finding micro plastics and BPA and like muscles and some of the bivalves, those things aren't good, or even pharmaceutical drug pollution into some of those animals that we wind up eating. So even if it's from the selfish perspective of we're eating them, we don't want it in us. Like, there's still an argument for trying to limit as much of that stuff as possible, yeah.

Jay Feldman 1:03:01
yeah. And plastic bags are used for, like, everywhere, for everything, and it's only gotten worse in this past year, where everything needs to be disposable now for contamination concerns, so using reusable things as much as possible, being aware of the plastic you're using, like Tupperware is another example. Or like, storage containers, switching towards glass would always be helpful, yeah? Composting, yeah, yeah, and we'll have bags, yeah, right, right. And we'll have to, like, reusable things. Another thing too, along with just talking about sterilizing things and concerns about contamination, is all the cleaning products that are used now when it comes to estrogenic effects. And again, this goes back to what we had mentioned earlier, where virtually anything that's stressful can be considered estrogenic, because estrogen is such a basic, big picture stress hormone in that way. I know Ray Pete talked about soot from like chimney sweeps being or from chimneys being estrogenic, and that that was why chimney sweeps would have a high incidence of cancer, and that was where a lot of this estrogen research started and identifying estrogens, but yeah, a lot of the chemicals that are used for cleaning can be estrogenic, so that's something that is worth examining as well and being aware of. And the amount of the concerns now with sanitation have led to an incredible increase in the use of cleaning products and sanitizers, of hand sanitizers, various things. So it's worth examining what you're using, what the ingredients are.

Mike 1:04:29
Or even some of the compounds that are sprayed on some of the masks that we were seeing, I was seeing reports on some of the like those blue masks, the surgical masks, yeah, yeah. They have as far as because in the hospital, we use different we don't use those blue ones because they're not rated for anything. They don't show protection. They're not supposed to stop prevention of anything. It says it directly on the box, so we have to actually use surgical masks and 95 but I know for some of the mass, some of the construction and compounds that are in them aren't necessarily great. As far as Chem. Both sprayed onto the mask for wicking or whatever the purpose is. I don't know the specific purposes for them, but Right? And then you're breathing that in as you exactly you're breathing in however long you're working, whatever you're doing those and even there's been talk about some of the things that have been approved for spraying to clean the air in certain indoor areas as being, actually being toxic. And so it's things important like to recognize there's a lot of toxic exposure going on currently and with chemicals that have hormone disrupting effects. And the other thing that to touch upon is, even in your beauty care products, which we've talked about in other episodes, those can be like a serious issue as far as parabens and other estrogenic compounds that will absorb through your skin to an extent depending on the type, depending on what it is. But I was going to say we use supplements that absorb through our skin and have notable effect. So just important to pretty much be aware of while we talk about diet and stress and stuff like that, some of these other factors to keep in mind.

Jay Feldman 1:06:02
Yeah, and another one, just real quick to add on, or two things I want to say. One is from the mask side. All of these things are alternatives that are better. So if you have to wear a mask, use a reusable one. That's not one of the ones that sprayed. It's cloth, water. You know, there's various options, but you have choices that won't involve a lot of, you know, throwing away all these things, and also these potentially estrogenic chemicals, also pesticides, is another one where, again, just sticking towards more organic foods and local foods, because organic doesn't mean free of pesticides either. These are massive topics that each we'll talk about podcast, right? Yeah, and we'll definitely do that, but these are the very least things to be aware of, especially when it comes to hormones. I meant to talk about a lot of these things when it came to women's health as well, talking about these aspects of increasing estrogen, but it's important, of course, for men's health as well. Yeah. All right, that's going to wrap up part two of this series. Make sure you tune in to part three of this series, where we'll be discussing the impact of sleep, stress and exercise on men's Hormonal Health, and we'll also be talking about the ideal types of exercise for building muscle. If you did enjoy today's episode, please leave a like or comment. If you're watching on YouTube and if you're listening elsewhere, please leave a five star rating on iTunes or a review. All of those things really do a lot to help support the podcast, and are very much appreciated. To check out the show notes for today's episode, you can head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast where I'll be linking to the studies and articles and anything else that we discussed throughout today's episode. And if you are struggling with any of the hormonal imbalances that we discussed, whether that is showing up as a low libido or trouble gaining muscle, or issues with weight gain or having trouble losing body fat, or if you're dealing with various low energy symptoms like chronic cravings and hunger, fatigue, chronic pain, digestive inflammation, or other gut Symptoms, brain fog, poor sleep and insomnia, or any other low energy symptoms or chronic health conditions that head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, where you can sign up for a free energy balance mini course, where I'll walk you through some of the main things that you want to do, as far as diet and lifestyle are concerned, so that you can 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.