Tracy Gapin - The Testosterone Epidemic: How Endocrine Disruptors are Crushing Men AHS19

good morning can you hear me here we go men make no mistake about it our balls are under attack every day testosterone levels are plummeting at a population level and it's become a crisis a true epidemic I'm here today to not only illuminate the problem but also hopefully motivate you and inspire you to do something about it and take the next step and make changes now to drive home how this is really affecting us I want to share with you a patient who I saw recently who I think really is a good example of what this looks like his name is Joe Joe's a 49 year old executive who came to me for a low testosterone he had just gone through a divorce and lost his job he had been happily married with two kids and over the last ten years he notes that he had declining energy he had fatigue he had a change in his cognitive focus he was having trouble working he was depressed and he was uninterested in life to the point that it affected his performance at work so much he actually lost his job he gained weight about 20 pounds and most importantly he really didn't even care he didn't really seem motivated to do anything about it it affected his relationship with his wife and his kids as well he didn't want to play with his kids he certainly wasn't interested in being intimate with his wife this caused problems between them and he thinks this was actually one of the biggest reasons why his marriage fell apart after 16 years he told me how his entire personality and mood changed and how he was no longer the man he used to be as he sat there in the office in front of me I was struck by how defeated he looked I checked some labs on him his testosterone was 280 forty nine year old guy with a testosterone of 280 his free testosterone was 30 which are both obviously very low so this is a common story I see this this guy a guy like Joe in my office every day even guys in their 20s and 30s and 40s just like Joe with low testosterone low testosterone is not just about libido or sexual performance or building muscle it's about a guy's life but about his quality of life it's about his cognitive focus his energy his vitality it's about his cardiovascular health his bone density his muscle mass his longevity the instance of low teen young guys like Joe is increasing dramatically I want to share a powerful study that really drives home what a big issue this is this study was a Baltimore longitudinal aging study this is a prospective study of over 1,700 men that were followed longitudinally for 15 years what they found was a substantial population level decline in testosterone median testosterone levels dropped from just over 500 to under 400 that's a 22% drop which is a 1.2 percent drop per year over those 15 years and perhaps more importantly the free testosterone dropped 45% so the studies showed that you know men we're not just losing testosterone as they age this is not unexpected but the same aged men from later eras has substantially lower testosterone levels than their predecessors so what I mean by this is this is very important a 50 year old guy today has a 22% lower testosterone level than a 50 year old guy 15 years ago now this study you know it controlled for health and lifestyle factors like diabetes and obesity and smoking that are known to affect testosterone levels so this dramatic decrease in testosterone levels persisted even after they corrected for those factors so there's clearly something else going on besides just lifestyle problems not just in the u.s. either there was a 30-year study out of Finland a longitudinal study that found that men had a lower testosterone level there as well 37 percent over 30 years a study at a Denmark showed free testosterone levels dropped by 45 percent there as well so this is a global epidemic this is not just here in the u.s. it's also not just testosterone it's fertility a sperm as well you know this study out of Israel followed men for 30 years and a dramatic decline in fertility rates they found sperm concentration dropped by 52% and sperm counts dropped by 59% over 30 years another study out of Spain looked at male college students and found the same thing so again this is a global problem and is not just testosterone this fertility as well you know it's know also no coincidence that these curves line up if you look at this curve versus the testosterone one it's not a surprise that they're fairly similar so the big question here is why why are testosterone levels and fertility plummeting you know it's probably partially related to the lifestyle - you know poor diet the Western diet obesity metabolic syndrome insulin resistance chronic stress lack of sleep but there's clearly another insidious cause and that's where endocrine disruptors come in so let's start with what is an endocrine disruptor an endocrine disruptor is a chemical or toxin that interferes with normal hormone function they could do this through four mechanisms one is they can act like the natural hormone and over simulate or over or increase the signal if you will to the body to respond kind of like turning on a light switch that never turns off it can affect the receptor the way the receptor responds to the hormone it can recep it can affect the the hormone from acting on the receptor as well it can block it so to speak and then finally it can affect the actual production or metabolism of the hormone itself now today I'm obviously going to focus on the effects of endocrine disruptors on testosterone as well as fertility but I should briefly emphasize that there are numerous other physiologic effects from these exposures as well including obesity cancers such as thyroid breast and prostate cancers insulin resistance and diabetes depression immune dysfunction and other developmental abnormalities so where are endocrine disruptors well unfortunately they're everywhere we see them in our pesticides herbicides and fungicides that are sprayed on the crops of the food that we eat it's in the food coloring of the food we eat it's in our personal care items like fragrances and cosmetics and sunscreen and cologne and cleaning products and lawn care products it's in industrial products like flame retardants and adhesives and detergents and in our cars it's in plastic like plastic food containers plastic water bottles we'll talk about a moment electronics is in pharmaceuticals IV tubing anesthesia tubing it's in furniture it's in clothing it's ubiquitous it's everywhere now there are hundreds of endocrine disruptors that are known but the EPA estimates that over 3,000 synthetic chemicals are produced in the u.s. each year and over 90% and lack any real data on their true health impact so they're likely many more that are not known yet I'm gonna focus on some of the endocrine disruptors that have clear-cut science showing how they crush men's health testosterone and fertility the first one is atrazine now atrazine is a weak killer an herbicide is the second most commonly used one here in the u.s. behind glyphosate studies have shown high levels of atrazine in our lakes and in our drinking water our municipal water treatment systems don't adequately filter it out now what's the problem with that regime well there have been studies that look at frogs who are exposed to very low levels of atrazine and male frogs have been turned into female frogs so think about that for a second you have a male frog you exposed him to very low levels of atrazine and he becomes a female frog who actually lays eggs and reproduces simply from exposure to atrazine the atrazine that we have in our drinking water it's important to note that those frogs were exposed only 200 nanograms per liter of atrazine 200 studies have shown 34,000 nanograms per liter has been found in our drinking water so a little more than the 200 that that affected those poor little male frogs now Europe band after zine in 2004 but the EPA here in the US unfortunately has turned a blind eye and it's still legal here the next one's BPA BPA is one of the most commonly known and discussed endocrine disruptors BPA is this fee a does anyone know here how many water bottles we use globally and we have an idea we go through a million water bottles and minute globally a million water bottles a minute and most of those are not recycled so major problem with BPA BPA is also in baby bottles as in plastic food containers in plastic utensils it's in the lining of the cans of food products the BPA is slowly leaching into our food and water from these products it's also found the coating of thermal paper receipts and we're absorbing that through our skin like atrazine BPA has been found in our drinking water as well one study showed 93 percent of us have detectable levels of BPA in our urine 93 percent studies have shown a dramatic effect of BPA on our testosterone there was a great study out of Paris where they looked at male human fetuses now these fetuses were between 5 and 11 weeks gestation that were about to be aborted but they actually took the Leydig cell tissue from their testicles before abortion they bathed them in BPA in various concentrations and they followed testosterone production from these latex ol tissues what they found was in just 3 days 3 days of BPA exposure these latex cells produced 50% less testosterone so a dramatic effect on testosterone production with BPA all right birth control fun one how many guys here on birth control no actually you all are it was a trick question all of you are on oral birth control the reason is is a hundred million women worldwide are on birth control and it gets excreted in their urine it gets recycled back into our water system because again our municipal treatment systems are inadequate at filtering it out you know estradiol the main component of oral birth control is a very tough resilient molecule and it doesn't break down easily has a prolonged effect kind of like that light switch example I was telling you where the light switch turns on and never get to turn it off estradiol has been shown as we know to lower testosterone and free testosterone levels but it also has a dramatic effect on fertility sperm counts and sperm function as well some fish studies show that that fish male fish become female fish just like those frogs did with atrazine with very low levels of exposure to estradiol and again we're drinking that on a daily basis so I'm gonna talking a few minutes about how we can mitigate that exposure hopefully and reduce the effect DDT those were reason have an alligator here I'll tell you in a second so DDT is in is an insecticide it was banned here in the u.s. in 1972 because it was found to cause cancer and it's been banned in most parts of the world but is actually still used in Africa to fight mosquitoes to prevent malaria there's still a fair amount of DDT residue here in the US especially in Florida so a great study at the University of Florida where actually did my urology training they looked at DDT effects on alligators now Lake Apopka which is a lake just near Gainesville Florida next to University of Florida it's known that there was a large chemical spill in 1980 so it's knowing that there are large quantities of DDT in this lake so for this study they got some lucky post-grad students someone who drew the short straw to go into this lake at night and capture 140 alligators they also went into a nearby Lake Lake Woodruff that was known to be clean and pure and did not have any DDT exposure so this unlucky soul had to capture 140 alligators pressing her cloaca to figure out which ones male which ones female by the way also and in the male ones they actually had to measure their penis size and draw blood and measure their testosterone so the next time any of you want to complain about your job think of these guys alright so what they found amazingly is there was a 50% lower testosterone level in the alligators in Lake Apopka compared to Lake Woodruff 50% decreased testosterone level from exposure to DDT and remember this is DDT from exposure from from 30 years ago okay from from the spill in 1980 it still continues to this day fail ace fail eights probably the most potentially disruptive one I'm going to talk about today the problem with aliens is they're everywhere you know they're chemicals used to make perfumes it's a plasticizer used to make plastic look clear and makes it flexible it's found in our personal care products like shampoo and soap and deodorant and cologne it's using cosmetics shower curtains plastic toys vinyl flooring detergents cleaning products food packaging adhesives raincoats paints garden hoses plastic bags it goes on and on because they lates are everywhere studies have found that 29% of our drinking water has fail aid at a detectable level in it several studies have shown a dramatic effect on testosterone production on fertility as well as reproductive cancers with fey light exposure so in your daily life think of all of the chemicals all that the products that have fail Eights in them that you're exposed to on a daily basis is pretty scary the next one one is milk now there was a powerful study with milk where they took milk off the grocery store shelf and they gave it to young boys and they check their testosterone levels before and immediately after drinking whole milk off the grocery store shelf they found in one hour one hour after drinking milk there is a substantial clinically significant decrease in testosterone levels in these young boys who drank the milk think about this for a second milk is stored in these containers these boxes that are lined with plastic that's leaching endocrine disrupting toxic chemicals into your milk the cow that made this milk is given hormones that are estrogenic the cow is eating a crop that likely has Michel estrogen another endocrine disruptor the crops have likely been sprayed with herbicides and pesticides as well that caused disruption so think of the multiple layers and levels of endocrine disruption when you're drinking milk so next time someone tells your kids to drink more milk because does a body good think about the multiple layers of endocrine disruption that is causing phytoestrogens this is a fun one in the plant-based community but that's okay I'll take it this includes soy and tofu now Suey is the second most genetically modified crop only behind corn in fact 90% of the soy that's available here in the US is genetically modified why is it genetically modified to withstand glyphosate what's worse is we're not actually eating the actual natural raw organic soybean that might actually be okay here in the u.s. almost all of the soy that's available has been highly processed and what that does is it super concentrates the phytoestrogen content which increases the estrogenic effect there were several studies that have shown the effect on testosterone one of them looked at animal study where they fed one group fighted estrogen rich diet and one had no phytoestrogens in him and after five weeks there was a 50 percent change in testosterone levels in the group that had phytoestrogens in their diet 50% there was a human study they looked at young men who were who were doing weightlifting and they gave me their way Pro seasoning whey protein soy protein or placebo and they checked testosterone levels before during and after an intense workout and in the placebo and whey protein group as expected they had a spike in testosterone during and immediately after the workout in the soy protein group there was a decline there was a blunted response to testosterone with exercise with soy intake it's not just testosterone for all she also seeing an effect on fertility with soy one very powerful study showed a 35 million sperm count decline in men who have chronic soy intake so what do all these toxins have in common it's that they're crushing us and an epigenetic level altering our genes and we've got to do something to start protecting ourselves you know we eat it we wear it we wash our clothes in it we cook in it we saw our food in it we lather ourselves in it it's everywhere we are living in a soup if you will of end disruptors and they are attacking our balls from every direction and also each of these toxins don't act independently you know there's a cumulative effect as well there was one study that looked at twenty humans they biopsied their fat and they found 19 different endocrine disrupting chemicals or toxins at a detectable level in every one of them all twenty people in the study had 19 different endocrine disruptors in that fat biopsy there are hundreds of endocrine disruptors and combined exposure to these has a dramatic effect on our testosterone our fertility our health our life you know has a transgenerational effect as well you know many of these toxins are affecting germ cells and DNA methylation and this persist for generations there was one study that exposed fish to estradiol and BPA and they follow these fish for five generations and what was fascinating is they found an increasing problem over generations generations 3 4 & 5 had worsened fertilization and survival rates than the first two generations so we're not just talking about ourselves it's our children our grandchildren and so on so what's the answer how do we protect ourselves how do we get optimized well there are two choices you can keep doing what you're doing we could be victims or we can decide to make a change so let's talk about the solutions to talk about what we can do that every man should be doing to opted get optimized and protect himself starts with mitigating exposure you know this is certainly not an exhaustive list I'm going to go through here but this is just a start to give you some ideas of changes that you can make in your life every single day each and every one of these are small choices each one giving you just a little bit more control but have a dramatic effect over the long term the first one I like to talk about is a charcoal water filter you know I should be a spokesperson for Berkey the berkey water filter because I'm always talking about it but you need to be filtering your water and reverse osmosis does not get rid of endocrine-disrupting toxins you need a charcoal filter as well Burke he's a great one they're a bunch of other ones out there you need to be drinking only from filtered water you need using a stainless steel water bottle as well so like this is my water and coffee cup right here stainless steel you need to be eliminating pilot processed foods focused on eating real fresh food organic if you can you need to be looking at the ingredients of everything you eat if you don't recognize or can't pronounce or don't understand the ingredients you need to not be eating it you need to be eating whole fresh real organic foods grass-fed organic meats and butter wall caught salmon you know your your your meats and your seafood should not be in a plastic package they should never be wrapped in plastic they should be in a butcher block we should avoid any plastic contact that we can with our foods we need to eliminate fast foods as well tons of endocrine disruptors in our fast food so the study that also showed that people who eat in restaurants have 35% higher levels of phthalates in their urine from eating out so cooking at home means you know what's in your food limiting dietary grains especially corn especially processed phytoestrogen full soy we want to eliminate all plastics that have any contact with our food or drink especially for storing foods especially for microwaving our foods cooking our foods we want to avoid foods in metal cans that are aligned with endocrine disrupters plastic cups place utensils that are in contact with especially hot foods is a problem as well good cleaning products laundry detergent dryer sheets I'm gonna talk about that in a second how do you how do you figure that out we want to be really careful about anything that we're putting on our body because we are absorbing those toxins every day you know plastics are killing us through our coffee as well so when you're drinking coffee think about that plastic cup that is in and instead stainless steel those K cups plastic your coffee is bathing in endocrine disruptors especially as you're brewing it eliminating fragrances from all your personal care products that's a big source of fail aids you know these these candles these scented candles that are a big deal now think of the fail lights that are in dating from those as you're breathing them in you want good quality personal care products including deodorant shampoo soap sunscreen I'm gonna show you how you do that these are two great apps that I like think dirty there's one and the other is healthy living and healthy living is made by the Environmental Working Group and I love that one I use it all the time what you can do is when you're shopping you can take this app on your phone and you can scan the barcode of any product that you're looking at and it will tell you the toxic ingredients in that product so you can choose products carefully and know which ones are free of endocrine disruptor disrupting toxins every one of these are these things are choices one little thing one little change that you can make on a daily basis that over time when put together can have a dramatic effect on your testosterone levels so these are all changes that everyone should be making but we can go one step further you know we now have tools available to take a personalized approach with what we call cutting-edge precision medicine this is where I say you have to know your genes because you're unique genetics allow us to identify how your body responds to toxin exposure and find blind spots we can understand the efficiency of your detox pathways we can understand if you're at risk for significant inflammation from your body's response to these toxins and we can learn how to protect you at an epigenetic level much more so than simply mitigating exposures so I work with guys directly I help them understand specifically what their genetic blueprint is what it looks like and how they they can use that to optimize their health which certainly includes endocrine disrupting chemicals exposure now dr. Woods it's great talk yesterday and I just want to briefly comment on that because I think it's important that we have an open dialogue about this that you know there's a discussion of genetic data and how it's fairly useless and I have to partially agree this is partially true you see the human system is complex it's dynamic it's adaptable it's really predictable you know there's a concept that that researchers aren't able to necessarily always recognize unless you're actually dealing with it clinically unless you're you're working with clients with patients you know genetics is a great additional piece of data it's a tool that could be added to the complex evaluation and management of human system and you know yes it's about probabilities it's not absolute I like to say that one gene does not equal one outcome and that's why a lot of these directed consumer products are fairly worthless we'll agree because it takes context the key part here is you have to understand the genetics have to understand the client and there's epigenetics which means that your genetics are just a starting point and your lifestyle and your exposures affect the expression and so we need to understand that there's context and you know we're not robots we're constantly adapting we have a genetic hardware that's the platform that we're operating on but it's certainly not the end-all it's not your destiny and that's epigenetics so back to Joe the patient I told you about in the very beginning we worked on his exposures I'll work with him closely to identify every toxin that he's exposed to Anna daily basis and we worked through coaching on eliminating those exposures and we worked along this diet and his lifestyle as well I ran his genetic blueprint and I found that there were several genes related to his detox pathways related to endocrine disease just two toxin exposure and we worked on that that's a personalized approach that's precision medicine that's a tool that's in our toolbox now that we should be using to provide a personalized approach these guys Joe's testosterone level came up dramatically over the six months after that initial visit he never required testosterone injections we were able to get his levels up to almost 600 with simply lifestyle maneuvers and working on his exposures and working on his personalized genomic approach as well with various supplements to help increase his detox pathways so we need to understand that that that this is happening at an epigenetic level you know our environment that we're exposed to on a daily basis is directly affecting our function not just in ourselves but in our children and our children's children ancestral health is all about how our health challenges come from an evolutionary perspective this is it okay that's what we're talking about here this is evolution happening unfortunately the EPA has known for years what's going on and they've really done very little to address this problem we need to have a stronger voice and insist on better regulation if we don't make a drastic change guys in 30 years the entire male population will be hypo gonna do and sterile has I hope you can tell I'm incredibly passionate about this about helping men optimize our health and performance and longevity and help them recognize their full limitless potential and that includes optimizing their hormones by mitigating exposure to endocrine disrupting toxins up railay and detox pathways and leveraging their genetics to take a personalized approach hopefully this morning I've not only educated you and illuminated you but hopefully motivated you to lock arms with me get empowered and take action thank you thanks Tracy that was awesome I didn't say that genetics were useless just point that out first anyway we were I had a question about a specific scenario that I see fairly frequently just because you talked about free testosterone or free Android index we're at the beginning and I often work with people who are who do almost all the stuff that you talk about why they're super dedicated super motivated you know they're one optimize everything and say they're in maybe their 40s or 50s testosterone looks pretty good maybe six seven hundred you know that's fine but like fine by me but they're SHBG is usually pretty high like maybe seventy eighty sometimes higher and if you look at the epidemiological data shbg pretty much is negatively correlated with insulin sensitivity or resistance so the more insulin resistant you are the lower shbg is so I've stopped really worrying about free testosterone this calculated measures based on SHBG because these guys have symptoms of testosterone deficiency there shbg is super-high bimah also know they're super insulin sensitive much higher you know much more instance sensitive than the people that they use to generate the SHBG normal ranges do you have any thoughts of I miss something is there something in there that you'd think about yeah so I'm not sure everyone can hear that but the question is related to shbg and basically do we care about free testosterone and I would say that that it comes back to - you know working clinically with patients with clients working with them one on one identifying symptoms a lot of guys will have low testosterone and allowed no symptoms or they'll have normal testosterone and super low free testosterone and have no symptoms and so you know in a guy like Joe where the free in total is super low that straightforward he is clinical symptomatology of hypogonadism he has low testosterone and he would certainly benefit from from whatever we can do to boost it but a great question is what do we do with with with a guy who has no symptoms and I think that that's a personalized individualized question I like using genomics personalized medicine in that situation because you can you know you could focus on other lifestyle factors you could focus on on different epigenetic maneuvers to help optimize other parts of their of their system a big issue I see where these guys asleep most guys with any questionable testosterone issues have terrible terrible sleep and so a lot of times optimizing their sleep optimizing their response to stress how they how they deal with stress how to accommodate stress their nutrition their fitness mindset I deal with all those other aspects of their health and and then a lot of times you know it comes down to them then making a decision how they want to deal with that so this answer your question No yeah no no I think we're saying the same thing that you guys have a normal testosterone super low free testosterone they're asymptomatic do you do anything about it and in general no you know the the guy may may want to do something about it but I would not intentionally give him testosterone therapy or do something dramatic to that guy yeah so when I when I see that kind of graph and you show that a big discrepancy in the drop between the free and total freedom total testosterone to me that really signals SHBG because that's a classic secret one if you see this in women's hormones as well and so the thing with SHBG is that it's stimulated by estrogen but it has enough greater affinity for androgens it's greater affinity yeah so I'm just kind of curious about like the account you've given of the mechanisms of endocrine disruption I'm sorry the account that you've given up the biochemical mechanisms of endocrine disruption being about lowering the testosterone because my understanding is it's not it's more about the binding of it and stopping it from okay okay so the question is the mechanism and and it's understood that it's through multiple mechanisms one is as an anti-angiogenic effect one it blocks receptors one is it actually affects SHBG which is more of the free testosterone if you will and then I think it's more so than that I think we're also probably looking at an effect on testosterone production itself so that was at once Lauer talked about the four different mechanisms I think it's probably at least three of those that these toxins are working through are you weary search on boron through or on lowering this hbg boron okay yeah take a look okay thank you so one of the things that I often like to look at is kind of work what are the biggest levers and like you know to the 20% that makes the biggest difference and you mentioned that lifestyle factors like diet and and other lifestyle factors you mentioned you know sleep in stress just a moment ago too kind of a factor as far as indican just disruptors how big a piece of the you are they the majority of the cause or the testosterone job do you think or a a small fraction or somewhere in between does that question make sense yes yeah the question is is how much of an effect is endocrine disrupters versus lifestyle other factors you're saying I would submit that it's it's massive and it's the majority I'll tell you why I see guys in my office everyday in their 20s and 30s they're working out there I have a guys who are very fit they're playing tennis they're you know body fat very low they're eating all the right foods and their testosterone levels around the 200s there's no there's no lifestyle explanation for that so I think that certainly you know when you see a six-year-old morbidly obese diabetic you know there's an obvious lifestyle factor there but most the guys I'm seeing now it's different this is an epidemic among young guys who are otherwise fairly healthy of course everybody is an individual and patients are individual etc etc but in your experience and your group of many many patients that you see where do men tend to become happiest as far as like total and free and SHBG anything like that is there a range that you tend to see most people do the best in and where do you find is do you find a range that is too much yeah great question so testosterone levels there's this clinical range that we've been given which is awful and that's generally 250 to a thousand or so give or take depending on which lab you're using and that's awful and that and that's based so you understand this base population-level latin numbers that range keeps dropping every couple years as a population level testosterone it's just the you know we talked about the standard deviation yesterday with dr. would so that this clinical range is BS i see so many guys with testosterone level of 400 who are miserable do you do not treat that guy because he's quote in the normal range the answer is no so the answer is every guy is different obviously the free is way more important than the total in general there are exceptions but most guys that I see the free testosterone is much more valuable to look at and I would say that for a young guy in his 40s if your level is not around you know seven eight hundred ish total and you're free somewhere around a hundred ish then you may not be optimized now I want to be clear though if a guy has a testosterone level of 500 and as free is eighty and he feels amazing and no symptoms whatsoever you don't necessarily need to do anything about that but that's rarely the case that I see I see guys who are symptomatic they have very low normal testosterone levels you know four hundred five hundred and they're clinically symptomatic they are subjectively hypogonadism preciate it I have a question when you talk about this worldwide epidemic the studies you brought up you know there's Finnmark denlon or Denmark Finland Spain etc etc but are these really universal I I see as a as a European and their descendants problem and you know you mentioned Israel but is there any any epidemiological data from Africa or or you know Asia etc yeah there there are studies looking at various parts of the world that show this effect they found whales in the Arctic Ocean to had detectable levels of estradiol they looked at lakes outside of Germany I don't recall one specifically looking in Africa but but there are studies from all over the world that are showing this effect on our marine life on our water on our drinking water in lakes in crops it what I found is is pretty impressive how Europe has been much more progressive and much more had a much more regulatory perspective on managing this whereas the US has really turned a blind eye and the EPA has done very little to regulate this and it's a problem and hopefully you know public awareness hopefully pushing it with a voice to make change will help but you know the fact that BPA is still still legal here in the US is crazy atrazine it's crazy question so on the basis that everything's connected to everything I find it interesting that you didn't mention anything about elevated aromatisse activity and made various environmental sleep causes driving up DHT eating up the forms of tea is that a another pathway for tea to be low I'm just coincidentally I'm um I was a soy fed baby and found to have a hypo um tea not too long ago I'm on topical BHRT and I find I've got high DHT an above the high range but I'm mighty measurements are okay and symptoms okay then additionally there is the things we take intentionally that are estrogenic like Chinese herbs many of the things that are in the the herbal environment are sr genic so I'm a multi-part to take your pick what you'd like to answer no good stuff so DHT first so DHT um I I have not found a ton of data looking at specifically correlating endocrine disrupter exposure to effects on DHT but I will tell you that there's a lot of correlational studies that look at genetics there are there are numerous genes that have been shown to correlate with a man's conversion of testosterone to DHT and so that's that's an individualized thing where a lot of guys may have a higher conversion than others as for estrogen I I think it's important for us to realize that estrogens not the enemy okay in men we need estrogen esters is important for cardiovascular health for a bone health for sexual function for libido for cognitive state it's different with these endocrine disrupters though estradiol and all these other toxins they're like a glue they bind to the receptors and they don't let go they cause a hyper aggressive response they block receptors they don't act like normal estrogen in our bodies and so the difference is with normal healthy estrogen and these toxins is the balance between testosterone and estrogen and for men we need a normal healthy balance between the two with endocrine disruption it completely alters that balance hi I got here a couple minutes late so I apologize if you covered this since the effects of these endocrine disruptors are extremely complex it can act as agonists and antagonists and enzyme blockers and and have a lot of regulatory effects I'm wondering when you're evaluating these men if you're looking at good editor opens to see to see how the body is perceiving the the endogenous and hormonal environment see if they're up high or low in these men that are complaining about yeah great question and and it is typically a mixed problem so what I mean by that is you know primary versus secondary hypogonadism in most of these men they have low testosterone and low free testosterone and their LH and FSH will be super low as well so they're there access is not responding appropriately you know you would think that you know you would have higher levels of LH FSH but we're just not seeing that oh yeah yeah and again this comes back to the fact that these disruptors are working through multiple different mechanisms to affect testosterone production and you know not just the two eteri stimulation but testosterone production as well as at the receptor level so I think it's at least three different levels where this is happening yeah great question okay thank you everybody we've gone a bit over time but I'd love the pretty hands together again for Tracy Gavin who's also thank you

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Length: 41min 54sec (2514 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 12 2019