In this episode of Chief Life, we’re talking all things testosterone with holistic coach and nutritional therapist Jake Doleschal. Testosterone plays a crucial role in men’s health, yet more and more men today are struggling with chronically low levels. We break down why this is happening, how it impacts performance and well-being, and—most importantly—how to optimise testosterone naturally through nutrition, training, and lifestyle choices.
We cover:
- Why testosterone is essential and what happens when levels drop
- The biggest contributors to low testosterone today
- How nutrition, training, and lifestyle affect testosterone levels
- Common myths, including the effects of low-carb and high-protein diets
- How endurance athletes can maintain healthy testosterone while training hard
Jake shares practical, science-backed strategies to help men boost testosterone naturally and improve overall health. If you want to perform at your best in and out of the gym, this episode is a must-listen!
Listen on Spotify!
Learn more about Jake:
- https://www.instagram.com/coach_jakedoleschal/
- https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/a-gut-feeling/id1601940282
- https://www.instagram.com/jakedoleschaltraining/
TRANSCRIPT
(00:00) older men with lower testosterone they're far more likely to experience things like [Music] depression low mood mood swings depression even anxiety sleep disturbances insomnia those are going to be massive symptoms almost every single combat athlete I work with the testosterone is flawed just super super super low very long times and a is going to de testost welcome to Chief life the podcast that cuts the crab with science backed insights on Health Nutrition and performance get expert advice actionable tips and everything you need to take
(00:47) control of your health and live your best life let's get [Music] started today's episode is for men only we will discuss why testosterone is important for men and why so many men these days suffer from chronically low testosterone Jake is a wealth of knowledge and his qualifications include diploma of nutritional therapy and postgraduate certificate in medical science welcome Jake I'm so happy to have you on for this chat thank you V thanks for having me I'm very excited to talk about this there's plenty to chat
(01:22) about it's a big topic so I'm looking forward to it yeah it's a very big topic I hope we can get through all my questions within an hour hour so let's just get straight into it why do men need testosterone and what happens when testosterone is chronically low what are the symptoms tell us so I'm going to preference by saying if I waffle too much about any question cut me off jump in because I know there's a lot to cover okay I have a tendency of doing that sometimes so by all means Jump On In so often when people think about
(01:54) testosterone they're going to think about the obvious things okay so they're going to talk about or think about sexual function they'll think about motivation libido drive maybe they might think about bone density and muscle mass and all those things are part of it right so I'm not taking away from that at all so people may notice a decline in libido and sexual function and all of that yeah but there's way more that comes into it as well so we need to look at things around mental health that's probably going to be one of the biggest ones that
(02:22) people are going to actually experience symptomatically so if we look at research on in particular like older men with lower testost they're far more likely likely to experience things like depression so low mood mood swings depression even anxiety sleep disturbances insomnia those are going to be massive symptoms then we've got correlations with things like metabolic disorders type two diabetes blood sugar disregulation insulin resistance now that's harder to put your finger on symptomatically what that's going to lead to it can be you know
(02:55) energy issues it can be obesity it can be um even it can actually start to affect things like energy and mood and all that as well so it's one of those ones where someone said to me hey give me like a quiz how do I know if I've got low testosterone symptomatically I'd say I kind of can't because kind of just about any symptom can boil down to low testosterone sometimes so I don't know if that particularly answers it but honestly it's it's really diverse in terms of what people are going to notice okay so what tests are the best for
(03:26) testosterone levels and why like do the general tests from GP suace or do we need other tests and how do we get them how do we read them we can get a really good indication from Fairly basic tests so if you go to your doctor and you say hey I want to test hormones I want to test sex hormones testosterone they're going to do total testosterone they'll do like an Unbound testosterone a free testosterone test they might do shbg which is sex hormone binding globulin and that's usually going to be it but that's going to give you a really good
(03:58) starting point to work off even even if we so sex hormone binding globulin I do like getting that it is going to give us information around things like insulin sensitivity as well but even if we didn't get it we're still getting good information just with total and Unbound testosterone so that's the most important but if you actually want to start to piece together well why might it be low or what could I do to optimize it there would be additional hormones worth testing so hopefully this isn't too kind of overwhelming but ideally
(04:28) what we would have would be dheas which is a precursor to things like testosterone so we definitely want to see where that's sitting and that's a fairly easy test to do as well it's just a blood test that a doctor can do then we would do our total testosterone Unbound testosterone I'd want to do the shbg and we could do LH and FSH so that'll be luteinizing hormone that's probably the more important one there for guys I don't always start with LH and FSH because sometimes doctors don't particularly want to do it we might have
(04:54) to pay a bit extra we don't always need it but if we identify issues with the other markers then we'll want to come back and test a few extra things like those Okay cool so it's okay to start with the regular GP test and then if there's anything wrong investigate further exactly exactly start with what you can get which is usually going to be total and Unbound and that's going to give us a good starting point and so why do so many men have low low testosterone these days and what are the main factors that lead to low
(05:23) testosterone you know how I gave you that bad answer at the start where I said it can cause all kinds of symptoms I'm going to give you another one of those answers where it's like the whole world is honestly set up in a way that is not conducive to good testosterone so we could look at our environment we could look at endocrine disrupting chemicals and and um compounds we're exposed to an air pollution we know that they're going to have an effect we could look at our food supply we could look at pesticides we could look at even
(05:49) particular Foods estrogenic Foods things like soy and flax we could look at EMF we could look at cortisol I mean I'm probably going to come back to cortisol quite a bit I suspect in this episode because it is is so important but from a stress perspective whether that's perceived or or real like how much higher stress levels today like we live in a world where people want our attention 24/7 and Technology set up in a way to VY for our attention and you're like cortisol levels are just significantly higher how much are people
(06:18) sleeping like we know that post the pandemic we know that that sleep has gone down people are sleeping less people working later like testosterone levels were bad before that let alone like people AR been sleeping properly anymore so anything that's contributing to higher cortisol is going to have a huge detrimental effect so that's a big one then we've got I mentioned food supply but we've got types of foods people are eating as well and if people are eating highly Ultra processed foods or even just overdoing it on healthy
(06:47) food if they're in a a caloric excess and they're gaining body fat and they're obese overweight like that's going to start to have an effect on on aromatization and how we convert testosterone so when we kind of look at our world it's like well why testosterone levels dropping it's like well why wouldn't they I mean our lifestyle is doing it our diet is doing it the the chemicals we're exposed to doing it like we're doing it to ourselves as well like it's it's just everywhere okay so let's agree that nutrition training and lifestyle all
(07:18) Impact testosterone and I have few questions in each area I'll separated it into nutrition training and lifestyle to make it more clear for the listeners but before I get to it I want to ask one question testosterone is a risk or low testosterone is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease how exactly does that work sometimes it's a bit of a chicken and egg scenario so we know for example people who have metabolic conditions and don't have as low testosterone compared to those who do there's additional risks
(07:52) involved with those who do we see more significant changes in microbiome we can see higher levels of inflammation we know inflammation at self can also drive lower testosterone so sometimes like one can lead to the other but then the other can lead to one as well so if we're looking simply at from a metabolic standpoint so can you actually say the question one more time just so I don't go down the wrong path completely I was just asking what's the mechanism behind be the low testosterone being a risk for cardiovascular disease like how exactly
(08:24) does it work so if we're really looking at from a cardiov perspective what are the issu is going to be involved one of the biggest ones is going to be around vein sufficiency and Vin's health so we know that there tends to be and again because there's so many things that contribute to low testosterone it's hard to always say well this is this is the reason someone has low testosterone therefore that reason is affecting these other things because it can be multiple reasons right so for example we know yeast and candida can cause low
(08:51) testosterone is that going to have the same Metabolic Effect maybe not but we do know that there's a really strong link with vinus insufficiency there's like things like varicose veins for example and so sometimes low testosterone can actually be the Canarian a Coline that's saying hey actually like vein Health cardi vascular Health like there's an issue here right so you often hear about like uh people who work in men's health and they're like hey don't ignore erectile dysfunction like this can be the first
(09:18) sign that there could be like heart issues or or cardiovascular issues coming up so it it's some in that regard it's it's like a flag it's like saying hey look at your vein Health look at your cardiovascular Health but then we also know testosterone is going to affect I mentioned like aromatization before if there's excess body fat that's going to obviously cause issues around insulin uh sensitivity it's going to cause issues around inflammation we know that inflammation itself like if we look at things like um like endotoxin levels
(09:47) post Mill for example we know that that is actually one of the biggest factors when it comes to to fatty liver and in fact someone can actually you could have people who are consuming similar amounts of alcohol and without higher levels of that that um endotoxin like things like LPS for example the alcohol is not going to have the same effect on fatty liver so there tends to be this like potentiating effect where the the things that are leading to someone having low testosterone will exacerbate or or worsen the same things that are leading
(10:17) leading to metabolic issues if that makes sense okay interesting thank you okay so let's get into the three groups I've good questions regarding nutrition training and lifestyle so do you agree with me that processed foods soy products herbicides and pesticides and Seed oils all can contribute to having low testosterone yeah definitely there's going to be individual variant here as well so even like you mentioned soy even if we look at soy if we look at the research and soy it's so controversial because people would be like well look
(10:48) at the studies it wasn't a change it didn't affect testosterone but if you look at the individual response to things like soy it actually changes really dramatically so for some people absolutely it can be a huge factor for other people will it necessarily be such a big factor maybe not so it's one of those ones like for me I don't consume soy do I know that it's going to be an issue for me I don't know it but it's not a chance I'm willing to take because I know there's such big individual variance to it cool how about sugar how
(11:16) does that affect our test or men's testosterone level not our sugar would be one of those ones where and even even if we talk about like carbohydrates in general it's one of those ones where it largely comes down to that individual so just because someone's eating high amounts of of sugar and that could be like natural sugar it can be refined sugar depends on you obviously the food source but just because someone's having high amounts doesn't necessarily mean it's going to have a really detrimental effect on
(11:45) testosterone in the same way that you know someone could be following a high carb diet low carb diet doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be an issue right I think what we need a look at when we look at nutrition is for who who are we talking about sugar or who are we talking about high carb or low carb and that's where we're going to see I guess more actionable or valuable information right so if we have someone who's obviously prone to blood sugar issues and they've got metabolic issues anyway or they're more prone to it
(12:11) anyway and they're overweight and then we start feeding them a high sugar diet we start feeding them a high carbohydrate diet we know that that's going to worsen things but if we have an athlete someone who's lean anyway maybe they're I don't want to say endurance athlete because there kind of issues with that anyway when it comes to testosterone but if we just have someone who's doing like fairly normal levels of activity and they're lean and they're insulin sensitive and they're consuming sugar that's not going to have a as
(12:36) negative systemic effect as on that other individual so for me from what I seen from sugar in terms of longer term outcomes I'm not that concerned purely based on the sugar I'm concerned based on the individual okay cool that's great what about alcohol I'm aware of alcohol having significant impact on the testosterone levels and I've read some research that one drinking session can reduce the testosterone levels by 25% again when we look at studies like this it's always important to look at is it a short-term study or longer term study
(13:10) right because it was just like a cube like the guys had big like I don't know how many drinks they had I don't remember but it was like a big drinking session and then their testosterone was reduced by 25% straight after and there's a number of studies like that there some where they'll use ethanol there's somewhere they'll even do like a um like a challenge like they'll inject people with a certain compound like ethanol or or endotoxins and so we do see significant lowering in testosterone down I'm certainly not saying that alcohol is not
(13:37) going to have an effect but the the point I just wanted to quickly make is sometimes people will look at like really acute effects and be like oh look you know this this exercise increased testosterone by 10% it's like yeah did for an hour and then the other 23 hours of the day it went back to Baseline and it probably didn't do that much right so sometimes it's easy to take research and be like look at the impact of this but in a in a really applicable way what did it change when it comes to ethanol or it comes to alcohol I do think that's
(14:05) really quite damaging because we've got decent data on how it affects Ling cells so basically it's going to damage your ability to produce testosterone in the first place so it's not just going to have an acute effect it's going to have a chronic effect as well the interesting thing with that is if we look at what's doing it so ethanol converting into acetal hiide and that's damaging L cells and testies that's the same compound we we see in yeast so yeast and Inda produces that same stuff as the talide ethanol so if we have someone who's got
(14:34) a yeast overgrowth a cida overgrowth which is incredibly common they may not even be consuming alcohol and we can start to see these same negative impacts on L cells testosterone production we also tend to see increase in prolactin in these cases as well both with alcohol and with acetal theide and yeast and prolactin tends to have an inverse relationship with testosterone as well so someone might think oh you know either I'm only drinking once a once a week on the weekend it's not going to have a big impact or maybe they're not
(15:02) even consuming alcohol at all but they could still be having these negative impacts going on wow that's interesting okay next question which vitamin and mineral deficiencies can cause low testosterone if any definitely a few um so my starting point when I get a client who comes to me and they're like hey you know testosterone they got lower testosterone what do we do about it I want to cover bases so as soon as so the first base covers make sure there's no nutritional issues and sometimes there will be I'd say majority
(15:34) of the time now cuz there's so many other factors it's often not just going to be a nutritional issue but if I just want to cover that base and make sure that's not playing into it the big things for me would be V like fat soluble vitamins so vitamin D especially but if I can just cover all fat soluble vitamins it's going to be better so vitamin A e d k we can cover a lot of those with things like C Li oil for example Obviously good quality fatty mates will have a lot of these as well but organ mates liver is going to be the
(15:59) best there so fat soluble vitamins are going to be important U magnesium is going to be very important most people are way underc consuming magnesium especially if they're active athletes almost certainly need more magnesium so magnesium I'm probably just going to supplement off the bat to be honest uh zinc there's pretty good research around zinc especially when we look at the fact that and I'm assuming a lot of your listens that are probably like more active or potentially athletes and we know that there's a higher
(16:29) probability or possibility of things like exercise induced intestinal permability if people are doing a high amount of activity a high amount of say endurance work or things like that then they're more prone to to leaky gut basically and we know things like zinc carnosine a compound or a supplement that works very well for helping with leaky gut so that would be one I'd love to use with with athletes especially because we're covering the zinc component we're supporting the gut lining as well so zinc mag fat soluble
(16:56) vitamins a little bit of research around selenium I don't always use selenium but that can be an option to look into they're probably the big ones for me obviously I want to make sure someone's consuming enough fats in the diet again generally people who are a little bit more healthc conscious are probably aware of this like there I don't think there be a lot of people listening to this of Slash of the fats you know eating 30 grams a day or something like that but if that's you if you're listening to this and you've gone like
(17:21) super low fat okay look that's not going to be conducive to good testosterone we need obviously cholesterol that's going convert into pregnant alone into DHEA to testosterone so we need that we need saturated fats um but they're the main nutrients I'd be looking at okay great thank you um so the next question touches on nutrition but also environment and that's um endocrine disruptors could you tell us which endocrine disruptors are the worst for testosterone where can we find them how can we avoid them just like a quick
(17:52) summary on endocrine disruptor so so obviously these are compounds that affect the endocrine systems of hormones right so that's not just always going to be testosterone it can be other hormones that maybe that have estrogenic effects that could mimic estrogen and there's so many compounds we're exposed to to do this and I mentioned like before that can be even stuff in air pollution it can be stuff in our Foods so like Plastics obviously people are going to be aware of things like BPA that got a lot of hair time a few years ago but
(18:19) we're still exposed to Plastics all the time um and I guess some real basic things like maybe some someone's never even considered this before right so some super basic things we could do to limit our exposure to some of these compounds would be just never ever ever cook in plastic so don't heat anything up in plastic don't put your your your food preparation and plastic and put in the microwave don't use a plastic lid don't use plastic wrap in the microwave just don't use plastic on your food right like that would be one simpler
(18:47) thing um but people are usually switched on and they're not doing that but there's a few other ways Plastics making it its way into our food so even things like tea bags tea bags release well can release huge huge amounts of microplastics so if you're drinking tea consistently like it might be worth hopping online have a look Google it there's websites that tell you hey these are the companies that don't use plastic in the tea bags there's plenty of good options nowadays right so that would be one plastic water bottles like people
(19:16) think about the food sometimes but they ignore the water bottle and they just buy a new you know Mount Franklin water bottle from the gym every day and then drinking out of plastic that leave in the car it heats up it's going to do the same thing it's going to leech into your water we know that you know things like poly staring cups like we know that the the foam cup literally weighs less after it's been used why does it weigh less you've consumed some of that so getting takeaway takeway coffees you know even
(19:40) takeway coffees in paper cups it's still lined with petrochemicals so the food aspect is probably the biggest one and it sounds overwhelming because it's like oh my God that's everything and it kind of is everything but at the same time what about the skin care and household products and hair care and all those it for guys that's probably slightly less of an issue like they're not using as many Cosmetics as females are going to be using but yeah absolutely I mean we've got studies on on teenage boys using using like body wash and that
(20:12) essentially causing growth of breast tissue so that was like lavender scented body wash so I mean lavender I would put in the same boat as soy like it's also very estrogenic so I personally don't use anything that's lavender scented I wouldn't use lavender candles lavender soap anything like that essential oils um but yeah absolutely like what you know what are you applying to your body what are you using in the shower what are you using what are you spraying and it I don't want to come across like all dooming Gloom and be like well you can't
(20:38) do anything cuz you can like you can use natural deodrant there's stuff out there and like hell if you want to use a cologne like occasionally put some on the outside of your shirt you don't need to apply it to your skin is it still going to potentially have some some negative effect a little bit but it's going to be a lot better than being straight on your skin you know so there's like there's compromises you can make you know what I guess I'd start by saying hey where you exposed to plastic what can we do to stop that cuz even
(21:03) things like plastic curtains in your shower like you're in a hot area there's steam you've got plastic in in there that's being exposed to the whole water like that's still going to be an issue right so go around your home where's there plastic that I can minimize that you can't eliminate it we live like you can't eliminate plastic in the life we live right but what can you do to to limit that even plastic clothing I mean if you're wearing nylon you're wearing polyester like you're wearing plastic and clothing that's going through
(21:30) usually a hot wash at some point and you know like that's that's going to Leach like you're wearing that if you're sweating you're wearing that in hot conditions we know that effectively like polyester underwear like that can actually essentially sterilize people like we've got animal studies on this we've got human studies showing the effect on on hormones and wearing plastic Co um clothing so you know you're going to the gym you're doing everything healthy and you're wearing your 100% polyester underwear and and
(21:59) skins and whatever like that could be having an impact that's crazy I didn't know that about the underwear yeah yeah there's there's some interesting animal studies and then there's some one or two human studies as well so definitely like underwear change it to wool or to to like cotton or bamboo any natural fiber is going to be better part of the issue is is the heat retention of the polyester so that's why it had a negative effect and we see that in other things that cause high levels of heat so even like cycling for example
(22:28) or swing corers but that's I guess slightly different issue again um what else I guess I mean like pesticides you know that's a bit of a difficult one so do you think it's worth having organic fruits and veggies organic meat to avoid the herbicide and pesticide in an Ideal World I'd say look if you're eating if you're not peeling the thing you're eating you're eating it like it was exposed to pesticides the way you're eating it it would be good to get organic I do normally suggest that the clients who concerned about fertility
(22:58) and you know the parts are trying to con conceive so if you're having like a banana not the end of the world if you're having you know potato and you're peeling it not the end of the world but if you're eating strawberries blueberries like it would be ideal if we can get that organic you can create like a a wash like even B carb soda this I don't know if you've seen the study on B carb soda they compared a few different washes and what was best for removing pesticides and Bops so they did very well I have but I just think that the
(23:29) herbicide and pesticide soaks into the pores of the fruit well so does plastic like have you seen that research on on um produce having plastic inside it so it's pretty concerning so you know it's it's again it's one of those things where we kind of eliminate exposure you kind avoid it just minimize it where you can exactly exactly meat's a bit easier so I do think it it's it's a sad reality that the way the world is going like if you want to avoid being exposed to some of this stuff you end up having to kind of limit how much plants
(24:03) you're eating to be honest like you just if it's if it's literally if plastic is inside a plant now like it's inside a banana what are you going to do you know so I do think that it's a bit safer if we're talking about meat um but you know even still we know that the nutritional content of meat has shifted pretty dramatically over time so there's still going to be some limitations yeah thank you that's great so at the beginning you mentioned cortisol and I know that cortisol produces testosterone and I read a study that shows that individuals
(24:33) on low carbohydrate diets have higher cortisol post exercise this persist post adaptation to the low carbohydrate diet does that mean that low carbohydrate diets cause low testosterone levels or are they just not suitable for someone whose testosterone levels are already low that's a good question so generally speaking if we look at diets and testosterone and we look like macronutrient intake and testosterone it's not always that clearcut so regardless if we're talking carbs we're talking fats we're talking protein
(25:08) there's a lot of limitations and obviously we're working off both observational data and then sometimes we've got Interventional studies as well and so that kind of confuses a little bit because they don't always marry up in fact a lot of the time they don't so that's that's one complication now as a starting point what I'd say is anything that's going to increase cortisol probably not going to be good when it comes to testosterone so and that's actually there's some and I know you've talked about this there there's some
(25:32) research around high protein diets can potentially being bad around testosterone and part of the hypothesis there is around cortisol as well that if we go super high with protein eventually we do tend to see an increase in cortisol yeah the study said over 3.4 gram per kilogram of body weight of protein causes low testosterone and then some people told me oh that's why I shouldn't be on a carnivore diet but I just want to point out that carnivore diet is very high in fat and moderate in protein that's I mean it's a very high amount of protein
(26:04) they did in that study like you have a kilo female and they're eating well over 200 gram of protein on that so it's very high and again it doesn't marry up necessarily with observational studies and there's some Interventional studies where I think at like 3.2 gram of of protein per kilo there was into negative impact on testosterone so they don't always follow what you expect same with the carbohyd diet studies so when we go low carb if we look at low carb studies on testosterone they don't always show a decrease in testosterone either in fact
(26:37) generally they're kind of about the same there's some stud not many there's some that show a potential increase and my question there would be what was the starting point for those participants you know did they have metabolic issues is that therefore helping is the same honestly I'd say kind of the same about any hormone like if someone has a thyroid issue we know that going keto going super low carb probably isn't going to be the best thing but if they had a th issue and they had metabolic issues and we were going to go low carb
(27:05) aita for a period of time I'd say great that's probably going to be beneficial in the long term in terms of even dealing with the th issue so for me looking at low carb I would sort of look at in that Bo like who's going low carb are you someone who's doing very high amounts of volume in terms of endurance work or cardio work are you a combat athlete are you doing you know are you placing very high demands on your body cuz that's going to increase cortisol are you someone who's sitting at home working from home getting in the gym 40
(27:34) minutes twice a week if you're going low cup it's probably not going to be that big of an issue so I think we always need to be asking for who who's the person we're talking about and again most of your listeners who are very active who are who are you know potentially athletes is low carb going to be the best choice like I'd say very low car probably not okay cool so now cie approach everyone is different I guess but considering that high cortisol causes low testosterone levels in everyone what would be the best test for
(28:08) cortisol levels cortisol is quite hard to test so I don't I do not like blood test for cortisol if someone want because that's what people are going to use usually or they're going to use saliva and saliva probably like even less okay so if we look at the D on salivary cortisol testing if you test the same people each day for month majority of those people are going to be below the conventional cut off at some point and are likely to be above the cut off at some point as well so you get one day's worth of tests like flip a coin
(28:43) are going to be high or low that could be either it doesn't mean anything right and then suddenly as a practitioner like oh you're hypocortisolemic we got to treat you for adrenal fatigue based on this one test yeah come back next week and we'll tell you you've got hyper cortisol and blah blah blah you know so a salivary test I just wouldn't bother using it all a blood test we still have similar issues if someone had if someone had a phobia of needles and they get a blood test we'll see issues there if someone slept poorly like you know sleep
(29:11) and cortisol massive impact right if someone's not sleeping well cortisol is going to go up what happens if you didn't sleep well the night before what happens if you had a big fight with your spouse the night before you come get a blood test that morning your cortisol is going to be higher than normal so if someone wanted to work off a blood test would say it sucks but I'd say look get a a cortisol test do one each day for like do one a week for a month get four of them to get a month where do you get it from you can get it from the doctor
(29:40) you can get it you can go online and order it's like a regular CRP test cortisol cortisol yeah so it should just be okay it will just be called cortisol or serum cortisol yeah um should be fairly easy to to do again I wouldn't use a single test okay like don't use a single test result but if you average it out you get four you get a few and then you average it out and they're all consistently High okay that could be interesting or they all consistently could could be interesting if they low um but you also want to make sure you're
(30:11) consistent in how you're doing it so don't do it like one day I'll get it done at 5:00 in the afternoon after intermittent fast at all morning and the next time I'll get it done 9:00 in the morning try to be consistent you know try to sleep well Etc now that's probably for people who are listening that's probably the honestly the best way or easiest way to do it I know it's a pain but it's going to be the more accurate way the way I normally do it I'm not going to get clients to go do five blood tests or four blood tests
(30:39) over the next month what I'll do is we'll get an indication from other markers so we can look at patterns we can look at things like sodium and potassium we know if there's low cortisol there's probably going to be low other adrenal hormones and so that'll be things like d it'll be things like aldosterone so if we've got a test and we've maybe we've got a single cortisol and we can see that on the low end maybe it's not okay but maybe it is and then we see DHEA is on the low end again DHE is not foolproof but it's a
(31:06) fairly decent indicator so if we see DHEA low maybe we see cortisol low if we see sodium low cuz oldstone is going to regulate the sodium potassium regulations so low aldosterone we're going to be losing a whole lot of fluid we probably urinating more than normal you're going to be losing sodium with that so we see sodium On The Low End maybe like 137 138 pottassium that's going to be spared so we should see pottassium fairly normal in that instance like four anywhere up to sort of 4.5 4.0 to 4.5 if we start to see
(31:39) that pattern where sodium doesn't match pottassium we see DHEA low maybe we see cazol L maybe we see weird stuff going on with glucose because cortisol helps mobilize glycogen and keep blood sugar normal that to me would start to indicate cortisol issues right in that that instance would be more hypo okay the kind of the opposite my suggest Hy per it's going to be a little bit it's honestly it's going to be harder to pick up high per High cortisol in Bloods than than low um but generally we can start to get an indication based on some of
(32:10) the patterns that's not super easy for you guys who are listening to this I know that but I guess probably the takeaway Point here is almost almost everyone I talk to is like I've got adrenal fatigue I've Got High cool I've got blah blah blah it's like well no you probably don't based off what you know based off what do you think you've got that diagnosis and most of the time the testing you're using to base that diagnosis off it's totally inaccurate yeah Okay cool so but we said at the start that um the high cortisol lowers
(32:40) testosterone so if we don't test for it we should avoid the things that increase our cortisol excessively which would be what yeah so again under sleeping okay so sleep restriction massive massive impact weird things with your diet so if we do extremes if we you know drastically restrict you know we undereat we do prolonged fasting we like we're talking about drop carbs super low increase protein super super super high if we do just like weird extreme things we tend to see things happening with cortisol um very high volumes of of
(33:16) exercise or training so that's I would say generally once we see a session extend beyond about an hour we're going to start to see an impact there that's not so someone's going to the gym and they're doing like powerlifting and they're taking 5 minutes off between sets I'm not talking about those guys right like we're not going to see a huge impact in cortisol in fact we might actually see a decrease in cortisol post session that's fine yeah I mean if you're doing like more than an hour continuous work um or or if we like add
(33:43) it up and and you're doing it hour of actual work that's where we're going to start to see more of an impact yeah like running chart loans and stuff exactly exactly but someone could still like someone could be in the gym for 2 hours and you know doing 50 sets we're still going to see that impact them you know it's more the continuity and then intensity and then I guess stress mental stress absolutely cortisol absolutely absolutely and and that one's a little bit more subjective you know it's hard for us as practitioners to to
(34:13) necessarily measure that on a test um but you know people generally be able to tell you how they feel yeah of course yeah so let's get into the training session so based on what we said what is the best exercise or typ type of training for increasing testo testosterone and what is the worst so I think the best one for increasing testosterone is one that doesn't decrease it so if we can not do this super excessive work if we cannot do and like some people like cycling I get it some people are athletes who need to
(34:44) cycle for this sport I get it but we need to acknowledge like very long times on a bike is going to decrease testosterone like that is actually a factor um you in the same like very high temperatures SAA can do that I'm not saying is going to destroy your testosterone but it is a factor um but yes very high volume training like my combat athletes almost every single combat athlete I work with the testosterone is flawed just super super super low so if we can limit the the very high volume stuff which may or may
(35:16) not be plausible for some people I get that but that would certainly be I guess the the worst type of training in terms of what's best what's best is going to be not that stuff and then whatever is going to get you into a metabolically healthy state so if someone is overweight if they've got excessive body fat well what if it's going to help get that body fat to a healthy level that's going to be great we know that heavy lifting is beneficial but again that tends to be a little bit more like acute effect so I'm I still am a huge
(35:48) proponent of it we know that combining heavy well resistance training with cardiovascular work we know that's going to be most effective when it comes to even things like metabolic function and glucose regulation obviously um like hormone regulation as a whole as far as insulin but is that going to boost your testosterone just because you're increasing your F Max it's probably not going to have that much of a chronic effect okay so I still want people to do it but if someone comes to me and they're like hey I've got low
(36:16) testosterone what can can I just go get my deadlift up and that'll fix it unfortunately it's probably not going to do it yeah yeah that's that's pretty clear uh let's talk about the male athlete Triad which is low energy availability leading to relative energy deficiency um and it's uh also comes together with poor bone health and low testosterone level so I just wanted to point out here that sometimes the athletes don't OV exercise and don't overtrain but they undereat which causes the low energy availability and relative
(36:53) energy deficiency and that's what's driving their testosterone down so just to clarify this for our listeners First Energy availability is the dietary energy intake in calories so the calories you eat minus the energy you expend via training activity in calories and then divide it by your fat free Mass which is your Lan muscle mass and if that number is less than 30 calog calories per kilogram of f free mass then that's considered low energy availability and that causes lots of different hormonal issues yeah yeah it's really good um I
(37:34) guess point to make that we're not always talking about excessive volume in training and you know can obviously be heavily restricting di intake as well um that's going to show up in a very similar way because it's still going to be affecting cortisol like we were talking about before fasting I know this isn't strictly fasting but it's going to show up in a similar way as fasting so we're still going to see increases in cortisol we're still going to see increases in intestinal payability I haven't really touched on this yet I
(37:58) talked about like yeast and how that can affect like ladic cells but there's other bacteria in I gut like negative Grand bacteria they produce an endotoxin called liop polysaccharide when that enters the bloodstream that actually basically it it messes with the conversion of androgens and so if we have higher levels of of that endotoxin in our blood we're going to generally see lower levels of of testosterone as well and why that is a factor is because when we've got higher levels of cortisol and um you know whether that's from
(38:26) undereating or overtraining that's going to increase intestinal permeability so it's going to increase how much of that endotoxin ends up in our blood and then it's going to have that Knockin effect as well so it's going to be a few things working against you so yeah I mean this is why you look at a bodybuilder and you know they're few weeks off getting on stage and they look amazing they're you know super welldeveloped super muscle and you're like man that person must be the epitome of masculinity their testosterone must be super high like you
(38:53) do do a hormone test on that person like they're like preent like the testost testosterone levels are so low it's not even funny and that's I guess a combination of both of those things over exercising and undereating in that situation um but yeah I mean both are going to be just as detrimental as the other yeah I think the bodybuilders and the endurance athletes have the biggest problem with the Triad and I was just wondering if an endurance athlete followed a carnivore diet that was high in fed Modera in protein and had high
(39:24) energy availability would that work for them m I would just quickly add to that list combat athletes I know I've mentioned them a few times any sport where you your sport requires you to do a high volume of training but also make weight that's going to be a bad combination so yeah any sort of weight class um yeah so someone's doing these sports or doing these activities and they want to be ketogenic or they want to be low carb and they want to mitigate some of that I mean for St is like there's so many other things we've talked about right so
(39:54) what are you doing to control excess cortisol what are you doing to control you know exposure to endocrine disrupting compounds elsewhere like what what else are you doing right so if you're controlling everything else and then you're following a lowfat diet and you're doing high volume but you're also doing things to protect the gut and you're doing things to reduce intestinal permability and you maybe potentially taking some compounds are going to help with high cortisol or help blunt High cortisol is that going to be as
(40:23) detrimental as someone who's doing none of the above like no I don't think it's going to be as as problematic there the question would be is it going to be as good as adding in some carbs I haven't looked at I don't even know if there literature comparing some of those those situations I think it'll be hard to find research on you know using some compounds are going to help mitigate cortisol and what effect that's going to have compared to someone adding in some carbs my like a big part of my sort of my job or you know the work I do is is
(40:55) trying to optimize training performance and unfortunately I think it's difficult to do that without any carbs um even we know there's some research coming out now around something called excitation contraction coupling failure in a low carbohydrate State basically all that means is there's essentially extra fatigue mechanisms and your body protects you from those fatigue mechanisms by essentially reducing M unit Recruitment and you can mitigate that by adding in some carbs so that's in a low carb state so you can actually
(41:24) you can kind of hack your way around a little bit by maybe doing something like a carbohydrate mouth rinse and actually like swishing carbs in your mouth that can that can help yeah I've heard about that how does that work yeah well there seems to be essentially carb receptors in our mouth and so that if effectively it's not because people think about it like oh this is happening because you're in a state of low fuel it's not low fuel it's not that we don't have enough glucose we don't have enough fuel availability and that's limiting muscle
(41:50) contraction it's literally a a neurological mechanism where the body or the brain is saying hey the like there is ultimately I guess it is seeing this as like not a not a not an ideal fueled State it's not saying we're going to run out of ATP but you know why is someone in such a low carbohydrate State and so as a protective mechanism it's downregulating this exageration contraction coupling so basically like your ability to to receive signals to to contract the muscle right that's ultimately what fatigue mechanisms
(42:25) usually are like it we never get to a point hardly ever get to a point where we don't have enough of that thing we need to do the work right like you know whether we're talking about failure we're talking about you know whatever it might be like um this essentially any performance what we're doing is we're simply just exceeding our ability to tolerate that that level of effort and so the body's always going to stop yourself short it's never going to allow itself to run out of fuel or or get to a point where it
(42:52) can't actually physically do the thing it's going to neurologically stop you because you you've reached your maximal to perception of effort so having the carbs I guess it's yeah there's there's o receptors that are sensing the carbohydrates there neurologically but's like okay I guess it's a bit safer to go a little bit harder um it what doesn't work as well as consuming carbs probably not and it's if you look to research on it like some of it's a bit funny they have to like swish it before each set for example to like really have that
(43:21) full effect or sometimes it's like 40 seconds of swishing or something like that so it's not super viable but if I had a client who for whatever reason they couldn't have any other carbs like yeah okay maybe having something where you just have a have a sip swirl it around your mouth spit it out do your set like yeah it might actually help a bit yeah that's interesting so I'm asking this because I have a friend who was recommended this by his doctor and this guy's really interesting case he is um in his early
(43:49) 40s he looks like a beast like he's big musly really lean guy he can lift super heavy weights like he can deadlift like 300 kilos or something ridiculous but then he also runs ultramarathons and does really well like he placed second in the coda ultramarathon so he can do everything he's so fit but his testosterone is extremely low and it's always low he tried all different diets and it never gets any high and it's been like that since his 20s and my question is why do you think that is because when you look at him he looks like such a
(44:26) Alpha Man musly lean he's performs well like he doesn't feel fatigued his performance is great but his testosteron is very low all the time yeah I mean that's interesting because you don't always see that correlation with muscle mass or even with performance and low testosterone and you know that's back to my point this start like sometimes it can be hard to put your finging on what you're going to experience uh in a situation like that so if if a client coming to me and that was this situation the first thing I would do is I would
(44:54) look at the other blood test results not testosterone but I'd look at everything else and i' for starters what I'd want to see is what are the white blood cells doing and my suspicion is you're probably going to see white blood cells are flawed like nuture Fields probably going to be super low and for me super low would be like in the below two so anything in the ones like that's for me that would be super low right so I suspect we're probably going to see stuff like that happen we might see issues around globulin would be would be
(45:19) another one and if that were happening again to me that would be suggesting pretty chronic intestinal pability and so that's what coming back to what I was saying before where I reckon that will be a big factor yes it might be some issues around cortisol but is it issues around payability around endotoxins so for me addressing that yeah there could be some adaptogens or some cortisol support that could help you know supplement wise things like testerone or or spermidine or ton even like some of these things can help your
(45:49) Laura or magnolia bark that can be a really good one as well significant reduction in in cortisol increases the haa so there's certainly compounds we could use to support what else we're we're doing but I'd be looking then at what can we do to support pability things like I mentioned in Caren before stuff like colostrum can be very good there some probotics like saic's bladi can be very good and once we get someone to a state where we've repaired some of that damage and we continue to support that so if they're doing you know an
(46:18) event or they're doing long periods of training okay before you go out you're going to take I've got a stack like I would use my athletes who are doing this kind of work we're like hey every day like you're going to take coloss you're going to take zarine you're going to take PA before your session like we're going to do whatever we can to limit that permability so it doesn't continue to have this effect that would be that's probably where I'd start with him the other thing I'd be interested in looking at is what is his DHEA levels and like I
(46:42) said before DHEA C is all usually going to follow each other if the ha is super low like that's that's never going to bode well for testosterone like I've had clients where the ha was through the floor we've used things like pregal loone so pregal loone is very interesting from a supplement standpoint because it doesn't have a negative feedback loop so obviously if someone were to go on trt for example that's going to shut off Natural production testosterone but if you take pregnenolone it's it's imagine taking
(47:08) cholesterol like if you eat dietry cholesterol it's not going to shut anything down it's not going to stop yourbody making testostrone assist a building block pregnanolone assist one step further down it's what cholesterol is going to convert into so if you take pregnanolone as a supplement one thing that's going to convert into is dhaa so I've had clients where they've had Rock Bottom d ha we've used pregnenolone and I've seen their testosterone triple like go from from seven to I think went to about 24 just
(47:37) from using pregnanolone so that would be another one where and that's not banned like that's not a banned substance so if someone is in that state where they're you know really putting the body through it that could be something from a supplement standpoint worth looking into so last question about exercise um I've read that libido scores are related to the duration and intensity of training is it possible to train hard like continuously let's say be triathlete or endurance Runner ultramarathon Runner and have highly
(48:08) beat her and how do they do it um certainly I would say it is and I come back to some of the stuff I just mentioned there around like protol for example so and I don't know cuz you've probably got a bit of a split audience like you've probably got some people who like down the more biohacking sort of side of things and they're like yeah supplementation I'll do it like peptides yeah great and then there's probably people listening to this who are like you know more you know Primal and maybe don't want to take supplements and
(48:36) whatnot so I guess there there's two different answers for two different people so if you're in the first boat and you're like yeah like if it's healthy for me I'll do it yeah totally there's stuff like good quality adapter gens I'm not big on ashanda people talk about ashanda I'm also not I don't hate it right people are very divided of your own Asal G I think for some people it's fine um but I think there's better options out there so if you were doing that stuff and you know hey I'm like really putting my body through like
(49:04) these high demands and I want to make sure I support myself and I want to have a high drive and high sex drive and whatever else yeah stuff like spermidine testerone uh you know I mentioned even the pregnanolone like that often does wonders for for libido um in addition to that like hey if you want to like feel like a teenager like there's peptides like pt1 141 and melanotan like there's are they legal in Australia um they're research chemicals so they're legal to buy and legal to administer um but they're sold as as
(49:37) research only um but yeah everything else I've mentioned up until this point is legal yeah um if you're not wanting to do that stuff then I'd come back to well what are we doing first and foremost to support cortisol elsewhere what are we doing to support Sleep Quality what are we doing to support like perceived stress psychological stresses like that's going to be huge and then once we've got all that dial in I'm trying to think I mean like you know from a food perspective there's even stuff we could add in like obviously supporting some of
(50:12) the nutrients we talked about zinc for example I mean some high zinc foods for example can be um you know affidia is stuff around like date palm Poland I don't know if you've seen the research around that uh it's pretty interesting for both males and females increasing libido um you can get that as a as a powder I don't know I don't know if you can get it like as a food source maybe it's a fairly new supplement um but it's it's not I guess like aphrodesiac isn't exactly my expertise but there's certainly there's certainly Foods people
(50:47) could be looking at including as in addition to to mitigating things like high cortisol yeah so all our questions from the nutrition and training questions always lead to to Lifestyle and cortisol and I know that poor lifestyle poor diet wrong exercise and not exercising causes inflammation which is also related to cortisol yeah if you have chronically High cortisol that causes inflammation as well well cortisol is helping mitigate is it's part of our inflammatory response so if we have something that's putting us in an
(51:19) inflammatory state so if we have again like say gut imbalance for example or bacterial overgrowth anything like that that then cortisol is is like it's not necessarily always bad like it's helping deal with some of that yeah so but let's say to find out if I have chronically or if someone has got chronically High cortisol would measuring their inflammation be a way to measure it you would you would likely see correlations I don't think it would be a strong enough correlation to be able to definitively make a um I guess draw a
(51:53) conclusion that because we're seeing so if we're talking inflammation we can thatu relatively why I asked about the CRP test to interrupt it like before I was asking about the CRP test in relating to um the cortisol would that be worth doing because that's really simple test that you can get done at GP it is a simple test the downside of CRP is it's a very cute marker so sometimes we won't always pick everything up like it's got a very short half life so you would expect if someone was exposed to like had a chronic inflammatory State
(52:26) you would expect see CP will be elevated but it won't always be so I wouldn't want to rely on C which is C reactive protein I wouldn't want to rely on that by itself I'd want to look at at the very least very least in that instance we'd want to look at CIP in combination with ESR ESR is kind of like the think about is the other side of that coin so ASR is more chronic inflammation CRP is is more acute uh so those two together they'll give us an okay indication but I really then want to compare with the white blood cells which is easy enough
(52:57) cuz that's like the most standard basic blood test you can do like the first page of a standard blood test will have white blood cells on there it will have white cell count that's not super helpful look at nutrifil lymphocytes in this context not that important although actually I mean cortisol will affect lymphocytes and if we did have say very low cortisol we can see lymphocytes increase a bit but that's a slightly harder pattern to pick up on so probably don't worry too much about that but we want to look at neutrophils we want to
(53:25) look at monocytes isops and and bassils like those guys they're never going to be that elevated um but if we do see basophils elevated at all like 0.1 that can often be an indication you know like it will tell us about histamine or tell us about chronic inflammation so I'd want to take the white blood cells I want to take CRP take ASR look at it all together the other one that's interesting honestly is cholesterol like cholesterol and cortisol the tricky thing is sometimes like some with some blood Mark is high
(53:57) or low can mean very similar things and cholesterol is one of those where if you see cholesterol high or you see it low sometimes you can be pointing towards chronic inflammation cortisol issues and it's not it's not necessarily going to tell you or low equals this High equals this it's like if this is out like there's issues there with inflammation usually so that would be another one worth looking into as well yeah great and then you mentioned the gut health before how does gut health affect testosterone level is it via the
(54:27) inflammatory Pathways as well so if you have inflamed gut that drives your testosterone down because of the inflammation so the big ones so so that would be one so systemic inflammation for sure and that's going to be exacerbated by like a bacterial overgrowth endotoxins LPS what I was mentioning before we know LPS itself is going to have a negative impact around um around conversion Androgen conversion we know I mention like yeast and acetal heide so we know that's going to have an effect around l so the actual toxins produced by these
(55:00) these organisms that's going to affect it the actual inflammation is going to affect it the cortisol from that as well is going to affect it they're going to be the big ones there going to be some knock on effects so for example if it's like more bacterial based that's going to cause the issues around certain nutrients um that can start to cause the issues around fat soluble vitamins as well so that can then have a knock on effect that would be secondary though like the primary ways the guts going to affect is largely going to be around
(55:26) some of the the the inflammation the endotoxins the microbiome also plays a pretty important role in things like um transportation and even clearance of hormones and estrogen uh even things like xenoestrogens is actually important for metabolizing and removing those uh stuff like prolactin so other hormones so there's there's actually an enzyme that bacteria will produce in a large intestine called beta gluc days and what that does is it essentially it basically like uncouples or almost like recycles some of the
(55:58) hormones we're trying to eliminate and so that can start to cause issues around things like estrogen and prolactin and that can have a knock on affected testosterone so if someone had an overgrowth of certain bacteria there like to give you an example I've had clients where I've had I've had clients where they've been told that infertile right and then we didn't do like from a testosterone perspective we didn't do anything what we did is we we worked in the beta glucon days and then they've gone back and retested the
(56:24) testosterone was actually elevated be like above the conventional range was like 31 and I think the cut off was like 29 or 30 um and that's when being told that we're infert that had things like G like so um dress development as well so if we if there are issues there this is where it becomes quite interesting like if someone's got a bacterial overgrowth or a yeast overgrowth or some of these issues going on and they've got low testosterone because of it and they're like oh but I'm taking tonad Ali and I'm using fogia grus and I'm you know
(56:56) whatever taking this this this this testosterone supplements deck I'm eating high enough fat like why is this still low it's like well okay great you're doing some of the things but you kind of putting the cart before the horse and you really need to look at what's happening in your gut as well yeah that makes sense and uh regarding the lifestyle as well you emphasized that sleep affects testosterone levels and we all know that we need sufficient sleep to have healthy hormones but what about circadian rhythms like do you agree with
(57:26) um the theory that you have to sing your circadium clock with the sun sunrise and sunset and follow circadian eating patterns don't eat big dinners and have having more food in during the day when it's daylight what is your stance on it so I don't actually have a like very strong stance on it um it's it's potentially not something I've I've looked into and enough into the research behind it but from what I've seen especially doing like DNA testing with people like people do vary quite a lot um even around like if we look at things
(58:01) like melatonin and we look at things like insulin sensitivity we know that those two are heavily connected and we know that some people metabolize melatonin way quicker than others we know some people will will start to to synthesize melatonin early in the night so for some people they might actually do quite well with carbs you know fairly late in the day and then for other people where you know their their metabolism of melatonin is quite different and maybe there's still melatonin hanging out the system in the
(58:27) morning and you know some people will do better with Cubs you know different times of the day so it's I for me I'd say there's quite a lot of individual variance there um you know even if we look like intermittent fasting like you can find data on on people doing it been fasting and those who ate early in the day compared to those who ate late in the day lost more body fat had a better effect around cortisol so like but is that going to be everyone and probably not so I personally take a bit more of like a how do you feel like is is this
(58:58) conducive to to you and your lifestyle and are you feeling like if someone's like oh but I feel I feel crap when this like I have no energy and my focus is awful and I need to eat in the morning or whatever I'm not going to be like well bad luck the research said this so I guess yeah I guess I don't personally have a super strong opinion there I want people to get outside I want people to get sunlight you know if someone's not going to bed till 4:00 in the morning they not going to be doing that you know shift workers you just need to look at
(59:25) shift workers blood to see what impact some of that is having on them like shift workers are some of the hardest population I work with um and honestly like I I I would tell my shift worker clients that it's what you're doing is going to negatively impact your health like we we can't actually undo that we can't fully mitigate that all we can do is try to support it but if your primary goal is your health like you probably need to get a different job so at some point yeah totally Cadian Rhythm it's going to have a big impact um for me
(59:56) it's not the first sort of stone that I move but maybe for other people it it's the big Lynch pin all right is there anything people usually don't know about testosterone but they should oh I think we've covered a fair bit of it I think that if I could nail one or sort of remind people about one would be don't don't ignore your gut like if you've got digestive symptoms and not all this is the difficulty right it's not all gut dysfunctions are going to manifest the digestive symptoms right so someone might be like oh but I don't
(1:00:27) have IBS so I'm fine and that's trickier and unless you're like looking at blood work and stuff maybe you won't pick that up but if you're someone who like knows you've got gut issues like yeah I've got IBS I've got whatever I'm bloated all the time I can't eat all these foods like don't ignore that like if you're ignoring that and you're trying to do the other stuff and you're you know icing your testicles and you're not having a saaa because it's going to be bad for you but suddenly you know you're struggling with IBS for the last decade
(1:00:54) don't ignore that you know that's going to be having an impact yeah interesting So based on everything we said what would be your best three to five tips on boosting testosterone naturally okay so number one I'd say it's so boring everyone says it better focus on sleep because if you're not focusing on sleep none of the other stuff matters that much okay and that doesn't mean you well you know I want to make a couple points about this so sometimes people come to me and be like I get eight hours sleep i' be like okay
(1:01:26) so like what time do you go to bed when you wake up and they'll be like oh you know I go to bed at 10:00 I wake up at 6:00 if you're going into your bedroom at 10: and your alarm's going for six you're not getting 8 hours of sleep there's no way about it right so ultimately I'd say as a rule of thumb generally speaking the amount of time you're in bed like take an hour off that that's probably how much sleep you're getting so if you're not spending like 9 hours in your bedroom I doubt you're getting 8 hours more of sleep so that
(1:01:55) would be one and like the amount of clients I've had are like no no I sleep fine I sleep fine I'm like just humor me let's try to spend n hours in bed let's see how you feel and then like oh my God my cron of fatigue is gone it's like yeah you didn't have Chron of fatigue you would just underslept like constantly so that would be definitely one um the second one I don't want people to feel too overwhelmed by this but limit plastic intake it's not that overwhelming um you know the big ticket things are going to be like Chuck out
(1:02:24) any plastic containers you have Chuck out any plastic bottles you have get glass it's not that hard get a standless steel bottle bottle exactly there you go work's done for you um and takeaway like you know often people be like yeah don't cook in plastic yeah you don't but you get takeaway twice a week and that's in plastic containers and you're getting like you know hot liquids in plastic containers single use like that's going to be awful right um You we even know like opening a plastic bag like if you you're eating cereal and you open a
(1:02:52) plastic bag like that fills the the thing with microplastic so it's it's everywhere I know you can't eliminate it but make smart decisions that's going to be an important step um the next one I'd say is think about what foods you're eating um and I don't again I don't want people to get like hyperfocused here I'd say if you are struggling with testosterone if you are struggling with estrogenic estrogenic issues and you're consuming soy milk every day maybe you ever think about that the big ticket ones are going to be Sor and flax I
(1:03:27) don't think people need to worry about much more from an estrogenic standpoint foodwise Beyond those two like those two have exponentially more like plant-based eens and anything else uh and if that if you're like oh but I Love My Tofu I don't know what's wrong with you but get fermented so and like I'm being a little bit tongue and cheeky I was Veo for over a decade so I ate tofu plenty um but get fermented get tempered that is has much lower um plant-based estrogens so be conscious of what you're eating be
(1:03:55) conscious of what cooking in sleep well and then like I know this is this covers your entire life I know right but like the next one is going to be what are you putting in your body and that doesn't need to be that complicated either like if you're using you know lyx body wash and it's got a million things in there that you don't know how to pronounce and got like micro beads that are literally made out of plastic and you're putting that on your body probably not going to be that good right everyone uses the
(1:04:19) deuka app these days and you can scan the barcode and it will spit out all the chemicals that are in and tell you if you should use it or you shouldn't cool what's that called it's spelled y UK and you can scan your like a skin care product household food products and it will tell you if it's like full of chemicals or not if the chemicals are harmful yeah that's super cool there used to be one called Think Dirty I don't know if they're still they still exist but they used to do that too um but yeah like there's information out
(1:04:50) there you know don't stick your head in the sand it doesn't need to be overwhelming you like these are these are relatively basic things like don't eat in plastic don't put plastic on your body like it's not that hard um and you know once you sort of I guess make a couple a couple of Habitual changes it gets a lot easier um and then the last thing I would just say is like just make sure you're getting actually those nutrients in that we were talking about you know like if you're again I don't want to rag on vegetarians like I said I
(1:05:16) was VE for over a decade but like if you are ve you're not getting vitamin A you're probably not getting I mean vitamin D most people aren't going to be getting enough of anyway even if you're eating meat obviously most of that we get from the Sun um you know you're not going to be getting zinc so and most people aren't going to be getting magnesium so I'm not saying you need a supplement with every single nutrient in the world but maybe take a MAG maybe check your zinc levels make sure you're eating your saturated fats if you're not
(1:05:42) like have a civa oil it's got some fats got some vitamin A got a little bit of vitamin D just a couple of nutritional Basics that was excellent thank you I've got one last question what is your favorite book favorite book so totally unrelated to anything we've talked about the first book that came to mind is a book called into the wild have you are you familiar with into the wild no what is this so it's Bas there's a movie called into the wild as well and then there's a book um it's it's a little bit sad okay so if
(1:06:14) someone's listening to this and they don't like sad things maybe this is in the book for you U but it Chronicles the the life of a guy named Christopher MCAS um and basically he's had it with Society um and sort of people who are chasing the wrong things in life and goes off in his pursuit to to I guess find himself and find what's what matters in life and and goes and becomes like a a nomad and goes into Alaska and it does end quite sad um but it was a very very profound book for me so is a true story or is it a fiction it is it
(1:06:49) is a true story yeah so the book actually has like his journal in there it's very very interesting people want that's based on what we've talked about Dr Anthony J has a very interesting book called estrogeneration and it talks a lot about some of the stuff we've talked about today so Anthony J is definitely someone I would recommend in this space epic thank you so much it was great I I knew you were the right person to have this chat with chat with um yeah that was really really good and I think everyone is going to love it because it
(1:07:20) was so much good information thank you so much and I think I'll need to have another chat video on female hormones next sounds good can't wait for it okay thank you have a good day bye thank you for listening I hope you enjoyed this episode if you want to hear more from Chief please like and follow us on Apple podcast Spotify and YouTube comment below to let us know what topics interest you and you can find us on we.
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