Hidden Hormone Disruptors with Dr. Anthony Jay

Discover the silent threats lurking in our everyday environment as Dr. Anthony Jay, author of "Estrogeneration," unveils the startling connection between common chemicals and hormonal imbalances. Grapple with the unsettling truth about a generation's fertility at risk, the rise in depression and cancer rates, and how these issues could haunt our genetic legacy. This episode is a stark revelation about the artificial estrogenics that are quietly reshaping our health landscape, challenging you to consider not just what's on your plate, but what's in the products you use daily.

Listen as we unravel the controversial impacts of hormonal disruptors beyond the lab—how they're influencing our water supply, cultural constructs of masculinity, and even children's play. Dr. Jay shares compelling evidence on the hidden hormonal havoc wrought by substances like atrazine, and the inadequacies of our current medical approaches to these complex challenges. From personal anecdotes to rigorous scientific discussion, learn why it's crucial to scrutinize everything from toy preferences to testosterone levels, and why the current standards for health might be misleading us all.

This conversation is an urgent call to rethink our approach to healthcare. From the myths surrounding cholesterol and heart disease to the implications of hormonal contraception, we're prompted to question the status quo. Dr. Jay's insights into phytoestrogens and the importance of informed genetic testing offer practical strategies for navigating a world rife with endocrine disruptors. Arm yourself with the knowledge and foresight to protect your health and that of future generations against the insidious influence of hormone disruptors.

You can learn more about Dr. Jay's work and his genetic consulting services at https://www.ajconsultingcompany.com/

This episode is sponsored by Beam Minerals, Use code JEN20 for 20% off by visiting the Jen's Favorite Things link at https://www.jenmayo.com

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 2:37

Dr Anthony Jay joins us for a fascinating conversation on why so many people's hormones have gone haywire and even why male frogs are turning into female frogs. Spoiler alert don't drink the water. Dr Jay earned his PhD in biochemistry from Boston University School of Medicine, where he researched fats, hormones and cholesterol. He spent several years at the Mayo Clinic researching stem cells, epigenetics and infrared light, and he's the best-selling author of Estrogeneration, a book that explains in great detail the hormone havoc that is being caused by estrogen-like substances in our environment and in our food and water supplies. Did you know? Every single cell in your body needs minerals and most people are mineral deficient. Every single cell in your body needs minerals and most people are mineral deficient. Industrial agriculture has created an epidemic of mineral-depleted soil, and eating even organically grown fruits and vegetables provides far less minerals and nutrient density than the same foods grown a century ago.

Speaker 1: 3:36

I take BEAM minerals every day and this is one supplement. I keep on auto-ship so I don't run out. Beam contains fulvic and humic acid complexes, which support mineralization, hydration, cellular health and, especially, detoxification. Fulvic complexes carry nutrients into your cells and toxins out of your cells. Humic complexes gather and then rid your body of toxins, bio-waste, free radicals and heavy metals. This is the supplement that helps all of your other supplements and nutrition do their jobs. Check out the Jen's Favorite Things tab at jenmayocom and use Gen20 for 20% off your purchase of beam minerals, or save even more on auto-ship. Welcome to the podcast, dr J.

Speaker 1: 4:20

Thanks for having me an auto ship. Welcome to the podcast, Dr J. Thanks for having me. Yeah, of course. So I'll just start out. I read, actually, Dr Shana Swan's book Countdown a number of years ago. I think I found that one right after it came out, and then I found your book a little bit later, which are both excellent reads for our listeners, and we're going to talk a lot about your book. Estrogeneration Love the book cover, by the way. I used to be a graphic designer, so very creative. What was so interesting when I first read her book and I don't remember a ton about it because it was a while ago but the statistic of and you can correct me if I'm getting this wrong, but I believe it was a male sperm count is down 50% in the last 40 years. Is that right?

Speaker 2: 5:11

Yeah, oh sure, yeah yeah.

Speaker 1: 5:13

Why should we be concerned about that?

Speaker 2: 5:17

Yeah, Well, and it's not just the count, it's the quality. And remember there's epigenetic changes that a lot of people aren't aware of, right when they talk about just these numbers, like depression rates are up and you know, fertility is down and on and on. Breast cancer is increased. Like breast cancer is up 250% since 1980, right.

Speaker 2: 5:40

Right, but the real underlying problem and, by the way, these are all connected to all of these things Depression is connected here. Fertility, sperm counts, testosterone declines, right. That's why I'm bringing them up. But the reason the epigenetics is so important is because that means it gets passed to future generations. In fact, it gets amplified in future generations, which not a lot of people talk about, because as soon as you say epigenetics, you lose a lot of people because that's a technical term and and it's hard to understand.

Speaker 1: 6:12

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 6:13

But, um, that's kind of the culmination of my book. That's where I end the book talking about, because you know, of course I talk about how to get rid of these plastics in your environment, these fragrance chemicals and these sunscreen chemicals and all these different things. But you have to understand the problem first. Right, you have to understand the severity of the problem. Um, and you know, the analogy that I use for epigenetics to explain it to people is musical notes.

Speaker 2: 6:42

So like, if you have a song, right, with a melody, the melody, the main line, is what people sing, like happy birthday or something like that, or Mary had a little lamb, or whatever. You could give that musical notes to somebody, the sheet music to somebody else, and they could play that same song. Yeah, that's your genetics, that's like your DNA. You pass that to somebody else, you pass that along. It doesn't really change, but the epigenetics is the marks on top of the DNA and that's like how you still have the same melody, but now you've got other instruments or you've got more notes on top of that, you've got harmony and that also gets passed on. Right, but that changes. You can change that a lot and very quickly. You can change your epigenetics within a few weeks.

Speaker 1: 7:24

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 7:26

And that's the biggest problem with these artificial estrogen chemicals that I write about. In fact, I wrote about them way before Shauna Swan and Shauna Swan. I like her book too, but she only focuses on phthalates, right. She only focuses on plastic chemicals, and not just plastics, but just the phthalates in the plastics, right?

Speaker 2: 7:42

She only focuses on plastic chemicals, and not just plastics, but just the phthalates in the plastics. And there's BPA, right, there's bisphenols, and there's BPS and there's BPF and there's BPAF and there's all these other bisphenols, and they act just as bad as phthalates. So, and then you throw in the oxybenzones and the artificial red dyes that act like estrogen, all the things right, and then you have a more complete picture of what's going on, because the problem with these chemicals number one is they act like estrogen in your body, they mess with your estrogen because they're artificial. But number two and even you may not know this because I didn't write about this in my book and it's pretty deep level but most hormones, when they're in our system, they bind to receptors on the outside of cells, and I'm sure you know that. But they stick to the outside of a cell and then that signal something inside the cell. It triggers like a response inside the cell right.

Speaker 2: 8:30

But sex hormones are actually unique in that they go through the cell membrane. They go inside the cell, which is kind of unique. But not only that, they don't just go into the cells, these sex hormones like estrogen, progesterone, dhea, pregnenolone, whatever testosterone they go inside the cell. But they actually go further. They go inside our nucleus. Right, the nucleus has its own membrane. You know, like the cells have a membrane, it's like a pillowcase around the outside of a cell. It's called cell membrane. The DNA actually also has a cell membrane called the nuclear membrane. It's basically another pillowcase, right?

Speaker 1: 9:06

Okay.

Speaker 2: 9:07

And so, if you're studying genetics, it's another layer of complexity to get that DNA away from that cell membrane because, again, it's doubly protected and almost nothing goes into the DNA, right Like almost nothing goes through that pillowcase.

Speaker 1: 9:22

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 9:23

But sex hormones do. So sex hormones go into the cell, which is unique, but they go into the DNA, which is even more unique, and they can mess with your epigenetics in a good way. Usually, it's a good thing, right.

Speaker 1: 9:34

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 9:35

And that causes multiple generations of change. So if you have decreased fertility with these animal research studies that I've personally done and a lot of people do like, my favorite scientist on this topic is Michael Skinner. He's out at Washington University. He studies like he raises like 5,000 mice at any given time, like crazy amounts of money he spends on his research and he doesn't just study the effects of BPA or atrazine or birth control or whatever. He studies the multi-generational effects and he's given TED Talks on this and stuff.

Speaker 1: 10:07

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 10:08

And that's when it gets crazy, right? Because, yes, fertility is declining. To go back to your original point, sperm counts are declining, the quality is going down. But not only that when you expose animals to these chemicals, you see the next generation getting even worse and the generation after that. He's showing four generations out. There's no reason to go past four generations because, number one, it gets expensive and number two, you know, if you just do three generations, you could argue that you're exposing the mother plus the fetus, plus the stem cells of the fetus, so there's three generations that could be exposed all in one shot. Right, research study. But if you do four generations and you see impacts, four generations out, well, that means you're exposed. You know you're going way beyond a direct exposure and you're passing things health problems on through epigenetics. It's complicated, but it's really important because it's a real problem epigenetics.

Speaker 1: 11:02

It's complicated but it's really important because it's a real problem. Is that more complicated for a mother carrying a female fetus who's already got the development of all the eggs she's going?

Speaker 2: 11:12

to have for her lifetime. Yeah, because if a mother is exposed to BPA, her eggs are also being exposed, and so that's messing up like that's a direct exposure. Are also being exposed, and so that's messing up like that's a direct exposure. Yeah, yeah, and again, those chemicals can go into the DNA and alter the epigenetic marks, right, like, think of it as the musical notes you know, on top of the melody.

Speaker 1: 11:32

Yeah, yeah, and I've I've heard epigenetics to kind of referred to as like genetics loads the gun and epigenetics pulls the trigger kind of scenario. Sure, and that's something you can change, but at the same time that also gets passed on to the future generations.

Speaker 2: 11:50

That's the definition of epigenetic. If it's, there's different types of epigenetic marks, like there's actual physical changes on your DNA, but some of them are called assimilations and some are acetylations and some are ubiquitin nations and some are methylations. There's all these different types of marks, but what makes them epigenetic marks is they get passed on. That's like the definition of epigenetic. Okay, so if it, you know there's plenty of things that change your health, um, like, if you have more insulin or less insulin, or more blood sugar, less blood sugar, whatever. But that's not an epigenetic change because it's not being passed on. The definition of epigenetics it has to be able to be passed on. So it's kind of like genetics in that sense. Right, it's not as powerful as genetics, so it doesn't get passed on forever.

Speaker 2: 12:34

Like DNA is really hard to change. Dna it's very stable, it's very hard to change it. You can have mutations and I have a DNA consulting company and I look at people's DNA, right, but epigenetics is much more transient. It's changeable, it's quicker to change, it's quicker to quote, unquote, mutate. You know what I mean. So these chemicals that are not found in nature, these artificial estrogen chemicals which our ancestors were never exposed to, right, for thousands of years. They're very dramatic in terms of the epigenetic changes and that's kind of where I took the book is to say, okay, these are the health problems and they get passed on to future generations, so it's super important. Here's what you do about it.

Speaker 1: 13:22

Yeah, yeah, exactly, for anybody who's listening and has not heard about this phenomenon before, can you kind of explain? You know, one of the more alarming things that you know was maybe a better visual example for people to picture in their head was this phenomenon that was happening with frogs. Can you explain that?

Speaker 2: 13:44

For sure. So there's a chemical called atrazine. It's the second most used herbicide in North America. Glyphosate is the number one used herbicide. That's Roundup, and both of these should be illegal more or less. But they're both used and, by the way, they both act like estrogen. They both disrupt your hormones.

Speaker 2: 14:05

I didn't write about glyphosate much in my book because it wasn't very clear when I wrote my book and I didn't quite, I wasn't sold on it at that point. Now it's more clear. Now it's. Now I'm convinced that even glyphosate messes with your hormones. But it's a tricky. I know it's a little bit of a tangent, but glyphosate, it doesn't look like estrogen. So it's hard for me to get my head around. Like, why is it? The chemical is made from glycine. Right, it's a glyphosate. It's like glycine, which is an amino acid, but it chelates metals, it binds to metals and so, uh, it makes sense. Now it's more clear very recently, because if you have multiple glyphosate molecules they stick to like a magnesium or zinc or calcium. So they they bind to metals and you can have multiple glyphosates around one metal. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1: 14:52

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:53

And then that starts to look like estrogen. So now I can see it right, it took me a lot of years to kind of figure out. Why does that act like estrogen? But atrazine for sure acts like estrogen, right? Yeah, the second most used herbicide.

Speaker 2: 15:06

And, by the way, atrazine is totally illegal in Europe. Okay, a lot of these chemicals are. You know, when you go through the list and I did this with my top 10 list of estrogens in my book I kind of compared Europe law, european laws, to American laws and it's just like illegal in Europe, super common in America. Illegal in Europe, super common in America, illegal in Europe, super common in America. It just goes on and on down that list. And even even China has stricter regulations on these estrogen chemicals than we have in America. So this isn't something that I'm just trying to be alarmist about. Other countries are picking up on this. So atrazine zero is allowed in the drinking water in Europe and in America. 3,000 nanograms per liter is allowed in the drinking water, 3000. Now here's the frogs. If you take a frog and in your little habitat or whatever, wherever you're raising your frog, and you have 200 nanograms per liter of atrazine in that water, the male frogs turn to females.

Speaker 2: 15:58

Wow not 3000. So we're legally allowed to have 3,000 in our drinking water. And, by the way, there's a lot of cities in America, especially out in the country where there's a lot of farming, there's a lot of cities that are over 3,000 in the drinking water and this is well known. But I think the government safety limits are ridiculous on this one and on a lot of these things, because they're just paying attention to toxicity, right, they're looking at chemicals and they're saying how much BPA does it take to kill a cell, right? Or how much atrazine does it take to kill a cell? And they have these toxicology assays where they look to see how much it takes to kill a cell. It takes a lot of BPA to kill a cell. It takes a lot of atrazine to kill a cell.

Speaker 2: 16:42

So they, they assume they're not toxic, right, but it screws up your hormones, you see, and so it causes a lot of major health problems, but it doesn't look bad from a toxicology perspective.

Speaker 2: 16:54

So most government officials, like most of their standards, are set up for toxicology and most scientists will say, oh, it's not really toxic, you, you're fine, you can drink glyphosate or you can drink out.

Speaker 2: 17:04

Yeah, it's not going to kill you. You know it doesn't kill you but it totally wrecks your hormones and that's my problem with it is it's it's not being recognized for the problem that it is in our culture because of the way our scientific setup, you know, scientific system is set up and then there's always the pharmaceutical companies that it's sick care system and that's really, it's not really a healthcare system in America and all these other problems that amplify the root cause of the problem that we're. We've got chemicals that are increasing breast cancer in women and early puberty and girls and, uh, testosterone crashing in men and male feminization. Scientists literally use the term male feminization when they study atrazine and and that's where that's the first study that indicated that was the frogs yeah, and I think we can look at culturally uh, trying to be sensitive I mean, you see it and I look at.

Speaker 1: 17:59

I look at the presentation of masculinity when I was a young child versus what I'm seeing now in the culture, and I've been a single woman for a few years, so this may be more in the forefront for me than it is for my married friends, but there's a definite shift that has happened in terms of just the qualities and I. I think I've heard you talk about how the lower testosterone levels are associated with apathy as well. Um, like what you know from a societal and cultural level, whether what's going on here is intentional or just an accident. What implications you know, besides just fertility and sex drive, does lowering a man's testosterone level do to how our society and culture is shaped?

Speaker 2: 19:01

Yeah, a lot, right. I mean, that's the problem with sex hormones is they act on a lot of different things in your body because they go into your DNA so they alter your. You know, they literally alter the way that your DNA is decoded and expressed into proteins. So, for example, a lot of men that have low testosterone have depression, right. A lot of men with low testosterone have weak bones or bone density kind of like osteoporosis for women, right. When women's hormones go to hell after menopause, a lot of times their bone density goes to hell. And then, you know, the doctors do they want to put you on prescription drugs and fake bisphosphonates and stuff that have like almost no impact and they never tell you about the hormones. It's like, look, yeah, just because you can't make money on these hormones, because you can't patent a natural hormone, doesn't mean they're not amazing and valuable.

Speaker 2: 19:49

Toy preferences change, you know, when they do studies on children that have exposures to these chemicals like phthalates. Boys tend to like guns and they like trucks and they like noisy, fast moving things. Um, just, naturally it's. It's well researched and sure you could find some girls that like that stuff too, right, and you always find some boys that don't? There's always a bell curve where the averages you know there's going to be the vast majority that like certain things and and whatever but toy preferences shift as they're exposed to more phthalates, even at a young age, right and again, this is published research, so it's changing the brain preferences. Apathy is the most common. Even in animal studies you find apathy where not only do they have sexual apathy, they don't. They're not interested in relationships and things or pursuing females, they're just interested in nothing. Right, right, not, they're not interested like the things or pursuing females.

Speaker 1: 20:43

They're just interested in nothing Right?

Speaker 2: 20:44

Not, they're not interested, like the rats. You know how they have those little wheels. The rats run on stuff. They're not even interested in that.

Speaker 2: 20:50

Yeah, so apathy is beyond just pursuing relationships, it's just it, it, it. It bleeds into all kinds of other aspects of life for men when they have low testosterone and their sex hormones are all disrupted. Um so yeah, that's a real problem. And of course, women have testosterone too. You know, one of the problems with menopause is not just your estrogen progesterone go down, but also your testosterone usually goes down, and it's a super important hormone for healing and recovery. And because a lot of women, you know, they know they're exercising, they're doing great, they're staying healthy, going to the gym, and then their hormones tank after menopause and they're like well, I can't go to the gym because if I do, my body is so destroyed for like two weeks that if I go to the gym like twice a week, I don't recover and then I'm just even more sore and then I go three times a week. Whatever, they can't, you know, do some of the training that they were used to doing when their hormones were good. What's the solution? You just fix the hormones, right?

Speaker 1: 21:44

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 21:45

But you see that in younger men and women, if their hormones are screwed up too, it might not be as amplified as menopause, but maybe it is.

Speaker 1: 21:56

Sometimes it is even that amplified. You know, I'll give my my own example here. I'm in my forties now, and before I went through kind of a radical lifestyle and diet change of my own. I had more hot flashes in my twenties than I've ever had in my forties.

Speaker 1: 22:13

And I think that certainly says something about what was going on there and the epigenetics, as you mentioned what you're putting into your body, one of the best quotes. I use this all the time. There was a doctor he was a dentist actually named Dr Hal Huggins, and I think, if I'm quoting him correctly, he said something like you can't towel off while you're standing in the shower, and I think even like the functional medicine approach to health at this point has become so much about adding supplements and adding things without taking a better look at taking things away that are negatively impacting us.

Speaker 2: 22:57

Right.

Speaker 1: 22:58

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 22:58

Yeah, especially. Yeah, I mean that's usually the bigger, uh, the bigger levers to pull right, like when people are gluten sensitive. You get rid of gluten, they feel amazing, or whatever. Sugar, yeah, in our culture. I think that's a good strategy, right? It's certainly something people need to be aware of and think about, especially because modern dietitians are not trained that way. They're basically trained calorie as a calorie.

Speaker 2: 23:22

It's especially worth mentioning for your audience too, because probably a lot of them are women and a lot of them have been told that calorie counting is the most important thing. Calories are how you lose it. They did a study with atrazine. It's one of my favorite studies because they had two groups of rats and the reason you want to use animals for a study like this, because if you do this with people, they cheat and they don't tell you what they're eating and they you know whatever. So you can't really trust the data as much.

Speaker 2: 23:49

But they had two groups of rats and they gave them the exact same calories, both groups. Everything was exactly the same, except one group. They put low dose atrazine in their drinking water just to mimic what Americans are exposed to, and that group got fat. That group of rats same calories is obese. The other group was lean and totally normal looking, and that's exactly what happens when you mess up your hormones.

Speaker 2: 24:17

Sure, like you know, you can count calories in certain situations and it helps you gain weight if you're a scrawny guy, or it can help you lose weight or whatever. But people get tired of counting calories after six months and they don't do it long term anyways. But that's how dietitians are being trained. They're basically being trained to say, like it's your fault if you're overweight, you're not counting your calories, you're eating too many calories. Right, eat more lettuce or whatever calories. Right, eat more lettuce or whatever. And it doesn't work. You know, a lot of people know this, and sure it works sometimes for people that have good metabolisms and they're not being exposed to tons of chemicals and their hormones are amazing. So then they think it works for everybody because it works for them. Well, you know, you have to consider the hormones and it's. It's tricky with hormones because blood tests don't tell you everything.

Speaker 1: 25:00

Right.

Speaker 2: 25:01

There's. That's why I look at genetics, right, Because some people have more receptors than other people, so their blood has the same amount of hormones, but then they make more receptors or less receptors that pick up the hormones, you see, and it's kind of like having your volume turned down on your hormones or whatever. So there's there's more complexity than just blaming it on a blood test, and most doctors don't even do that. They don't even check hormone levels on the blood test. It's like pulling teeth trying to get them to check your testosterone if you're like a man below age 50. It's ridiculous.

Speaker 1: 25:30

Yeah, yeah. I think all young people you know in your early 20s or even earlier, should get their hormones tested, just so they have a baseline to know what it is for when they get older.

Speaker 2: 25:46

I agree yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent, and that includes the thyroid too, because you know the thyroid is another one. A lot of people are low energy. Their thyroid hormones it's usually low energy is either sex hormones or thyroid hormones right, yeah or both.

Speaker 2: 26:02

So, yeah, we're usually both yeah, right, yeah, and so there's a lot, a lot going on with people's issues there, and most of the problems for thyroid come from inflammation or lack of iodine. And inflammation, of course, is diverse. Some people, you know, inflammation comes because they're smoking cigarettes, right, and some people inflammation is gluten or dairy or nightshades or whatever. Everybody's a little different on that, but that's the goal, you know find that, find what's triggering the inflammation, and uh, and then you, the you fix the problem instead of just throwing drugs at it and covering something up right.

Speaker 1: 26:40

Can you explain too, like on the male side of things, how does introducing these estrogenic, artificial estrogen compounds to the body, how, what's the mechanism that that screws up the testosterone levels?

Speaker 2: 26:57

Yeah, it does it with three different ways. Um, number one it lowered. It physically lowers if, if you have more estrogen chemicals in your body, it lowers your total testosterone. Um, so that's the first thing. Secondly, it lowers your free testosterone. That's a different blood test that they do. There's a difference between total, how much and this is men and women. There's a difference between how much total testosterone is in your system and how much is available to your body. That's called your free testosterone and, uh, estrogen, estrogenic chemicals, but we're both of those, which is bad, so it's like doubly bad. But then, not only that, they lower, they block binding to the receptor. So, like hormones, don't, they can't do anything in your body until they stick to a receptor. Yeah, it's kind of like.

Speaker 2: 27:45

The analogy I use is hockey, because I played hockey back in the day, and if you have a puck on the ice, that doesn't mean you're scoring any goals. It just means there, you have a puck on the ice, but if you put it in the net, that's a goal that actually means something to your team and the goal is like the receptor. That's a goal that actually means something to your team and the goal is like the receptor, meaning like you've got to get it into the goal to do it, to have an actual impact on the game. Now let's say you have 20 pucks on the ice, your testosterone is super high or your hormones are really high. If you don't have any goal, like if you've got a piece of plywood in front of the goal, like you block the goal, you block the receptor. It doesn't matter how many pucks, how many players, how many shots on net. If you're blocking the goal you're in trouble, right. And these estrogen chemicals block the goal. They actually block binding to the receptor. And that's the most insidious problem, because your testosterone might even look good. It usually doesn't, usually it goes down, but it might look okay.

Speaker 2: 28:37

And, by the way, they've lowered the normal range, and I'm sure you know this. Like back in the 80s the average male was 500 on their testosterone and that they've lowered the normal range, and I'm sure you know this. Like back in the 80s, the average male was 500 on their testosterone and that used to be the normal range. They used to say the normal range is 500 to 1500. Right, and now it's 300 to 1000. They've lowered the high end and they've lowered the large, and sometimes it's even 250 to a thousand or 250 to 900.

Speaker 2: 29:02

These blood test companies are just accommodating sick people. They've done this with blood sugar too. They've increased because everybody's eating way too much sugar and carbs. They've increased the range for blood sugar to accommodate people that are over 90, which is absurd, and they've lowered the vitamin d range down to 30, because the average american is 30. And that's absurd because hunter-gathering tribes we have studies and blood tests from hunter-gathering tribal communities and they're all between 70 and 100 on their vitamin D. I've looked at the blood work right. So we're screwing with all our blood tests, right?

Speaker 1: 29:38

We've normalized dysfunction, so we're just adjusting the tests to accommodate how dysfunctional I know we are in our environment and but it's.

Speaker 2: 29:49

It's crazy to people like us, jen, but there's so many people that don't know this. It's astonishing to me, but, like because I do it every day. I look at people's blood work every day literally, and and people need to hear about this because their doctor's probably telling them their cholesterol is too high but everything else looks good and that's probably their cholesterol is totally fine and everything else is terrible. Right Usually the actual story behind that. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 30:16

I had um, I had Sally Fallon Morrell on the show to specifically talk about cholesterol and sex hormones a while back, which that was a great discussion, but can you talk a little bit about your thoughts on cholesterol and its impact on sex hormones?

Speaker 2: 30:36

For sure. And let me tell you a Sally story really quick. First Let me tell you a.

Speaker 2: 30:39

Sally story really quick first, yeah, she gave a talk at a school that a friend of mine taught at, like a college that a friend of mine was teaching at, and it was you know however many, like a thousand people or whatever, were in this audience. And this woman had a son who had anaphylactic shock if he had milk, right, like a real severe reaction. And sally said, well, just drink raw milk. And then she moved on and everybody's like whoa wait, what like? And everybody thought she was completely insane. Yeah, of course. Right, like the whole place got quiet and they all like, yeah, they all in their heads they were all like, oh, she's full of shit. And now here's the crazy thing they actually brought this woman who asked that question, actually brought a doctor to their house with an EpiPen. They were ready to, you know, test this out, which is crazy. I wouldn't have done this personally, right?

Speaker 1: 31:31

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 31:32

Because if I had a kid who was literally going into shock if they drank milk, I'd say okay, let's just let's just not do nothing.

Speaker 2: 31:38

But they actually brought raw milk in and this is a true story and they gave the kid raw milk. He was totally fine. Oh my gosh, and all those people in the audience, they didn't know that, right, like they never followed up on that story and realized like, hey, she was right, even though it's a little risky to to say something like that but, um, it goes to show you how much they've, you know, altered the proteins and milk and the casein, and all this to make them more inflammatory for people that have immune system issues or dairy issues. Yeah, so that's my Sally story that a lot of people don't realize. There's probably a lot of other stories like that too, but that's just the one that's most interesting now, oh yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 32:19

And I totally forgot the cluster. It's okay, no.

Speaker 1: 32:22

And we could go on a total tangent on raw milk too. I actually drive across state lines to go to a co-op that sells raw milk. They're able to sell it in an actual store. However, they have to label it. As for pets, yeah, for animals.

Speaker 2: 32:40

Yeah, so stupid.

Speaker 1: 32:41

As if you're going gonna go to an expensive health food store to buy milk for your cat crazy yeah no, I know exactly well.

Speaker 2: 32:51

Um, I get it from a farmer every Monday. Today is the day I go to the farm and pick it up. It's on the way to my kids. Uh, archery and stuff. My kids are all involved in archery yeah uh, but but yeah, we, we use that and uh, and some people still have inflammation from that. So it's not for everybody, but right, but my goodness, it's certainly better. Uh, it's better. You know, it's less tampered with, it's just less, yeah, and there's.

Speaker 1: 33:19

There's more a2 cows in that industry too, and she for sure is the expert on that one. But the Holstein cows versus the Jersey cows too.

Speaker 2: 33:29

There's such a difference in just going from one breed or whatever, to the other money and profit and the government subsidizes these people to pursue it that way and think about it that way. So, of course, like if you're growing broccoli and your crop fails, you're in real trouble because there's no subsidies and no backup and no whatever. But if you're growing soybeans, it's like you make more money. If your crop fails, if you get hail damage, you get more money. It's kind of like getting the hail damage on your roof. If you have insurance, they come in and give you a new roof and it's like, hey, I'm glad I got some hail damage.

Speaker 1: 34:03

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 34:04

But man, if you have broccoli or some actual health, healthy plants that aren't sprayed with whatever nonsense, you're not getting any support from our government. That's a real problem. Yeah, but um, the cholesterol. I did a five-year PhD at Boston University Medical School on the topic of cholesterol and sex hormones, so definitely in my wheelhouse to talk about cholesterol and there's a lot of corruption. In fact, there's more corruption on the topic of cholesterol than any other topic, in my opinion in the medical system in America, unfortunately.

Speaker 2: 34:36

And cholesterol is good for you, it's a building block for all your sex hormones. That's the definition of a sex hormone, right? It's?

Speaker 2: 34:42

a hormone that's made from cholesterol, right, and some people haven't even heard of most of this, like, there's a lot of sex hormones, like pregnenolone or whatever people haven't even heard of. It's not just estrogen, it's not just testosterone, right, there's a lot of sex. So, if you're, if you're vegan and your cholesterol is super low and vegans usually do have super low cholesterol doctors are correct about that their sex hormones are usually super low and imbalanced because their building blocks are not present. They don't have them. But the saddest thing is there's a lot of really good research and I've done YouTube videos on this too, by the way, if people want to just go and watch the YouTube videos where I go through some of the studies.

Speaker 2: 35:22

But, um, there's good research showing the optimal range for your cholesterol is one, 80 to two 80, your total cholesterol one, 80 to two 80 is the optimal range for the average person. If you're in that range, you're doing great, not just okay, it's not too high. Doctors will tell you it's too high when you get above 200, right, but in reality, that's actually starting to get into the more optimal range, right? And um, that's a study based on 12 million people, 12.8 million people, right, these aren't tiny studies that they do. In fact that's another one that the, the medical system has altered the blood test on uh in this and you can ask I've done this, I've looked.

Speaker 2: 36:03

I've asked chat gpt what was the normal range for cholesterol in 1970? And it'll be like 300 and below. What about 1980? 300? My dad is a medical doctor, he's retired but he said back in the 80s and even in the early 90s, the normal range for cholesterol, your total cholesterol, it used to be 300 and below yeah they dropped it all the way to 200 and below overnight as soon as they invented statin has nothing to do with research studies and some data, it's just complete corruption.

Speaker 2: 36:33

and there's so many people that buy into it. Um, and then, of course, what happens is the Google algorithms and the YouTube algorithms promote those people because they fit the standard medical system model right. They fit into the standard medical advice and the professional medical system Because remember, here's the problem If you have the same curriculum for every medical doctor in the whole country and you teach them that cholesterol is bad if it's above 200, then they all say the same thing and it sounds like a conspiracy. If you go up against that and you say, look, it used to be 300 and all the studies show 300 is totally fine. In fact, have you heard of Dave Feldman?

Speaker 1: 37:11

No.

Speaker 2: 37:12

Yeah, feldman, uh, I had him on my YouTube channel way back like a long time ago, but he's become a little bit more popular recently because he, he, uh, he's published a study. He's publishing a study, um, with 548 people. So he's he collected 500 people and their cholesterol is over 500. Right, yup, and these are people that eat keto. So they're eating lots of fats, lots of red meat, hardly any plants, honestly. So they're eating lots of fats, lots of red meat, hardly any plants, honestly. And they're exercising. And, like, he specifically looked for people that are, quote-unquote, healthy in their lifestyle, right, like actual exercising, getting out in the sun, going for walks, and over 500. And he hasn't published the whole study yet and that's probably why you haven't heard of it yet, because once he published and I know the data, because I know dave, but, um, he has published a case report. So you have to look up, like dave feldman case report.

Speaker 2: 38:06

Familial hyper it's called hyper cholesterolemia is what they call it. Cholesterol is crazy high, um, in fact, let me just I'll pull it up, I'll pull up the study and on my computer and I'll just read you the title yeah, people are going to want to look this up. Probably. It's called hypercholesterolemia. Lean mass hyper responder phenotype presents in the context of a low saturated fat, carbohydrate restricted diet. Long, long title. But here's what they found right and again.

Speaker 2: 38:38

At least people can pause and rewind and have to go through that three or four times to catch that whole title. But the point is, um, he hasn't published all 500 people but he's. He's taken a case report in that study and just published one of the guys because they have the data completed and, uh, his, he, they've, they've followed these people for two years. John, two years and this guy his total cholesterol has been over 500 for two years. Jen, two years. And this guy his total cholesterol has been over 500 for two years. At the beginning of the study he had zero plaque in his arteries. They do a CT angiogram and they have the. Literally the guy who is the best in the country at doing CT angiograms is doing them for this study and that's basically a way of measuring plaque in the arteries, right?

Speaker 2: 39:21

So they can measure and see if they have any plaque in their arteries. And this guy had zero at the start, even though his cholesterol is 500, he's still got zero. Two years later, still no detectable plaque. That's the conclusion of that study. Two years is cholesterol is over 500, zero plaque in his arteries. Why is that? It's because he doesn't have inflammation, right? Inflammation is always the root cause of plaque in people's arteries. Always, every single time. Yeah, um. So if you have, if you smoke cigarettes and you damage your arteries, yeah, you're going to have plaque in your arteries from the inflammation, right? And, by the way, cholesterol is what makes up the plaque, right? So the doctors are correct when they tell you that, like, plaques are made up of cholesterol, so that they're just incorrect when they blame it on cholesterol and they think cholesterol is bad because of that. It's like blaming firefighters for fires, right?

Speaker 2: 40:07

it's like yeah firefighters are always there when there's a fire. That doesn't mean they're causing fires right cholesterol is always there.

Speaker 2: 40:15

When there's plaque in people's arteries doesn't mean it's causing plaque, and people it's like usually smoking cigarettes or eating junk food with all these nasty chemicals that we're talking about or it's you know whatever. Everybody's different, like some people have food sensitivities that are different than other people, but they're causing inflammation that damages arteries, that causes plaque in the arteries. And then what does the doctor do? He blames cholesterol. That's just how he's trained. And now what they're doing, unfortunately, is there. Can you still hear me? Sorry?

Speaker 1: 40:42

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 40:42

Yeah, I bumped something. But what they're doing now because the cholesterol thing has become so obviously nonsensical like the doctors, even even if they pay half attention, they know that like yeah, cholesterol is not a very good blood test they changed it to LDL, like 10 years ago, where it's like, oh, but let's check your LDL versus your HDL LDL. Like 10 years ago where it's like, oh, but let's check your LDL versus your HDL. But now even that's become very obvious. Like, yeah, that doesn't. The research studies don't support that idea. At all.

Speaker 2: 41:07

You can have crazy high LDL and you're totally fine. Happens all the time. And you can have super low LDL, by the way, and if you smoke, cigarettes and things, you have all kinds of plaque in your arteries, right? Or if you have diabetes and super low cholesterol, you still have plaque in your arteries. It's all about inflammation, because blood sugar can cause inflammation. If you have enough sugar in your blood, that triggers inflammation. So it's always inflammation. It's just like what's the inflammation?

Speaker 2: 41:28

And now what they're doing Jen, and you've probably heard this now the new craze and it's very new, but the new craze is ApoB, no-transcript, get you on statins. And people are saying, yeah, no, I'm not going to do that. And the doctor's like, well, let's do a little bit more blood testing and see, right, and what they basically are doing is they're just playing a shell game where they're checking something that sounds more technical APOB, a-p-o-b and it sounds more complicated, more academic and more illustrious. And then people are like, oh, I guess maybe it is high, maybe he has followed up on it. You know what I mean. It just gives them another level of excuses to prescribe more statins when they don't really need to.

Speaker 1: 42:23

Yeah, and I don't think people realize when you're under more stress your body needs more cholesterol. I personally had this experience in a blood test. I went through a very stressful year when my father died and kind of freaked out when I got my cholesterol checked later in the year because it was much higher than it had ever been before and you know I was eating more healthy fats and whatnot and I was kind of a little concerned. But a year later checked it again, still eating the same high healthy fat diet and it was back down into, you know, the under 200 range that it was normally in. But when your body's under more stress it needs more cholesterol.

Speaker 2: 43:09

And when you get sick your cholesterol goes up because LDL actually helps fight viruses and bacteria infections and your triglycerides go up too. A lot of people don't realize, like if you train really really hard in the gym and then you go the next day and you check your cholesterol, it'll be really high because your trigs go up from training. So I recommend don't check your blood test after a hard training session the day after. Always kind of take it easy the day before you do a blood test, just so you don't get a weird reading.

Speaker 1: 43:47

Because what's the point of doing a blood test if you're getting weird readings that you can't trust? You know Exactly exactly. And with cholesterol too. I've kind of heard the analogy of it being kind of like spackle for your arteries.

Speaker 2: 43:52

So if the arteries are damaged, yeah, then your body's going.

Speaker 1: 43:56

It's actually doing you a favor until it becomes problematic. But you know, if you, if you don't get rid of the inflammation, your body is going to require that to fill up the holes that are in your arteries.

Speaker 2: 44:09

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 44:09

And you can reverse it.

Speaker 2: 44:10

By the way, people like professional doctors are trained to tell people you cannot reverse plaque, because there are people that go out and they do the CT angiogram and they get their plaques measured and they have plaque in their their arteries and it freaks them out. Now, again, I always recommend do a DNA consult if you have a situation like that, because it might be lactans. It might be something weird that you haven't thought of, but, like some people, it's ferritin. Did you know there's a gene called superoxide dismutase, sod2? It gives you a 10 fold higher risk of heart disease if your ferritin is high. Oh, interesting. And some people have hemochromatosis genes, so their ferritin is really high and then they have that gene and the doctors just all they're focusing on is cholesterol. They totally ignore the ferritin, and that's the real problem.

Speaker 1: 44:50

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 44:51

Like you said, it's cutting up their arteries and then their cholesterol is spackling it in there and doctors aren't even. There's just years I mean, they'll have three heart attacks before they finally figure out it's the ferritin, Right, and it's like, well, let's prevent all of that, Right. Look at your DNA code to see what kind of weird stuff you might have, because I've seen people reverse plaques in their arteries. That's the unfortunate thing is statins do not reverse plaques. Like if you take these medications for cholesterol lowering drugs. They don't reverse plaque, that's for sure. Like I agree with doctors on that. But you can actually reverse them. I've seen people do it when they change their diet. It's always a dietary change that's required, but it's a little complicated, but you can reverse plaque. If people have plaque, there is hope. It's not hopeless. It's not like you're just going to be stuck with that for the rest of your life, even though you get told that Doctors will tell that to people, right, right, I mean, is this the problem with epidemiology?

Speaker 1: 45:47

And I think we're kind of on the cusp of some very like giant leaps in medicine. Once we get past the politics that have especially come to the forefront in the last four years, I think we're at like a point where what we can do with AI parsing data that clinicians are contributing to rather than, you know, the gold standard, has kind of been these double-blind placebo clinical trial type studies. But we now have the ability to collect data and use it in a more meaningful way, directly from clinical experience, rather than trying to replicate all this stuff in a lab. What effect do you think? You know the way epidemiology has been used up till this point? Certainly. How is that? How is that throwing everybody into one bucket and expecting everybody to play by the same set of rules when they're, you know, feasibly in different sports even?

Speaker 2: 46:51

Yeah, everybody's genes are different. I mean, sometimes I tell people to go vegan if they have legitimate hypercholesterolemia because that does lower cholesterol, you know, but those are super rare genes. And then some people I tell them to go carnivore because of other weird genes. That's complicated, but but yeah, um, epidemiology is total nonsense. It's done nothing but hurt the industry in the diet, in the diet space, because you know, they just muddy up the waters one week it's eggs are good, the next week eggs are bad the next week. It's just so absurd.

Speaker 2: 47:25

Um, and they have this healthy user bias situation where, if people are paying attention to their health and they go vegan because they think it's healthy, they get healthier generally because now they're exercising and now they're doing all the and now they're getting rid of the doritos and the mountain dew they were doing, and then they blame it on red meat and stuff. Like just total nonsense. Yeah, which is super, super frustrating. But what's really interesting with AI because I've been messing with chat GTP a lot lately just to see what it says about different things- yeah.

Speaker 2: 47:55

You can go on chat GPT 4.0 and ask it, do you have access to PubMed? And it'll say no, like it does not have access to the medical journals because they're behind paywalls and they've intentionally programmed it so it can't even get into those medical articles.

Speaker 2: 48:11

Why? Because if you have something like chat GPT that digs through all that stuff, it's going to start saying, like the vegan thing is bullshit and like a lot of this stuff is manipulated, and so they actually keep it out of there, right now at least, and I hope they don't. I hope they change this in the near future. But what ChatGPT is dependent on right now is the Internet and the American Diabetes Association, the CDC and all these bullshit organizations. The Diabetes Association is telling people to eat waffles and you know, and just put less whipped cream on it or something like like. It's like hey, people have diabetes. Why are you recommending waffles, right? I mean, that's just a big blast of carbs. Um, not to mention, just eating breakfast period for a lot of people is an absurd idea. If they have diabetes, right, they should be intermittent fasting, and. But the point is that's how they've manipulated the narrative so far with these AIs is they?

Speaker 2: 49:10

they only hook them up to the internet and the internet has to just rely on interpretations of studies, not the actual studies, which I think is sketchy, because I look at the actual stuff, Like one of the things I do with my YouTube videos is I just go through actual studies. I try and stay away from people's interpretations of the studies and like, well, they just let me just go directly to the studies and pick those apart and uh and put those out wild.

Speaker 1: 49:45

My mother. Actually we're kind of on the cholesterol tangent here. My mother had a stroke about six weeks ago and it's pure insanity when you're in the hospital and you see the food that they're feeding to people. And then I actually I got in an argument with the doctor, um, when he wanted to put her on statins and I asked him. I asked if I could see what the, the NNT or the number needed to treat statins were, and the, the look on his face, um, was priceless. He obviously doesn't get asked that very often but, um, the number, you number you need to treat people, total to see a positive impact for one person is like something like one in 80. You have to give the medication to 80 people before you see it benefit one person.

Speaker 2: 50:36

But then 60 of them have side effects.

Speaker 1: 50:38

Right, it's right. They don't include that, but just the the whole.

Speaker 2: 50:43

They're serving margarine in the hospital I know, I know an apple sauce every apple sauce, apple juice, the sugar, sugar, sugar, yeah, sugar, plenty of sugar.

Speaker 1: 50:52

And so, after the fact, um, blue cook, blue cross, blue shield, uh, as a service to you, uh, when you've had a stroke, they will send you meals, healthy meals to your home that are in plastic that you put in the microwave to heat up oh my god, of course, yeah, of course we'll have seed oil, sugar, margarine again. I mean it's. The whole thing is just ridiculous.

Speaker 2: 51:19

Mayo Clinic where I used to work, they the whole gym. They have like a three-story gym called the Dalk D-A-H-L-C and it was donated to them by the guy that invented those weight loss shakes or whatever like Slim Fast, and it's just high fructose corn syrup and a bunch of vitamins, that's all. It's just corn. So you're just chugging corn syrup, right?

Speaker 1: 51:43

yeah, and he made like a ridiculous amount of money on that yeah, uh, similar experience when my father was passing away.

Speaker 2: 51:50

He was on a feeding tube and we we asked the nutritionist to see the ingredients of the bag food that they yeah, I shouldn't laugh, I mean, it's not even funny, but you know, when I quit mayo clinic, you, I quit Mayo Clinic because they were forcing people to get the vaccine Right and and I did a YouTube video on that and I complained about here's why I quit Mayo Clinic and I gave a bunch of reasons but the biggest one was they're forcing people to get the vaccine. It's totally unethical to do that for people. But but I also included in that video like hey, they've got soda fountains at every, every story of the mayo clinic, every building, every level of the buildings. You can go in there and get your free refills and stuff.

Speaker 2: 52:33

And this is a medical institution that's supposedly cutting edge and supposedly trying to, you know, optimize people's health's. Not it's just a sick care system. But they're always touting this idea that it's like the number one clinic in the world with all these ratings that are from whatever organizations. But it's got soda. Everybody agrees soda is basically as bad as you as cigarettes, right?

Speaker 1: 52:57

And they're promoting it right.

Speaker 2: 52:58

It's just unbelievable what's going on with the dieticians in our country and the way they're trained. I mean, there's plenty of them that break free of that training and realize oh my gosh, this is a real problem and they go in a better direction. But there's the conventional system and the way they're training them is making people worse miseducating them.

Speaker 1: 53:24

Mis-educating them? Uh, I I've seen it even in sports medicine um practices where you go in and half of the staff are obese. Um, I had one experience where, uh, we were working with an orthopedic surgeon I won't mention the name of the hospital, but, um, you know, we went downstairs at the cafeteria at one point and he's sitting there eating pizza and soda and he's a very prominent surgeon oh yeah oh, trust me I worked in the orthopedic surgery department.

Speaker 2: 53:50

Oh my gosh, yeah, it's unfortunately at younger ages your body can handle a lot more shenanigans. So people think it's okay because they're 20, they, they're 30, whatever, but it's, it's not. And that's the wisdom of old age. Usually, if you get somebody who's 60 years old, uh, or 70, like Mark Sisson he's 70 years old, he goes surfing a couple times a week down in Miami. Um, people like that you can trust them a lot more, because it's like look, they're not blaming old age, like there's plenty of doctors that are 50 years old that are hobbling around and their knees hurt and they're saying, oh, it's old age and they're blaming it. It's not old age, it's bad habits. You just didn't right, you didn't express them. It wasn't as problematic at younger. You got away with it at younger ages.

Speaker 1: 54:34

Right, you know, Right, yeah, Um, can you kind of just give us a rundown, Um the book is mostly about um the biggest offenders, uh, in our environment and our personal care products and and foods and so forth, of these estrogenic compounds um that are really messing with our hormones and you know, in turn, our expression of chronic disease and quality of life. Can you give us kind of a quick rundown? I highly recommend the book to go into deeper, deeper, you know, take a deeper dive into this for anybody who's listening but just kind of give us an overall view of which substances should we, you know, keep in the forefront of our mind when we're reading labels and choosing products and so forth.

Speaker 2: 55:26

Yeah, for sure. I mean in the book. I have a top 10 list, but I would suggest people focus on their drinking water. Don't drink liquids out of plastics. Don't heat liquids in plastics. Liquids and plastics are a bad combination.

Speaker 1: 55:40

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 55:40

And fragrances are the second most common source that people are putting on their skin and putting in their bodies. That are just we're just absorbing these chemicals, um, and then of course, the diet and the food, like the soy and all these soy products, and the atrazine, like the pesticides and herbicides they're spraying on your food. Those are all problematic. So those are probably the top three. If I was going to boil it down to three things that most people are doing every day that need to be adjusted to be healthy plastics, fragrances and foods. You know, pay attention to pesticides and soy pesticides and soy.

Speaker 1: 56:26

Yeah, yeah, um and I. The EWG has a skin deep database. I referenced that a lot, um, for, just you know, lay people to go in and see which products are safer than others and they give it kind of a rating system, um, so that's a really excellent resource too. Um, you talk about birth control, or where I was going to say birth control pills, but there's various different delivery methods for these at this point in time. Hormonal contraception how is that impacting women's health as well as how that ends up in the environment, and what one place I don't see any studies really being done on this is, I feel like the women who go on these in their twenties and thirties and the impact it's having on their hormones at menopause, I think, is really showing up, um, in ways that aren't being well assessed.

Speaker 2: 57:19

True, yeah, and fertility, like future fertility, is like I. I talked to so many people doing genetic consults where they they struggle with fertility later in their life because they took birth control for a lot of years earlier in their life. It's made specifically to stay in your body longer, right, it's fake estrogen, like the birth. The most common birth control estrogen is called ethanol estradiol. It's not estradiol, it's ethanol. It's a synthetic version of estrogen and it's designed by chemists to stay in the body longer, so your body doesn't break it down.

Speaker 2: 57:55

And, by the way, that ends up in the drinking water because people urinate this stuff out and it doesn't get filtered out of the municipal water supply. So it's worth mentioning because it's such a stable compound, it doesn't end up back in the drinking water, especially if you live in a big city where there's a lot of people, so everybody's on a little bit of birth control if they're drinking just sink water without filtering it. So, once again, filter your drinking water. But, yeah, I mean, doctors are trained to tell people that it prevents ovarian, it decreases ovarian cancer because it declines. It decreases ovarian cancer like 0.5%. It's not nothing, but it's tiny, right.

Speaker 1: 58:33

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 58:34

But what's crazy is it increases breast cancer like 2%, so it's much more of a risk than a reward. But the way that doctors are trained to present it is like, oh look, it's much more of a risk than a reward. But the way that doctors are trained to present it is like, oh look, it's just beneficial, as if there's no side effect. I mean, they won't tell people like, hey, this often causes future fertility problems, it causes depression a lot of people, it causes weight gain than a lot of people. They won't tell them any of that stuff. And and then women mess up their hormones and they don't realize like, hey, this is a part of that story.

Speaker 2: 59:01

It's not the only thing. Sometimes, sometimes it is, sometimes it's just that simple and it's unfortunate, right, because you know, if people want to make an informed decision, they need the information, right, Right, and they're just not being presented that stuff. So I'm always leery of chemicals that are not found in our environment. You know, like our ancestors were never exposed to them for thousands of years. I think that's a good general principle I even mentioned that in my books. Like, if there's a chemical your ancestors were never exposed to for thousands of years, start with skepticism, that's where you should start with.

Speaker 2: 59:35

It shouldn't be like, let's assume it's okay and then we'll find out later with a bunch of studies that it's bad. Let's start with like it's probably terrible, let's do crazy amounts of studies and then maybe we'll we'll approve it. Right.

Speaker 1: 59:47

That's where we should be with these things right, and science, I mean, is supposed to be the study of nature, right. But it seems like science has evolved in early mainstream. Science that's been combined with capitalism has evolved into, uh, trying to dominate nature rather than to learn how to work with it exactly manipulate nature.

Speaker 2: 1:00:11

Yeah, yeah, I mean it's you know and I I do have a similar to ewg on my website. I I have some lists of soaps that I recommend, or bond or detergents, things like that. It's not super exhaustive. I like EWG too. Mine is just more about like what I use and what I personally find is pretty inexpensive, also really good quality. That's what.

Speaker 1: 1:00:36

I try and do. Okay, just to help people on that stuff. All right, and I'll maybe try to link directly to that for the show notes so people can find that but um yeah, uh, I don't think most people I. I think some women are educated enough to know that there's several natural um estrogens in the body and that shifts at menopause too, um, but there's more than one estrogen receptor. And how does that play out in?

Speaker 2: 1:01:03

things. Good question, yeah, um. So estrogen receptor alpha. There's two of them alpha and beta. Estrogen receptor alpha is generally the bad one. It's the troublemaker. It's good, I mean, it's supposed to be there. It's only supposed to be activated when you're in the womb, you know, like basically in utero, as an, as a fetus. You need estrogen receptor alpha to help with sexual development and but after that, later in your life, you're not really supposed to be activating alpha receptor. That causes breast cancer for women. It causes prostate cancer for men, things like that. It's not something you want to be triggering beta. On the other hand, the other estrogen receptor is called estrogen receptor beta. That's the good one. That one's protective against breast cancer and protective against prostate cancer. That's good. That's why estrogen is good for you if it's natural. But if it too high and things like that, it can start activating alpha. Or if you got like these fake estrogens, like the phthalates and the bpas and the atrazines, and then whatever oxybenzones and the sunscreen, they activate the alpha receptor. They're the ones that are causing the problems. So that's.

Speaker 2: 1:02:07

It's important to understand the difference, because a lot of times there's discussion in the topic of soy about alpha versus beta. A lot of vegans will tell you like soy is good for you because it activates the good estrogen receptor, the beta, and it does, but it activates the alpha also. It activates both. So it's a little risky. Some people do okay with soy, some people don't, but my opinion we got enough estrogen as it is. Let's not do more. You know, everybody agrees that soy acts like estrogen. That's the irony is. Every scientist will tell you like yeah, of course it acts like estrogen. That's the irony is every scientist will tell you like yeah, of course it acts like estrogen. But then they try and tell you it's good estrogen. Some of them some of them say it's bad, some of them say it's good and it's kind of hit or miss. But that's why it's important to understand the difference between alpha and beta, because that's the difference between basically saying it's good estrogen or bad estrogen yeah, um your thoughts on fermented soy versus like the processed products.

Speaker 2: 1:02:58

Yeah, fermenting is totally fine is that potentially why?

Speaker 1: 1:03:01

because I know japanese women, um, interesting fact, uh, japanese women didn't even have a word for hot flash until recently and I think they were just trying to fit in with the Western culture and they came up with one. But is that potentially part of, I mean, is that potentially helping them at menopause or even before menopause, because they're eating fermented soy products?

Speaker 2: 1:03:28

Yeah, when you have fermentation it literally breaks down all that estrogen, compound estrogen. In fact, it also gives you a byproduct called equal, eq, uol, equal which you can take as a supplement. But yeah, that's a positive thing. Equal is usually good. It's activates on the. It activates the beta receptor, the good receptor. So, yeah, and fermenting is great. It's one of the things our ancestors did and the other aspect is I do consulting for people in asia, genetic consulting, and they do have very unique genes compared to caucasians and most americans yeah um, asians do have very unique abilities when it comes to estrogen and soy and stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 1:04:08

So even if it's not fermented, they do better than most americans do okay but fermenting is the way to go yeah, yeah, interesting, um, and can you talk a little bit about phytoestrogens? Um, I know there's a few others, like flax and maybe even lavender, that have an impact yeah, um, yeah they.

Speaker 2: 1:04:32

They've done like in canada. They did a study with over 100 food items and uh, and I do have a hard stop here coming up in a few minutes, just so you know, but but that's my fault, I go way too.

Speaker 2: 1:04:43

No, that's fine, that's fine but, um, in this study with over 100 food items, um, they were just looking at plant estrogen, ph, phytoestrogen, how much they have, and like all the plants are under 1000 units, except for soy and flax. Soy and flax were over 100,000 units of estrogen. Okay, so they're crazy high, but then they're separate. They weren't measuring lavender and cannabis in that study and they've done separate studies where they show lavender and cannabis smoke, not edibles, but for some reason reason the smoke acts like estrogen in our body and messes with your hormones to some degree. And lavender is still kind of debated. People, yeah, people, that research it will usually say, oh yeah, it acts like estrogen, like I talked to those people.

Speaker 2: 1:05:25

but the studies are kind of hit or miss on that one okay um, I just err on the side of caution and avoid it even though though it's anti-inflammatory, it has some benefits.

Speaker 1: 1:05:36

Yeah. Is that potentially more problematic for men than women, or is it equally an issue across the board?

Speaker 2: 1:05:44

I don't know. Yeah, I mean probably more problematic for men because they're more sensitive to estrogen. If you load up a man with a bunch of estrogen, we're very sensitive to that, whereas women can get away with a little bit more right.

Speaker 2: 1:05:56

Cause it's a drop in the bucket, considering but cause women. Remember, women have a natural estrogen level of about 20 to 200, changes so dramatically depending on the time of the month, whereas men are always about 20, you know it doesn't really change. So when you throw it, when you throw a man from 20 to 200, it's like a massive problem. But when you, when you, when you change a woman's estrogen from 20 to 200, that's just a normal month. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 1:06:18

Yeah, yeah, we're still cyclical anyway. Um, can you expand a little bit, because I know we talked about the frogs earlier? But, um, and you mentioned that liquids and plastics are especially problematic. That liquids and plastics are especially problematic, is that why we see so many of these issues show up first in marine life?

Speaker 2: 1:06:43

before we start seeing it in mammals and humans. Yeah, frogs absorb these chemicals through your skin, just like humans do, but because they live in water, they're just soaking this stuff up a lot more yeah, so yeah, that's why they consider them like canaries in the coal mines.

Speaker 2: 1:06:58

Yeah, um, and and fish, the same problem right, they're breathing these things into their gills and all this um, so usually, yeah, you see the problems in those animals and those species first. That's why I like, for example, we're when the coral reefs are becoming extinct because of these sunscreen chemicals. They make the sunscreen chemicals illegal, like in Hawaii and Australia and all of these different. A lot of countries have made oxybenzone totally illegal and when I published my book, that was the number one sunscreen chemical. When you go to Walmart, that's all you see and all the labels you know you can't find a sunscreen without it. Now you can find good sunscreen that just has zinc and no, no nonsense chemicals. But it used to be, you couldn't even find them.

Speaker 1: 1:07:40

Yeah, yeah, interesting. Do you have any other additional thoughts? I know I want to make sure our listeners know that you do genetic consulting and I've done 23andMe and it is very interesting to see what your genetic profile is showing up and how that correlates. Are there any specific things to estrogen that people can look for in their genetic coding?

Speaker 2: 1:08:08

Oh yeah, sometimes people have like 15 bad estrogen genes. A lot of people have zero bad estrogen genes and they can range in terms of what that looks like breast cancer risk or prostate cancer risk or whatever. And then how do you mitigate? Those depends on the gene and what the gene is doing, but usually it's artificial estrogen avoidance. Right, you avoid these fake estrogens. Some people need to be super strict and some people don't. But yeah, in terms of estrogen, the main gene I look at, well, there's a whole bunch of them.

Speaker 2: 1:08:37

I look at all of them right, but the most common one that I see is called FGFR2. It's a. It's a. It's a gene involved in breaking down the alpha receptor, and people have issues with that, so then their alpha receptor is higher. It's a little complicated, but, um, that's one that people could look at. The problem with 23andMe is the reports are garbage, right, they don't give you very useful reports.

Speaker 1: 1:08:59

You have to get the raw data and take it somewhere else. You have to use the raw data. Yeah, and they were hacked recently.

Speaker 2: 1:09:04

I don't know if you knew about the 23andMe hack yet, so they're not releasing their raw data right now, so I don't recommend 23andMe, honestly. I would go with Ancestrycom or MyHeritage. Myheritage is running a sale for $30 for like the last month.

Speaker 1: 1:09:19

Oh, wow.

Speaker 2: 1:09:20

Yeah, and they give you just the same raw data as Ancestry and other companies. It's great, it's very useful. It's like 900,000 snips, you know, and if people are trying to analyze that on their own, it's pretty hard. I have my own software. I've written my own software for this, so it's not something that's available to you know, it's not something I just took off of somebody else's website.

Speaker 1: 1:09:42

But right, right, yeah, that's, that's how do I do it, okay, amazing. Um, well, this has been great. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and um definitely recommend anybody who found this conversation enjoyable to run out and get a copy of Estrogeneration. It's very in-depth in terms of learning which of these chemical substances and so forth in our environment and our daily practices that are problematic and I'm right there with you on, you know, especially with people who are struggling with weight the whole calories in calories out phenomenon should have died in the 80s with leg warmers, but this definitely, you know. Something to look at is your hormone profile and what are the things negatively impacting it, not just how we add to it. I'll ask you one last question about your thoughts on bioidentical hormone replacement versus, like, the synthetic stuff, and are there different nuances for men versus women with that?

Speaker 2: 1:10:48

Oh yeah, I'm a huge fan. If women need to replace their hormones after menopause, I'm a huge fan. It works great. You have to use the bioidentical. You don't want to use some synthetic birth control versions, of course, but yeah, there's a time and place, for sure. This whole estrogen causes breast cancer thing is nonsense.

Speaker 1: 1:11:05

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:11:05

Just so women know. That's complete nonsense. And same with testosterone causing prostate cancer complete nonsense yeah yeah, okay, it's basically they've manipulated, they've it's complicated it's just more corruption is what it comes down to.

Speaker 2: 1:11:22

It's just it's. It's the reason that they say estrogen causes breast cancer is because they want you on more prescription drugs. That that's as simple as it gets. There's a harvard scientist and a medical doctor that published a book on this called estrogen matters, and I've done my own research on this too, to make sure you know, like to figure out his. Does estrogen cause breast cancer? Does testosterone cause prostate cancer? The answer is no. You want to be a nice and up. You don't want to be overdosing, I'm right. You don't want to be like super, super high levels that are super physiological, above what your body naturally would do.

Speaker 1: 1:11:55

Right.

Speaker 2: 1:11:56

But nobody is suggesting you do that. Just bring them up to where they were when you were 25. You'll feel amazing. It's good for your bone density, it's great for your energy. You heal faster, men and women. Yeah, yeah, that's, it's important.

Speaker 1: 1:12:08

Yeah, absolutely, and we're talking about the natural ones, not the synthetic things that we're trying to avoid.

Speaker 2: 1:12:15

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 1:12:16

Yeah, yeah, awesome.

Speaker 2: 1:12:31

Well, where can people find you online or in the land of internet world if they people start there, and I have a YouTube channel, if you just search my name, and Instagram and all these things too. But ajconsultingcompanycom Not very memorable, but it's there.

Speaker 1: 1:12:44

Okay, okay, awesome, and I'll include those in the show notes so people can find it. But thank you so much for joining us. This was a great conversation and I learned a lot too.

Speaker 2: 1:12:54

Thanks, appreciate it.

Speaker 1: 1:12:57

This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Any statements and views expressed by myself or my guests are not medical advice. The opinions of guests are their own and the Body Literacy Podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. If you have a medical problem, please consult a qualified and competent medical professional. As always, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Body Literacy Podcast. Be sure to subscribe and sign up for updates over at genmayocom.