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Saying it outloud!
Saying it outloud!
EP 99: Exploring Hormones: The Microscopic Powerhouses That Control Our Bodies
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Get ready to unravel the mysteries of microscopic powerhouses controlling your body - hormones. Embark on a journey from understanding what hormones are, how they originate, and their magnificent orchestration that powers our bodies. We will also shine a light on how to spot a hormone imbalance in your body, a discussion that could potentially change how you perceive your everyday life.
The essence of our discourse will revolve around three types of hormones, peptide hormones, steroid hormones, and amino acid-derived hormones. We will elaborate on their pivotal roles in controlling metabolism, growth, development, reproduction, stress responses, and much more. The hormone insulin, our body's sugar regulator, also finds a special mention. We'll highlight how our lifestyle choices can disrupt its function, serving as a wake-up call for many.
In the concluding segment, let's talk about oxytocin and cortisol. You might know them as hormones associated with childbirth and stress response. But did you know they also influence your cravings, sleep, recovery, and training? We will also discuss four well-known hormones: estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and melatonin. Their societal implications and how they shape our lives are up for discussion too. So brace yourself for an enlightening conversation about hormones and their influential role in controlling and shaping our everyday lives.
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Understanding Hormones and Their Functions
Speaker 1What's going on, everyone and welcome to saying it out loud. A podcast created to help people who want to learn more about fitness and life. Our podcast will help you build a foundation and turn fitness into a lifestyle and help you conquer your life. I will be your host, leo, and my co-host.
Speaker 2Stephanie, and we're the owners of a HALA athletics coaching business built on our belief that clients aren't just a dollar sign and they're human. Now on to the episode.
Speaker 1What's going on everyone and welcome back to saying it out loud. Come see us live another Monday. San Antonio, texas, best state.
Speaker 2Wow, you're already sweating.
Speaker 1I told you, it's hot bro, it's got done with a crazy leg day. We're officially power rangers. We both have gotten whoops for each other for our early anniversary gift. And it is amazing because it tracks all your body, when I all your body feedback, but a bunch of body feedback markers. It tracks stress, heart rate variability, resting heart rate, sleep like sleep, rem sleep, deep sleep all four stages of sleep stress.
Speaker 1I just said it on your regular strain your heart rate, basic metabolic temp, and it tracks your workouts. It tells you your intensity, how many pounds you lifted. If you're pushing yourself hard enough, your heart rate is on. But it tracks so much but it doesn't track steps. So, other than that, that's definitely highly recommended just to have a picture perfect of how hard you're actually pushing yourself. And a lot of you guys would be surprised that you're not pushing yourself hard enough because to get to that 15, 15, 16 strain, oh my God, I thought my freaking butthole was gonna blow out, so hard I was pushing myself and it's still like not enough intensity, I guess.
Speaker 1Well, it is.
Speaker 2But it's like 30s 3% percent, it's still.
Speaker 1it's still enough, though. Anyways, it's a definitely freedom fire and it just looks cool. So, yeah, that's what we got for our anniversary, and measures on a Monday oh, that's really trash.
Speaker 1I don't even bother, I don't bother anyways, anyways. So yeah, working out, training's been going good. I got a big milestone coming up tomorrow. I got 380 on the bench press tomorrow, so yeah, I'm going for the big time. Pr so close to 405. I can literally just taste it. She day I made cinnamon roll cheesecake with the actual. I made the cinnamon rolls and I put a cinnamon roll inside the cheesecake square and it was pretty freaking fire. Then I made strawberry white chocolate cookies. They were good, and then she made my favorite.
Speaker 2Bread bowl I can choose bread bowl, sausage, bacon.
Speaker 1I can cheese. I'm gonna say about that. And then Megan hasn't seen in cities, so we watched one in two good movies I've only seen it once but rewatching them Still good movies. And we got to watch 3, 4 and then the red door.
Speaker 2Yeah, that too. We're trying to catch her up on good horror movies.
Speaker 1Yeah, other than Nino Her reditary, which is not gonna happen, because that's the worst scary movie.
Speaker 2I wonder what she would say about that she might not watch it, so she can see it.
Speaker 1I know we're probably watching it, so she can see all this. Anyhoo, other than that, everything's been going good, so you already know what I'm gonna say. Today's another important episode, but for real this time. I said that last time too, but for real, for real. So question of the day have you ever taken something to balance your hormones? Probably, yes, a lot of you, because you know marketing why not? Right Top of the day Hormones.
Speaker 2Hormones Okay.
Speaker 1So a lot of people are familiar with the sex hormones and that's pretty much it. They have no idea the other type of hormones in their body, but not to say the sex hormones aren't important, but that's just one cause, an integrand scheme of things. So we're gonna be giving you a rundown of some other things and we're gonna be giving you a rundown of some other important sex hormones and how they all work in tandem to Other hormones, not sex hormones.
Speaker 1Other hormones yeah, other hormones, how they all work in tandem to power your body.
Speaker 2In tandem Like that Big words. That's very educated.
Speaker 1So, yeah, we're gonna start off by going over a brief description of what hormones are For those who don't know, and then we're gonna dive right into the other types of hormones.
Speaker 2Yeah, so the goal for the podcast One go over what hormones are in the care system, types of hormones and then specifically certain hormones. There's a lot of hormones in the body, a lot more than you would think, so we're just gonna go over common ones and then at the end I'm just gonna go over all the symptoms of like a hormone imbalance from what we talked about, not any other hormones. So do you want to start with what hormones are specifically?
Speaker 1Yeah, hormones are basically chemical messengers produced by specialized cells or glands in the inter-consistence. Most people know Okay, I'd say this I most people know what the inter-consistence is, what the inter-consistence is like the hormone home.
Speaker 2Okay, and some network of glands that produces the cream almost as a blustering.
Speaker 1Nobody wants to start to the answer.
Speaker 2So there's primary glands in the endocrine system, such as pituitary, thyroid, adrenal pancreas, ovaries, intestines and males, and each of these have a specific hormones production and also like a how like function in the body. Hormones in general. Though they don't act locally, they travel through the blustering to wherever they need to be utilized, which is an important Distinguished.
Speaker 1Distinguished, I must say Distinguishment.
Speaker 2Is that the word I don't know, that's the word I must say.
Speaker 1It's important to distinguish between the speed of blood and the speed of nerves. So nerves are like Blood is like I think it's wrong, and they move a lot slower. Wow okay.
Speaker 2So there's different types of hormones. So it's like the categories and of their chemical structure is how they're like separator. So there's peptides, which are composed of chains of amino acids. These are like insulin, growth hormones, oxytocin, which we're gonna go over what each one is. The peptide hormones they bind to receptors on the surface of a target cell to initiate actions.
Speaker 2Steroid hormones so these are the ones that we know, talk about a lot. They're derived from cholesterol, which, if you don't know, that's how sex hormones are produced. These include the cortisol, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone which is what people think when we say hormones and then amino acid derived hormones. These are derived from a single amino acid. These are included at the thyroid hormones, which is T3, t4, and epinephrine. That's also a hormone, if you didn't know.
Speaker 2So hormone regulation how it works in the body. There's two different biofeedbacks that they undergo. It can be either negative feedback or positive feedback. So negative feedback, it's pretty much the levels of hormones in the bloodstream reach a certain threshold, which then inhibits the production. So it catches up to whether it needs to be balanced wise, so it gets to the point and it stops the production until it gets. That's a healthy hormone person. We're not talking about unhealthy people, which is the majority of people. And then there's positive feedback, which positive feedback will amplify the production and release certain hormones. So it's opposite of each other. These are the functions. If you want to talk about the functions of hormones.
Speaker 1Yeah, so you get the metabolism, metabolism regulation. So a lot of people know when you eat something you get that blood sugar spike and then the hormone insulin is released to bring that back down to normal. So that's one of the functions of one of the hormones for metabolism. And then there's also growth and development, which is growth hormone and thyroid hormone. The thyroid hormone also plays a role in metabolism regulation, but for growth and development it's extremely important for, like child or when you're developing as a child.
Speaker 2Or those you know puberty.
Speaker 1Yeah, growth and puberty. You need that growth hormone release. And then you got reproduction and sexual function. So everybody knows testosterone and estrogen. But then you got progesterone as well, which is more female. It's a lot more progesterone than men do, but we still have trace amounts that we need as well for puberty, growth and puberty, and we need estrogen while we're going through puberty for everything to develop and how it's supposed to develop. Then you got the stress response cortisol. So when you're going through a stressful event, your cortisol spikes and then, like I said, a bunch of previous hormone talks and then some of the posts I've talked about in all my stories. Cortisol and testosterone have an inverse relationship. So if cortisol is super high, testosterone is going to be super low. If testosterone is super low for men and women, then you're going to have mood swings, a bunch of mood problems. You're going to have bone problems muscle wasting libido problems.
Speaker 1So just to keep that in mind when you're going through all these problems, before you can hop on some antidepressant, think about managing your stress first. Then you got your immune system regulation, so your cytokines, which are the things that cause damage to the immune system and they respond to infections like your white blood cells, and they freaking get there and they see the threat and they start shooting this laser. That's how I picture white blood cells taking out antibodies, like a little freaking magic school bus episode when they were in the freaking blood and they were shooting the freaking antibodies. Anyways, the stuff that they shoot out is toxic to us.
Speaker 1So a prolonged battle, battle of attrition inside your body is going to cause a lot of inflammation, which is going to cause damage. And then you're going to have all kinds of metabolic issues. And then you got the sleep weight cycle, which is regulated by the hormone melatonin, and we all know melatonin. You can get over the counter, but if you take a lot of melatonin it's going to disrupt the production of your own melatonin, so it's going to cause you to have an imbalance in your circadian rhythm. The only time it's really good to take melatonin is like to adjust to a different time zone and you only want to take it in short spans until you're adjusted to that time zone. And it's also important to understand that, in order to have good melatonin production, you're going to need vitamin D as well, and you're going to need an all black out environment.
Speaker 2Yeah, we talked about that.
Speaker 1Yeah, we have a whole episode on cycle.
Speaker 2So we're going to go specifically on types. First one, insulin. It's a very important and if you have weight loss resistance or just like gained weight, et cetera. So insulin is a peptide hormone that we talked about. It's produced by the beta cells in the pancreas, so the primary goal of that is to regular blood sugar levels. It pretty much happens as soon as you eat. Normally a lot of people associate it with eating carbs, but it can happen also just with fats and protein as well. It's just the amount is completely different. So that's why you want a normal like a balanced macro meals and violence macro levels during the day.
Speaker 2So when we eat carbs specifically, they're broken down to glucose which enters the breast stream. In response to this, it rises a blister levels and the pancreas releases insulin. So insulin binds to resist your cells in the cell membrane, allowing glucose to enter the cells. If it's used or not as immediate energy, then if it's not used and it's stored as black agend in the liver and the muscles. The problem with this is that when we either are under too much stress or we're overeating, or eating carbs, nine of protein, et cetera, this regulation cycle gets disrupted and so it gets to the point that your blood sugar stays super high. The blood sugar stays like within the bloodstream and it doesn't come down. So, like the insulin production, everything gets jacked up and that's where a lot of like insulin resistance and that kind of stuff starts happening.
Speaker 2So insulin has an anabolic effect. It promotes the synthesis of proteins and stores of fats. It contributes to tissue growth, repair and overall metabolic relation. So A lot of people associate insulin as bad because of insulin resistance. Insulin is very necessary. It just needs to be at a balanced state. Do you want?
Speaker 1to talk to us about that. Just to make it clear insulin resistance is when your muscles and wherever else it needs to go is resistant to that insulin. I know it might seem kind of like I'm not a child, I understand, but there's insulin resistance and there's insulin sensitive.
Speaker 2You want to be insensitive to the insulin.
Speaker 1So that means when your insulin spikes and it attaches to that glucose. If you're sensitive, it's going to be pushed into the muscle or wherever it's going. If you're resistant, it's not going to be pushed into the muscle and it's going to keep floating around the bloodstream. So if you are insulin resistant and you have a glucose monitor and you take your glucose like two hours after you eat, when it's supposed to technically come down, it's still going to be elevated and that's how you know. That's a good indicator that you may be insulin resistant. And the higher that goes, the more you encroach into pre diabetes and type two diabetes. And if you look at your A1C, that's a good indicator of what time span is in the month.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think at three months, Three months three months time frame of your insulin.
Speaker 1That's going to be a good, good indicator that your insulin resistance.
Speaker 2You want to always like, if you start at a high glucose amount during the day, fast like that's also an issue. So you always want to look at like glucose insulin and A1C in labs, which a lot of doctors believe in.
Speaker 1Yeah, all three of them will give you a very big, clear picture. But it's not just the insulin that pushes the glucose into the cell. There's other cofactors like potassium and magnesium and these other things that help assist in that process. So, yeah, you might be getting enough. You might not be insulin resistant, but you could be having a slower uptake. Because you're not getting the other cofactors and then eventually it turns into insulin resistant.
Speaker 2Yeah we can do a whole process.
Speaker 1So insulin resistance is so good too, yeah.
Speaker 2Anyways why we know a lot Growth hormone. So a lot of people when I say growth hormone, like they associate with us. They're right. So just want to talk about growth hormone in general. It's a very important hormone. It's produced in the pituitary, anterior pituitary gland. It's growth. Its role is literally growth and development. So that's why a lot of people take it as a steroid. It simulates growth of bones, cartilage and it can help, like during puberty, adolescence. It will help with high. Growth Does not happen after that. So if you're taking steroids thinking you're going to grow high, it's not going to happen.
Speaker 1Just get the knee replacement surgery, but it's going to help.
Speaker 2And tissue repair is supporting lean muscle. So it's something that we already have in our body. It's still super important. Has metabolic effects, including metabolism of fats, carbs and protein. It encourages a breakdown of fats for energy and uses reduces glucose uptake by cells. So it helps increase blood sugar levels if that's what's needed. But again, that's why it's something that's very important to monitor.
Hormonal Role in Oxytocin and Cortisol
Speaker 2I don't want to just hop on on growth hormone just because it can get. It has a lot of negative side effects as well, but it also has a role in getting you to deep sleep, so I know nothing for them. Ok, cool. So oxytocin this is a hormone that a lot of women associate with one love hormone, but bonding hormone. So like if you are, you have child, like you're doing child, child birth, or also like if you just become a mom. That's something that you're going to be releasing a lot.
Speaker 2It's produced in the hypothalamus and released by the posterior pituitary gland. Again, its role is social bonding, maternal, infant attachment, intimate relationships, etc. So during childbirth, oxytocin is triggered during uterine contractions to help facilitate labor and delivery. So that's why a lot of women associate with oxytocin. So it's childbirth. It's talked a lot, but it also seems like. It's like the release of the milk during breastfeeding produces a lot of like bonding reproduction. So a lot of a lot of women are taught like oxytocin love hormone. So you don't have anything about that. What do you want to talk about Cortisol?
Speaker 1Cortisol, everyone's favorite hormone, because we all squirted out Like there's no tomorrow.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Or I should say, secreting it out. Squirt that cortisol. Anyways, cortisol is created by the adrenals, it's a steroid hormone and it helps with stress. Now people think cortisol like cortisol bad. No, prolonged exposure to cortisol Bad. Think about cortisol. So when you go through a stressful event, the cortisol is released to help you Initially that's what it's there for and then that stressful event is supposed to end, but your mother freakers are stressed out 24, seven. So it never ends. So cortisol is constantly being pumped out. That's why cortisol is bad and, like I said, if it's constantly being pumped out, guess what? It's constantly being lowered testosterone and testosterone is being lowered.
Speaker 1Guess what? You're going to feel like absolute crap. You're not going to be able to sleep. You're going to wake up groggy because your cortisol pattern is f-ed up. Your training is not going to be trash? Yeah, your training is going to be trash. Your recovery is going to be trash. Your GI tract is going to be trash. Cortisol will literally ruin all your functions. So prolonged exposure bad being chased by a lion. You're using it right there. Good, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2It's basics on that produced by the adrenal cortex, released by the hypothalamus, and it's signaled by the pituitary gland, so it's a very impactful hormone. It also regulates blood sugar. So, like I have a lot of clients that even if they're not insulin resistance, their blood sugar is super high because they're super stressed out and again in labs, either if it's high or if it's very low. Both are an issue regardless. Like a lot of people think, high cortisol is bad. No, you want it balanced, like in that range that you're supposed to be, and then if it's literally anything below or above is an issue. So it's something that's very important to understand because and they're going to have the same symptoms too it's basically mirrored.
Speaker 1Yeah, but like one is way worse Cause once you're out on a cortisol you're pretty much a zombie.
Speaker 2Low cortisol, yes, yeah, yeah. But again, if you feel like and this is why we always talk about how like hey and phosphate and stuff like that is very bad for you and that in a sense, like it really does race cortisol to a point that a lot of people have a very hard time recovering from because already their life is super stressful, if you literally do nothing, then crossfit won't really affect you. But again, no one just does nothing. Like you have work, you have family, you have life regardless. Even social media can be stressful, so all these things compound and you're not going to build muscle.
Speaker 2You're just going to be affecting your health overall.
Speaker 1So if you're trying to build muscle, crossfit hit just nine times out of 10 people aren't doing hit correctly.
Speaker 2to begin with, yeah, but so if you're struggling to build muscle, if you're struggling to lose weight, high cortisol, low cortisol it's gonna be an issue. Over-eating also stresses out the body, so just so like, like.
Speaker 1That's what a lot of people don't understand. It's not that you are this way. It's that your hormones are causing you to be this way.
Speaker 2Yeah, which means we have to balance.
Speaker 1So once you actually get your body back into the equilibrium, you're not gonna want to binge eat anymore. Yeah, because you don't have the urge anymore, because your hormones Are now balanced out to where they're supposed to be. There's a reason why people crave salty foods. There's a reason why people crave sugary foods. Think about, think about when women are pregnant. They're hormones are a freaking, going to a place, freakin I don't even know how to explain it. All over the place, I should say so. That's why they're craving these different things. But once you bring back your balance, once you, when you push out that baby and you bring that balance back, you're freaking back to be in like, oh I guess I don't want to be in this. So it's not that you are that way, it's that your hormones are causing you to be that way.
Speaker 2Yeah, yes, yes, and if you've lived your life lightly, you're homeless, have been probably out of one. I can't promise you that. So I heard hormones. So that are hormones. A lot of doctors will just pull TSH. So a whole lot more than just TSH. There's t3, t4, free t3, t4, reverse t3, and then there's TR, ish as well.
Speaker 1Yeah, what's that one TPU.
Speaker 2TPU and. Tgab as well. All of these are very important. They all have a role, and that's why you need a full panel and they only pull it too.
Speaker 2Yeah, if you're lucky they'll do T4. Usually they just do TSH and that's it. So TSH is, it starts at a pituitary gland. So that's why they think if we do TSH, because it's signaled by the pituitary gland, then we're gonna get what thyroid health is at. But now, because we need to look conversion, we need to understand if it's not converting correctly, if it's converting into, like almost like Hashimoto's or graves, etc. So it's very important.
Speaker 2Anyways, the thyroid gland main like function is to Convert from t4 to t3. So, and that conversion doesn't have Happen necessarily in the thyroid gland, it's stimulated but also happens in the liver and the gut. So it's something that's very important. Why do you need healthy liver health, healthy gut health? But it Maintains metabolism and it takes a solar function. It's important for just overall temperature. It's it's very important for just overall mood, civilization too.
Speaker 2So the thyroid is something that A lot of people don't have. That's healthy, because other things are influencing it. But a lot of doctors just look at the thyroid and that's it. That's an issue. Anyways, t3 is an active form of thyroid. That's what we want. That's why you want to see that number, because you want to see it. If your T3 is healthy, then you should be good.
Speaker 2If it's just T4, we don't know if it's converting correctly or if it's just staying there. If it's staying there, then your thyroid is not producing hormones correctly. It's not working correctly. It also influences how much energy you get from food, heart rate and digestion as well. So they have an inverse relationship in a way and both are important. You have to look at both. You can't just look at one or the other. It's also important for overall development of the nervous system during childhood and infancy. It also promotes healthy skin, hair, etc. So a lot of women that I see that have hair shedding, hair loss, weaker hair, whatever. I look at thyroid too, because usually the biotin hormone won't be enough.
Speaker 1If your thyroid hormone is not converting, then biotin isn't getting you either. That's another important thing to bring up is about the people on thyroid medication. So to understand how that works, it replaces your normal hormone production. So if you're taking the medication and stopping your body from producing T3, or whatever you're on, T3, T4, or whatever you're on, or however you can get on.
Speaker 1So if it's stopping that production but it wasn't converting to begin with, taking the medication is not going to cause it to convert. You need to fix the reason why it's not converting into whatever form it needs to convert to, and then you don't even need the medication. What you need to do is support the thyroid with what is supposed to get, like I talked about with the insulin cofactors. There's other cofactors that go into the conversion of the thyroid, so T4, in order for it to convert into T3, it needs other minerals and vitamins to do that.
Speaker 2You also need healthy digestion.
Speaker 1Yeah, and you need that healthy digestion, because if you're not absorbing those minerals, it's not going to be able to convert into T3. So when the doctors are like, oh here, take your T3, take your T4. Okay, that's the problem. Like, why isn't it converting, doc? That's what you need to ask them and they're not going to have the answer for you. But you need to fix the gut and the liver. You can't just attack one system because, yeah, that one system is not working. It's not working because the other ones aren't working. Down below, everything just backs up the chain and then you have freaking, all kinds of problems.
Hormones and Their Impacts on Society
Speaker 2Yep. So now we're going to talk about what people think hormone-wise. What hormones are Estrogen? Plays a role on both men and women.
Speaker 2Estrogen is important for both. A lot of women, a lot of people associate estrogen bad for men, good for women. It's important for both. Estrogen plays a central role in development of female secondary sexual career characteristics and periverty, including breast development, winding up hips, change of body fat distribution, etc. That is why when you have too high of estrogen you start carrying a lot of fat around your midsection, your hips. You develop a lot of cellulite with your glutes and stuff like that because of that reason. So a lot of women don't understand that. They just think it's facting, you're eating too much. But usually there's actually a reason for that.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's the same for men too. Yeah, that's what a lot of men don't understand, whether you believe in it or not, if you want to call it conspiracy or whatever, but xenoestrogens some of the estrogens in our environment and in our food. They can cause the estrogen in your body to raise.
Speaker 1So if you have an influx of estrogen as a guy, like we just talked about, estrogen signals the body to store fat because that's what it does. So you have an influx of that and they say you know, you got love, handles back fat and your body can't purge the estrogen because your liver detoxification pathways are all jacked up. Yeah, so what happens? That estrogen keeps building.
Speaker 2Yeah, especially for men. A lot of doctors like if you come to them with low libido, you can't lose weight, fatigue, whatever they might pull testosterone, they might pull free testosterone. Usually they don't pull estrogen. So like, even if you're testosterone is quote-unquote normal, if they don't pull estrogen, you don't know if you're converting that testosterone into estrogen, which happens a lot. So sure your testosterone is quote-unquote normal, but it's actually converting into estrogen, causing you all these issues too. So you want to see that.
Speaker 1Just having the full picture is better than only having part of it. So that's why we get so frustrated with the doctors when they only pull one value. It's okay, just pull all the values so we can see the whole picture of the body. I want to know what my whole body looks like, and that's why we have to go outside and do it. That's why we do our own with third-party testing for our clients.
Speaker 2Also, I feel like we've talked about this before, but if you do have a little test, as some men and you're referred to, like HRT or just the cream pellets, whatever it is, if you don't have estrogen values, you don't know if that T-R-T pellets, cream, whatever, is converted into estrogen. So it's very important to understand that, because I've seen it happen a lot. A lot of people get on T-R-T. They don't think like anything of it and they're actually not utilizing it to actually make testosterone. It just starts converting into estrogen. So it's something that's important.
Speaker 1Like I just said, if you don't fix the root cause of the problem, adding more of whatever you're on is not going to fix the problem.
Speaker 2So estrogen also regulates the menstrual cycle. We've talked about that on the menstrual cycle podcast. It promotes growth, shedding of the uterine lining during each cycle, when I've talked about this also on our podcast about endometrosis endometrosis one of the things is that it's too much estrogen, so that's why you have a lot more like this thicker uterine lining. So again, instead of getting surgery or using all the other stuff, you need to address why you have high estrogen. It's also a crucial role for fertility maintaining bone density, protecting against bone loss, promoting healthy skin. Estrogen is very, very important and also it does all that for men too, apart from the menstrual cycle, yeah, she had this point, who knows, sure.
Speaker 2So then, after progesterone, progesterone is not so important in men, but I still like seeing it regardless. Progesterone main function is support pregnancy, prepare the body for conception. During the menstrual cycle it prepares the uterine lining for potential implantation and fertilized egg. If pregnancy occurs, progesterone continues to support the pregnancy. If not, it starts lowering. So we talked about this. In the menstrual cycle phase it's going to be higher the week before your period. It's supposed to come back down after and then testosterone Prominem smells like hormone again, but it's still super important for females as well.
Speaker 2Again, doctors won't look at testosterone as an issue for females and also their values are super low. What they consider is high for females it's just terrible. So if you're trying to build muscle, you want actual healthy values for females. But it's mainly produced in testes for men, still produced in the ovaries for females, but also an adrenal glands. It's responsible for the male reproductive organs and it also helps puberty simulate facial growth, body hair, evening of voice, etc. For men. That's why I be having such an issue nowadays with that in men, because they have lower testosterone in general. It contributes to growth of muscle mass and bondicity for both male and female, but also it plays a role in sex drive for both male and female, so it's very important on both. It's just going to be super high on men for pair of females.
Speaker 1So yeah, like we talked about earlier, testosterone was extremely important for both men and women. My men just need a lot more of it than women. So if you're a guy and you got low T, that is a very big concern because you have any aspirations to build strength or you just want to feel better in general, you're going to need to make sure you got that testosterone.
Speaker 2You've been a favorite female too. Anyway, last one, mousonin hormone, produced by a pineal gland, is located in the brain, if you didn't know, is productive as influence by the body's internal blockage regulated by light exposure and darkness. So Mousonin is crucial for the regulation of sleep, weight cycle, body circadian rhythm. So as darkness falls, mousonin is supposed to rise and it signals the body to sleep. It doesn't happen always, so a lot of people have a lower amount of Mousonin. I've talked about this before, about the dust house. That's one of the metabolites that is measured, so it's something that can be important to look at, but I usually just recommend it for shift workers or people that travel a lot to regulate your circadian rhythm.
Speaker 1Yeah, just like I talked about quarters, all all it has cofactors that go into creating melatonin. So one of those cofactors is the sun. And if you're not getting that, that's your taking. Well, even if you're taking an exogenous melatonin, then you're just going to be screwing up your production. But you need that light. It's the sun. Hit your eyes, get that melatonin to start building and then, as nighttime falls, it starts to release and that's when you get to sleep. But there's a lot more that goes into the production melatonin than just the sun.
Speaker 2Yeah, so, lastly, we're going to talk about symptoms of hormonal imbalance. That's something that I'm not going to talk about, like what each one is or whatever. We're just going to talk about symptoms, because there's a lot of symptoms. So do you want to start off this list, because I feel like I've been talking?
Speaker 1about it You're smart with here. So you got heavy PMS, painful periods, bloating, mood swings, irritability, headaches, migraines, histamine intolerance so it's like allergies. And you got irregular visual cycles tend to your breasts, abnormal weight gain, weight loss, resistance fibroids like the freak fibroids. There we go Acne heart flashes, mood swings, fatigue, depression, joint pain, muscle aches, dry skin, frequent new TI's, brain fog, memory issues like brain, I was gonna say brain fog again remembering things insomnia, vaginal dryness, low libido, bone loss, irregular menstrual cycle Is that twice?
Speaker 2No, you talked about heavy.
Speaker 1PMS. So, it doesn't hit you hard in the menstrual cycle Poor skin elasticity, easy scarring, easy sun damage to the skin, muscle loss, hyperthyroidism, sugar cravings I got it.
Speaker 2Sal cravings, osteoporosis, low bone mineral density, hair loss, excess fluid retention, history of miscarriage or miscarriage, low fertility, mid cycle spawning anxiety. Quote unquote PCOS diagnosis, oily skin, abnormal facial hair, abnormal body hair, darkening armpits, deepening of voice, increased belly fat, low libido, low sex drive. This scene is when you stand up too quick, exercise intolerance, afternoon energy crash. Always stress or anxious, lack of motivation, blood sugar swings, getting sick frequently, trouble sleeping, high blood pressure, sensitivity to caffeine, body water retention, chronic pain, poor wound healing. Second win at night after midday crash, inability to concentrate easily agitated or angered, low heart rate, goiter wishes like a round. Swollen face, puffy face, setting of eyebrows, dry hair, constipation, poor digestion, joint pain.
Speaker 1Cold intolerance, high cholesterol, hoarse voice, shakiness, trembling hands, heart poppations, increased appetite, increased heartbeat, excessive sweating, heat, heart intolerance, shortness of breath and bulging eyes. So, as you can see, there's a lot of symptoms that can come into play when you have a hormone imbalance. And when people say hormone imbalance they're usually talking about the sex hormones. But there's over 50 hormones in your body, so an imbalance can be any of those hormones, but if one of them are out of whack, I guarantee you not talking about 10, all of them are out of whack. So you can't just attack one hormone and hope to fix the problem. You need to attack the root cause, and the root cause is probably your lifestyle. Cool.
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