Essentials: How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

**Andrew Huberman** (0:00)
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health and performance.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. Before we begin today, just want to acknowledge that if you're watching this on YouTube, yes, I have a bandage on the left side of my face. I was trying to cook something for Costello and I, and I got burned. Burned myself. It was a cooking accident. I'm fine. No need to dwell on it. We can move on. But I just wanted to let you know, everybody's going to be okay. He got a great meal. I got a burn and a great meal. Today, we're going to be talking about hormone optimization, and we're mainly going to be focusing on estrogen and testosterone and their derivatives. Now, estrogen and testosterone and their derivatives are what we call sex steroids. But I just want to emphasize that estrogen and testosterone are present in everybody. It's their ratios that determine their effects. So today, we're going to talk about how specific types of exercise, particular patterns of cold exposure, as well as particular patterns, believe it or not, of breathing can impact sex steroid hormones, both estrogen and testosterone. So one of the first things to understand if you want to optimize your hormones is where they come from. There are a lot of different glands in the body that produce hormones. But when we're talking about the sex steroid hormones, estrogen and testosterone, the major sources are ovaries for estrogen and the testes for testosterone, although the adrenals can also make testosterone. Now there are also some enzymes. Enzymes are things that can change chemical composition. And the enzymes that we're going to talk about today are the aromatases mainly. The aromatases convert testosterone into estrogen. So in a male, for instance, that has very high testosterone, some of that is going to be converted into estrogen by aromatase. The important thing to know is that prepubescent females make very little estrogen. And when we talk about estrogen, we mainly talk about estradiol, which is the most active form of estrogen in both males and females. So prepubescent females, very low levels of estrogen. During puberty, levels of estrogen, AKA estradiol, basically skyrocket. And then across the lifespan, estrogen is going to vary depending on the stage of the menstrual cycle. But as one heads into menopause, which typically takes place nowadays, somewhere between age 45 and 60, levels of estrogen are going to drop. And then post-menopause, levels of estrogen are very low. As well, testosterone will fluctuate across the lifespan. Testosterone is going to be relatively low prepuberty in males. During puberty, it's going to skyrocket. And then the current numbers are that it drops off at about a rate of 1% per year. So let's talk about other sources of these hormones. And then it will make clear what avenues you might want to take in order to optimize these hormones. The other glands and tissues in the body that make these hormones, testosterone and estrogen, as I mentioned briefly, are the adrenals. So the adrenals ride out top the kidneys. And the release of these steroid hormones from the adrenals, in particular testosterone and some of its related derivatives, are mainly activated by competition. Pretty interesting. There's a lot of evidence in animals and humans that competitive scenarios, at least short-lived competitive scenarios, can liberate testosterone from the adrenals. I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, 8 Sleep. 8 Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating and sleep tracking capacity. Now I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. 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