How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

**Andrew Huberman** (0:00)
Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
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. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. Our first sponsor is Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens is an all-in-one vitamin mineral probiotic drink. I've been taking Athletic Greens since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast. The reason I started taking Athletic Greens and the reason I still take Athletic Greens once or twice a day is that it helps me cover all of my basic nutritional needs. It makes up for any deficiencies that I might have. In addition, it has probiotics, which are vital for microbiome health. I've done a couple of episodes now on the so-called gut microbiome and the ways in which the microbiome interacts with your immune system, with your brain to regulate mood, and essentially with every biological system relevant to health throughout your brain and body. With Athletic Greens, I get the vitamins I need, the minerals I need and the probiotics to support my microbiome. If you'd like to try Athletic Greens, you can go to athleticgreens.com/huberman and claim a special offer. They'll give you five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. There are a ton of data now showing that vitamin D3 is essential for various aspects of our brain and body health. Even if we're getting a lot of sunshine, many of us are still deficient in vitamin D3. And K2 is also important because it regulates things like cardiovascular function, calcium in the body and so on. Again, go to athleticgreens.com/huberman to claim the special offer of the five free travel packs and the year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Today's episode is also brought to us by Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the exact ratios of electrolytes are an element and those are sodium, magnesium and potassium, but it has no sugar. I've talked many times before on this podcast about the key role of hydration and electrolytes for nerve cell function, neuron function, as well as the function of all the cells and all the tissues and organ systems of the body. If we have sodium, magnesium and potassium present in the proper ratios, all of those cells function properly and all our bodily systems can be optimized. If the electrolytes are not present and if hydration is low, we simply can't think as well as we would otherwise. Our mood is off, hormone systems go off, our ability to get into physical action, to engage in endurance and strength and all sorts of other things is diminished. So with Element, you can make sure that you're staying on top of your hydration and that you're getting the proper ratios of electrolytes. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to Drink Element, that's lmnt.com/huberman, and you'll get a free Element sample pack with your purchase. They're all delicious, so again, if you want to try Element, you can go to elementlmnt.com/huberman.
Today's episode is also brought to us by Thesis. Thesis makes what are called Neutropics, which means smart drugs. Now, to be honest, I am not a fan of the term Neutropics. I don't believe in smart drugs in the sense that I don't believe that there's any one substance or collection of substances that can make us smarter. I do believe based on science, however, that there are particular neural circuits and brain functions that allow us to be more focused, more alert, access creativity, be more motivated, et cetera. That's just the way that the brain works, different neural circuits for different brain states. Thesis understands this. And as far as I know, they're the first Neutropics company to create targeted Neutropics for specific outcomes. I've been using Thesis for more than six months now, and I can confidently say that the Neutropics have been a total game changer. My go-to formula is the clarity formula, or sometimes I'll use their energy formula before training. To get your own personalized Neutropics starter kit, go online to takethesis.com/huberman, take a three-minute quiz, and Thesis will send you four different formulas to try in your first month. That's takethesis.com/huberman, and use the code Huberminute at checkout for 10% off your first order. This month on the Huberman Lab podcast, we're talking all about hormones, these incredible chemicals that can impact our mood, our behavior, our feelings of optimism or pessimism. The amazing thing about hormones is that hormones impact all those things, but all those things, how we feel and what we do and what we think also can impact our hormones. And so it's a really fascinating area of biology that impacts every single one of us every day, both in wakefulness and in sleep and throughout the lifespan. 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. Last episode of the Huberman Lab podcast, we talked about sexual development, that is how the chromosomes, the gonads and hormones impact what we call sexual development, leading all the way up to puberty. Today, we're mainly going to talk about processes that happen from puberty onward. Although we might talk a little bit about development as well. So today we're going to talk a lot about basic biology, but we're going to weave in a lot of practical tools along the way for how to optimize these incredibly powerful things that we call hormones. Before we dive into our discussion about hormone optimization, I want to raise what I think is a very important point that at least I hadn't heard of until recently, which is the concept of salutogenesis. Many of us are familiar with the concept of pathogenesis, the idea that there are all these scary diseases like dementia and heart disease and stroke and all these things that await us if we don't take good care of ourselves and that might await us even if we do. That's the pathogenic model. Salutogenesis is something I learned about from one of my Stanford Medicine colleagues, which is a different orientation toward health and well-being where you're taking on particular behaviors. You're taking on a particular stance towards nutrition and exercise, supplementation, et cetera, in order to promote well-being above where you would be if you were not doing those behaviors. If you think about these two things, salutogenesis and the pathogenic model are really two sides of the same coin. But I'll just give an example of how this might affect you in a real way.