Digital Social Hour - Testosterone Levels, Dangers of Cannabis and Worst Foods for Men | Layne Kilpatrick #235

Episode Date: January 16, 2024

On today's episode of Digital Social Hour, Layne Kilpatrick explains what is causing testosterone levels to drop dramatically, the dangers of sex changes and some common items that are causing problems in men. APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://forms.gle/qXvENTeurx7Xn8Ci9 BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] SPONSORS: Opus Pro: https://www.opus.pro/?via=DSH Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is shocking. In 1997, 27% of African-American girls and 7% of white girls were showing breast development and or pubic hair at age seven. That's young. So the question is what's going on? Yeah. What is going on and how can this continue? People say, well, it's diet, we're fatter, we're eating more poorly. Another is environmental toxins and impacts. Nobody has an answer. Nobody has a definite answer. These things are hard to test. Welcome back to the show, guys. I'm your host, as always, Sean Kelly. Got a great guest for you guys today, Lane Kilpatrick.

How's it going, Lane? Good, Sean. Good to be with you here. Thanks for the invitation. Yeah, absolutely. So you're a pharmacist, right? I'm a pharmacist, yeah, with a focus and a clinical specialty in hormone therapy and all issues surrounding that. Yeah, it seems to be rampant these days. Oh my gosh. There's really alarming data out there right now. And I don't know that enough people are aware of it, but it comes from a study back in 2017 by Shana Swan, PhD. She did a study that she called temporal trends and sperm counts. Temporal meaning over time. So

over a significant period of time. And it revealed a 50% drop in fertility. Well, let me just do some of these statistics here. In 1973, the average man had a sperm concentration of 99 million per ml. By 2011, 47.1 million. Yeah. Back in the 40s, 60 million per ml was considered a good, fertile level. This is by the World Health Organization. Then they decreased it to 40,

then to 20, and now they say 15. I'm not sure why they're dumbing this down, but that's what they're saying now. There's been a lot of change over the last 50 years. So from 2003 to 2013, students in Boston were sampled for their qualification as a sperm donor. In 2003, 69% qualified. In 2013, 69% qualified. In 2013, 44% qualified.

In China, they qualified 56% in 2001. In 2015, 18%. Wow. So this means they have fallen below what sperm banks are very good sources of information. They're like life insurance companies. They're going to make sure that their client gets what they came for, and that is to get pregnant, conceive, have a healthy pregnancy, and take it to term.

Right. So they're pretty good judges of what constitutes good sperm. Yeah. They're rejecting a lot. 82% they're rejecting in China? Yeah, that's a lot. The use of assisted reproductive technology is up, is doubled from 1997 to 2012.

That's IVF, where they inject the sperm into the egg because it has poor motility, can't get to the destination. Testosterone levels have been declining by 1% since 1982. 1% a year? 1% a year. Jeez. Yeah. Which, yeah, you know something about that.

26% of men now presenting with ED are under 40. And I see this all the time in my office. Younger and younger men. And these are fit guys that you'd look at and you'd go, really? Yeah. In the US, we're below what is considered necessary to replace our own population by 16%. That was effective 2017. This is data from 2017. Yeah, so it might be worse. Oh yeah, it might be worse. And that's shocking. And it's worse in other countries. In several other countries, it's much worse than that. From 1990 to 2011, the risk of miscarriage increased by 1% per year. Jeez. In pregnant women in the U.S. And then here's another one that's just, this is shocking.

In 1997, 27% of African-American girls and 7% of white girls were showing breast development and or pubic hair at age 7. That's super young. That's young. And that earlier beginning of puberty is linked to increased breast cancer, increased uterine cancer. So the question is, what's going on? What is going on and how can this continue? I'd love to hear your perspective.

Well, let's get into it. I mean, there are a couple of theories out there, leading theories in my mind. One is people say, well, it's diet, we're fatter, we're eating more poorly. Seed oils. When you have excess fat, that produces more estrogen. Estrogen inhibits testosterone production and therefore fertility. So there's one theory. Another is environmental toxins and impacts. That's kind of the one that I tend to think is a little more relevant because, I mean, if you look at the use of plastics over the years of that time period, back into the 50s even,

when it first started, and these numbers have paralleled that. We know that there are all kinds of things out there that we're consuming. And nobody has an answer. Nobody has a definite answer. These things are hard to test. I mean, in fact, it's kind of unethical to give, like pregnant women, something that could harm their fetus. Plastic, yeah.

Yeah. So it's difficult to test, but I really feel like that's what's going on here. And the question is, well, that's huge. That's mammoth. How do you fix that? Yeah, plastic is everywhere. Yeah, oh, yeah.

Think about it. I mean, we can't go 10 or 15 minutes in a day without having some contact with plastic. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Think about it. I mean, we can't go 10 or 15 minutes in a day without having some contact with plastic. And plastics are just one thing. So cleaning that up, and because you can't do anything about the great big global picture, really all you can do is take care of yourself. So what gets into your body, and it turns out we can do a significant amount of of cleanup just by number one filtering water because a lot of these things come through drinking water yeah and two filtering the air surprising amount of these toxins and these endocrine disruptors hormone disrupt disruptors, we breathe in,

we inhale them in our homes, in our cars. Wait, how does it get in there? Gust. It's one of the, one of the main sources is actually from, from clothing,

textiles. These things that are made up of plastics, put them in the dryer, look at your dryer vent. Those little particles, they get in the air, but yeah, these, they're blowing around all over the place. And it's, there's, there's been some pretty good studies on that. in the dryer look at your dryer vent those little particles they get in the air but yeah these

they're blowing around all over the place and it's there's there's been some pretty good studies on that so you'd recommend to dry your clothes manually like outside i think that would be better probably yeah yeah and and wherever possible um go to natural fabrics natural things like cotton and hemp so cotton cotton is good. Cotton's good. So what's the ingredient in shirts that isn't good? So the polyester type thing, spandex. So jerseys. Yeah.

And I'm guilty today myself. But if you think about it, these things don't disappear. When you throw them away, plastics don't disappear. They're designed to not degrade. Right. And so then what they do is they break down and they get smaller and smaller and then we get these microplastics that people a lot of people talking about that these days too they just recently found them in the human heart i saw that did you see that crazy oh that that really alarms me yeah how did that get there? That makes no sense. The size that they're talking about, that's visible to the human eye.

I don't know how it even got there. But they're just everywhere. So that's kind of the situation that we're dealing with. So for the testosterone levels, do you really think it's from diet mainly? Just the shift? I don't. I think it's, well, you know what? There are a lot of different factors in this equation. There's no question about it.

All these things contribute your diet, exercise, what you take into your body, stress even, what they call perceived stress, which is different than actual stressors. What is perceived? Perceived stress is you think something is stressful when it only is because you think it is. Stressors, like a disease is a stressor to the body.

And what it does is it raises cortisol. Elevated cortisol levels all the time are not healthy and they're not good for testosterone levels. Right. So we think the testosterone or the sperm count, which turn out to be a really, actually an accurate measure of general health. In fact, it's a good biomarker.

I believe it ought to be, every guy ought to have a sperm analysis because we know that if the motility is off, the concentration, there's not enough of them, they're malformed, they can't swim. For whatever reason, they're not getting there. The things that cause those things also impact general health. Right, so that's a sign of you being unhealthy if your sperm isn't healthy.

Yeah, yeah. So everybody ought to know. And it doesn't get any better, really, with age. So this is another reason a young guy ought to know what that's like. And then you can actually bank those for a future time if you know that about them. Right. There's a few types of food I've seen you speak against. One of them was soy. You're not a fan of men eating soy, right? I'm not a fan of men or women eating soy. And I need to be clear about what the reason is. I don't think it's necessarily harmful because you have to understand that soy is very

estrogenic, meaning it looks like an estrogen molecule, enough like it that it will bind to the receptor and therefore block it, block its access to real estrogen, estradiol. And so can it have positive effects? Yeah, it can. But do you really want it blocking your natural estrogen from that same site? Are you ready to say, okay, go ahead and take its place? It's going to differ from batch to batch. You don't know how much you're getting.

That's my issue with soy. And the same thing goes with the other real estrogenic food, and that's fseed flaxseed yeah i was gonna say that next yeah that's that's one that i have i have sat and and puzzled with practitioners when they've got they'll have a patient that's levels look good on estrogen but she's just not getting a response still having symptoms that it's low and turns out well she's adding flaxseed to her smoothie in the morning, which does not have the same intensity or the same affinity for that receptor. So it's going to have a different response. I'm not saying it's altogether bad,

but why would you want to replace the pure thing with that when there are other ways to get omega-3s or whatever it is you're taking that for protein in the case of soy so that that's i i get misunderstood on that a lot yeah i saw the comments on that one oh my gosh the soy boys get all up in the most controversial one i think you spoke about though is cannabis yeah because a lot of guys smoke cannabis but you you weren't a fan of that right well it's funny the the the studies out there are mixed on what it does to testosterone some say it it has no effect some say it increases some say it decreases significantly but there doesn't seem to be too much debate about its effect on sperm and it is not good

but interestingly it's just the combustion material it's just smoked it's not oh so it's not the cannabis part it's the smoking part right interesting yeah so smoke is that what the sperm cells on that's what they there's studies that have identified that when that's the route of ingestion yeah so that would. That would apply to cigarettes too then. Yeah, it would. But specifically the cannabis, I mean, I don't think there's any good healthy way to ingest tobacco. Chew or whatever. But cannabis is a different animal. I recommend CBD all the time. Very effective.

And it has some THC in it. So I'm not opposed to it. But smoking it is probably not good for your boys. Yeah. I've also seen you talk about atrazine. Atrazine. And you want people to avoid it as much as they can, right? Well, yeah.

And truth is, you can't. You cannot avoid it. Atrazine is a broadleaf herbicide that is used commercially, mostly in the Corn Belt and the Midwest. And if you see a map where the concentrations are highest in groundwater, it's just concentrated right through the center of the U.S. Groundwater. Yeah.

And that's the problem with it. Atrazine actually decomposes pretty quickly in soil yeah um two two weeks two three weeks to four months maybe from the microorganisms in the soil but once it gets into groundwater it's not soluble there and and that's a that's an anaerobic environment there's not oxygen there's not oxygen to to helpgrade it. And so it lasts a long time. And that's people's concern with it, is they're finding it everywhere. It's atrazine in groundwater, but once it gets there, it's spreading everywhere. So what does it do to your body? Well, atrazine is a hormone disruptor. It's an estrogen. It's estrogen it. And so it can affect people developmentally,

development of a fetus. Those reproductive effects are what we're most concerned about. Yeah. Somebody's got to have an answer for this. We can't keep losing 1% infertility and testosterone levels. Pretty soon we can't sustain, we can't reproduce. Scary. It is.

Wow. I mean, sperm is an interesting thing. You think it's available in abundance, and guys have this image and concept of themselves that, hey, I can perform. I'm good. Well, not necessarily. When somebody examines it and analyzes it and those parameters are off,

then you've got some problems. And often they don't find that out until they go to have a child. And then it's a, well, okay, your options are a little more limited now. Yeah. We got to ask Elon Musk what he's doing, right? He's got 11 kids.

Right. And smart kids, probably. Yeah. So what are some other hormone disruptors, or is that the main one, atrazine? Well, atrazine is one. It's the second most abundant herbicide besides glyphosate. Glyphosate hasn't got real strong data as a hormone disruptor, but it's another one that, oh my gosh, it's got its own set of problems.

But so there are other hormone disruptors that are all around us, like what I said, in the air and in the water. Some of them are what we call xenoestrogens. Those are just things like, you've probably heard of BPA. Yeah. That are in plastic bottles. Anything BP, BPS, BPF, they tried to make something better and didn't quite work out. Put a Band-Aid on it. Yeah, right still still damaging but

so there's that there's what they call pfas p-f-a-s those are they're also called forever chemicals because they just hang around right and they're just they're hard to eliminate those are hormone disruptors they're in um anything that that people are trying to waterproof. So phones. Waterproof your phone. Didn't Apple say the phones are waterproof or something? I don't know. I've still got a plastic cover on mine. So there's PFA's in it.

There are. Also fire retardant that you used to find on furniture. Fire, oh, okay. But, you know, the other thing that's concerning is the U.S. is incredibly slow and lax at enforcing or even having laws and rules that protect people, the consumer protection people.

These things have been banned in Europe since 2004. The US even entered into what they call the Stockholm Convention for Persistent Organic Pollutants, they call them. Enforceable in international law. But we never ratified it in the U.S. So it's a big fight. It's a big gamble against a lot of money.

Yeah. I don't know how you win those fights sometimes. So it comes down to you've got to take care of yourself. Government's not going to do it. Hell no. No. You can't depend on what they say is safe and what isn't. They've changed so many times on a number of these things.

I mean, just look at ****, but we won't get into that. No, we'll get banned if we talk about that. But they seem to... Atrazine is an interesting case there. They've said for years at just various like every few years they would issue another statement it's safe there's no reason to think it is unsafe well then just in 2016 they finally issued something that said it's pretty clear that it's affecting all aquatic species in the environment and so that that extends into

birds it was to mammals and it's all connected. It goes everywhere. Oh, it is. Man. Yeah, and there are endocrine functions, you know, problems with that. So where does this, you know, there's a special, gosh, real concern with this in people's lives, but in particular, pregnant women. There's a window of time from about six, seven weeks or so

to ten weeks or so. We don't know exactly when it is, but when differentiation of the genitalia is taking place, where you've got an XY male, the gender and the sex is determined. It's the same up to a certain point, and then there's a release of DHT, dihydrotestosterone, that then sends it down the path of becoming a phenotypic male,

has all the equipment of a man, of a male. If that gets blocked at any point, it doesn't have to be completely blocked, just partially blocked, then you get effects on that fetus that will survive him and pass on to his offspring and grandchildren, and it gets worse. Whoa. Epigenetic changes, they call them. That's crazy.

But we also see the underdevelopment of ****. There's an increase in what they call micro ****, which is scientifically defined. It's two standard deviations from average, which average is 5.3 inches stretched. Micro **** would then be about 3.2. Stretched? Stretched.

These are some, or it can just develop wrong. It can have the opening of the urethra on the underside. Defects that all take place because something was sitting on that testosterone receptor at the absolute wrong time. Crazy. Couldn't have been a worse time. And that's not reversible. Affects their fertility.

So if there's if there's a an emphasis that i could make it would be pregnant women you have got to be vigilant very careful during yes during that first trimester when things can be done that can't be undone so that's that's critical and we know that's these are phthalates this is research is from phthalates right and that's that's another big hormone disruptor. You asked what some of the others are. Phthalates, parabens, things that are in most things that are scented artificially. I walked through the restroom in our office.

Yeah. It's a common restroom for all these offices. And I'm always shutting off the gas. Oh, the wall plug? Yeah, the gasser. The other thing that, you know, you're standing there doing your duty, and you hear this. Yeah?

Yeah, yeah. They're gassing you, man. Man. Ivory Casino has some sort of scent, too. Oh, yeah. Those are probably parabens. They are. They're disgusting.

And so there's no question about those, either. So they're out there. Her study was in 2017, and it was all over the press. Cover of Newsweek, cover of Time, New York Times, all over. But do you hear about it much anymore? No. No, not really. Did it go away?

No. Yeah. So we ought to do something about this. And the only thing we can do, really, Sean, is you've got to protect yourself. And so your own little microenvironment that you have control over. I don't like sounding like a doomsday guy. Oh, gosh, you know, the world's coming to an end.

No, this is a beautiful world. There's a God in charge. He's going to win. We're not going to be c***ed by this and wiped out as a species, but we are stewards over what we have, and we need to take care of ourself and our own our children rely on us for this yeah so you go through your house right we develop this tool it's called hormone disruptors my exposure score take you through your house help you identify in the kitchen bathroom just the living room and

house cleaning in general all these areas and identify where you're getting exposed and what your levels give you a letter grade and at a quantitative score. And then what to do about it. Man, this is so eye-opening and I'm planning on having kids soon. So this is just scary almost. I have to lock her in a room almost so she avoids all this. Have you ever had a sperm analysis? No, how do you get one? There are several online now. You can go into what they call an andrology clinic.

You can look that up, just Google it. There may be one or there may not be one in your town, but there's just some good online options. One of them is givelegacy.com that I like. And they also will present you with options like, hey, this is how your report came back.

It wasn't good. Do you want to freeze some? And when they freeze it, then they also wash out and clean out all the non-performers, the guys that can't swim straight, go around in a circle. And then you have a much higher likelihood then of that sperm actually. Wow. That's impressive that they can do that. Yeah, it is. And it used to be really cost prohibitive. Not so much anymore.

Yeah. I got to look into that. Most people don't even know if their sperm's healthy. So that's good advice for just anyone watching. Yep. I think so. It's not something we generally think about. Most guys don't think about infertility. Usually gets blamed on the woman. Yeah. But let me tell you when you're the time to think about your healthy contribution as a male and the sperm is not the night that you're conceiving. It's about seven or eight weeks prior to that. Oh, yeah? Because that's how long it takes that sperm to mature.

Wow. And to reach the point, I mean, we make two or three hundred million of these a day, but only about half of them survive to mature sperm. But that's the kind of thing you need to think about. And so that means seven or eight weeks before, no binge drinking, no heavy caffeine use, heavy, moderate is okay, as is moderate alcohol intake, actually. So caffeine to sperm?

Caffeine in high concentrations is toxic. Yeah, it's toxic to sperm. You don't want to be a slob. Because if your hormone levels are out of balance, the testes are dependent on a certain concentration of testosterone within the testicle, not just circulating. And if that gets impaired, then you're in trouble. But it's a long time ago.

It's not when you think it is. And most guys don't think about their contribution. Most miscarriages actually are the result of DNA fragmentation from the sperm. Dang, that's never talked about. No, no. We just assume it's something with the girl usually. Exactly. And these poor women have, you know,

taken responsibility or blame for it for all this time. But, you know, it's a blame for it for all this time. But, you know, it's a problem. It's scary. Is it true soap and laundry detergent are really bad for you? Some are. If they have what we call alkylphenols in them or triclosan,

those are ingredients to watch for. A couple of examples of alkylphenols are nonylphenol and octylphenol. And those you can see because they have to be on the label. But here's the thing, Sean. You don't have to remember that. There are really good apps nowadays. One of them is Euka.

There's one by EWG, Environmental Working Group, that's called Healthy Living, there are really good apps nowadays. Yeah. One of them's Yuka. There's one by EWG, Environmental Working Group, that's called Healthy Living, that you can scan, take it with you to the store. Oh, nice. Scan the product.

I love that. Look at the ingredients, and it'll tell you if there's hormone disruptors in there. You don't have to remember what they are. If they're there, then avoid it. There are plenty of other choices now. Yeah.

So just do it, and you'll find out it's not as hard as you might think it is and it's not as disruptive to your life. So that's what you got to do. Yeah. You got to take that responsibility. The days are gone when you can just trust. Yeah. It's trust, but verify. Yeah. You know, I love that. Yeah. Now I can't even microwave plastic leftovers. Scared of doing that. Yeah, now I can't even microwave plastic leftovers. Scared of doing that. Yeah, that's right.

You don't want to do that. So that's one of the things. So when you go through your kitchen, it's are you filtering your water? That's the first thing. And it has to have a carbon filter, and it needs to be either reverse osmosis or distillation. Are you filtering your air? Again, have a carbon filter in there.

That's what will filter out those hormone disruptors. Carbon filter. You see a, oh, go ahead. Well, just a couple of other things are what's your cookware like. If you got Teflon or some coating on there that's flaking off, which a lot of us do, dump that thing right now. Get rid of it. Oh, if it's like burnt?

Those are PFOS. Those are forever chemicals. If you've seen that where the nonstick coating is flaking off, wearing off, where do you think that goes? In your body. Right down the hatch. Yeah. Yeah.

So there's that. And then what containers that you store food and drink in. So you do glass? Glass is my preference. But I do also silicone. Silicone. Sil silicone silicone's okay okay these reusable bags that are that are fine what about ziplocs plastic bags no they have ziploc teflon ones okay or sorry excuse me ziploc silicone ones yeah i know you okay yeah yeah i got to switch those yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna get the assessment are allowed to film it, make a video out of it? Yeah.

Cool. Sure. Yeah, we should do that. I mean, yeah. We have a private Facebook group for those people that have bought that tool, and the interaction in there is interesting. Nice. It's nice to be able to share. People are really excited when they find something.

Okay, this is good. But I'll tell you, there's never been a better time to clean this up because I love seeing these little grassroots small businesses emerge that are selling clean stuff. And they're doing well. They're making a living at it. Love it. Yes. I really love seeing that.

Because now there's a trend about being healthy and people are waking up slowly, right? Yep. And also in the kitchen, I would say organic food. You've got to buy clean food. And I realize that the organic label is not perfect, but it's better than probably anything else we have. So it's not going to have most of those pesticides and things on it. When you say not perfect, what do you mean?

Well, recently I did a reel on this coating they call Appeal. It was developed by a company that Bill Gates seeded early on. But their idea is to coat vegetables and fruit with this coating that keeps air out, keeps oxygen out, so it preserves it longer. Okay. But it's supposed to be edible. You can eat this. And yet, when you see what they used to make it, that doesn't qualify for organic.

It does not. But somehow it got through. And it really suffered. The label, the organic label kind of suffered in its integrity. Things like that. So not perfect, but maybe better than what we have. Yeah. Wait, so how can we know which vegetables and fruits have that layer on it? You have to ask. Oh, you have to ask? You have to ask the produce staff. Seriously? Mm-hmm. Because they don't have to even label.

A lot of them do. A lot of them will have a little label that says appeal on it. But oftentimes it's just labeled on the box that the produce comes in, which they don't put out, of course. So you do have to ask. Wow.

Such an extra step and it's kind of hard to find some people at the grocery store sometimes. Exactly. Lane, anything you want to close off with? Just, I can't emphasize enough that you have got to take charge of your consuming choices. The decisions and the choices that you make as a consumer will drive the market.

They will determine what gets out there. If you don't buy it, they won't make it. So as more people become aware and look into their reproductive health, especially males, I'm seeing so many young men now. It's alarming and kind of disturbing to me. Actually, there are options out there to, to correct that. This, this is one of

the approaches to it, but there are, there are several. And if we have to supplement, we can. There are, there are prescription options. But that's not always the go-to because when you give testosterone supplemented, you make less of it. So your own production will slow down and that includes sperm production. Wow. So it is not always the answer. In fact, that's, you asked me once about, about some of these myths that are out there. That's probably biggest one that i see yeah is that your testosterone is low so we need to give you some not necessarily yeah because we give you some and then you can't have kids you're not going to be very happy with me so i think that's a that's a pretty big deal wow so what are before we close off what are some ways to raise testosterone naturally then rather than injecting?

Well, so the lifestyle things, you don't want to be overweight. You don't want to be underweight. A good BMI between 20 and 24 or so, good body fat percentage for men, 16, 15, 16. For women, it's about six points higher. You want to have a good, clean diet. As I mentioned before, not too excessive of an alcohol intake. They say one unit a day is fine, unit being a can of beer or a glass of wine. Smoking, absolutely no.

None. Vaping, out. Don't do it. Your sperm is a really good indicator of how you're doing. And these days, sperm are not doing well by any count. So it's a bit of a wake-up call. Wow. So if there's one message you have, it's increase your sperm counts, guys.

Increase your sperm count all right well thanks for watching guys super informative episode thanks for coming on man and i'll see you guys next time