Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2570: Test Your Sex Hormones & Cortisol at Home With Dr. Stephen Cabral

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Dr. Stephen Cabral How your hormones are connected to your circadian rhythm and sleep. (2:15) The differences between a cortisol and blood test. (3:24) The function of cortisol. (5:32) The most common lab results from this test. (8:12) Can someone develop cortisol resistance? (15:03) His recommended methods to apply for night shift workers. (20:45) Signs your catabolic hormones are taking over. (23:15) Can inappropriate levels of hormones promote visceral body fat? (23:57) Why it’s important to monitor your blood sugar. (25:47) PSA for the guys on TRT. (29:31) Revealing the guy’s Sex Hormones & Adrenals test results. Sal. (34:05) Justin. (38:47) Adam. (42:56) Doug. (48:25) How often should you test your hormones after the recommended protocols? (51:00) How they are using AI and what it means for the future. (54:38) Related Links/Products Mentioned For a limited time, Mind Pump listeners can test their sex hormones & adrenals at home! Visit here for HALF OFF! ** Includes a FREE 30-minute health coaching call with an EquiLife Certified Health Coach to answer all of your questions. ** Visit Eight Sleep for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump Listeners! ** Code MINDPUMP to get $350 off Pod 4 Ultra. Currently, it ships to the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. ** April Special: MAPS HIIT or Extreme Fitness Bundle 50% off! ** Code APRIL50 at checkout ** Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources Featured Guest Dr. Stephen Cabral (@stephencabral) Instagram Website Podcast  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. We had Dr. Cabral come on the show today and talk about why people sometimes are just gaining weight, water retention, bloating, low libido, low ambition, low mood. He took us through some sex hormone and adrenals tests

to look at us and then he talks about the value of doing this. By the way, if you go to stevencabral.com forward slash hormones test, Stephen is spelled S-T-E-P-H-E-N, so stevencral comm forward slash Hormones test you can get a discount on their hormones test that tests all these things He looks at your hormones and cortisol in the morning afternoon early afternoon before you go to bed It's 50% off by the way if you go on that link half off. So it's steven cabral comm forward slash

Hormones test by the way, this comes with a 30-minute health coaching call which is awesome. Now this episode is brought to you by a sponsor, 8 Sleep. This is the most advanced sleep system that you'll find anywhere. It goes on your bed, cools or warms your bed, and it uses AI technology to optimize your individual sleep. So it monitors your sleep and it adjusts on the fly to keep you asleep and give you really recuperative sleep. Anyway, go to 8sleep.com forward slash mind pump, use the code mind pump and you can get $350 off

the Pod 4 Ultra. We also have a sale this month. Maps hit is 50% off and the Extreme Fitness Bundle of programs also 50% off. If you're interested, go to mapsfitnessproducts.com and then use the code April50 for the discount. All right, here comes the show. Dr. Gural, welcome back to the show.

Great to be here as always, thanks for having me. Always fun, always revealing. Always excited and nervous at the same time. Yeah, that's right. Just putting out all our laundry, let's go. Whenever you're waiting for lab results, that's always the way that is. You hope that they're gonna be good, you anticipate they will be, but there's always a chance. Yeah, that's... Just putting out all our laundry, let's go. Whenever you're waiting for lab results, that's always the way that is. You hope that they're gonna be good,

you anticipate they will be, but there's always the chance. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You also provide great shit talking between the three of us for the next couple months till we see you again, so it's always a good time. So today we're gonna talk about hormones, essentially. Yes. Hormone optimization, that's the test we all did,

but I wanted to kind of connect it to your circadian rhythm, your sleep, and what's the connection between those? Yeah, so the biggest thing that I always look for in terms of people's hormones is not one single number, but what does it look like in terms of balance? So we as humans, and I've kind of shared this before, but this is really important, we are diphasic beings. So we're really meant to be on the go from six to eight a.m. in the morning.

And then that starts to really decline mid-afternoon to evening when we want to start to go into cool-down mode. That cool-down mode is some of the hormones that we're gonna be talking about. So today I wanna talk about what are the hormones in the morning to optimize, and then what are ones at evening. Because how this works is that ultimately

the health of you take through your 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond is what allows you also to live to 80, 90 plus with the ability to actually still be able to use your body and enjoy quality of life. So it's a balance between cortisol, the catabolic hormone, as well as the sex hormones like testosterone and even estrogen, progesterone, DHEA that we'll talk about today. Okay. Now, is that why the tests we did required us to test ourselves throughout the day versus the standard blood tests, it's once a day type of deal? Exactly. Because I could see how that was kind of a snapshot, whereas what you're trying to do is

look at the whole day. And you mentioned cortisol. I'm familiar with that's supposed to be high in the morning, low in the evening. When it's flipped, people have terrible sleep and they don't feel so good. That is, it's probably the fastest way that you will begin to age is high elevated evening cortisol. So that's one of the most important numbers you could run.

We do a test that's just bedtime cortisol. Like it's that important to understand that one number. But here's the issue. When you run your blood work with your doctor or you run it on your own, that you should do. Like I'm a big believer in annual blood work and for myself, I do it semi-annually, but you're only getting one snapshot in time then as well. And you want it to be between eight and 10 in the morning so that you get proper lipid profiles and proper thyroid levels.

So your blood work should always be done first thing in the morning. I think it is the best time to do it. Overall, you get the best numbers that you want to look at and it should be fasted as well. However, you don't get your best cortisol because almost everyone's cortisol between 8 and 10 in the morning is totally normal, like almost less than 1 out of 10. But the problem is, is it normal the rest of the day? Does it actually start to decline at night? And then what does that look like the next day for testosterone and DHEA, et cetera?

Because when the labs that we look at, we also look at the simidimitology, like what you're actually feeling. So as people begin to get older, their strong levels of testosterone or DHEA can no longer compensate for their elevated levels of cortisol. So when you're young, you can have high cortisol all day long because you're also high DHEA, which is great for the immune system, and high testosterone, which is amazing for your libido, your ambition, your drive, your strength, and your recovery. So you can do that when you're younger, but as you start to get to mid to later 30s, depends on how much stress you've dealt with over your life, also genetics matter as well, you start to see that decline. That's why when people talk about 40 to 50 years

old, there's a window within that, that people, if they haven't been doing the work or they don't start to do the work, will start to accelerate their growth. So you can see that decline. That's why when people talk about 40 to 50 years old, there's a window within that, that people if they haven't been doing the work or they don't start to do the work, will start to accelerate the aging-based process. Let's talk about what does cortisol do then? So it's catabolic, releases energy, how does it make you feel, what is the function of cortisol?

Because you need it. Yes. We always hear it as this bad thing, lower cortisol, it's bad for you, it's too much cortisol causes visceral body fat, et cetera, et cetera. But it's an essential hormone. We need it because having much cortisol causes visceral body fat, etc. But it's an essential hormone. Having no cortisol would be terrible as well, right? 100%. So, Hans Sealy did some amazing research on this. When we look at the different stages of dysfunctional cortisol,

well, one of the first stages is called the alarm stage, and it's actually elevated cortisol throughout the entire day. So you run someone's lab that we're going to look at here today, simple saliva samples. Why run saliva? Saliva is showing you free what's available in the body. So free hormone, free testosterone, free DHEA or reused DHEA sulfate, which is a really good proxy for DHEA over the course of the whole day. It's the average when you use the DHEA S. And then cortisol. So if we do a upon waking waking when it should be at it, but it should be elevated but not high, meaning it should be between six and nine for a number. And then we look at lunch, we look at right before bed and we look at, I'm sorry, we look at before dinner and then right before bed. So you look at a total cortisol picture and your total unit should be between a nine and

a 13 for the whole day. You might see someone at a 26, 30. They're producing massive amounts of cortisol throughout the entire day. Now in the beginning, they feel fantastic. It works as an anti-inflammatory. It gives you energy, increases heart rate. You start to lose weight. It's all of those things. Well, what happens when you become chronically stressed? The morning levels can no longer keep up because your sleep becomes really poor at night. If you were to track your sleep with a Whoop or aura or Apple Watch, whatever it might be, you'll see lower levels of deep sleep and then typically later lower levels of REM.

Deep repairs the body, REM essentially repairs the mind. And when those levels start to, when your restorative sleep isn't there, cortisol doesn't rise in the same way, neither does thyroid in the morning. So thyroid starts to get going around 3 AM, cortisol around 6 AM to 7 AM, somewhere right around 6 a.m. to 7 a.m., somewhere right around there. Those levels stay a little lower.

However, as you then start to move caffeine or other stimulants into your day, what happens is cortisol levels then rise later in the day, still affecting sleep, but now you're more tired and wired, and I'm sure you guys have heard that before. Where you can't fall asleep, you can't turn off your mind at night, so you start to use different things

to turn off the mind at night, but you never get going first thing in mind at night, so you start to use different things to turn off the mind at night, but you never get going first thing in the morning. Cortisol is amazing as an anti-inflammatory. It is great to get the energy going in the body, but too much of it begins to burn the body out and you become more catabolic rather than anabolic. Really difficult to start to put on muscle or recover from workouts. It's extremely important to have that. Your libido goes down, your ambition goes down, your drive goes down, and you just feel overwhelmed. You feel irritable. Now, I always love talking to you because you do thousands and thousands of labs on people.

You have this great test group basically to look at. What are some of the things that are most common that you see when you take this specific lab? What do you see that are most common? What happens? So in women, we see a lot of estrogen dominance. So that means that women have a menstrual cycle that the first part of their cycle is typically denoted by higher levels of estrogen.

And then once you get to around day 17, 18, 19, progesterone is gonna start to increase. And then that's called the luteal, 18, 19, progesterone is going to start to increase. And then that's called the luteal phase, so follicular phase, luteal phase. What happens is, when women are exposed to a lot of levels or higher levels of cortisol, their progesterone levels start to decline. It can lead to infertility. It can lead to lower mood, lower energy, bloating, water retention, a lot of estrogen-based symptoms. But we run their labs, estrogen looks totally normal. The problem is progesterone is low. It's too low.

So they feel like they have high levels of estrogen, but estrogen is totally normal. Anxiety too, right? It's a common one. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And so you'll know if this is affecting you, even

without running a lab, if it's happening in about five to seven days before a woman gets her cycle. For men, what do we see? We see a decline in DHEA and testosterone. So we have normal levels, like levels for free testosterone. When you're below 22 years old, you want that 140 to 160 for free testosterone. Once you start to get into your 30s, 120 to 140,

we like to keep people in the higher end of optimal. Once you get to about 40, I like it around 100 to 110 minimum. You can still, it can still be higher. It can still be higher, okay. Yeah, absolutely. And then we go down about 10 points per decade. So we never get that low.

If you're just looking at like what's normal, healthy. But then we can make the argument, and I don't know if you want to get into this now, but like, is that optimal or is that just acceptable? Right? And because there's going to be a point in your life and it's usually between 55 and 65 and it depends on the individual, it depends if they're

weight training, it depends if they're eating well, if they're keeping themselves in shape, if they're doing all the things. They can maybe push it off till 65 I've seen. Because before I really got into integrative health and functional medicine, all these lab testing, like you guys, I was a personal trainer from 1996 on and nutrition. I got to see this with my clients. No matter who the guy was, once he got to his mid-60s, it was difficult for them to be able

to put on muscle and even maintain that muscle and not put on belly fat. It was just more challenging for them and obviously with recovery as well. So what I say to guys is that we can push this as long as we can, but around mid-50s to mid-60s, you're probably going to start to become more catabolic than anabolic and you're going to start to feel the effects of the lower anabolic hormones, the androgens like testosterone, namely NDA, which gets overlooked. It's really important for the immune system and overall anti-aging, cancer tumor suppression, a lot of that. And we start to see cortisol, though, stay normal.

So if cortisol stays normal and testosterone drops, well, we've got a more catabolic situation. So you're talking about the balance. You mentioned estrogen, progesterone, testosterone to cortisol. Yes. There's a ratio or a balance of them that is as important as just the levels themselves.

Absolutely correct because as you know, there's genetic variability, right? Some men have higher levels of testosterone than others, but the cortisol levels then should match that. So if you have a little bit elevated levels of cortisol, you need higher levels of testosterone and DHEA. So let me go back to DHEA just for a second. DHEA is the signal if it's chronic stress or not. So if your DHEA drops below, we typically say at 10, but 6 is our lowest number, we know that you've been chronically stressed for some time. So that's our first proxy there. And then if we catch it just like when you're at 9 or 8, testosterone is still normal, we

test you a year later, but you haven't done anything different, and now DHEA is a five, and we see your testosterone start to fall then, we know what's coming next. Over the next year or two, your testosterone's gonna plummet. Right, and DHEA, so what's the role of that, because I know it gets converted into other hormones. I've heard it being referred to as a parent hormone

or something like that, right? It can get turned into, it was an androgen, send it down, testosterone, even into estrogen. Is that all it does? Obviously not, right? It's got its own functions. Yeah, you're right. So the sterile hormone pathway,

you're basically moving from cholesterol to pregnenolone, and then you move right to dihydroepiangistrone, which is DHEA. So DHEA then can flow to any other part of the hormone pathway. So it can move actually from DHEA to fulfill progesterone cortisol pathway, or it can move down to, as you were saying, androstenedione, androstenediol, testosterone, which can then flow to estradiol, estrone, and estriol. So it is that parent hormone. I mean, I would say that it's a prohormone,

it's a precursor to the other sex hormones, but it balances both sides. So it balances the sex hormones, but it also, if cortisol needs to be made, it will steal from testosterone, it will steal from progesterone, it will take from DHEA. And so DHEA is the balancer of that. So that is the reason why testosterone is going lower in somebody who's really stressed out then? Is that what's happening? Nine out of 10 times. Yeah, interesting. I never knew that's why. So chronic stress. Now you can say, well, it's more complicated than that. It has to do with poor sleep and nutrition. All of that is true. It's chronic stress on the body. It's oxidative

stress and chronic stress that ultimately wears. Now, could be gut health issues, could be heavy metals, could be viral based. If you look at the data during COVID and other viruses, it crushes testosterone and sex hormones, destroys it. And the reason is, is that your body is so inflamed and inflammation in general is going to lower sex hormones. Yeah. So if DHEA gets turned into these hormones and somebody goes and gets hormone replacement therapy, because I've seen oftentimes people will get on hormone replacement therapy looking for the end stage hormones, testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, but they'll still get recommended DHEA. Why is that?

Is it because it has its own function? You need that as well, not just because it gets turned into other hormones? Yeah, I'm actually a supporter of that. So men who are using TRT, or even women that are using maybe estrogen or anything else, I do recommend supplementing with DHEA. Okay. And the reason is DHEA may not be being made

like it should be if you're satisfying all of the hormones that come after it. Okay. So your body's not like, well, how much more hormone do you really need when it's being satisfied? You don't need to make your own testosterone. If the exogenous hormone that you're putting in is greater than the endogenous production, you'll stop making it in most cases. Now, you can use certain pharmaceuticals as well to try to keep your testosterone going,

but ultimately after a long enough period of time, it probably gonna start to go down. Do you see resistance to cortisol like you might? Cause I know you can see, you know, receptors down regulate for some hormones, of course there's insulin resistance. Can somebody develop cortisol resistance where the cortisol stays elevated, elevated, elevated, it's not affecting them so it has to keep going up until it crashes?

Yeah, yeah that's actually, so it's rare, but it is possible. Yeah. That's actually, so it's rare, but it is possible. Wow. So we have concussions. Is it CTS? Yeah. CTE. CTE. Okay. I'm not, I couldn't recall that right now. The guy with CTE, remember that one. Ironically, the guy who I remember.

Super chiasmatic limbic part of the brain. So basically inside of the hypothalamus regulates day and night. And a lot of people who have had brain-based trauma or emotional-based trauma stay stuck in this called the HPA axis, the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis that we've spoken about before. But it is what regulates with ACH and ACTH the amount of cortisol you produce as well as epinephrine. So if your body thinks it is permanently stuck in a state of fight or flight from a concussion,

from sports, and so a lot of people just say, well, it's from football. Soccer is one of the highest sports with concussions and CT, it's unbelievable. So jet skiing I've heard too. Is that because of the bouncing up and down? Yeah, that's crazy. But true, I mean, like these things really happen,

our brain sits there and floats a little bit in space with only millimeters of space against your cranium. And so, it's important that we take care of that. But this does happen. So we've got Cushing's disease on one side, where cortisol stays chronically elevated. What is that? That is like decatabolic wasting disease. You lose massive amounts of muscle where you could actually be, and again, not trying to be disrespectful, you become skinny fat. Yes. Like very thin, but your body fat is very high.

Round face, right? Yeah, absolutely. Just like as if you were in progesterone. Right. Not progesterone, but a pregnozone. Yes, yes. So that basically a catabolic hormone that they're putting in your body as a powerful anti-inflammatory.

That's what pregnozone does. So you have to be really careful being put on pregnozone. I know it can help with inflammation-based issues and rheumatoid, but only symptomatically and temporarily when leading to much bigger issues. And also, it puts you more susceptible for brain-based issues.

So you have to be really careful with this. And by the way, people, Pregnazone feels good. So does cortisol. Like you put someone on Pregnazone, they're like, oh my God, I'm on top of the world. I have all this energy. We refer to, we have a term we use, cortisol junkies, which these were clients that we trained

where they were chronically stressed and they gravitated towards the most intense workouts and they would say, I feel good doing them though, and it's like, yeah, you just pushed your cortisol a little higher. Always hard convincing that client they're doing the wrong thing because they have that feedback. Maybe get the reward.

Oh, I feel better. How could you tell me this is the wrong thing? In the alarm stage of stress, you feel amazing. Yes. So it's very rare that I see someone in my practice in the alarm stage of stress. It's after. It's only after. It's when they feel fatigued. Because they feel great. Yeah. And so the only people I see during it are those people that are staying ahead on their health. Like, yeah, I feel great, but my friend was doing this. They recommended it. Maybe I

should try it as well. And so if you can get there, even when you feel great, you want to get a baseline, no matter what, like you want a baseline on your health. Plus if your cortisol levels are elevated in the morning, you actually want to stay away from the high intensity interval training, the cold plunge, the et cetera. Now those can be beneficial, but not if you have elevated cortisol. Timing. Because this is why you told Doug not to do that, right? I remember when we all did that test, you were told out of all of us, you're Doug is the one that's not supposed to do

the cold plunge, right, for that reason. Yeah, the elevated cortisol and the elevated evening cortisol multiple times, so we'll talk about that here today. And you have to actually then give someone a more personalized plan for that. They need to start hours before bed to start to decline and lower that cortisol.

Any light will upregulate, or should upregulate cortisol and downregulate melatonin. So much more challenging to, they call it sleep latency, how quickly you can fall asleep. It's gonna be like that. How often do you see bandages where people are like elevated cortisol, you mentioned melatonin, which kinda, which kind of,

for lack of a better term, balances it out. But how many times do you see people in this alarm stage, oh yeah, I take five milligrams of melatonin every night. And it helps, and it's like a band-aid, right? Yes, well, so melatonin, we can look at it as like that's a natural hormone in the body, powerful antioxidant, powerful anti-cancer, powerful antiviral. So it has benefits on its own, but I don't disagree. So if you have a cup of coffee in the morning, you should have a cup of coffee with some caffeine in it because you enjoy it, not that you need it. If you can't get through the morning without caffeine,

then it's a dependency. If you're taking some melatonin at night because you like the benefits you get from it and it gives you a little extra deep sleep, phenomenal. But yes, if you can't fall asleep, that is an issue. Yeah, but like you said, Ambien, Lunesta, over the counter, all sorts of things people are taking. And even in the morning, like uppers, they're taking allergy medications that push epinephrine. Like seriously, and they're like,

well I take it because I don't have allergies anymore but I feel better when I take it. Yeah, you feel better when you take it because you're pushing something we didn't even talk about yet, which is excitatory neurotransmitters. Like you're spiking your epinephrine and dopamine, just like again, a cold plunge would do. Now, what if someone, we run a neurotransmitter test and they have low levels of dopamine and norepinephrine and they don't, this is important, and they don't have chronic fatigue based issues, right? Because you don't want to push someone's dopamine and norepinephrine and cortisol in the morning if they're still in a recovery phase of healing.

Because we actually don't want to push that they're still healing, which is why they're not producing as much. But if you're just more of like the larger kaffa body type, like the endomorph, and you're just not producing a lot of cortisol or epinephrine or dopamine, nothing wrong with stimulating that body in the morning. I wanted to ask you because we get a lot of calls for this specifically and it's always a difficult question to answer for us in terms of advice. What's your best advice for somebody that works like a graveyard or like a night shift?

What are the methods that they can apply to kind of balance things in that situation? It is challenging and I've gotten the same questions. So I've worked with firefighters, I've worked with so many individuals. Firefighters is the most difficult because- It flips, their schedule flips. Exactly. Their schedule isn't the same. Their schedule is essentially like two or three 24-hour shifts.

And so, and then there's also the trauma. It's not the same as being in war, but you're stimulated. Am I going to wake up tonight? Am I going to get the call tonight? Yes, I am. It's like, how many times am I going to get the call? Is this going to be a four alarm fire that this is going to be the day or is it just a regular day? That that's a difficult group. Obviously we help them with getting to sleep as best they can, but you can't give them a high dose of liquid melatonin or anything like that because they need to be able to wake up that night. So that one's a challenge you want.

Now, the shift worker, like the nurses we work with or others, what we need to do is create a separate, which is not ideal, diurnal rhythm or diphasic rhythm. So let's say that they get off at seven in the morning. Okay, they're probably going to have some food because it's difficult for them to even eat and drink while on shift. So let's say they then go to bed around 9 a.m. or 10 a.m. We need then the same preparation we would do for the evening as we would do in that morning. That has to become their night. Again, not ideal, but that the pineal gland and the part of the hypothalamus is regulated by light.

So we need to do the blackout shades, just the salt lamps, the blue light blockers, the calming based protocol, and then still not eating a couple hours before they go to sleep, which is really difficult for shift workers in the morning. And then we need to wake up at the same time each day. So we just try to create that eight hours there. And then when they wake up, that begins their morning, which is again, kind of strange, but that's when they do their errands and their routine before going off to work. All right. So you just flip it completely. And usually it's when you're first

starting out as a nurse or other jobs, police, et cetera. Once you get some seniority, you typically get neural hours. Yeah. And so you're most- You hope for that. Yeah. And you're hopefully best able to deal with that also in your twenties and early thirties.

Much more challenging if you're doing that for 20, 30 years. Yeah. What are some of the signs that your catabolic hormones are just taking over? If you're starting to feel poor recovery from workouts or you're not getting the gains or the adaptations that you think that you should, or you're starting to feel poor recovery from workouts or you're not getting the gains or the adaptations that you think that you should, or you're starting to put on a little bit more belly fat, even though you're working out as hard or even a little bit better, you're sore for longer, decreasing energy, libido.

Now you could just take, like maybe I am over training by doing this for a little bit too long. Okay, you might take three days off or a week off with an unloading week. If you still don't feel better after that, that's a real sign that you're moving more to a catabolic stage. So lower mood, lower energy, lower libido, lower endurance, lower adaptations to exercise.

What's the connection between that and visceral or belly body facts? I've heard that higher levels of cortisol or inappropriate levels of cortisol because I've heard that higher levels of cortisol or inappropriate levels of cortisol, I should say, can promote visceral body fat in particular, is connected to visceral body fat and belly fat. So in other words, it could change your fat disposition or where you store body fat. You tend to store it on your hips and now suddenly, and you heard this from women, because

men are used to storing body fat in their bellies, but you hear this from women like I didn't store body fat in my belly ever and all of a sudden I'm getting belly fat. Yeah, and it's a good point and you probably will hear it more from women and a lot of it has to do with levels of estrogen. Okay. So if our cortisol levels go up oftentimes and typically a cortisol is a glucocorticoid right so it raises blood sugar levels. So if you have chronic levels of stress you can raise blood sugar levels without even eating any carbohydrates. That's what a lot of people don't know is like, oh, I don't even eat carbs or I'm below 50 grams a day or I don't have any carbs in the morning, but my blood sugar is still 120. It's like, okay, well, if you're that stressed, your body's going to look to the liver and if not the muscles.

Now you're breaking down muscle tissue, you're raising blood sugar levels, you start to increase fat stores, the higher the fat stores of adipose tissue, the elevated levels of estrogen, more elevated levels of estrogen. That elevated level of estrogen is going to then cause you to store more body fat as well. So then it's a vicious cycle because now as you store more body fat, you produce more estrogen, you're chronically stressed and just cycle just for- Is it that you produce more estrogen or is that you're more sensitive fat, you produce more estrogen, you're chronically stressed and just cycle just for- Is it that you produce more estrogen or is it that you're more sensitive to estrogen or both? Your estrogen receptors are more sensitive.

However, no, you don't necessarily produce more estrogen unless you're being exposed to environmental, exogenous forms of estrogen, but your estrogen receptors are, they do go up. So it's like you just made it, you made whatever estrogen you have, like you have more estrogen, because you have more receptors. Yes, 100%. Wow.

Now, what you said about blood sugar is very interesting. I remember years ago I had a client who would monitor his blood sugar carefully. He was pre-diabetic. And I remember we did a workout and we trained really, really hard, too hard. And he tested his blood sugar and it was high. And he's like, this doesn't make any sense. I didn't eat anything. And at the time I didn't understand it either. I said, I don't get what's going on. I talked to a friend of mine,

who luckily was in the functional medicine space, which years ago was quite rare. She said, oh, it was too much stress. His liver dumped a bunch of glycogen. That was the first time I'd ever heard of that. You could literally have a nightmare in the middle of the night and get a spike in blood sugar, even though you ate nothing of that. So you could literally, he could have a nightmare in the middle of the night and get a spike in blood sugar, even though you ate nothing. Yeah, and if you're wearing continuous glucose monitors, if you try it out, you might actually see that. Yeah, or get an argument and you'll see

your blood sugar go up or something. Really, you will. And so it's funny, and I've shared this story, I think, here before, but it's worth repeating. I've read that in the literature, but I had never seen it. I had literally never seen it. And then I was working with a type one diabetic client, and we were trying to get their blood sugar under control in every way, shape, or form.

Because having dysregulated blood sugar is one of the fastest ways to age and end up with chronic based disease. And you end up with advanced glycation end products, all sorts of different things. So we found, because he only had time to do his workout after work, which if that's all you have, that's all you have, no big deal. And so every time he did a boot camp, every time he did high intensity interval training, every time he did his boxing, his blood sugar went up, stayed elevated the next morning. The only thing that brought it down was low intensity cardio, the craziest thing. And he hated low intensity cardio and didn't want to do that. So we had to play with it and move it around a little bit to try to get it earlier in the day. And that's a big one too is mismatch workout timing. So when you

look at this, great, great studies on this that now again, not everybody can do this, but I like to do my strength training mid afternoon. I'm someone, I had Addison's disease, believe it or not, many, many years ago. That's kind of how I got into this industry in the first place, rheumatoid arthritis, Addison's disease, type 2 diabetes, a whole lot of how I got into this industry in the first place, rheumatoid arthritis, addisensis disease, type two diabetes, a whole lot of issues. Took me 10 years to recover, but I learned a lot in that process and that's why I'm here today. But what I found was that now that I'm healthy,

I produce a lot of dopamine, I produce a lot of norepinephrine, I produce a lot of cortisol just naturally. And so for me, doing a morning workout is too stimulating. Actually, I feel terrible about two, three hours later after. I feel great while I'm doing it. If I do a mid-afternoon, what they found is that you get the most benefit from testosterone to cortisol ratio. So by the

time you get to mid-afternoon, your cortisol has dropped precipitously. It gets really come down. If you start the day, let's say at a nine, before lunch you're at a three. By dinner, you're at about a one, one and a half normally. It really comes down. The before bet at.5. One of the biggest issues with your workout is it's spiking cortisol and cortisol being almost in exact opposition of testosterone. Testosterone is normally at its highest in the morning, but you can actually give it a boost mid-afternoon through a strain training workout.

When cortisol is low. When cortisol is low. Yeah, exactly. With a smart workout. And I feel great. I was going to say, it also helps with that afternoon energy slump that some people get. Exactly. Yes. Plus, it's a great de-stressor. If you're able to do that, it'll sometimes be when I used to be in a gym in different place like that, my clinic, it could be one o'clock or so. I don't usually get that opportunity now. Usually,

it's now end of the day, but still four or five hours from bed. And it does give me that extra little wave of energy, but not that excitability manic energy where your heart rate can't calm down. It's just enough to move through that afternoon lull where a lot of people, they'll reach for another coffee, an energy drink, or maybe something more stimulating. What do you, now, when you're doing these tests throughout the day, because we did a hormone test with you and we did, it was four saliva tests, I believe. I think you mentioned it was like morning,

like first thing when you wake up. Yes. Lunch, before dinner. Before lunch, before dinner, and then before bed. Testosterone's supposed to be the highest in the morning, so it's cortisol. Those start to drop throughout the day. What about the other hormones?

What do those look like throughout the day, typically? For men, they're basically going to all be at their peak. So that's the nice thing at looking at. In the morning? In the morning. So that's why in the morning, you have four tubes of saliva, but the first one is the largest one. And that's because we're collecting all the sex

hormones, not just cortisol. Okay. Then you get a smaller tube before lunch, you fill it up halfway just with saliva. And then one before dinner and then one before bed. Any 30 minutes or so before bed so we can actually look at cortisol. That's to me, if you can only run two, it'd be first

morning and then it'd be before bed. Okay. Now it's great to see your rhythm, because all of you, we can actually see your total cortisol output, which is impossible to do any other way, except through these salivities. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And now when people aren't, because when people are on hormone replacement therapy, or hormone optimization, through exogenous means, are you, obviously it's gonna look different. Is it gonna look different? Yeah, we should chat about that because I know you three are using testosterone replacement therapy. And I've, some great research on this as well.

It's fascinating and I think it is now changing the industry. And you all see a great practitioner, so they're doing it now twice a week? Are you doing it? Or are you doing it once a week? I do it twice. Twice? Okay.

So what they found was the actual mean, so the elevation of testosterone on day one for TRT. So you inject yourself within 24 to 48 hours, it's going to peak. Yeah. Right. And so the mean on that, they only do it by, so conventional medicine just looks at total testosterone. They don't really look at free testosterone too much. A good doctor will look at the free testosterone because that's ultimately what really matters. But it was a 1,012. So, 1,012 I should say, 1,112 was the mean peak in terms of testosterone. Now, by day six or seven, it was 400 with a plus minus of 297. So, it's huge range. Some guys were up to 1,400, 1,500.

Some were at 100 to 700. So it's just this huge range, which is why my recommendation, actually last time, a bunch of years ago, but I said, if you can, do twice a week, lower dosage, and it will allow you to feel that same benefit all the way through. Now, since then, I've worked with a lot of guys on TRT, it's obviously a lot more popular now, much more prevalent. And what I'll say is this, most guys know right away when their level falls below a certain number. Like without even testing it, they're like, oh yeah, I feel it. Mood, strength. I was just talking to a guy, he's 71 years old, he uses TRT, he's like, this is what I use,

this is what I've always used. I can tell that every time I go down, just by, I think he dropped it by like 30 milligrams his dosage, you know, I think he went from like 100 to like 75 or 70, somewhere right around there. He's like, yeah, it wasn't right. He's like, it didn't give me what I was looking for. He's like, when I'm at this number,

he's like, that's the perfect amount for me. I hear some people do now sub-Q injections on a daily basis to keep it as long as possible. I don't know how you would do that with the oil, but that's what some people are doing. Yeah, I think in the future, it's every two to three days. Now it's a lot more of a pain, right? Literally to do that. Literally.

Yeah. That's the only reason why I don't like doing the two times a week is because of just having to inject twice a week, you know, forever like that. But I know that my levels are like that. They took a while before they could figure out the optimal dose for me because I was crashing hard by day seven. I remember you saying that. Yeah. Yeah. And you don't want that. I don't know that it's worse, but it is worse in terms of mood and in terms of getting in the gym and exercises sticking with

the routine. So I don't think it's as, I think that if you can, you take the dosage down based on what your levels say, but also based on feel, right? Because part of it is how you feel, part of it is what your numbers look like. That goes for every functional medicine test in the world. It's not just the numbers, it's the symptomatology. And then one thing we need to look at is if you can remember, was this done, this lab test the day or two after after an injection because you're gonna be at high levels. Some of you are at really high levels, but now we can talk about that and we can say, okay, based on that, like I would say,

based on that safely, you're going to be around 40 to 50% in six or seven days. Like however you wanna look at it. Of that, and that might be perfect. Right, for each person. All right, so let's look at our test. Let that might be perfect. Yeah, right for for each person All right. So let's look at our test. Let's dive All right, so we're gonna start with Sal Sal yours is the only one we didn't have The point of reference we don't have a point of reference. So that's why I do always love baseline, but that's okay

We're gonna dive right into it. So I'm gonna I'm gonna start with DHEA and then I'll kind of work down to estrogen. So I supplement with that as well. So DHEA to... I was going to ask you because your DHEA is high, but it's excellent. It's a 49. Okay, good. So how much do you supplement with DHEA? 100 milligrams. Oh, you do? Okay. So that's a high dosage as well. 50 to 100 milligrams is typically the dosage we would give 55, 60 plus, usually divided dosage, if not all in the morning. All in the morning. Are you taking the morning?

All in the morning. Okay, great. So that would mimic more of nature. So that's what we want. So your DHEA is great. You're a 49.4. If you ever wanted to, you could try doing 50. I always like to tell people you want the lowest possible dose to get the best clinical effect. I started with 50 and I went up to 100 because I felt better on 100. What did you feel? I'm interested. More energy and better sleep. Actually better sleep, I noticed. Okay. That's great. Great to hear. Your testosterone was 1513.

So it was higher than you. You were the high number in the group. Yeah. I don't know- Obviously. Not surprised. Yeah. I don't know what it was baseline, like I said before, but your levels could be, if it's 1513, may also be 700, 800. By the end of the week.

By the end of the week. Yeah. But we're talking about this is free testosterone. Okay. So. Could be accidentally drawing a little bit more than what- So what I'm saying is you probably feel phenomenal. We'll put it that way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Your progesterone was pretty normal, it was 158. And your estrogen is only 2.8. Now, is it higher than the 1.6 we like to see? Yes, but at this number for testosterone. It should be higher. Oh, it should be an eight or nine. Okay.

Yeah, it should be like three times. So you are, unless you're taking something, you are not converting testosterone to estrogen. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, so. Two masculines, but a mood. Well, it's a good thing.

You do want estrogen. It's actually, it's preservative for anti You do want estrogen. It's actually it's preservative for anti-aging but you just don't want a lot because it can cause obviously gynecomastia and all sorts of other issues. Alright so let's check out your cortisol levels now unless you have any questions on the others. Okay so what do we want in the morning we said six to nine basically is our number. You were a 7.8 nanograms per milliliter. At noon, you were right on the cusp. We want two to three, or 3.1 technically.

You were 3.2, so that's great. Nothing to change there. Evening, you were higher than we want. We want up to a two. Again, only 2.1, but we want to start to come down. And then before bed, not out of range, which is above a.9, but we wanted a.6 or less, and you were a.8.

Okay, so a little high in the evening. Yeah, but really like great levels. I mean there's really no issue there. And then total cortisol we talked about before, we want that between nine and 13 units for the day, and you were a 13.9. So just out of the zone. And so what I would say is this,

is like this is pretty balanced. The testosterone, if I was your doctor, I would say, let's see if we can go a little lower. Let's get back off a little bit. For only four, because I want you to stay on this at the right dosage for you for the rest of your life, right? Yeah, yeah. And so it's like, okay, well, what's the right dosage? You're going to have to just play with that and find out what's right for you. But this is great.

I think these are good levels. And so work a little bit more. If you're, what's your deep sleep and REM sleep look like? I don't know. Okay. So you don't track that? I don't track it, no. I would track that.

Like that's that next like evolution of like what I would say to a client. Like what do you want to do now? All right, if you're optimizing nutrition and exercising and like healthy biohacking and all of those things, let's start to look at your sleep. Okay. It's probably the number one thing for aging

as we start to. I mean, I sleep okay. It's not bad. I can have bad sleep sometimes, but usually I'm okay. Are you using your? I use CPAP now. You do? Oh, you do? Okay. Yeah.

How long have you had to use the CPAP? Well, I mean, I probably had to have used it longer than I have, but it's been maybe at least three, four months now that I've had it. Okay. And that's probably given you a lot of benefit in terms of, let's say. Yeah, definitely, definitely. Good. So we'll look at that, or a whoop,

I don't know if you guys work with any companies as well, but- We don't use Aura though. Yeah, I would definitely check that out. Or is the best for sleep- Normally I have mine, I didn't wear mine this time around, so it'll be interesting, but I will after this. And then don't go by any one night,

look at the month of aggregated data, like what's my typical deep, my typical REM. You want to shoot for 90 minutes or more of deep, and then two hours or more of REM. And just like on a consistent basis, try to get in bed, stay in bed. If you're training, stay in, if you can be in bed for eight and a half hours and get eight hours

of sleep, that's ideal. If you find yourself waking a lot between one and three in the morning or two and four in the morning, it can be dysregulated cortisol as well. Yeah. Okay. So. That'll happen sometimes. All right. Good results. Justin's up next. All right. Justin, previous DHEA was 12.4. Previous testosterone was 163. Previous progesterone 24. Previous estradiol 1.9. All of those were perfect. They were great numbers. You had just started TRT when we did this lab. Yeah. Just started then, yeah.

And so those were like ideal numbers. Testosterone or DHEA now is an 8.1. No issues with that. Okay. So optimal is between 6 and 18. Do you take any DHEA or anything? I don't. I don't supplement with that, yeah.

At 8.1, you could start to think about it. You wouldn't. So we actually start out with just five milligrams twice a day. You can start with 10. You can start with a little bit more if you wanted to, but we don't really need to get you above a 20, 25, so not a lot more that would move the needle. Now your testosterone this time was a lot higher. It was 8.26. And I don't think you said you've changed your dosage, right? No, I haven't. So I'm assuming that what we got was your day or two after. Oh yeah, closer probably to the injection.

And that will fall to maybe 200 by the end of the week. Maybe not that low. That would be a big drop. So I wonder if as well, cause these tests are really accurate. I mean, these are very accurate tests, especially when you're looking at free testosterone, is that if your body is utilizing this testosterone, the receptors are stronger for testosterone now than they were before. Maybe before you were converting more to DHT, which this test isn't measuring or something like that. It's possible. Okay. Interesting.

And DHT, it's an anabolic hormone. It's not that it's not good in terms of exercise and gains and all of that, but it can have some detrimental side effects for prostate inflammation, hair loss, et cetera. Doesn't DHT also lower estrogen? Only if testosterone is moving to DHT instead of converted estrogen. Got it. Yeah. Okay. Because it can go one of two pathways. Okay. Okay. Okay. So those are the main ones. And by the way, now that I'm kind of running my mind around it, I actually – I don't have to look back in the research on this so you get me thinking. I do

actually believe that your body can endogenously produce higher levels of estrogen from adipose tissue. So I want to go back and look at that. Oh, yeah. Because for men, you're looking at a conversion from hormone production estrogen, but for Roman, they're looking for estrogen production from the ovaries. So I actually want to look at to see if the adipose tissue does that. I was fatter back then.

Well, your estrogen is at 3.6. Now. Ooh, that sounds high. It's high. So I would actually start to use indole 3-carbonyl and dim, so di-indole methane. So those two, which are in cruciferous vegetables, help to block that and get it out of your body faster. More blocky. Okay.

Yeah. So I might use that. Yeah. So don't touch me. Estrogen balance, that'll be helpful. But if you look at the ratio, so you didn't even double your estrogen, but you quadrupled your testosterone number. So meaning like it's not that the estrogen. Yeah. That'd be pretty good. That sounds good to me. Yes.

All right. Let's look at those cortisol numbers. So from before, cortisol was 7.6 in the morning. Excellent. High at noon at 3.8, high in the evening at 3.4, and then back down to 0.8 at night. So not bad at night. Oh, okay.

Again, would like it. Just leave it down at night. Just an after at night. Again, would like it.6. Just down at night. Yeah, just in the absence. Just stress them the fuck out. All the ways around us. Good Lord. Do you drink a fair amount of caffeine? I do. So that's probably the caffeine.

And then the caffeine wears off, which is six hour half-life of that. So that's probably. It might be similar, I bet, on that then. That explains it. But your cortisol now, I believe, let me just make sure. Oh, that was before?

That was previous. Okay. Yep, so now it is a seven in the morning, so optimal. Still high around noon, it's at six, so that's a big one. So that's gonna be the caffeine. Yep. And then in the evening it drops down to low, believe it or not, at.4, and then optimal before bed.

So yeah, those look good. Nice job, dude. Whatever you're doing. Yeah. Huh? Looks good. I'm not stoking caffeine. Is that yoga class?

You're saying you can take it or what? Yeah, just trying to be chill, you know? That's a good thing. All right, Adam's up next. Let's see. Did you save Doug for last because he won? Is that why? There's no winner in this one.

Everybody's a winner. Everyone's a winner, okay? Everyone's a winner in this everybody's winner Goal was the highest disaster and kill it then Sal's Your testosterone last time was a 233 Okay, and and that was actually pretty good. We I think that was actually before you moved to the twice a week, but I'm not sure. You might have already moved it twice a week. I don't remember. I know I played with that for a little bit and I'm not there. I'm once a week right now because I've been in... It's harder for me to consistently remember to go twice a week.

I just, I don't like doing it. Oh, so you don't take it home? Yeah. No, no, I do take it home, but I mean, I'm just, I'm not consistent when I have to go twice. I'm good if it's once a week. Once a week, it's easy. I start the week out every week know I do take it home, but I mean I'm just I'm not really I'm not consistent when I have to go twice I'm good if it's once a week once a week. It's easy. I start the week out every week I do it. It's but if I have to remember to do it again. I always were stick it here. Let us see what you But that's good, that's good, okay, the numbers pretty good. Yeah, I felt like I've it's been about I want to say a good Two years now where I felt like I've really honed in on where I was talking, I don't know if you were in here or not, when this is the best I've ever

been to of not even having to take a Remedex which was what I used to have to do to keep the estrogen at bay. I typically, my estrogen would shoot up but I haven't had to mess with the Remedex in a long time which has made me really happy that I found that kind of balance. How would it affect you? Because your lab doesn't show that. That's why obviously your symptoms matter. I would get gynecomastia. Yeah, I'm very sensitive to it.

If I ever, you know. Could it be progesterone related? Can gynecomastia be related to progesterone as well? Mainly estrogen. Anytime, so two ways I would notice. Anytime I would slightly up my dose, even the slightest bit, I would notice. Or if I'm actually not training.

So if I would keep my normal TRT dose and then not be lifting weights, I could notice a sort of kick out. If I kept my TRT dose where it's supposed to be and I'm straight training at least two to three times a week, I've been perfect. So I'd just- It is good.

I'm telling you, like, there is some genetic variability with all of this, and to start to dial in what works for you is just of the utmost importance without a doubt. Well, I can tell you that we can just kind of jump back and forth for yours. Your testosterone is 224 this time. So it's exactly the same. I mean, which is uncanny. I've been very consistent with my dosage. Estrogen before was 1.4, so it was higher, but normal range. And now it's 0.7. So it's great. Good.

Yeah. You don't even need to take an estrogen support or the You're taking now, but if you fight if you feel you're prone to it There's nothing wrong with taking that to just keep it at bay if you feel like you're something So I do what I do and I and I haven't really had to do this in a long time But if I start to feel this sensitivity come up, I'll take it and then it'll go away And then I don't worry about it until then I don't ever let it completely start to form like I would in the past because I'm not knowing how to control it. Where now I wait to feel that if it only take it if I sort of feel it coming on. I haven't in a long time.

So it's been good. Very good. DHEA has come down a bit. It was 39 before and it is 4.6 now. So I don't supplement at all. What would you recommend I take? I would probably do 10 milligrams twice a day. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And then just probably do 10 milligrams twice a day. Okay.

Yeah. Okay. And then just start at just 10 milligrams in the morning. Okay. Make sure there's no aromatase where it's starting to cause maybe some tingling or is that what you typically feel? Yep. Yep.

It starts with that before it starts to do anything. Yeah, around the nipple area. And then if you don't have that, then you can add the other 10. Now it shouldn't because remember, DHEA can move to wherever it wants in wants the sterile hormone pathway. Can help to balance cortisol, can end up with testosterone, then testosterone converted to estrogen or DHT. And you might want to just use again the it's just I3C and DIM. Two extracts from broccoli, great product and it will block some of the estrogen. It's not a bad product. You guys create that? You guys have that? Yes, it's called estrogen support. Got it. Got it. All right. Let's take a look at your cortisol

levels. Progesterone was totally normal. It was 55 before. Now it's 21 now. Both are totally normal for guys. Cortisol before was high. It was 17.4 in the morning. So it shouldn't be above a nine. It was borderline. I was three at lunch, 3.3 in the evening, so it's a point and a half too high, and then 0.8 at night. So it did come down a little bit before bed, which was good. Now, perfect, 6.3 in the morning, 1.7 at noon, 0.8 in the evening, and then 0.5 at night. So that's excellent, really good.

What were we so stressed out about before? You, of course. There was something going on there. Yeah, there was something going on there. We were slacking off a while back, that's for sure. Because that's not when it's first in while back. That's not caffeine. That's what it was all about. That's the cortisol awakening response. I'm pretty high on caffeine in the morning time. That's before you even had caffeine. That was upon waking. When you

look at that, the previous one is what I'm saying. It's great now. Some people are slow and fast metabolizers of caffeine as well, but it also depends on the dosage. There's 200 milligrams, then there's 600 milligrams, and there's, you know. There's a fine, there's a one, once I started to get to 600, so 400 seems to be very good for me.

Like 400 and early in the day, I feel great. I start flirting with 600 and start pushing it closer to noon, it starts to disrupt sleep. Definitely have connected that. If you check your heart rate too, you really don't want it to rise more than like three beats to maybe five at rest. So if you have a caffeinated beverage, this goes for food sensitivities, which I know we're going to talk about in the future. If your heart rate goes up,

you are having a reaction to that and you're definitely sympathetic nervous system tone. It's a good thing just to look at. Good to know. Thank you. All right. Doug is up. Last but not least, previous testosterone was a 42. Previous DHEA was 7.9. DHEA borderline, testosterone obviously too low. Right? What is it now? 121 for testosterone. Perfect. Okay. Yeah. What are you doing? Boy, what kinds of things? Yeah. Perfect. What are you doing? Boy, all kinds of things.

Yeah? Yeah. So you're, well, I'll get to your cortisol, but like you've done, you had a big turnaround from your cortisol numbers and your testosterone. So I'll just go through them. Your testosterone was 42, which even at 70 plus, we don't want it at 42.4, 1.9, and 1.5 at night. So it was essentially double the amount of cortisol that you would want to produce for the day. I can just do a quick math on this, 10, 16, 18, 19 and a half, call it 20.

Yeah, just about double at the max what you would want to produce. Now, testosterone is 121, which is great honestly for any age for testosterone. Progesterone is 31, estradiol only 0.8, DHEA 6. So, I mean we can play with that DHEA a little bit, but it's not bad, it's just borderline. Cortisol though had the biggest change. It went from 9.4, 6.4 to 6.8, 2.6, 1.1, and 0.6 at night, total cortisol 11. Okay. So you cut your cortisol basically in half. Beautiful. Good for you.

It's great. Yeah. He just cares less about that stress. I know that's been an area I know you've been really trying to- I've been working on my sleep a lot. I track it and I've done a lot better. Yeah. That will change. We didn't actually talk about that, but sleep will change your testosterone faster than almost anything. If you're not getting good sleep and it's disrupted

and it's not restorative, it's gonna affect your progesterone levels, it's gonna lower them, and it's gonna lower your testosterone and DHA as well. So that's why really dialing in the sleep, making sure that you're getting not just enough hours, but restorative sleep of deep sleep and REM sleep really do matter. I know it wasn't competition, but I do kind of feel like Doug and I kind of won this one, don't you?

I think so. You feel like that? I feel like that. Like I said, everybody's here, winner. That's for sure. That was stress. Great testosterone. That was good, that was good though, huh?

That was a good one. Not bad. Probably one of our better balances, I'd say. No, I actually, I think most of your numbers, especially cortisol, have improved over the last couple of years. I know you've been using magnesium and different things like that

to help to turn off that sympathetic nervous system at night. All of that comes kind of with just dialing in the lifestyle that you guys have been talking about and finding out what really works for your body. Now typically when you do these and you have a client who did a test like this, when you look at these numbers and there's some that are off, you have protocols. Yes.

You see like, okay, this is out of whack here, this is out of balance there. It's a really, it's like a window into the right protocol for that individual to help, and it's through measuring the hormones. Now how long do you, how often I should say, do you test the hormones after you start implementing certain protocols? Yeah, so let's say a female has estrogen dominance,

so lower progesterone levels. They might even show higher testosterone because of stress, or a male's showing lower testosterone, lower DHEA, higher elevated cortisol at night. That's the most typical profiles that we see. We are going to put someone on a 12 week protocol to maybe 16 weeks and then we're going to lab test at that 12 to 16 weeks. Now, we're going to use things like magnesium that we talked about before, especially in the evening. We'll use B complex or activated B's during the day. We'll use omega-3's which help to balance the hormones and inflammation.

We'll use a product called adrenal soothe which has ashwagandha, L-theanine, phospholacering that starts to quiet cortisol in the evening and maybe we'll ashwagandha, L-theanine, phospholacering that starts to quiet cortisol in the evening. And maybe we'll use some liquid melatonin at night, which is a little bit different because it's in and out of your system faster, so you're not groggy the next day. For women or for guys with higher estrogen, we'll use estrogen support, which is that I3C. And damn, again, these are all natural supplements and ingredients. And then what we'll want to do though, this is really I3C and DIMM. Again, these are all natural supplements and ingredients. And then what we'll want to do though, this is really important, and we can use DHA if we need to, but don't always need to in younger clients. What we want to do is we want to

test these levels while still on the supplements. And that's what a lot of people don't do. They stop them and then they're getting not their baseline. Now you've been on these for 12 weeks to 16 weeks. Test where you're at. If everything is balanced, amazing. Then we're going to use a specific protocol as well to titrate you down. So we're very going to slowly to figure out maybe using six products. All right.

We're going to start with what first? Maybe we start to remove the liquid melatonin first. Or just use the magnesium, the adrenal soot. So then what do we do? Well, instead of taking 2.5 milligrams a night, not a big dosage, we'll take it to 1.5 milligrams a night. the liquid melatonin first or just use the magnesium, the adrenal soothe. So then what do we do? Well instead of taking 2.5 milligrams a night, not a big dosage, we'll take it to one and a half or one and a quarter and we'll do that for a week.

Did it change your sleep? No. Great. Let's go to a half a milligram. Change your sleep? No. And then after a half a milligram, we can just remove it the next week. So it's typically over two to three weeks that you slowly come off a supplement and

it allows you to see if there's a rebound effect. If there's a rebound effect, it means your body just needs that for a little bit longer. It's not just supplementation, it's also lifestyle. If you're going to do a workout and it's within an hour or two of bed, it might just be too stimulated. Some people can do a sauna an hour before bed and it actually helps their sleep. Other people, it's detrimental to their sleep. Yeah, it would hurt me. A lot of people like red light 60 minutes before bed because it's longer wavelengths, less energy than blue light. So it can actually help to reset that circadian

rhythm as well. So that could be a nice thing to do. I feel that. So you add these things in and it's the whole de-stress protocol and each, so every time someone runs this lab, you get that whole protocol personalized for you. That's what I believe the future really of health and medicine is, is being able to run these labs. Totally. Awesome. That's great. I feel like this is one of the most fundamental tests that people should do. This is one that is probably our maybe like second or third most popular lab. We run tens of thousands of just this lab a year and it's with people literally all over the world. And it can be game changing because the goal is to find something before it goes wrong. But if not, at least, okay, now you see what's going on between your hormones and you're able

to fix that. So yeah, I appreciate you. A little off topic and we can cut this if you don't want to talk about it on here, but I'm just curious because what's so cool, you have thousands and thousands of people. You got to have so much great data on all this. Are you using AI at all to support what you guys are doing as far as protocols? And I would think having that now, you could really quickly solve a lot of problems and get right to a protocol. Are you using it at all? Are you messing with that at all? Yes. We built this about 18 months ago. Like you said, we have over half a million labs, or 500,000 labs, over a million to a million and a half data points. It's actually well over that.

It's probably around 10 million data points. Then we have all the people and their healing based process. What you're able to do, because a lot of people worried about their data, and this is the nice thing about these labs, it's not shared with anybody. So we use all third party lab testing, which you should always do as a practitioner. If you own the lab company, it's a little sketchy there.

Of course. So you always keep that separate. Look, our supplements fixed everything. Exactly. Wow. Exactly. So you want independent research and data, CLIA certified labs,

and then you have your practitioner, then there's you. If you want to share this with your PCP, or insurance and then you have your practitioner, and then there's you. If you want to share this with your PCP or insurance or whatever, feel free, but people like it private. Now, what we can do is on a HIPAA compliant level, you can anonymize all this data. Sure. And that's the amazing thing. So all you see is numbers.

And then what we now do, and you'll see our labs actually look different than they have before. So we've created our own API. We have all new structured data. I like to geek out on this stuff all the time. And I've got a couple of scientists on my team that love to do this as well. We've now made it super easy to read for a client. It summarizes exactly what your data points mean just based on your numbers. So no humans doing that. And then it gives you a protocol based on how others got well based on your numbers. So it's unbelievable. Now, the nice thing is you then, again, doesn't take into account though, the symptoms really. So I still believe there should be human. So a human then goes through

this and says, oh yeah, but based on Sal or Justin or Adam or Doug, we need to take out this one and add this instead. So that's how I believe that human and AI will work best in the future is our practitioners can't forget anything because it's already there. It's based on all of the teachings that I've done before. And so it's pretty remarkable. I mean, I love this stuff. Oh, I mean, I said, so cool.

I mean, I feel like there's a future in the business to where people can almost do it themselves. But then only if I am running into problems or I notice other symptoms, maybe I call your team and I'm like, okay, I'm following the protocol as it's laid out, but I noticed this and fill this. And then that's where the real person comes in. But I bet AI would be able to help a good percentage of people just because you have so many data points.

So, and we do use that now and people are able to get their labs if they need to on their own, but do a 30 minute call with a practitioner. That's like, our team, their average industry experience is over a decade. So, I mean, they just have so many hours. They've got that 10,000 hours. And you really want that.

An unfortunate story the other day, someone wrote in on the minerals and metals test and they looked at their heavy metals and they were a practitioner. They weren't trained through IHP, which we try to train people to be able to read all of these labs, but they're a doctor and so we give them access to all of these labs. We sign off on it. We have a medical director and a medical doctor in every single state. And here's the problem. They look at just the graph and they saw that mercury was elevated and aluminum was

elevated. That's not uncommon. We're exposed to all of these things in the environment. The problem is they looked at five-degree testing, the graphs looks very similar. Well, the problem is there's no upper limit on heavy metals. So the graph goes from, we'll call it a one is high for aluminum, to infinity. And so where do you graph it? Well, you have to graph it like halfway, somewhere between one and infinity. Now we're going to this in the future, but they didn't interpret it correctly because they didn't look at the numbers in the bottom.

All the numbers for all of their clients were different. All they looked at was the graph. So that's why having a qualified person read this lab, it's worth it. Plus it comes with all of these labs. So that's the nice thing is like, you might as well just take advantage of it. We already include that with all the lab testing

Very cool. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, so my team just we've done this before but it's half off for your community So that is something we'd love to be able to bring you so it's literally 50% off that still includes the Consultation and that's at stevencobral.com Hormones test if people want to pick their own lab, definitely recommend they do so. So yeah, appreciate it. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy,

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