Science Vs - Hormone Balancing: Should You Try It?

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

Tons of us are feeling run-down and crummy and are wondering: What can we do about it? Well, lots of influencers have an answer: balancing our hormones. These influencers, including some doctors, recommend special supplements, diets, exercises, and prescriptions to tame our cortisol, boost our testosterone, and tackle our estrogen. Are they on to something? We get to the bottom of it with endocrinologists Dr. Deena Adimoolam and Prof. Anne Cappola; and urologist Prof. Mohit Khera.  Find our transcript here: https://bit.ly/ScienceVsHormoneBalancing (00:00) Hormones are hot right now  (02:57) A tale of cortisol and supplements (14:25) Are we in a testosterone crisis?! (20:42) Should you boost your T? (27:35) Is estrogen the enemy? This episode was produced by Rose Rimler, with help from Wendy Zukerman, Michelle Dang,  and Meryl Horn. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact checking by Erica Akiko Howard. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Bobby Lord, Bumi Hidaka, and Peter Leonard. Research help from Timmy Broderick. Recording help from Alex Stuckey. Thanks to all the researchers we spoke to including Dr. Amit Raval, Dr. Andrea Sansone, Prof. Bob Spencer, Dr. Daniel Rippon, Dr. Emma Adam, Dr. Hannah Troxel, Dr. John Hough, Dr. Jonathan Little, Prof. Paul Cooke, and Prof. Paula Hillard. Special thanks to Joel Werner, the Zukerman Family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson.  Science Vs is a Spotify Studios Original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus. So, a lot of us are feeling pretty drained right now, a bit crappy. Maybe you're not sleeping enough or you're sleeping too much. Well, more and more, we're hearing that one thing could be behind all this, your hormones. They're not balanced. If you're a man or a woman with messed up hormones, listen up. Let's discuss the best way to balance your hormones. If you are not getting your hormone levels tested, what are you doing?

People are saying that because of stuff like stress and chemicals in our environment, our hormones are out of whack and our bodies aren't working the way that they're supposed to. So one hormone that might be messed up is your stress hormone, cortisol. This is something that I wish I knew years ago. Cortisol, it's a real mother****er. Here's five signs that you're running on stress hormones and high cortisol and you probably need to make some huge lifestyle changes. I'm talking about adrenal fatigue. Yeah, you're talking about adrenal fatigue. Everybody's talking about adrenal fatigue. Yeah. You're talking about adrenal fatigue. Everybody's talking about adrenal fatigue. It goes from high cortisol to then having a cortisol crash. And that, my friends, is trouble.

And it's not just cortisol. Apparently, for a bunch of us, our testosterone is in the toilet. And it's making us feel awful. Guys, we have an epidemic of low testosterone among men. I have felt like absolute shit for the last year. Low T sucks. You don't even feel like a man. You're all depressed and shit.

And you'll also hear that our estrogen is running amok, causing things like painful periods. There's a good chance your estrogen levels are higher than they should be. You might be estrogen dominant. And these wellness gurus, I mean, some of them are even healthcare professionals, also have advice on how we can fix our hormonal imbalance. They'll recommend supplements, special diets, exercise regimes,

or even just direct injections of the hormone that you're missing out on. And all over the internet, people swear by these techniques. They say they've used them and they feel great. Oh my God, this has changed my life. Feel amazing. The way that it's made my energy, the way it's made me mentally far more clear has been f***ing incredible.

Probably one of the best things I've ever done for my health. Hormone therapy has definitely like changed my life. So if you are feeling not your best self and you want to get a little pep in your step, can you fix it by balancing your hormones? And also, what are the risks here? When it comes to hormones, there's a lot of, what are you doing? But then there's science. Science versus balancing your hormones is coming up just after the break. Chiara, it means smart in Italian. Too bad your barista can't spell it right.

So you just give a fake name, your cafe name, Julia. But the more you use it, the more it feels like you're in witness protection. Wait a minute. What kind of espresso drinks does Julia like anyway? Is it too late to change your latte order? But with an espresso machine by KitchenAid, you wouldn't be thinking any of this. Because you could have just made your espresso at home. Shop now at KitchenAid.ca.

What does the AI revolution mean? jobs, for getting things done? Who are the people creating this technology and what do they think? I'm Rana El-Khelyoubi, an AI scientist, entrepreneur, investor, and now host of the new podcast, Pioneers of AI. Think of it as your guide for all things AI with the most human issues at the center. Join me every Wednesday for Pioneers of AI. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you tune in. Welcome back. Today on the show, we are finding out if we need to be hacking our hormones. Senior producer Rose Rimler has been hacking away at the science. Yeah.

Rose, how are you feeling? Wow, there is just so much out there. There truly is. Do you just dip your toes into the hormone balancing world and it's like, whoa. And it's a whirlpool. They can suck you right in. Toe first. Yes.

Okay, so what I want to start by asking you is about cortisol because you go online and people will say that having too much cortisol can lead to a bunch of stuff that I may or may not be feeling right now. Not sleeping properly. Feeling anxious. Oh, no. So do we need to be worrying about cortisol? So cortisol is this hormone that our adrenal glands make.

And they make it when we're under some kind of stress. But we also make it routinely throughout the day and especially in the morning. So we make it within the first half hour or so of waking up. And that helps us just like, you know, jump out of bed with our fresh lease on life, which I know, Wendy, is what you do every morning, I assume. I can't remember the last time I bound out of bed. Well, it does help you wake up. And then it goes down throughout the course of the day. So it's good. It's a good thing. But having a lot of cortisol in your system is not a good thing. And I came across a particular story that really drove this home for me.

I heard it from Dr. Dina Adamulam. She's an endocrinologist, so a hormone doctor. What happened? So for Dina, this all started when this patient walked through her door. Do you remember the moment you first met her? I do. I had never seen her before. So sometimes I always ask my patient, can I see your driver's license? Because that gives me a good indication of what they might have looked like within the past five to 10 years. And it was clearly a drastic difference from what I could see.

What Dina saw was that this woman's face had gotten a lot rounder and it was very red and had more acne than usual, that she had gained a lot of weight, but it was primarily in her stomach. And she had lost hair. She had all these terrible bruises. And overall, she told Dina that she just felt terrible. And Dina wanted to know what was going on with her hormones. So she does a bunch of tests. When we did her blood work,

I found that she clearly did have very high levels of cortisol. Her cortisol was more than five times the upper limit of normal. Five times. Five times. Whoa. Yeah.

It looked like the patient had Cushing syndrome, which means that the body is just flooded with cortisol. And Dina immediately starts trying to work out, like, what could be causing this in this person? And she thinks maybe she has a tumor that's causing her body to pump out too much cortisol. I've seen maybe three or four cases in my entire career. And when you see these patients, it's devastating.

They look like how this patient was looking in front of me. This gets Dina really worried because these patients, they don't always get better. Sometimes I can't help them. I've had patients of mine die from Cushing's. But before Dina sent her off to get a bunch of scans and tests and to look for a tumor, she asked her one more question. Is there any supplements that you're taking? Is there any, you there any supplements that you're taking? Is there any, you know, vitamins that you're taking?

Is there anything that you haven't been prescribed by a doctor? And here's where Dina realizes what's causing all this. What did she say to you? She told me that she was taking a supplement. Oh. Yeah. This woman had gone online and seen all this stuff about how boosting your cortisol can improve your energy.

And so she took a supplement that promised to do that. And by the time she's seen Dina, she'd been taking it for months. And so when Dina heard that, weirdly, it actually was kind of a relief. As soon as she said that, that was a kind of like an aha moment. Like, thank God I don't think this person has an adrenal tumor and I have a path forward for this person to get better. So what the hell was in the supplement? Because I just assume all these garbage people sell online like does nothing. I know. I assume that too. I assume it's like M&Ms or something. Yeah. Well, Dina didn't

remember the name of the supplement. She wasn't sure exactly what was in it, but she remembers that it claimed to have a bunch of science-y sounding stuff like adaptogens in it. Maybe they actually did something, but there's a much simpler explanation here, which is that it's possible the supplement was spiked with the pharmaceutical version of cortisol. Oh. Like a corticosteroid, like synthetic cortisol that is like a Western medicine. And the reason I say that is because like studies have found this before. There is actually a study that analyzed 12 different adrenal support supplements.

So these are marketed to exactly the kind of person like Dina's patient who was feeling like low energy. Right, right. All natural, probably saying things like that. Herbal, yeah. All natural. Uh-huh. So how many of them had actual drugs in them? All of them had pharmaceutical stuff. No. Most of them had at least one steroid hormone. Oh, man. At least one. So this is very possible that's what happened. And, you know, there are other case reports of people who have taken supposedly all natural supplements that ended up getting this like jacked up cortisol level thing happening to them and getting bad symptoms. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. OK, so then with Dina's patient, like what happened? Please

tell me she stops taking it. So she stopped taking the supplement and she got better. She did get better. But it took a long time for her body to recover and change to go back to normal. I would say that took like more than six months to a year for her to start losing some of the weight, for her to feel like herself again. So it was really a really significant hit on her body in just so many ways. Oh, okay. So what we have learned is like really

beware of those supplements that are saying things like all natural because, you know, you're really not helping with your cortisol imbalance, right? Well, I'd take it a step further because the thing is that this woman probably never had a cortisol imbalance until she gave herself one accidentally by taking these freaking supplements. And that's because having an actual medical problem where you naturally have too much or too little cortisol is rare. So like when it comes to Cushing's, where your body starts pumping out too much cortisol, each year out of a million people, less than 10 people get diagnosed with this. Oh, wow. That is quite rare. Okay, so that's having too much cortisol. But then what about having too little? Like there's that thing online about adrenal fatigue? Right. So the idea there

that you hear people talk about online is that what happens here is that you're under so much stress that your adrenal glands are constantly pumping out cortisol and then they burn out. They just like, you've overused them and they fail. But the thing is that there's just no evidence for this. Oh. According to this big review paper

that went through all these papers that were on supposed adrenal fatigue. Right, right, right, right. Well, they ultimately concluded, I mean, it's in the title of the paper. It's called, Adrenal Fatigue Does Not Exist. Oh, wow.

Wow, that's a strong, strong statement. I read a lot of scientific papers that don't come out so strong. And also, annoyingly, this doesn't mean that there's no possibility someone can have a problem with low cortisol. That's a disease that exists.

It's actually called adrenal insufficiency, right? So that sounds very similar. To adrenal fatigue, yes. Yes, it does. But the thing with adrenal insufficiency is it's a very serious disease, and it's not just about feeling tired and crummy. We're talking extreme chronic fatigue. And Dina says you need to treat it or it can be fatal. It's really, really hard for them. It

requires medical intervention. You can't just have adrenal insufficiency and go on with your life without having some kind of medical help. Okay, so if you don't have a medical condition involving cortisol, there's really no need to worry? I mean, no, because your cortisol levels are supposed to go up and down throughout the day. And it's supposed to go up if there's like a stressor, because it'll help you get through that stressor. Like you want that stuff to happen. People who don't have these specific conditions, the body will balance it out naturally. Like that is what the brain is for basically to like say like more or less cortisol, please. Right. But I will say it's true that chronic stress is bad for you and chronic stress is associated with having higher cortisol. But even then, if you are someone who feels like you're under chronic stress,

I spoke about this with Dr. Ann Coppola. She's another endocrinologist at the University of Pennsylvania. She says that even then, focusing on the cortisol is the wrong way to think about it. I'm not a believer that we need to do something if we're feeling stressed to try to bring our cortisol levels down. Why not? It seems like it's a good idea. They need to come down. Why not tackle the root problem? The stress, not the response, right? So try to manage your stress. That makes more sense. That makes sense. You know, if stress is causing this like elevated cortisol, you got to handle the stress, not the cortisol. Yeah. It's like if you have a housemate that's never replacing the toilet

paper, the answer isn't hide the toilet paper in your room. You know, you've got to talk to your housemate about the problem. Is that right? Yeah, that's suspiciously specific. He used so much toilet paper rose. It was crazy. Anne actually had an analogy that's kind of like that. You know, you don't want to give perfume when you really need a bath. Better analogy. Yeah, but you guys both really brought your A game. And Anne says, if you really feel crappy and run down,

you deserve to have a doctor take you seriously and try to figure out what's wrong. But just don't expect a diagnosis of adrenal fatigue. Okay, so here's where we're at. When it comes to balancing your hormones for stress, the answer is don't do it unless you have a medical condition that you need medicine for. Do not try to balance your cortisol levels. Don't DIY endocrinology. And if you are really stressed out, try to focus on that. Although I know how hard that can be. Yeah. So let's move on. We're going to take a break. When we come back,

we're going to find out if we're really in a testosterone crisis. Coming up. We'll be right back. does Julia like anyway? Is it too late to change your latte order? But with an espresso machine by KitchenAid, you wouldn't be thinking any of this because you could have just made your espresso at home. Shop now at KitchenAid.ca. Welcome back to the show. Today, we are talking about hacking your hormones. Do you need to do it? How do you do it? Rose Rimler is here, our guide into this hormone balancing world.

Where are you taking me next? Wendy, I'm taking you to your favorite place, the ball sack. uh so uh what where what are we gonna do while we're here it's a strange place look around you this is where testosterone is made oh in people with testicles and it's made in other parts of the body too okay especially people without testicles but let's just get down to brass tacks we're here to talk about testosterone. Right. Okay. And what people on the internet are saying about it. So what are people on the internet saying about testosterone?

They are saying that testosterone levels in men generally across the board are plummeting. This is why a lot of men just feel crappy, don't have a lot of energy, don't feel like their best selves. And that the solution is to take some extra tea. Mmm, okay. And you hear this a lot on social media from wellness influencers. Of course, of course. Which sounds like it's a very new thing, but it's really not new. And men have actually been trying to boost their testosterone for ages.

And I talked about this with Mohit Khera. He's a doctor and professor of urology at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas. It goes way back, even 2000 BC. Ancient manuscripts talk about the ingestion of testicular tissue. They would eat it. They would eat it. Wait, whose testicular tissue were they eating? Goat, dog, pig, hippos. Hippos? How do you name it. Oh, gosh. How big is a hippo's balls? Something I didn't think I'd say today. I don't know that sounds like a riddle. Yeah.

And a lot of the motivation for eating hippo balls or whatever has come down to this idea that more testosterone means being more vital, more alive. Like there was this doctor in the 1920s who believed that he had boosted his patient's testosterone. And he wrote that his patients, quote, changed from feeble, parched, dribbling drones to men of vigorous bloom who threw away their glasses, shaved twice a day, dragged loads up to 220 pounds,

and even indulged in such youthful follies as buying land in Florida. I don't know what that means. That seems like a dig at Florida, which kind of comes out of left field. But away from hippos balls, Florida real estate. We do know testosterone is very important for your health. Hippos, balls, Florida real estate. No. We do know testosterone is very important for your health. And it's important for men to have enough testosterone.

Because if they don't have enough testosterone, they can feel pretty crappy. So here's Mohit. Low energy, low libido, erectile dysfunction, decreased muscle mass, increased fat deposition, poor sleep, poor cognition, and some depression as well. Wow, that's a long list. You got muscle issues, brain issues. You want enough testosterone, right? Yeah. So then the question becomes how many men out there don't have enough? Like, are we truly in a testosterone crisis? Very interestingly, there is evidence that testosterone levels are going down over time. Mm-hmm. So, for example, there is a study that came out fairly recently

that looked at testosterone levels in 1999 in guys aged 15 to 39. This is in the U.S. So you pluck out, like, what, Ryan Phillippe or whatever, take him out of his cruel intentions set, test his testosterone. Okay. And then tested guys of that age range in 2015 and found that the younger generation really did have lower levels of testosterone than the younger generation really did have lower levels of testosterone than the older generation.

So it was somewhere in the ballpark of 25% less on average. Sorry, I was so impressed by your ballpark pun that I missed it. What was it? Not intentional. Not cruel intentional. Wait, so seriously, how much lower? About 25% less. 25%?

That doesn't sound good. And other studies have also shown testosterone declines over time, too, by different amounts and in different populations. Okay. And we don't totally know why this is happening. I mean, one big theory is that it's related to chemicals in our environment, like endocrine disruptors, because we know that those can mess with our hormones. But we also know that this is linked to obesity. And that's partly because fat cells make an enzyme called aromatase, which I talked about with Mohit. You know what aromatase does? It eats testosterone.

It just eats it up and converts it into estrogen, right? It's constantly eating up. Whatever I'm making, the testicles are making, it's eating it up. And we do see that men who lose weight bring their testosterone levels back up. Uh-huh. Okay, interesting. All right. So this is, there is something weird going on here.

So how worried do you think we need to be? I mean, this is not a good thing. It's like not a sign that our population is in the best of health. But I think it's a stretch to really freak out about this. Like when we look at men who have low levels of testosterone

and some of the symptoms that Mohit mentioned, so stuff like low libido, bad sleep, low energy, the best estimate that we have suggests it's only about 6 percent of the male population that have like low t with symptoms six percent yeah it's not everybody that number gets a bit higher as you get older but i mean good news the majority of men don't need to be worried about this right and it seems like a lot more men are worried about this than need to be so i'm thinking of this clinical trial that reported that they had to turn away 85% of the guys who showed up to be in the study thinking they had low T because of these symptoms,

because when they actually got tested, their testosterone levels were fine. So if you are in the minority that does actually have low T and has symptoms, will you feel better by topping it up? You know, a cheeky shot of T in the arm. Shot, gel, pellet. Yes, yes. So should you do it? I mean, yeah. For some people, it really might help them. So we have these studies that are collectively called the T trials, where they recruited nearly 800 people with low T.

So these were older guys. They had symptoms and gave them testosterone or placebo. And statistically, they did see an improvement in guys' moods. And in people with depression, there was an improvement in their depression symptoms. And we have a newer and bigger study that found the same thing. A bit of an improvement for people with depression. Oh, that's cool. That's really cool.

Yeah. But I think a lot of guys might expect that they would get a much bigger benefit here. None of these studies were showing that guys were just like jumping out of their beds like Grandpa Joe and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Mohit says that rarely happens. Not exactly. I mean, in some, some patients will feel an improvement in energy. There are some men that come back and say, wow, this was a big difference. And I, and I, I do see that, but most of the men will say this really is helps and it's good. But I just don't want the listeners out there to think I just take testosterone and the world's going to be great. In fact, Mohit says that testosterone is so far off from being a golden ticket, you know, being the best you, that even for patients who are getting testosterone therapy, he tells them that to really be healthy and feel really good, they also have to do all the other regular ass stuff. Rose, I don't have a pill on the planet stronger than diet, exercise, sleep, and stress reduction.

In other words, many patients will come in and say, look, I'm going to take the testosterone, and I'm going to keep eating potato chips and watching TV, and I want everything to be great. I said, that's not going to work. And of course, a lot of guys are taking this because of their sex drive. And we know that if you've got low T, getting a bump might bump up your libido. But if you're in the normal testosterone range, it's just like jacking yourself up with more testosterone doesn't seem to work for that.

Okay, so that is some of the benefits. If you've got a low T, taking more might bump up your sex drive, might give you a little mood boost. But if you think you're about to be buying land in Florida, think again. Yes. Florida is safe from hordes of testosterone-fueled real estate speculators. Okay, so now what about the risks?

You know, the stuff that perhaps wellness gurus are a little less keen to talk about. Yeah. So some good news here is that for a long time, it was thought that taking testosterone could cause heart attacks and prostate cancer. Oh, right. But this big new study that Mohit was a part of finds that that's not the case. And what we showed in that trial was there was no increased risk in heart attacks. And there was no difference whether they took testosterone or placebo. There was no increased risk in prostate cancer.

And the same is true for trans men taking testosterone. We're not seeing a higher risk of heart attacks or stroke in that population. But there are other downsides to testosterone. So the big one is that sperm count plummets. And Mohit says a lot of men on T actually don't realize this. So it's very unfortunate. I see many of these patients that go to these outside clinics. They are started on testosterone supplementation. They're young men. They were never told that they would become infertile.

If they took this medication, they show up and they say, I want to have a child. Did he say infertile? Yeah. When you take testosterone, your brain thinks, oh, my body has enough testosterone. I'm going to make less of it. And then you also make less sperm. So that's why your sperm count goes low on testosterone. And that's actually why testosterone is being studied as part of a male birth control method, which we talked about in an episode that came out a couple years ago. And even though this is reversible, so you go off T and your sperm count goes back up, it can take a while to bounce back, like six months to two years. Oh, wow. And it might not bounce back to where it was before. And then the other thing

I asked Mohit about, because personally I was really curious about this Was this idea of like taking tea and getting like really aggressive? Because like you probably heard of roid rage or getting roided out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is that real? That's that was my question too I did find an experiment in the literature where scientists gave guys big doses of tea and then followed them for six weeks To see if their mood changed and if they got more aggressive. It was interesting because they actually recruited the guys like partners or spouses

or like close friends who they hung out with a lot and asked them like, is this person changing and how are they changing? Oh, wow. And what they found was that basically different people responded really differently. So there were a couple of guys that said that they felt like they were getting more aggressive for sure.

And researchers, they actually pulled one guy from the study because his behavior was getting, quote, alarming. But most people's behavior didn't change much at all. And this is true for trans men who are on T as well. Like, you see these really mixed results. But it's interesting right like the same like big dose of testosterone might not affect someone at all and another person get like alarmingly angry yeah you know yeah it's very strange it's kind of unpredictable and then just quickly what about tea for women because i i'm starting to see i don't know what this is about my algorithm like but more and more ads and wellness

gurus promoting this. Should women be taking testosterone? There was this international panel that got together and rounded up studies of testosterone and women and looked at what it might be helpful for and what it might not be helpful for. And they concluded that the best evidence that we have here is that testosterone could help with low libido in postmenopausal women. That's it. And that was it. And it's worth pointing out that if you're a woman of any age, playing around with tea has some different risks for you than for men because women typically have very low levels of testosterone. So bumping it up, you can easily go so high that you cause some changes that actually might really bother you if you identify as a woman. So you can permanently deepen your

voice, lose hair that's on your head. And if you're pregnant, taking testosterone can harm the fetus. Okay. All right. So I guess the final hormone to hack is estrogen. What have you been saying? I've been looking at hormone balancing content for several months now. But yeah, one thing I've noticed is this trend of people demonizing estrogen. It's like if you feel tired or moody or weird, bam, it's your estrogen. If there is something off about your menstrual cycle, like bam, estrogen. And they say that you need to get it stabilized, usually by taking supplements or eating specific foods at certain times of your cycle. So is there any science behind this? Now, the truth is that estrogen is related to some menstrual conditions like fibroids, endometriosis, like really bad PMS.

But a lot of this content suggests that if your period isn't like the perfect, most smooth, painless, predictable experience that's been like coordinated by fairies, then your hormones are way off. But that's just like, that's just not, it's just not true. So like take painful periods, for example. Okay. So there are influencers that would have you believe that if you have cramps during your period, it's a sign that you have an excess of estrogen. Right.

And it's like, no, not necessarily. We know that most people who get painful cramps during their periods, they make more of a certain type of lipid called prostaglandin. And that's why their cramps are more painful. It's more prostaglandin, not estrogen. And we've known this for decades. And if I could just rant like a little bit longer. Yes, please.

These influencers are just like taking little bits and pieces of things and just like pasting them together. They're like, it makes me think of like a decorator crab. You that like they're like oh i'll take a little bit of kelp and i'll take a little bit of shell and i'll put it on my shell and then i'll make a whole new outfit no one will recognize me like no we get it you're a crab you know it was what's an example of like influences putting like weird faux science together and then like turning it into advice they're telling people a good example of this and this is my final debunk of the episode okay um is when i see all these videos of people saying like don't do this kind of exercise or that kind of exercise because it'll

affect your hormones in some bad way like i have a friend who's post-menopausal who told me like she's been watching a lot of this wellness stuff. And she was like, I was thinking I'd get back into running. But then I saw the stuff online that said postmenopausal women shouldn't run because it'll make them put weight around their belly because of like hormonal reasons. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And I'm like, Wendy, I looked into this, and what I have here in my hot little hands, it's actually online, but I have here a 2022 review of aerobic exercise on abdominal fat, which did not find that people's belly fat increased. It found the opposite.

People lost a little bit of belly fat, including several studies specifically on postmenopausal women. No. So this is stupid. Yeah. And if you need to hear it from an expert, I ran this by Anne. Yeah, I agree with you. That's stupid? Yeah, I wouldn't.

Absolutely. You know, I absolutely think that's stupid. And it just really, it's like an instance where it just makes you want to like spritz water on the influencers, like bad influencer, bad influencer. Let people go for a run if that's what they want to do. Jeez. Oh, God.

Yeah. There's so much with hormones. Yeah, there's so much here. But just in general, for most of us, you can just trust that your hormones are trucking along and just helping you out in the world. Here's Anne. I think what I would like to convey is that you don't need to mess with them. Don't even try to.

They're doing what they're supposed to do. And so you're just kind of getting in the way. Okay. No more supplements. No more hippotesticles. Well, I wouldn't say that. What you do in your off time is what you do. Yeah.

But as a general rule, using all of this, like, whatever dietary advice about what to do to balance your hormones and these, like, exercise advice. Like, this is all just, like, let your hormones fluctuate as they're naturally meant to fluctuate. Yeah. And actually, I read a review paper that summed this all up really nicely where they said basically that the pursuit of balancing your hormones is a biological fantasy. Oh, wow. Wow. Can't wait for that Disney movie to come out. So bottom line, no more trying to balance your hormones

through some advice from a science-y sounding person on TikTok. No, don't do it. Oh, Rose, I can't believe how much research you did for us to ultimately come to that conclusion. Yeah, I know. But that's what you got to do. That's the job, Wendy. That is the job. Mm-hmm. Okay, so how many citations are in this week's episode? 79. 79 citations. And if people want to see them in all of their glory, where should they go? They can check the link to the transcript of the episode and they can find that link in our show notes.

Thanks, Rose. Thanks, Wendy. This episode was produced by Rose Rimler, with help from me, Wendy Zuckerman, Michelle Dang and Meryl Horn. We're edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact-checking by Erica Akiko Howard. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Bobby Lord, Bumi Hidaka and Peter Leonard. Research help from Timmy Broderick.

Recording help from Alex Stuckey. Thanks to all of the researchers that we spoke to for this episode, including Dr Amit Raval, Dr Andrea Sansone, Professor Bob Spencer, Dr Daniel Rippon, Dr Emma Adden, Dr Hannah Truxell, Dr John Hawkes, Dr Jonathan Little, Professor Paul Cook and Professor Paula Hillard. Special thanks to Joel Werner, the Zuckerman family and Joseph Lavelle-Wilson. Science Versus is a Spotify Studios original. Listen to us for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We are on all the podcast apps, so find us there. But if you are listening on Spotify, to follow us, just tap the bell icon and then you'll get notifications when new episodes come out. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.