Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - The Truth About Hormones: How Men & Women Differ - With John Gray

Episode Date: April 25, 2022

For full show notes, resources mentioned, and transcripts, go to: www.drmindypelz.com/ep118/ To enroll in Dr. Mindy's Fasting membership, go to: resetacademy.drmindypelz.com This episode is all about the power of hormones on our behaviors and relationships.  John Gray is the author of the most well-known and trusted relationship book of all time, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. USA Today listed his book as one of the top 10 most influential books of the last quarter-century. In hardcover, it was the #1 best-selling book of the 1990s. Dr. Gray's books are translated into approximately 45 languages in more than 100 countries and continue to be a bestseller. Dr. Gray has written over 20 books. His most recent book is Beyond Mars and Venus: Relationship Skills for Our Complex Modern World. His Mars/Venus book series has forever changed the way men and women view their relationships. John helps men and women better understand and respect their differences in both personal and professional relationships. His approach combines specific communication techniques with healthy, nutritional choices that create the brain and body chemistry for lasting health, happiness, and romance. His many books, blogs, and free online workshops at MarsVenus.com provide practical insights to improve relationships at all stages of life and love. An advocate of health and optimal brain function, he also provides natural solutions for overcoming depression, anxiety, and stress to support increased energy, libido, hormonal balance, and better sleep.  He has appeared repeatedly on Oprah, as well as on The Dr. Oz Show, TODAY, CBS This Morning, Good Morning America, and others. He has been profiled in Time, Forbes, USA Today, and People. He was also the subject of a three-hour special hosted by Barbara Walters. John Gray lives in Northern California where for 34 years he happily shared his life with his beautiful wife, Bonnie until her passing in 2018. They have three grown daughters and four grandchildren. He is an avid follower of his own health and relationship advice. Please see our medical disclaimer.

People today need a lot more evidence to explain why men and women are so different. There's not a lot of conversation that allows us to say we're different. We all know biologically, women's hormones are very different from men. This is understandable when just look at hormone tests. Resetters, Dr. Mindy here. And I am on a mission to teach you just how powerful your body was built to be. This podcast is about giving you the power back and helping you believe in yourself again. Let's jump in. On this episode of the Resetter podcast, I bring you

Dr. John Gray. I hope you guys know who this man is, but if you do not, you are in for a mind-blowing relationship, enhancing, self-awareness improving conversation. I cannot say enough about what I just experienced talking to this man. So John Gray is the author of, and hopefully you know this, from men are from Mars and women are from Venus. He has a new book out called Beyond Mars and Venus. And why I wanted to bring him on to the podcast was because in the new book, he talks about the power of hormones on our behaviors and our relationships. So hopefully you all know that I time everything to hormones. I time not just fasting.

Of course, that's what I am educating people on, but I time foods to hormones. We are timing supplements. We're timing exercise. Everything for women and what you're going to hear in this episode, also men, should be timed to hormones. So when I read his book Beyond Mars and Venus, it blew my mind because all. all of a sudden I realized that how I interacted with my husband affected my estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. And how I communicated to my husband affected his testosterone.

And when we can understand each other's hormones, we can actually synergize our relationships. And it's not just our romantic relationships. It's also our friendships. It's our work relationships. it's how we communicate with the same sex, the opposite sex, we can start to learn how to have deeper connections with people in a way that not only benefits our own hormones, but benefits theirs. And if there's anything that I love more than fasting, it is hormones and you will be blown away by this discussion. So it is going to be one of those. You're going to need to

go back and listen to, and it will absolutely change the way that you approach your stress. It will change the way you look at what to do at the end of a long workday. It will change the way that you communicate to your spouse. It's unreal. And so Dr. John Gray, here you go. Enjoy. Just like you know, I have geeked out on hormones and fasting, you have now given. out on hormones and relationships, and I can't wait to have this conversation. So let me just start

off by welcoming you to the Resetter podcast. Thank you so much. I'm really happy to spend this time with you, Dr. Mindy. Yeah, thank you. So here is, I'm just going to go right to the hormones, because when I actually listened to your most recent book and it was so good, I then bought it so that I can physically read it. And the two chapters that just blew my mind was the one on testosterone and the one on estrogen. And this idea that the way men and women need to manage cortisol spike is different according to our testosterone and estrogen needs.

So can we just jump into the hormonal aspect of this? Absolutely. You know, I wrote men from Mars, women are from Venus, 27 years ago. It's still a bestseller around the world, but the world has changed a lot. And so I needed to update that book. And people today need a lot more evidence to explain why men and women are so different. And what's happened to us today because there's a big switch in our hormones. So the world's a different place. And I think for everybody listening to me, at least when we talk about men and women in relationships, there's not a lot of conversation that allows us to say we're

different. And I thank you, Dr. Mindy, and all the researchers into women. women's hormones because that becomes something and nobody can disagree with. We all know, biologically, women's hormones are very different from men. This is understandable when just look at hormone tests. So I'm going to go with just simple, basic things. And I love talking with you. We're so much aligned in terms of understanding our hormones. It's so important because, simply put, for men, typically speaking, a man needs 10 to 20 times more testosterone in order to not be in the stress zone. Okay. So he's oh wow. If a man has producing, if a man's producing, uh, adrenaline, which is the precursor to cortisol, his testosterone is going up when he's producing adrenaline,

but his estrogen's rising. And as his estrogen rises, as his female hormone, his testosterone, a certain point will start to go down and estrogen becomes dominant. For example, when a man is angry, he's not testosterone dominant. He's estrogen dominant. He's estrogen dominant. When a man is depressed, he's estrogen dominant, not testosterone dominant. When a man is confident, he's testosterone dominant. And when he's testosterone and happy, he has high levels of estrogen, but he's still testosterone dominant. So this is, this is just think of it, masculine energy is your testosterone side for women. You have a testosterone side and men have an estrogen side as well. And we know women, estrogen is a key player along with progesterone, and those are key, and testosterone.

But the reality is that women cycle, and after beyond cycling, has a huge impact on are they nurturing the right hormones at that time? And so what you bring to the table, I love it, I love it. And I'm learning from you on fasting. It's just so, I'm an intermittent faster as well. And now I'm going to really encourage women when to do it because I didn't have that knowledge other today. Yeah, thank you. So many, so many women will say, oh, I just can't do it. It makes me crazy. And now I know why. It's simply because you need to do it a certain time in your period. They have to go to you to find that information. That's so good. Yeah. Thank you. What I'm explaining is where the best times for romance, for example, are. It's the time we don't want

to be fasting. That's what your romance levels are, you're dependent on stimulation to go to a higher level of estrogen. So what I talk about is to get right into it. managing stress, when women's hormones are deficient or they're out of balance, she will experience adrenaline and cortisol. And that inhibits all health. It inhibits your mood. What happens, and when a man's testosterone is low, when his estrogen is too high compared to his testosterone, he will be in the stress mode.

So a depressed man has just low testosterone. He could also have low estrogen as well. but an angry man, a violent man, an irritated man, a pouting man, a rigid man, all the worst quality of masculinity only occur when his testosterone is low and that sort of aggressive side of him happens when his estrogen is high. This is amazing information. And so, you know, love, think about, so what are some of the qualities of testosterone when your testosterone is healthy and your female hormones are in balance, particularly estrogen,

when estrogen is where it needs to be at that time of your period, of your cycle or afterwards. You feel love. You feel happy. You feel appreciation. You feel trusting. What's happening there, those are the natural qualities, appreciation, trusting, accepting, grateful, validating. There's like the positive side that we all have only occurs when our estrogen,

our progesterent is in the right place at the right time of the month. Yeah. This is amazing stuff. And for men, all of his negativity that I said associate either with low testosterone or low testosterone and high estrogen. Now you have a few variations of this. Is it 10 times higher as you're basically your average for men when they're experiencing well-being? And when you have romantic feelings for someone, your testosterone is going even higher than just well-being. So as a man, you know, I love my wife.

I look close to her and whatever. and there's sometimes when I really want to be connect with her. I'm feeling a need to connect with her. That feeling the need to connect with her emotionally and physically, I miss her, I want to be with her. What's going on with my hormones at that time? My testosterone is higher than where it needs to be if I'm going to feel drawn to her. My testosterone goes higher than my average well-being.

Now I want my estrogen level to come up to find the right balance for me. And the right balance for me is somewhere where my estrogen is high, but my testosterone is higher. So let's say I'm working really, really hard and I'm on my traveling. I'm away from my wife because any kind of connection, personal connection produces estrogen. Right. So this is the whole thing about what as a therapist, why 90% of the people that come to a therapist are women. Because you get a chance to do two things, to feel safe and depend on someone to fulfill a very important need, which is to feel heard, to be seen.

This is a very, very big thing. For a man, go over to your male side, is I want what I do to be heard and seen and valued. See, men are all about, look what I can do because that produces testosterone. And we're also about I'm a loving person, I'm a caring person, I'm a good person. That's my estrogen side.

And we have both sides. The difference between men and women, to be a little political for a moment, the way I would define a woman. She has a whole different set of hormones that require different needs, which allows her to be her best self. And her best self, her best self is a balance of masculine and feminine. And therefore, she's not that different from a man in terms of behavior and responses when

she's in her best self. And a man, when he's in his best self, we'll call it authentic self, whole self, is not that different from a woman. So, you know, when I say men and women are different, those differences show up the most when our hormones are out of balance. And so we know that. We know that another practical insight for both women and men to know

is when you have, if you're in one part of your cycle and your estrogen's too low. And this is paradoxical about women, which is, as you know, when towards ovulation, her estrogen levels are rising. Let's say they're not.

Then she's going to be stressed. Then afterwards, she still needs estrogen, but her progesterone still needs to be rising. Otherwise, she'll be needy in the relationship. She'll be looking for the wrong thing. This is very interesting. At time, your needs are changing. A human being has one of my books got how to get what you want,

what you have. It's my book on success and happiness and fulfillment. It doesn't focus on the hormones like the new book, but it explains something very important. As human beings, we have a variety of emotional needs. And let's say you've been alone for a while. You feel the need for intimacy with someone. And while you're filling up with intimacy,

it's so fulfilling, but you may be neglecting all your other emotional needs to produce your estrogen. See, for example, when you're nurturing a child, it's producing estrogen, a lot of estrogen, and ironically, the right amount of testosterone. Because when you're giving to a child that way, you're doing it from a place of, of, it's a kind of unconditional love, which means I'm not doing this to make money. Right. Yeah.

Okay. Definitely not. You're not doing that to make money. Whenever you're giving of yourself to not make money, you're actually on your female side. When you're giving of yourself to make money, that's goal-oriented. Then you're more on your male side. And there's nothing wrong at all with women going to their male side. The problem is they sometimes disconnect most commonly.

They're not also nurturing their female side. So let's say you're a woman CEO and you're running your business. That's all testosterone production. So how do you stay in balance? Well, there's two ways. One is after work, you go to a world which produces lots of estrogen. And what is that? Okay.

So to summarize that, it's anything that makes you feel happy, makes you feel good, makes you feel relaxed. And one of the phrases for it that I like is do what you like. Whenever you're doing what you like to do, you're making estrogen. When you're doing what you don't like to do, but you have to do in order to make money or even what you have to do to take care of your choice. children, you're basically making testosterone, but that's okay because you're also making estrogen because you're giving from your heart for your children. You're not giving for your money.

And so there's an impersonal side of life and a personal side of life. And everything to do with personal side of life is going to be estrogen stimulating. Now, some of those things which are estrogen stimulating are good for you. They're always going to help lower your stress temporarily, but some things like overeating, for example. Yeah, I was going to say, How do you define good because you could go crazy on this one. So go for it. So if you just look at hormones, anytime we simplify things, knowing that life is complex and it's a blend of both these opposite things all the time.

But we just look over to estrogen side. What makes estrogen rise is when you feel trust and you can depend on something to make you happy. So food always makes us happy, right? And so overeating, if you're low in estrogen, let me just eat some food. And the more I depend on that food to be happy, I'm depending on that. You see, for males, their big problem is not always food, but can be to some extent. But for them, we have this new thing called porn.

This is all introduction to human, never, never in history, unless you were the emperor of China. Could you have 64,000 women wanting to have sex with you or at least pretending to want to have sex with you? Wow. That's his harem. Yeah. But a thousand. Crazy. And that kept his testosterone up because a new woman every time, new and different, new and different

stimulates dopamine, which gives him a boost of testosterone. But unfortunately, if it's new and different every time, that creates a change in the brain where you depend upon high dopamine stimulation to produce the testosterone you need to feel good. So that's what's called a behavior that makes you feel good because it gives him a surge of testosterone. but now he's addicted to that high dopamine stimulation of new and different and is unable to maintain intimacy with his partner, with his wife. There's no longer intimacy with him. So this is like amazing information because people today are always, oh, you know, men are basically biological polygamous. Okay, we're supposed to spread our seed everywhere. And yes, men are also violent too biologically.

That's your primitive brain. Your primitive brain, if somebody hurts you, it says you need to to be eliminated. That's a part of all of us, but we're not just a monkey, okay? We're not just a snake. Okay. We have this prefrontal cortex up here, which elevates us to our humanness and even our divineness, which is, you know, I consider divineness. Whenever you're following that, which is good for you, life supporting, your divine is coming through. And it comes through with the prefrontal cortex of the brain. When you're experiencing hormonal and balance, the prefrontal cortex of the brain will tend to become diminished and you start just reacting based upon childhood conditioning or if it's a high stress, you react based upon primitive instincts.

Yes. This is different parts of the brain get activated depending upon how stressed you are. The first level of stress is adrenaline. The next one is cortisol. And there you're pretty much going on instinct. And you, but even when you're kind of like just normal, you're not life-threatening or whatever. What's happening is you have two parts of the front brain,

which are regulated by your hormones. And the front brain regulates your hormones as well. It's basically different parts of the body in relationship. So, for example, if I'm a woman and I'm looking at all the problems in my life, basically what's going on is my testosterone is going up for a woman. And in the prefrontal cortex, it's the right prefrontal cortex that becomes, activated, which is the worrier, which is the pessimistic, which is looking for the problem. I know her. I know her. And let's take it to the worst level, which is so common today for many

people, is they put those people who are worrying, who are upset, or they're crying, or they're depressed, or they're anxious, which is all right prefrontal cortex brain activity. They put them in an MRI and they see that they're having a dopamine experience similar to cocaine. from worrying. From worrying. From negative thinking. It's addictive. It's addictive. It is just as addictive as cocaine. And what happens is when you have high dopamine stimulation, the normal functioning of the brain

change where it becomes dependent upon high dopamine stimulation. And literally, for example, the first time you take cocaine, if you've taken it, 30% of your dopamine receptor sites practically disappear. That means your ability to feel. pleasure is one third taken away. And so when you don't feel pleasure, then your brain seeks out that pleasure to be motivated. And now you just reinforce the problem. And gradually life and life becomes more boring without your drug. And so life is worry, which in this case is worrying. In this case, it's worrying. It's worrying. And it's basically, which is caused by when your

hormones go out of balance. Okay. So you're a woman, you're worrying, which means I can't depend on others. I have to do it myself. Okay, I can't depend on others. I have to do it myself. Does that sound familiar? Oh, yeah. I feel like you might have been in my kitchen this morning having a cup of coffee with me. I can't say to every woman because I don't haven't counseled every woman. But any woman that comes to my office are millions of people have taken my workshops and thousands of people have taken my counseling. You know, basically they think I'm a mind reader. I go, no, you're just every other woman in a certain way. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing what goes on with the hormones. And so, but just to know, if you're a woman, your hormones are out of balance for your age and

where you are in life, if they're out of balance for you, and we know general indicators of what out of balance looks like. And you would be an expert at that as well. And, but just simply put, when you compare a woman to a man, which I like to differentiate, it also helps us to know ourselves is we're the same and we're different. And what's interesting is that's what a university used to teach. Unity in diversity. Unity in diversity. So what is similar in us and how are we diverse? And well, everybody talks about diversity today, but basically they're saying many women are the same. Yeah. Well, yeah, so interesting on that. And we are the ones have to buy a lot. I mean, here's the Supreme Court person. Can you define a woman? It's simple as saying hormones.

Women can make babies. Men can't. And they can't say that politically because we've just gone off the cliff in terms of logic today. But thank goodness we have science where you basically can say, yes, I can be conditioned to be a woman. There's no question about it. You can be, but my hormones will still be masculine and I'll be depressed. I need stimulation from my culture that says, I'm a man and I need particular kinds of support. And women need stimulation from the culture that's telling you how to behave. You know, we follow the leader, kind of we duplicate. A huge amount of us is just what we've been trained to be.

If I've been trained to be a man, I'm a woman. I'm going to have so many hormone problems. Oh, my gosh. So now we're talking about women in menopause and beyond menopause. If you've had unsuccessful relationships with men, you're alone in the world. Yeah. So you're going to be making your, it's a feeling of, I have to do it myself.

I have to do it myself. I don't have someone I can depend on for help. And it's depending on for others for help that is a primary producer of estrogen. Okay. So this is key. So I don't want to lose this point because this was my huge. I literally was listening to your book on a plane heading to Vegas for a conference I was speaking at.

And when I heard you talk about the difference between men and women and how we, handle stress according to our hormones. I like almost jumped out of my chair. I was like, oh my gosh. So estrogen, what, and I want you to really like lay this out. So estrogen, when we're stressed, has a different need in a woman than testosterone in a man when he's stressed. That's right. So explain that because. Okay. Very simply put, if I'm stressed, it's always when a man is stressed, what's happening is, for, well, let's preface what makes a man feel really good. We all know this to be the case when he's confident and he's successful.

That's his whole thing. Or when his team, you know, when you look at when men's testosterone go to the highest, it's when their team wins. So if they love their team and they win, men's testosterone are shooting up. That's crazy. It's crazy stuff. And for a woman, she can have her testosterone go up because it's her team too. But her estrogen is going to go off if she knows the players.

Okay. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. This is my parents. They're warrior fans. And when they sit down, my dad wants to make sure. They're in their 80s. He wants to make sure they win.

My mom wants to tell me about all the couples and who's dating who and what the relationships are like of the players. This is exactly right. It's amazing. And so there's different hormones even being stimulated then. And so, but when a man feels unsuccessful and we're always, you know, when you get up in the morning, you look at your, you put on your makeup, you put on your hair, you look, you look at the mirror and say, how do I look today? What do I want to wear today? I don't want to be boring. I want to

look pretty. I want to do the, you have your preferences. What do you want to eat today? All these activities are estrogen stimulating. They're personal activities, particularly if it's, I'm going to do what I like to do. If you look historically, a lot of stuff has changed now because we've become more like each other, but our hormones are still a million years of evolution. We are very, very different. So if you look at kind of men and outfits, for example, men use, if you're a chef, you get to wear a big white hat. If you're the top chef, you get a bigger hat, okay? It's like, if you're a soldier, you get badges and you have a uniform, you wear it every day. Your outfit demonstrates your competence. And is that raising your testosterone? Yes, yes, yes. I remember as a little

boy watching this cowboy movie of this famous cowboy who got old, became an alcoholic, you know, they didn't need him anymore. And then finally this girl, young girl, goes, we need you. We need you. Come on. And so, oh, I can't do it. I can't do it. His estrogen's high. Just let's the lay around, do nothing. No, motivation. I'm done with all that. She says, no, we need you. Nobody can do this, but you, you're the one. So need wakes up a man's motivation. So then he's, okay, I'll do it. And you watch this transformation in him. I remember as he started putting on his cowboy outfit. I mean, he had this very cool cowboy outfit. And this is what I feel like sometimes when I put on my suit to go out.

You know, I'm putting on my outfit. This makes me the expert, you know. This is men's makeup is what car I'm driving. What, my books are behind me. I've written 28 books, bestsellers. It's like, it's stupid. That's being testosterone. Exactly.

It's a testosterone booster. It's a testosterone booster. So that's primarily, not that a woman couldn't want to show her books and whatever, you've got your wonderful books behind you, but that's not your major source of hormonal balance. The hormonal balance for woman is, I have a voice and I'm seen and I am heard and I have help. I need support in my life.

I don't have to do it all myself. And I see your big smile as you're talking to me. That's the voice. I like what I'm doing. I truly am enjoying what I do. It's who I am. That's authenticness. And that's the interesting thing.

If we look at our authenticity, you know, everybody's talking about I want to be my authentic self. What is your authentic self? Well, that would be the part of you that's not just masculine, not just feminine, but it's a blend of both. If you're the CEO and you're a woman or you're stressed and your work, okay, you're on your mail side. You need to be able to anticipate coming into an environment when you leave work

that is very, very supportive more so than a traditional environment. Okay. So if you're way on your male side and you come home to a traditional environment where you had children and you had dishes to clean or a house to clean or food to cook, well, those are all nurturing activities. they're estrogen stimulating, but if you're way on your male side, you need more than that. And that's what they wake up call is in this book, is that women today have a new need and men have a new need as well. What is that? So, okay, wait, we have to unpack a lot of what you

said. Oh, I said. So I do like to go far. You know, I can go on. So, so, because, you know, as a woman who has had a career, I can definitely say that I know when I, you know, move into my more masculine side that I tap into that testosterone, but transitioning back into the household hasn't always been the easiest. So what I hear from you is I should cook dinner. I actually really like dinner cooked for me. Yeah. That feels nurtured.

Yes. See, nurturing is one activity. It nurturing produces estrogen because when you're giving without making money, what you're getting back, you don't just nurture anybody. you might nurture your dog who loves you unconditionally. You nurture your child that loves you unconditionally. So giving to a child, I remember with my little kids, the women would convince Bonnie's friends that come, they don't want to hold the baby and they want to change the diapers of the baby.

Who wants to change diapers? It's like nurturing is an estrogen stimulating activity because you're getting, you need to feel that unconditional love. And it's a part of who you are as a woman. So all the other aspects of estrogen production. are feeling someone's doing something for me. The only one, see, when you're doing something for somebody else, you're on your male side.

That's testosterone. That's testosterone. So when you're in a relationship, we'll look at unsuccessful relationships, successful relationships. Both have to do with giving. Unsuccessful relationship is called giving too much. That a successful relationship is giving back what you've received. Right.

It's not reciprocity. It's back and forth. That's what I was trying to say in that content of reciprocity. There's a sense of women have a basic female genes, very strong compared to a man. We'll just put it in terms of we don't really know that to be case. But it's a playful way of saying it. But women have a greater awareness of the need for reciprocity, which means if you do something for me, I should do something for you. And I want to do something for you.

Okay. So if you give me $100, I want to give you $100. Okay. I'm not going to go broke that way. But let's say you give me $50 and I give you $100. Now what happens is you feel like you're out of balance. Yeah. And so you're tanking your estrogen.

Your estrogen's going down. That's right. That's right. So whatever you give, that's your testosterone side. That's your male side. You have to balance it with your estrogen side. So if you're too far on your male side, it means you're giving more than you're getting. Okay.

So this. So here's, oh my gosh, John, this is so good because I, once I, I understood hormones for food and fasting and what goes through, women go through when they go through menopause, I was like, if men and women understood the menopausal journey from hormone perspective, I think a lot of marriages could be saved. And what I'm hearing, after 40, your estrogen, a woman's estrogen is going down and it'll decline for 15 years. So correct me if I'm wrong, men listening, I'm thinking that what a woman with declining estrogen needs is more nurturing, more giving, more things that make her feel good.

And if you do that, your relationship will be better if you're in a heterosexual relationship. Well, let me just say that men have to learn that and women have to learn that because women who've gone through menopause don't give themselves permission to ask for help. Oh, well said. Yes. They've had life experiences, which increases confidence. I can do it myself. And if you haven't been getting the support you needed in relationships with men before,

it just becomes more challenging because you've got this whole history of men forget to do things, men change, men lose motivation. I end up doing more. What I own in a man in my life is like having another child. I'm done with that. Right. And the same things apply to menopause just need to be, we have to become more expert at finding our balance because our hormones aren't really

controlling that they're not the change of hormones isn't changing us so much what I'm saying is that when a woman's estrogen goes up she will typically become more emotional and ask for more yeah now she learns how to ask then they'll have a happier relationship as opposed to I need more I'm not getting it comes across as complaining so it's it's in those five days before ovulation where women will be most unhappy they'll be most complaining if they don't have someone they trust yes so this is this is This is where I think we can start saving marriages because the other thing we know about declining estrogen is it makes you more insulin resistant, which is not fair for women because now she's

holding on to weight more. Her energy goes down. She's feeling, and what I'm hearing from you is she's feeling unheard. So it's not the man's job. If she doesn't know what she can get out of a man, first she has to know how to get it, otherwise she thinks I can't get it. And second, she has to be in touch with what she needs from a man. Because if she's already very independent, what do I need a man for? Unless you have a higher level of knowledge that says the major super estrogen production

is what women get out of therapy, which is they feel safe to express what's inside, encouragement to get in touch with their feelings. And they don't know why, but I always feel better afterwards. And that's because when you are in touch with your need to talk, and then when you're talking evokes emotion, now you're producing huge amounts of estrogen. You'll feel a little extra estrogen just complaining.

But that's one of those behaviors that ends up giving you some fulfillment for a moment and then you go back to a worse situation. Just like with men, we know we've tested this biologically, is that when men go to porn, they'll get a surge of testosterone, but then afterwards, they go back to their baseline. But over time, now we have to take two different. studies. We know now that you can't even get a control group of a man who doesn't do porn. What? Wow. That's crazy. Where they do the studies is on, you know, college. Right. Yeah. Oh, okay. They can't find somebody who doesn't do porn. So they, we don't have a control group for it.

Crazy. It's quite, quite crazy. And but here I am. I've been teaching this 50 years. I predicted 20 years ago that with the availability of porn, what you'll see is males testosterone levels will go down. And they now, for all ages, the average male goes down 1% every year. So you're 20 year old, it's still going to go down 1% every year. You're 35 year old. You're going to go down 1% every year. Even back 20 years ago, we first started looking at these numbers. A 50 year old man had half the testosterone he had as a young man. And mine were not that. And mine have basically, since I started testing them, are 50% higher than when I was a young man. So we don't have studies on that because Well, I tell you what I'm doing, I'm consciously doing things to keep my testosterone up.

There's nothing. There's nothing. Okay. It's, I work hard. I'm happy on my own and I'm monogamous. And my relationship is the most important thing in my life. But I can't give to that relationship if I don't also take the time I need for myself, which is I'm a hard worker. My virtue is to make a difference in the world.

And part of that is because I'm very successful in making a difference. I mean, you don't understand those books behind me. Yeah. No, we don't. No, we know all about how impactful there. You know, sometimes I'd be in a bad mood. That means my testosterone is down. That means I encounter too much stress during the day.

Stress for a man is moments where you don't feel completely in control of making a positive influence in the world. Okay. If there's something I can't, if I feel like I'm trying to solve somebody's problem. And this is when I was younger, I'd have counseling clients and I couldn't solve their problem. I'd be hugely stressful for me because I'd give them advice and they go, yes, but, yes, but. Oh, yeah. Eventually what I learned is I never give advice unless somebody is they're somewhat in balance with their hormones. It doesn't matter how good your advice is.

If somebody is stressed, there's always going to be yes, but, yes, but. And I know for many people, even as I'm talking, the people are right now stressed, yes, but, yes, but. So that's tanking their hormones. That tanks their hormones. Always stress things their hormones. I'm going to use that. Yes, and. And I'm a big yes.

And I can disagree and everything, but I'll find something positive and look at it. And that's why I have so many different ways of solving problems. All these people will come to me with their problems. But the first thing, if it's a woman, I will always make sure that I'm able to validate what she says. Now, nobody knows how to validate. This was a big word in the 90s where started coming out. And the reason a lot of the stuff started coming out in the 90s, even in the 80s,

it was, you don't bring me flowers anymore, was a big theme of romance was a big deal. And then women gave up on romance. And then the next thing they could find was the communication. If you have good communication, your estrogen levels will shoot up. If you have romance, they go even higher. So that's why women have more romantic feelings at ovulation if they feel safe. See, safety is oxytocin. And all those studies came out in the 2000s.

I was talking about in 1900s, but they finally, they did the research on it and they found that stress levels go down when oxytocin goes up. But actually stress levels don't go down and men when oxytocin is produced. Yeah, you talked about that in the book. And nobody will talk about that, okay, because they want to make, they want to see that we're all the same. So as you point out, they don't do a lot of research on women and all these things, but what they found out is that if you produce oxytocin, stress levels go down. But as you say in your videos, it is true. I'll say it as well, they're not testing what time of the month does

oxytocin make their stress levels go down. Thank you. Because oxytocin doesn't cause progesterone to go up. So, yes. Is oxytocin helps your estrogen? A little oxytocin's small. lime, but too much oxytocin, too much safety does not promote the production of progesterone. And there's research showing that when you make oxytocin, you're using up the fuel that would make your progesterone. So, but at the time, okay, so what, what do you need for the progesterone? This is, this is golden. Mutual fulfillment.

Okay. So there's, oxytocin is produced primarily, a strong producer of oxytocin is not. non-physical touch, a non-sexual touch. So if you can let someone touch you and be with you, like a massage, for example, is a super oxytocin producer. Between a husband and wife, regular hugs, non-sexual hugs. You know, my wife complained in the beginning. She says, the only time you touch me is when you want sex. And I thought, what's wrong with that? And then I read a book on hugs. So I became now a big hug teacher because hugs for the best, produce a lot of oxytocin.

And so when you're feeling safe, then you can feel I can depend on you. And then you feel your needs. So it's really getting in touch with your needs, trusting you're going to get what you need to feel good, produces estrogen. That's why overeating is you're hungry, as long as you're feeling some hungry, as long as the food is filling you up. It's producing estrogen. And therefore, if your brain goes, eat more food, I'll get more estrogen.

and that will produce more fat, which also produces more estrogen. Right. Oh, my gosh, the cycle. So, okay, so go back to the progesterone. The conclusion of that is listen to Dr. Mindy tells to learn how to do intermittent fasting and fasting. It's very, very important for women. It's the most important thing. Thank you.

And I was going to add to your testosterone list. I hope you're intermittent fasting or a 24-hour fast. They've shown increases a man's testosterone by 2,000 percent. Absolutely. Absolutely. What was the last thing you said? Yeah. So progestrone, because this is a big thing. Testosterone. Testosterone. No. Yeah. It increases testosterone. But I want to go back to fulfillment. What does that mean? Like if I'm PMSing or I want to go back to what you just said. I want to underline that when a man fast for how long it increases his testosterone. Yeah. How long does he have to fast? 24 hours. 24 hours. It goes up 2,000 percent. 13 hours. It goes up 1,300 percent. So, you. Each hour you keep going, you're getting men are getting more and more testosterone. That's so great. I'm a major faster. That's also why I have 50% more testosterone.

Yeah, there you go. I love it. You ask me how I get that. I only eat one meal a day. I do drink a lot. I tease. I have coffee in the morning. Then I drink teas throughout the day.

And then I have a meal and that's it. And I will do a three day fast. at least every month. I'll do a, every year I do a 30 day fast. Okay. And it's very important. If you do long fast,

you have to exercise a lot. You know, people think, oh, I should rest. No, you need to produce energy in your body.

You need to keep using that fat that you're burning off. So that's my 30 day. And what I do is even further. I do silence for 30 days. I put on a mask. I never see light the whole time. And this is real,

folks. It's what your brain, and a lot of people blind will tell you this happens for them, is then you can actually see with another part of your brain, you can see the lines of the furniture. So I can walk through the house without having to, I go from one side to the other and I can see the line of the door. It's like a little white light of the table. I can see the white light. It's all there. My bottom of my mind, maybe it's remembering or maybe it's feeling just the frequencies and turning it into light.

It's amazing. Do you mind if I ask you how old you are? I'm 70. Yeah. You do not look 70. Well, people say that to me. Now, my wife died three, four years ago, but I have a new partner. Of course, I'm still in the newness part of the relationship, which is definitely free testosterone. But I had that before. And it's just compounded to another level. See, there's something, not everybody wants to hear about sex. I'll talk about that for just a moment. You can turn it off. But basically, too much sex lowers your testosterone. Not enough sex lowers your testosterone. Everything is finding the right balance. Just as women get older, I'll just throw this in as well with menopause, your hormone levels will go down,

but your adrenal gland can still make the right hormones for you to be a healthy, happy, sexually active woman. Yeah. I know women, they're late 70s, maybe beyond that, but I know one woman's 78 years old. Her boyfriend is 70 years old. He's one of my friends. They have a lot of sex. And they protect this.

You must be doing something right. Yeah. Well, to have a lot of sex, you have to be doing a different. kind of sex. For a man, as you, as you grow older and you're more balanced than your testosterone and estrogen, you're free from addiction. And then you can learn how to have orgasms without ejaculating. So I have lots of sex, but I have orgasms without ejaculating. As a younger man, I really couldn't do it. I didn't have somebody teach me how to do it. Now I teach me how to do it. You need a book on that. Have you written a book on that? That's your next book. I have the beginning book, which is,

of course on my website. And that's for the basics. But see, I couldn't teach the advanced things because people think you're too weird, but they can't do it. You really just need an instruction. The science I wanted to bring up in terms of men's testosterone and also women's estrogen. These are two things. The science only shows the testosterone side, but I'll give you the, my lifetime experience

helping couples who lose interest in sex, okay, which is very, very common. But the biggest estrogen producers for a woman is the anticipation. of sex, particularly during the five days towards ovulation. Of course. Now, the brain is associated with that. That is a younger person, you get automatic hormones that say estrogen is going up, and if I feel safe, I feel strong sex desire. Once you go through menopause, you're not going to get that I have strong sex desire unless sex itself is something that promotes high estrogen for you. So this is, let me, it's a pacing. You know, we're talking about going from zero to 100 here.

Yeah. There's so much in this. And above is. Yeah. The research now shows scientifically. See, I couldn't even talk about this, you know, for example, masturbation. Everybody's, oh, it's good for you. It's fine to do.

Why not do that? And have more sex and you'll be happier and so forth. Well, the research shows that if you ejaculate on Saturday, say, with your partner. and you don't have sex, or at least the man does not ejaculate for six days. On the seventh day, his testosterone will increase 50%. Oh, so he shouldn't masturbate. Definitely not. What about women?

And just before we did the topic. Before you, we go so far with this. I love your question. But let me just finish that one point. Yeah, yeah, please. If you ejaculate once in the week, if you're a man on the same day, at least if you have six days, seven days in between. on the seventh day, your testosterone levels go up 50%.

Consistently. Now, crazy. So, you know, you get married and you get the flush of new love. Of course, you have more sex because you have more dopamine because there's newness. But then you settle down. You don't have that spark. And all you have to do is have sex twice a week, which everybody tries to do to be acceptable by everybody else.

That means your testosterone levels, if you look at the norm, the norm in America, until sex stops is twice a week. you know, people used to ask me how much sex do you have? I wrote a book on sex. I said, once a week, oh, not enough. I say, why go for quality, not quantity? I'm very in tune with what my body needs. And so I know how I felt. Basically, how did I feel? And how did I feel if I went with that? It's kind of like intermittent fasting when it comes to sex. And what about women? What about women? It's the same thing. Nobody's done the research on this. And so keep in mind, the sexual practices as they are today with a lot of masturbation going on. Everybody's going down, down, down if you're masculine. Okay. And the average 50-year-old man has half the testosterone

young man. I'm 70. It's 50% higher. Every day I'm ready for sex and almost do every day twice a day. Because I'm slightly retired, so I have more time. If I was raising kids, I don't have time for that. So now I want to know another thing that happens is hard for men not to masturbate because they're addicted to. It's cocaine, basically. The dopamine rush you get from masturbation is much higher than being with a woman. You see, when you make our with a stranger, it's higher. It's in the fantasy.

It's the highest. But with a woman, you see, if she's having sex with you, because she appreciates you, she likes you. There's some love there. There's physical connection. There's female energy. So to have sex with a woman means your estrogen levels are going to go higher than with a stranger. That estrogen going higher keeps your dopamine and your testosterone from going

off the chart. See, whenever you're in a woman, this is in a woman, just so we're clear. Oh, it's in a man. Then we'll get to women. So once, once the, if a man makes love, that means I love you, you're special to me and you turn me on, not some fantasy. Not I watched a fantasy. Now I want to go have sex with night wide. No, it's she or her body raises. my testosterone and my estrogen, then if we climax together, at different times, we both climax, the research on that, there's research on that compared to masturbation or compared to a prostitute or compared to fantasy. It's all the same world. The research on that is when a man actually makes love, he knows the person, they love him, they like him, they have a history together, that's a

married couple. They find that when married couples have sex, there's a hormone that gets produced in a man's body that doesn't get produced at other times. And that hormone is prolactin. Now, prolactin is in a woman's body is associated with breastfeeding and so forth. Well, for a man, when prolactin is produced, it inhibits his desire for sex. Oh, that doesn't sound like it helps the marriage. Well, it's actually inhibits his desire for sex for six days. Oh, biologically perfect. So you can biologically perfect. So see, men are addicted to sex. And a single. man should be interested in sex. It would cause evolutionary wise. If you haven't found a woman who loves you, you should keep looking. And it's the sex drive that causes men to keep looking.

But when you want you found the right person who loves you, your body then produces prolactin and inhibits lust from searching for one woman after another to another. And as soon as you start masturbating as your male, you're increasing your addiction to sex as opposed to having a natural desire for sex once a week. So if you want to keep your man, then you need to make sure that you make love once a week. Once a week. Because they also found that if you go six days,

seven days without ejaculating and don't have sex on the seventh or eighth day, that your testosterone never goes up 50% until you go six days and you have crazy. And you have sex. So regular sex is very important. It doesn't have to be spectacular. secular sex. It needs to be some form of intimacy, physical, because that, that's always going to go in waves, okay? Everything moves, go in waves. But there needs to be that physical, special

intimacy with someone that you love and you're naked. In a sense, you're naked. And what allows you to be naked in the bedroom in a healthy relationship is you can be naked in your mind and in your heart, and then in your body. And the most important thing for women's estrogen is to be naked in your emotions. And that's what I was getting at before. The old traditional things that produce estrogen like nurturing, cleaning your house, taking care of your children. Children is different because they're producing estrogen in you. But even still, if you're working all the time, there's just so much pressure to do nurturing things. There's not enough time. It produces testosterone. But there's something, which is the superpower technique to raise your estrogen, which is to be

completely naked in your mind and heart to someone who loves you. That is so true. And there's an art to doing that because usually when women don't have emotional intelligence, and realize that their emotions are something that is within them. And they can change those to positive, but they can depend on their partner to change those emotions, but not by having him change his behavior or change anything about him, but to get him to listen and understand and hear you, which is what a therapist does.

But your husband is not a therapist. I became a champion. He's not. Because I'm a therapist. I get paid for this. I've learned to do it. My livelihood is based on it, so I've got to apply that to my wife and have an amazingly orgasmic wife, because that high estrogen has to occur.

And what's so interesting that separates women from men and women from animals is that women only can be sexually aroused at the time, they can be sexually aroused at any time if they're in a safe environment, enough estrogen or progesterone is being produced in her body. Animals can't do that. You see, they just have that cycle, has not, they can think different things. but it doesn't matter. Their body, when they're ovulating, then they want to have sex. Well, if a woman has high estrogen, just double her estrogen on a date and she wants

to have sex at any time of the month, even on her period. If you double her estrogen by letting her like love on you, showing her how much you care for her, nurturing her. That's a whole other talk. You know, if you want to have me back, how to do all that. But we're just understanding the hormones now, the necessity. for women being able to feel safe to express how they feel. Now, it doesn't mean she can just say whatever she's thinking and feeling.

She has to do it appropriately so he doesn't feel blamed. If he feels blamed, then he will go into low testosterone. His estrogen will go up. He'll become defensive. He'll go into fight or flight. That's why women say he always wants to solve the problem or argue with me. He wants to try to build his testosterone back up. Once men learn that by saying nothing but asking questions,

you're actually helping her feel better. You don't have to give a solution to help her feel better. So you don't, so ask her questions. Don't give her the solution. Oh, it's helped me give you the three questions. Let her talk. It's not just let her talk. You can destroy relationships if a woman just starts blaming you.

Okay. His testosterone will go down down. It's literally he gets a bruise and he shuts down. It's, you see, just it's validating what she's saying. And it's hard in the beginning of training. I can do it because I'm a trained person here. I know that if I can not react in a negative way when my wife's upset and complaining about me,

and there weren't that many complaints either, but when she was complaining about me, to not react with an excuse, but to say, help me understand that better, tell me more, and what else? Those are questions we ask as therapists. We don't jump in with solutions. We give women a chance to talk.

And if you validate their emotions, this is really key. If you can validate her emotions, her stress level, dramatically goes down. If you don't validate her emotions and you just listen to whatever she's saying and agree with her, that can be somewhat validating. But the reality is, if a woman is complaining about a man, it's hard for her, him to agree that she is thinking clearly. Right. Yeah, because he's not going to be like, how can I help you? Like, he's going to fight back. He's going to defend himself

because unless he shows up as successful in making her happy, his testosterone. He's not, will go down. And now she's just pointing out, you didn't do this, you didn't do this. How can I trust you? Why can't you do this? You should have said all the little pet peeves, what we call complaining are nagging. All of those things are knocking his testosterone down, down, down. So we need to have technology.

That's my new book, which is how to help men keep their testosterone up. A woman can help that happen. And a man can help keep her estrogen up. He can do that. And listening is one of the key factors. Romance puts it over the top. If you just do romantic things, think of a woman's estrogen having stages of going higher and higher. If she's at the lowest stage, anything you say, which is romantic, it means nothing.

At a normal stage, helpful things start to become romantic. And then you do something a little special out of the ordinary, estrogen goes even higher. Romance takes you from feeling good to feeling really higher. But listening can take you to feeling really good so that then almost anything you do as a man is somewhat romantic. You know, my gosh, this is golden. I didn't even know that until my daughter, Lauren, who teaches a class to women only on all these factors, how to bring out their best in a man. And so we're writing, writing this course online hasn't come out, but this is understanding men. That's what it's called.

And you have to understand men's cave, men pull away, how to get them to come back without going in his cave. That's one aspect of it. And so Lauren says, yes, when I do this, he comes out of the cave and he's always romantic. And I said to her, well, he is, because I'm not always romantic when I come out of the cave. I'm just normal. And what does he do? He says, oh, he'll just go and start cleaning the kitchen or empty the trash. And I said, that's romantic.

Of course, that's romantic. Oh, yeah. No, it's super real. Clean the kitchen. If a woman is stressed and he does those things, she'll say, well, he should do those things. I did this for him. See the difference there? Yeah.

It's only romantic when she's already feeling I'm getting the emotional support at a certain level and then it becomes more romantic. Yeah. And it's also can be romantic in the beginning of its novel and different. So if he occasionally does it. But what's routine to do it, it's no longer anything. Oh my God. Unless her estrogen levels are in a healthy place.

Then whatever he does is she's special. She gets to feel the love between them. It's amazing once we understand the whole power of understanding each other's hormones and how to keep it up. So before we leave this conversation, I do want to just go back to. So what I hear with a man, if he wants to get. get his testosterone up. You don't have sex for a week.

But what about a woman? What if she wants to, what if she wants to improve her libido? What can she do or they do? Let's say how men ruin your libido. Every time a man is accurate how men ruin your libido. Okay. How do they ruin our libido?

Historically, women have a higher libido than men. Just to let you know that. Okay. Particularly five days before ovulation, they had the highest libido. Historically, that's why in the Middle East, but off clitoris. is men were afraid their wives will go off and have sex if he couldn't perform well enough.

So if he loses interest in her, losing interest in her, her interest in him will go away. Her estrogen levels go down. Her interest will go away. But a third thing is too much sex because what happens when he ejaculates, you know as a woman, he always pulls away. There's always this detachment you feel. He turns over the other side. So now basically his testosterone suddenly went way down.

You experienced an attachment, an orgasm, his was way up. your estrogen's way up. It's a time where you connect the most. You sort of cling, you feel so much love. And then he takes it away. Yeah. That's a conditioned response that says if I go to high estrogen, I lose him. These are biological responses that go on. We call it conditioning in psychology. So having sex with him is always going to mean he'll go away. And that's a conditioning that slowly keeps you from opening up. When women say, I can't trust you, it's because men will pull their love away. and it's painful when you attach and somebody pulls away. So it's a gradual experience in your body of every time I open up to him,

he pulls away in several days. He's not as emotionally available to me. It's only when he wants sex that he's open to me. So part of you feels it's like a losing battle. But you can recondition. That's called conditioning. And then there's something called reconditioning. If every week he comes back with 50% higher testosterone,

it tells your body he will always come back. So it reconditions you to always feel safe having sex because he will pull away, but he comes back with more. It's like he leaves, but he always comes back with more for me. But if he leaves and he doesn't come back with more for you, it slowly declines over time. She can't anticipate going to that high level because his testosterone raises her estrogen. So bottom line, heterosexual couples need to have sex once a week. At least. And they need to love each other outside the bedroom. and there's a lot of skills to that.

It's a whole new way of having relationships today. Yeah. It used to be you didn't have to see your husband that much. If you were hungry and you couldn't get a job, you didn't have education, your husband went out in the world and brought home food for you and the children. You needed that. You really needed that. So you had a lot of love for him.

Yeah. And what about the man that's married to the high-powered woman who's type A, she comes home. He needs to nurture her, give to her. Oh, so this is because, you know, I think there's a lot of women that are in the workplace, they're career driven, and it's affecting their relationships because they are doing so much testosterone activities during the day. What can a man do to support her when she comes home at night to bring her estrogen back up? Or what can she do to reboot that estrogen?

That's called a relationship. And that's called being responsible for herself. And then using her partner for extra. Think of men as dessert. If you can get your estrogen up to a normal level, then a man's going to be very willing to do the things I suggest. Prior to that, there's less motivation in him. So that's we have to take personal responsibility. And nobody's taught as personal responsibility to raise estrogen. So we talked about in the beginning is what there's two major things. In the book, you know, I have all these big lists and all. I love the list. The lists are amazing. My daughter says, dad, your lists are the best. They are really good, agreed.

Because it really brings it into practicality. And not everybody's the same, so you have options to look at. But the basic short version of lists is anything that you like to do that you don't have to do. Just think about that. And if it's something you have to do, you're producing adrenaline and you're a little stress, then you can even have a dialogue with yourself for a moment and just say, all right, I'm in my stress zone. This is self-awareness.

I'm in my stress zone. I'm feeling I have to do this. and I do have to do this. However, why am I doing this? I'm doing this because particularly my family will have food on the table so that my children will get their education they want. So that brings you back in your awareness of why you're doing what you have to do. And then you say, and therefore, it's an if then, it's a therefore, I want to do this for my children.

So I want to do this for my country. I want to do you bring it into what you're wanting. And that softens it. when you're doing what you want to do, you're on your male and female side. Okay. So if you're putting your female side in, that's a simple thing. It's not the big thing, but I just wanted to mention that one. Yeah.

So if I come home from work and I want to sit on the couch and watch Netflix and drink a glass of wine, will that bring my testosterone or my estrogen up? That will bring your estrogen up for sure. No question about it. But only so far. The thing that brings it up higher is relationship to a person who cares about you. and using them to see you, to hear you, just like you use the mirror when you wake up in the morning,

you comb your hair and you put on your makeup, and you use your people in your life, your mirror is using your mirror to see yourself. Okay, now what communication, there's four kinds of communication real quick. One's to solve problems, but another is just to lower your stress. And for women talking is a way of lowering their stress,

and it's more effective if what they're talking about brings them greater awareness in terms of their emotion. It's being in touch with your emotions that it really raises your estrogen. Just talking and being heard with somebody who agrees with you will produce oxytocin. You will feel safe and some stress will go down. But you're not really bumping your estrogen up a lot because often women get into these groups where they're complaining about men. Yes.

And everybody's agreeing with everybody. You're going to produce some estrogen. Mainly you're producing more oxytocin and you'll feel I depend on that. oxytocin, so you get some estrogen. But right afterwards, it's gone, because you're feeling like a victim. You just agreed. I'm a victim. Okay, I'm agreed. I'm powerless. I'm agreed. So if you do something else, you can talk about a complaint you have in life and something bad, it's important if you're feeling it to talk about it. But then to validate it is to not necessarily agree with it, but to agree with the emotion it produces. See, the world's not a terrible place. The world's a wonderful place, and it's full of

hope. But when we just focus on our victimness, we tend to go into hopelessness. And hopelessness suppresses estrogen. See, estrogen goes up when I have hope I can have. I can have. I deserve to have. It's all part of hope. And when, when, so you're in a relationship of a man, you don't know why nothing. You think if he was a woman and all the nice things I do for him, he'd be so nice to me. But you don't realize that what men need is different from what women need. So that's a whole. Right. Right. That's a whole other thing. But sticking with what we're just talking about. I went over there.

I even forgot what we're just talking about, which is emotional vulnerability for women is one of those powerful ways. Doing what you love to do, nurturing activities, doing what you like to do, learning new things. See, when you're learning new things, you're depending on things that will increase your happiness and your well-being. Seeing a doctor, going to somebody for advice so that they'll help you with something you can't do for yourself. because once you can do it for yourself, you're not making a lot of estrogen.

So taking classes and taking classes in dance is a big, for some women, massive estrogen levels. The singing classes, anything which is personally expressive, being personal about things. For some women, it's wearing outfits is a big estrogen producer for, it's crazy. Putting on makeup, by the way, is a huge estrogen producer. it makes anybody puts on a mask feel safe. I think wearing dark glasses as estrogen producer. I mean, it's amazing all the little things in life that were drawn to,

particularly for women, why you'll see more women looking at the cosmetics counter than men, okay? Because it's a mask that you put on, it helps protect you. You feel safe, which then allows you to open up to look at, okay, I can depend on other things to make me happy, as well as my dark glasses and my makeup and so forth. And so that's a dynamic of all producing estrogen. And that's good estrogen.

Ten times more estrogen, if I can just poetically say it, is what women get out of therapy. And therapy is just a good therapy. It's just somebody validating your emotions. So I know the whole therapy world. Some people go to therapy in their lives never change. Those whole books written about this. And they often say only the first six sessions produce change. And after that, it just stays stuck.

And that's because the therapist is getting to know you and not ready to give you solutions. You see, giving women's solutions is not going to lower their stress levels. It just increases what they can do to solve the problem, which is testosterone. And not that you don't need that, but you need first to open up your female side, which is talking about the problems in your life, the things that are making you uncomfortable, things that are stressing you out, things that are pressuring you, things that make you upset. Once you talk a little bit about that, then you have to bring it to the emotions. And most therapists don't do that.

They just let you talk. If you're stressed is because you're in your head and you're not in your emotions. Emotions produce estrogen. They're your most powerful. Happiness is an emotion producing estrogen. Love is emotion producing estrogen. Anger is an emotion producing estrogen. You just don't want to get addicted to the negative emotions.

But often if you feel your negative emotions, it will lead you to your positive emotions. And that's called emotional intelligence. It's hard to go from feeling angry and frustrated to feeling I'm so happy and grateful. although it's a good practice to do, but there's actually a whole journey you can go through to make it very efficient. And that's called emotional intelligence. And all my books explain the levels of emotion.

If ever you're frustrated, for example, you're only frustrated because you had an expectation that wasn't met. That means you're disappointed. If anybody who's angry, they're also afraid. If you're not afraid, feeling insecure, then what do you have to fight for? You know, just, okay, I'll take some time with you,

I'd understand your point of view. But if somebody's angry, a man's angry, and you say, well, you know, you're just afraid. I'm not just afraid. Are you kidding? That's because we don't have emotional intelligence to realize that you can't have one negative emotion without all these others. And if you see basically four, it's simple. And if you stay in your prefrontal cortex, it's you share your husband and put it practice called Venus Talk. Oh, honey, I'm so happy to see you. So what is it? Oh, I just want to talk about my day for 10 minutes. You don't have to say anything and you'll see I'll feel better just being able to talk about it. So okay, what do you want me to do? Nothing. Just look at it. me, nod your head. That's the beginning stage. Don't say anything. Don't fix anything. Don't solve anything. And trust that I'm going to feel better just doing this and I don't need any help on that particular thing. I need your help just because I want to talk about it. So that's kind of the way you'd frame the conversation. And that's called a Venus talk. Only 10 minutes. I promise you.

Okay, I can do that. Then you start out by looking at, okay, today, what was frustrating for me? And you talk about that. There were so much traffic today or I got there and they had even done the work and I had to pick up Slack. Try to keep it short. That's what's frustrating. you. What are you disappointed about? Well, most women never get to the disappointment. They'll just stay at the level of blame and frustration. Oh, it's so disappointing because, you know, when I started this job, everybody was supportive of me. Now it's like I'm so competent. I do everything and now I can't relax. It's like, everybody looks to me for everything. So I said, just that's a disappointment, the tone of disappointment, you know, it's not really the ideal

setting for me right now. Then you go to your concerns and worries. And I'm concerned it's just going to get worse. You know, I'm concerned that I'm going to burn out. I have to change another job. I always tend to do this. I give more than I get. And then I burn out. I don't want to be there. And then the last one, this is the best one with your husband. And I'm so, I feel so embarrassed that it's really me. It's me who takes on all these projects and I'm over here blaming everybody else. Or it could be, I'm so embarrassed because I got, I blurted out and got upset with so and so. I don't want to do that, you know, whatever's embarrassment. Embarrassment is pure vulnerability. And you'll see people's face gets a little red when they're embarrassed because the blood flow goes to the brain.

It's the most powerful, positive emotion to produce estrogen. I'm so embarrassed. But you have to have all of them. You see, they're all there. That's called emotional intelligence. And then what's behind those emotions is your passion. And your passion is what do you want? So then you just think, you know, a perfect world.

I wish this. I want this. I hope this. So it's a little positive what I want or what I would like or what I wish. This is going into what are your expectations, hopes, whatever. Just a little bit of what I wish is. or what I want is, then you took about seven minutes to do that. Now you've got the last few minutes to say what I'm grateful for,

what I'm happy about, and what I'm hopeful for, and what I'm proud of. Those are your four positive emotions that are balance of those negative emotions. And you can do this and like, you can learn to do it in two or three minutes. And, but with your partner,

you want to take at least 10 minutes because every time he hears an emotion, and doesn't try to push it down. He doesn't push it down. See, every time a man's solving your problem when you're upset, he's pushing down your emotions. He's saying, you don't need to feel that way. I'll do this for you. Or you're overreacting to this situation.

You just say, you know, honey, if he's a guy who said you're overreacting, you say, I just need 10 minutes to overreact. In the old days, they say, I just need to vent my feelings. And that, if you're with somebody venting your feelings, who's whatever you say is what you feel, not necessarily an emotion.

You're just expressing, I feel like nobody likes me at work or it's too hard work and I'm not getting paid enough. That's expressing your feelings. There's no, there's estrogen being produced, but the problem doesn't go away and your stress doesn't go down so much. Right, right. Yeah. You get the validation, and particularly with a man. Now, see, a man can't validate the way you're thinking about a situation because you think about situations in a different way.

Like if you're saying, oh, my, my stockings tour, you know, he has no experience of that. Right. Are my shoes, these high heel shoes are driving me crazy. You know, he has no experience of that. The reality is he looks through life through a different set of glasses, okay? The things cause him to be stressed are a bit different from you, particularly if you're overwhelmed. He's going to be thinking, cool it. You know, it's not so important.

Just, you know, some men will say, let's just watch TV. What I did in the beginning of marriage was, why don't we just go have sex and forget all our problems? Yeah. Men can forget. Women need to remember and share. And if you remember and then look at what emotion that causes inside, just briefly, just to have become emotionally intelligent. What's going on inside of me?

Check in. And I just want to check in and share it with you. Now, teach men to do this, but to do it alone. If you're independent, you're always making testosterone. And if you're really upset, first do something that will raise your testosterone up, which, you know, I can go drive my car, I can meditate, I can go play tennis, I can go jog and lift waist. Anything.

Fast. Or I can fast for sure. That's a great one. My testosterone goes up. Then I take time to do emotional process and say, okay, what was I feeling? It's sort of in past time. What was I angry about? What was I feeling hurt about?

What was I scared of? And you try to bring those emotions up to the prefrontal cortex emotions, which are frustration, disappointment, concern, and embarrassment. Powerful emotions and then come back. Just get in the habit of it. You know, everybody says take a journal and write what you're great. for them. Such an important thing to do, but often not the whole story. You've got to first embrace the negative, then you move to the positive. And that's what our brain's designed to do.

The prefrontal cortex, we're in our human self, not our conditioned self, our instinctive self, but the human part of us is the prefrontal cortex. It's the only part of us is different from an animal, primarily. And the left side is when you're optimistic, and the right side is when you're pessimistic. Okay. So pessimistic is looking at danger, and that can be addictive. Ironically, looking at the positive is not addictive. There's always a bias for survival to look at the negative. Anytime you're under stress, you go to the negative. And when you go to the negative, it becomes addictive.

And you actually grow neural pathways. So anytime there's any discontent side, you go right to the problems out there, rather than, and you can't get out of feeling unhappy unless you change the outer world. What we want to do is when you're unhappy, you can change the outer world, but first change yourself. So you feel good, recognize what the problems. are and then solve them. So that's your, your optimistic side and your pessimistic side. You want to exercise both. So then you can move through life balancing your hormones that way by seeing, yeah, there's problems. And yes, it's not as bad as I think. And what we can do about it.

Yeah. So, okay, one last thing, though, I want to go back to progesterone because she's my favorite hormone. And I lost her in my 40s. So what I heard you say is any activity that's going to make you fulfilled is going to bring up a woman's progester. And there's a little difference. Okay. Yes. So any activity that is fulfilling where you're depending on something to support you, that's more estrogen.

Progesterine is when it's reciprocal, like playing cards was shown to reading, reading books and discussing it together, talking about problems at the workplace together with somebody who relates to you. So it's a mutual. Collaboration. It's like a collaboration. When you're interacting with someone in a non-testosterone-producing way, you're making progesterone. Ironically, the very chemical that your body, your adrenal gland makes is progesterone.

And the way your body makes testosterone is to convert your progesterone into testosterone. So the more you're in your testosterone mode, the less progesterone you can make. That's why we have social rituals, eating together, conversations together. events together, talking together. You know, I was, I remember even in a social repressive country, I was in Saudi Arabia. And it's hot there. So at night, they go to the restaurants and they're all under the stars. I was at a restaurant where there were a thousand people were there at tables under the

stars. And not one family had their cell phone on. So that was one of the ways they handled their happy. And they all looked happy. Not that they had this perfect lives or anything, but they created these social situations and the women were talking to the women and men were talking to the men. It's all this natural, but there were no cell phones and they all have cell phones. Now go to an American restaurant, you'll see everybody looking at their cell phones.

It's like crazy. We're non-relating to each other. We're losing our relatedness. We're addicted to the electronics and social media and all those things. And all of those addictions inhibit natural hormone production. They all in the same category. Wow. So you just have to minimize them.

And you go back to nature and natural things, easy going, no pressure. that's your primary estrogen producers. And for men, pressure is good sometimes and then non-pressure. They need to be challenged, stress, to be challenged to overcome is predestrone produced testosterone. It goes up for that. But if you don't have enough confidence, meaning you don't know what's going to happen, you think maybe you're going to fail, all that stuff happens, then what happens is cortisol

goes up. And for a man, his testosterone goes down. And for a woman, when cortisol goes up, her testosterone goes up to whatever extent she can make it and her estrogen goes down. Crazy. Crazy. Amazing. Amazing.

And how perfect it is when you can have, you can share what's inside, particularly with men who typically women think half the world doesn't understand me. Because the other half of the world, because her woman does understand you and they agree with you. As a man to teach validation, how I can validate with my wife when I don't fully relate to everything she's experiencing is by simply going, saying statements like, that must be so frustrating. I can always relate to the emotion of frustration.

And actually, men become more aware of their own personal feelings and emotions by listening to a woman be in touch with her emotions. And just by being there for her, his testosterone goes up. He doesn't need to talk to somebody else about his emotions. If he has a woman, he has those emotions and he can listen to her. So what I want as a man is to be able to stay in my male side. This is I kept my testosterone of all those,

you know, other guys is going down. the sex thing was a big part of it. My wife's appreciation for me a big part of it. Being successful is a big part of it. But I know a lot of successful men who have very low testosterone. Okay, they actually have high testosterone at work and they come home and they crash. You know, you have to have success in your relationship. And anybody who comes to me in counseling who has a problem of relationship, first I validate,

then I point out to them how they're making their problem worse. And they just don't know how they make it. worst. That's where we have to understand these new emotional needs that both men and women have. The man today needs emotional support to motivate him to be the man he was in the beginning. Women need emotional support to bring forth the happy person she was in the beginning. And we can first start with ourselves and then we can help each other out. Oh, this is, this will change relationships. I know you know this, but I can't wait to bring it to my community.

So thank you so much for spending so much time with me. I do have one question that I ask all my guests. So I want to make sure that I finish with this. Do you have a gratitude practice? And if so, what is it? And I'll add another piece to that, which is what is one thing you're grateful for in this day and age? I'm grateful to your message to the world that men and women's hormones are different. And fasting is so important.

And when women can fast, it's so, so important. I just think more than ever in the world, we need cleansing. We need the fasting. besides the hormonal production that happens. It's just so, so important. We have these toxins from our environment are called hormone disruptors, and that alone will cause your hormones to go out of balance. And one additional thing we didn't say about the women are menopausal and beyond menopause.

Once your ovaries stop making that estrogen, you don't need as much estrogen. Keep that in mind. What you need is the right balance of estrogen and testosterone. That's your key. Your tendency is to fling right over your testosterone side because it's so easy to go there. Well, if nobody's going to help me, I'll do it myself. And so if you're married and you're in a relationship, get in a relationship if you're not,

because that's your major estrogen supporter in life. It's major, that's the one that can make it go so high through the romance, but first it happens to the emotional fulfillment. And in there, there's a little game. I know we're going overtime. Actually, I'm good. I know I have a couple minutes left before my next interview. Yeah.

Our client, actually. It's called the, this is something anybody can do for hormone balance. Okay. It's called genie in a bottle. It's between a man and a woman. Okay. So you have a woman. One of the big estrogen producers for women, besides being able to share and feel validated, is the other one is being able to ask for help and get it.

Very important. Now, the way estrogen works, every act of love to support me has this same score as every big act of love or a little act of love. it all has the same reaction to estrogen. I bring you 50 roses. Estrogen spires. Oh, so beautiful. I bring you one rose, almost the same estrogen response.

So save your money. It's just become more efficient as men do lots of little things. Like I get four hugs a day as a religion. Before I leave, I come home, before bed, after morning, going,

coming, saying good night. And somewhere else I do my other one. I get up in a morning. I give my hug. I don't know why I'm forgetting. getting this right now. When I come back, there's a hug. And when she goes to bed, there's a hug, and there's always a hug somewhere in between. And during that, one of those hugs, I always say

some compliment about it. I love you so much. You're so beautiful. I'm so lucky to be with you. My life is a dream because of you. You make everything wonderful for me. These are little nothings, but they all score as big as a thousand dollar check on an estrogen level. Men don't know that. They think making money will make you happy. And if you're hungry, the money will make you happy until you have plenty of food and then it does nothing. Okay. So the emotional needs have now become the most important thing. And for women, lots of little acts of love score big.

Now, paradoxically, asking for something, instead of him doing it automatically, asking with full trust that he's going to do it, even produces more estrogen. So you practice asking. So this is called genie in a bottle.

It takes 10 minutes. Any man will do something. I just, when you have a chance, I just need 10 minutes. Would you help me? Yes, I will. Okay, I want to finish this show. That's fine. Go ahead. It is not an emergency, but I need your help. And then what do you need? Well, I want to play genie in the bottle. And practically, in the beginning, once a week is enough for this. But it's a powerful way to

balance your hormones. So for 10 minutes, you already know the rules of it. He's going to say, whatever your request is, your wish is my command. It has to be something he can do in 10 minutes. So maybe you say, oh, would you clean it at the kitchen is such a mess? Absolutely, I'll do it right away. Happy to do it. it, just like he's like a mater D of the best restaurant. Oh, Dr. Gray, you're here again. We got your special table. I have a big tipper. Are you flying first class? They all come at you on a long flight. Oh, is there anything you need? I'll be happy to do it. Just read this little buzzer. I'll be right there. So you're the mater of day. I love this game. This is a great game.

A great game. He's a genie in the bottle. So he can he can do this for 10 minutes. You see, this is like, I'm going to play that roll up. Whatever you ask, I'm going to get on it right away. Yes, ma'am, happy to do it. So now women, the most. The most. popular thing women do in their 10 minutes is they'll often say, well, I'd like you to give me a foot massage. And now that's only one point. But each time you ask and he responds, it's another point of estrogen. So you say, okay, first thing I like you to, oh, Jeannie, would you run to my room and get my lavender? He runs to the room and gets the lavender. He runs. That's an extra point. He comes back with the lavender. He says, now I'd like you to take off my right shoe. He takes off the right shoe. Oh, happy to do that.

And it's like a game. Oh, happy to do that. Now take off my socks. I'm happy to do that. Now massage my right foot with the lavender oil. I love it so much. This feels so good. Now would you do my left? Or would you do my toes now? See, the more...

Sounds amazing. Ask for it doesn't matter how big the response. It's just immediate and right away what you're doing. Every time you're asking and getting, you're producing estrogen. It's an amazing thing, which it takes you out of the mistrusting place where women go to. Well, does he still love me? Is he offering to do things for me? See, that's a...

It is an estrogen producer. happenly magically know what she's thinking and needing at that time. And you have the motivation to do it. Because better always holding back to really have to do it. Because half to is what produces testosterone. Get to is estrogen. So to play the rules of the game. And so here's how you could ruin the game is let's say he's washing the dishes for you. And while he's over there washing the dishes, you're like now ironing clothes. You can't do anything for yourself. You're dependent on him totally. So that's a sometimes we couples will have him feed her. I used to do that in my workshops when people would eat there.

And, but the, the, he's washing the dishes, then the mistake of women would make and make issues. And now would you always keep the kitchen clean, okay? Oh, yeah. They take that as a moment to a teaching moment or go beyond that. No, it's just right there. I have an ache in my foot and I need you to massage it, so to speak. It's something he can do and he doesn't have to ever do again unless you ask him.

It's such a good training and it teaches, it brings back that motivation spark inside of him and it awakens inside of her, that feeling you have when you got together where you don't have to ask. Everything just happens for you magically. That is estrogen going up. And either way, estrogen will go up. And more powerful is you have an integration of masculine and feminine because when you're in your male side, you're asking, and your female side is a part of you that's wanting to help is depending. So the immature woman can't ask. The mature woman is on her male side because you're a boss. You're asking all the time. You're directing. I want you to do this. And now I want you to do this, It's just like you're the boss.

And then at the same time, it's little things. And it's all where you're depending on him for your happiness feels so good or I feel so relieved. I'm so happy. Oh, I got to take a bath while you did the dishes for me. That's so wonderful. Although you couldn't do that in 10 minutes, but you could start your bath then. Yeah.

Oh, my God. Well, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to raise your testosterone by telling you that the world needs you to keep talking about this because I have no doubt you are saving relationships. Well, many, we should do another. one on behavior skills of women and men to increase. Now we've sort of covered the basics. We can get into how to ask and get the support you need, what to do when men go to their cave to rebuild your estrogen. Yes. Because see, when men pull away, women go after him thinking that

if we connect again, we'll get estrogen. Let him go. Let him go and know where you go that will produce your estrogen for you. It's kind of like when I'm fasting, if I get hungry, I go right to a glass of water. And I also do another one, which is lemon and honey. That takes away my hunger completely. Amazing. Well, I will have you back. I will take you up on this was such a joy. You saw the smile on my face. I get it. I get it. And I feel with you what you're doing. The recognition of hormones is so, so significant in life. It was fasting, a big part of my life. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love

to know about it, so please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.