back to indexHow to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone | Huberman Lab Podcast #17
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Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,
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where we discuss science and science-based tools
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for everyday life.
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I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology
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and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
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This podcast is separate from my teaching
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and research roles at Stanford.
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It is, however, part of my desire and effort
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to bring zero cost to consumer information
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about science and science-related tools
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to the general public.
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In keeping with that theme,
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I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.
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Our first sponsor is Four Sigmatic.
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Four Sigmatic is a wellness company
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that makes mushroom coffee.
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And if you're asking yourself,
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why would you want to put mushrooms in coffee?
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First of all, let me tell you,
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these are not psychedelic mushrooms,
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and no, the coffee doesn't taste like mushrooms.
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The coffee is delicious,
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and you don't taste mushrooms at all.
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I know this because I've been using Four Sigmatic coffee
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and been stocking it in my laboratory for several years now,
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long before I ever had the podcast,
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or Four Sigmatic was a sponsor.
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The two kinds of mushrooms that are in Four Sigmatic coffee
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are lion's mane and chaga mushrooms,
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both of which have been shown
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to have a slight anxiolytic effect to reduce anxiety.
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And lion's mane has also been shown in several studies
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to lower the symptoms of depression just slightly,
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although I wouldn't consider it a treatment for depression.
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That's an attractive benefit,
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as well as have some effect at offsetting cognitive decline.
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Albeit slightly, the effects were real
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in the studies that I found.
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So if you'd like to try Four Sigmatic,
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you can go to foursigmatic.com slash Huberman.
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That's F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C.com slash Huberman.
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And if you do that, you'll get 40% off your order
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plus free shipping on mushroom coffee bundles.
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That's foursigmatic.com slash Huberman
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for up to 40% off and free shipping.
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Today's episode is also brought to us by Blinkist.
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Blinkist is an app that has thousands of nonfiction books
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condensed down to just 15 minutes of key takeaways
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that you can read or listen to.
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I'm a big reader and I'm a big consumer of nonfiction.
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And most of the time I consume books
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in their traditional form,
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like a book where you flip the pages and so forth.
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I also listen to full length audio books.
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However, over time, we know that we forget lots of things.
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And even though sometimes I think
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I got all the critical information from a book,
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when I listen to Blinkist and I get the 15 minute rundown,
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either in audio or in written form,
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what I find is there are key points
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and I've listened to the Blinkist version of it as well.
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Livewired is a book about neuroplasticity,
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the brain's ability to change in response to experience.
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I get so many questions and requests
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for books about neuroplasticity.
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In my opinion, Livewired is the most recent and up to date
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and the best one to date.
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David Sinclair's book, Lifespan.
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David, as many of you know,
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is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School.
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Lifespan is this terrific book about aging as a disease
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and the future and present of longevity treatments.
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Very interesting book.
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Matt, of course, is a professor at UC Berkeley
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just for Huberman Lab Podcast listeners.
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to get a free seven day trial
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This episode is also brought to us by Monkpack.
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Monkpack is a company that makes keto friendly snacks
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that taste incredible,
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but have just one gram of sugar or less.
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As I've said before on this podcast,
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I am not in ketosis, I'm not ketogenic.
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I don't advocate or follow any one particular diet.
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For me, what works is to fast in the early part of the day
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and to eat low carb and keto-ish throughout the day.
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That's for alertness and attention so I can work and focus
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and I don't feel sluggish or brain fog.
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And then at night and in the evening
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is when I tend to eat my carbohydrates
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to aid the transition to sleep.
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That's what works for me.
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Monkpack bars are a terrific snack,
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whether or not your keto all the time,
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whether or not you're low carb, or even if you're not,
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they are absolutely delicious.
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And I don't say that lightly.
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I'm not a big fan of bars in general.
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Most bars to me taste like a combination of a metal bumper
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mixed with some cardboard and some lawn trimmings
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and some artificial sugar.
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Monkpack bars, when they were sent to me,
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I was like, all right, I'll try them.
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I tried it like, uh-oh, this is a problem
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because I like them very, very much.
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And when I say it's a problem, it really is a problem.
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I actually keep the Monkpack boxes in my basement
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so that I don't tear through them all at once.
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I'm a huge fan of the caramel sea salt flavor.
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It's delicious, just talking about it.
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It makes me hungry for one.
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But they also have sea salt, dark chocolate,
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peanut butter, dark chocolate.
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In addition to being keto friendly,
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they're also gluten-free, plant-based, non-GMO,
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no soy, trans fat, sugar alcohols, or artificial colors.
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their keto less than one gram of sugar.
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This month, we've been talking all about hormones,
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which are these absolutely incredible chemicals
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in our brain and body.
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They impact our entire lifespan.
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So from the time that we are in the womb,
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they are controlling the development
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of our brain and our bodies.
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After we are born, they're still controlling
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the development of our brain and bodies.
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And I did say development
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and that's because contrary to what most people think,
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development lasts the entire lifespan.
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From the time you're conceived until the time you die,
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you are developing, you are changing,
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and hormones are constantly updating and changing
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the different functions of your body.
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They have two major kinds of effects.
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One are immediate effects.
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So they can actually bind to
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or kind of park in parking spots on cells
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and impact all sorts of things
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like the growth of cells, et cetera.
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They also can control gene expression.
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This is the way that hormones during puberty
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control body hair growth and breast development
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and growth of muscles and limbs and height
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and all sorts of things.
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They are incredible.
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We've talked about testosterone and estrogen.
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We talked about insulin and glucagon
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and some of the other things.
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Today, we are going to talk about metabolism,
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mainly going to talk about thyroid hormone
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and growth hormone and some other related pathways.
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I'm going to explain to you the logic
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of how thyroid hormone and growth hormone work.
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It will become obvious why I've paired
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thyroid and growth hormone together in the same episode.
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And I will of course talk about tools that you can use
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to elevate or reduce thyroid hormone.
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There are cases where people
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want to reduce thyroid hormone.
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I will talk about tools that you can use
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to elevate growth hormone.
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There are rare cases where people
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want to reduce growth hormone.
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Most people are interested in increasing growth hormone.
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So today is going to be rich with information,
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rich with actionable tools.
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And as always, the idea is to spell out
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an organizational logic
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so you can come away from this episode.
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And in fact, the entire month on hormones,
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really understanding at some level
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what these things we call hormones are and how they work.
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And that's really to arm you
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to encounter information going forward,
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whether or not it comes from me or from somebody else,
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a book or a course, someplace else online,
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to make sense of how to work with these incredible chemicals
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Before we begin to talk about thyroid and growth hormone
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and how our metabolism works and how to control metabolism,
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I want to answer a few questions
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that I received from you, from the audience.
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Every once in a while,
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someone will send me a quite earnest question
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about something they saw on the internet.
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And one of the things I've heard about quite a bit
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in the last couple of weeks
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is we've been talking about hormones and food intake
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and how those interact,
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is this question of are certain foods
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particularly good for certain organs of the body
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and can that be predicted on the basis
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of the shape of those foods?
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I want to acknowledge the question as a valid one
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because I see this every once in a while out there,
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well, walnuts are in the shape of the brain
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and therefore they are good for your brain
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or a particular fruit like the beet
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often looks like a heart and it's good for your heart.
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And I certainly invite questions of all kinds
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provided they are sincere questions.
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However, I am not aware of any science whatsoever
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supporting the idea that the shape of a given food
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or object for that matter
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is relevant to its functional role in the body
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in reference to biology.
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Now, beets contain something
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that we're going to talk about today.
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They contain a substance called arginine,
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which actually can control the dilation of blood vessels
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So it has some relationship to heart and heart health.
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Walnuts contain various fatty acids that maybe,
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I want to underscore maybe,
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beneficial for certain aspects of brain health,
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but there's no evidence whatsoever
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that the shape of the food itself is relevant.
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And I think what's happened is,
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is that people have gone out there
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and found foods that contain certain substances
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like carrots and vitamin A
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or walnuts and particular fatty acids
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or beets and arginine,
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and they've selected the foods
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that happen to be in the shape of the thing,
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the organ that the particular substance
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like vitamin A or fatty acids and so forth
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might benefit or support.
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But of course, there are many, many other sources
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of these nutrients that don't come from walnuts
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or from beets or from carrots.
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And so I guess the short way to put it
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is that the idea that the shape of some food
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is an indication of whether or not that food
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would be healthy for a particular organ in the body
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is absolutely unfounded.
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I don't know of any evidence for it.
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And I'm not out to quash anybody's great love
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I enjoy all the foods I just described,
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but the shape of things in the physical universe
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bears very little, if any, relevance to the nutrients
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that it contains and therefore the organs that it supports.
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So thank you for your question.
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But if you see that out there,
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I don't even think you need to tell the person
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who's putting that information out into the world.
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I would just back away slowly.
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One other thing before we move into today's material.
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Last episode, I talked about the problems with emulsifiers
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in highly processed foods
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and the way that they can strip
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the mucosal lining of the gut
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and they can limit the signaling of hormones like CCK
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that can signal to the brain satiety,
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the signal to stop eating.
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And then we got into a discussion
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about artificial sweeteners.
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And I threw out Stevia as an artificial sweetener
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and several people reached out to correct me
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that Stevia is not an artificial sweetener.
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It is a non-caloric sweetener and you are correct.
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I lumped artificial and non-caloric sweeteners together.
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And thanks to many of you that also sent me some references,
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it does not appear that Stevia
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can negatively impact the gut microbiome.
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It does seem unique among non-caloric sweeteners.
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There are probably others out there.
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The other thing that we discussed
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is how Stevia can lead to slight increases in blood glucose
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but can also improve insulin management just slightly,
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probably cancels to zero
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in terms of its impact on blood glucose
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provided it's not at concentrations
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that are super, super sweet.
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Ingestion of anything that's very sweet,
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whether or not it contains calories or not,
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artificial or not, will create an insulin response.
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In fact, just walking past a bakery
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and smelling delicious baked goods
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can increase your insulin secretion.
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And so I just want to point that out.
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Thank you for the information
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and the references that you found.
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Please send additional ones if you do find them.
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And I appreciate that you allow me to make corrections.
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Every once in a while I misspeak here
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and the opportunity to make corrections
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keeps us all on the same page.
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And please do keep any feedback
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that you have about particular things
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I cover here coming my way.
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There is so much interest in metabolism.
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We hear about having a high or a low metabolism.
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There are some people out there
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who would like to reduce their metabolism.
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They simply can't eat enough to maintain their weight.
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Most people, however, struggle with the opposite issue.
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They struggle to maintain a healthy weight
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and or their metabolism is too low.
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Now, there are a variety of reasons
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why metabolism can be low.
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Today, we are going to talk about two hormones,
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thyroid hormone and its related pathways
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and growth hormone and its related pathways,
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which arguably are the two hormones
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and two systems in the body that are most significant
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for setting your overall level of metabolism.
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Before we dive into those,
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I just want to cover a little bit of what metabolism is.
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And I want to talk about which organs in your body
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use the most energy.
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So metabolism is the consumption of energy,
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not necessarily eating,
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but it's the use of energy in the cells of the body
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for growth of tissues, for repair of tissues,
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and also just for day-to-day maintenance of function.
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A good example of maintenance of function
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would be your brain.
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Most of your metabolic needs,
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your so-called basal or resting metabolic needs
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are for your brain, for thinking.
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If you were to just sit in a bed all day
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and do nothing but think,
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that consumes about 75% of your metabolic needs.
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Now, there's also moving around.
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If you have a job that requires a lot of heavy labor
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or lifting things, or you're a new parent
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and you're carrying kids around
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and you're going up and down the stairs
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or back and forth to the refrigerator for formula, et cetera,
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well, then you're burning more energy,
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burning more calories.
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But even if you are very physically active,
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unless you're an ultra marathoner or a marathoner,
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chances are that 75% of your metabolic needs
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are coming just from your brain.
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And that's because neurons consume a lot of energy.
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Neurons, of course, are just the nerve cells of your brain.
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So these two hormones, thyroid hormone and growth hormone,
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we think of as related to metabolism of things in the body,
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keeping body fat low and keeping muscles strong
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and tendons strong and repairing themselves, et cetera.
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But they are also key for brain function,
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for the ability to maintain cognitive function
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throughout the lifespan.
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So the big theme I'd like to introduce
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is that metabolism isn't just about losing weight,
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but having a high metabolism provided it's not too high
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It means that you will have more lean tissue,
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more bone and muscle and less adipose tissue, fat.
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And we know that that's healthy.
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How much fat and how much muscle?
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Well, that varies and the numbers on this
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are always shifting.
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But in general, muscle and its related tissues
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burns more energy than does adipose tissue or fat.
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And the water in your body doesn't consume any energy.
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So metabolism can be increased simply
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by adding muscle to your body and reducing fat
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or adjusting the ratio of the two.
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But regardless, even if you're not interested
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in changing body composition,
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these two hormones, thyroid hormone and growth hormone
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are super important for metabolism of all kinds,
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including tissue repair after injury,
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including maintaining cognitive function and wellbeing
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and the ability to think clearly as you age,
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offsetting dementia and so forth.
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So the big theme here really includes the previous episodes.
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You don't have to have seen those episodes,
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but for the last three episodes and today as well,
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we've been talking about hormones,
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these substances that are released from one location
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in the body that go and act other locations in the body.
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I'm going to tell you how that works
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for thyroid and growth hormone.
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But now that you've heard about testosterone and estrogen
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and you're going to hear about thyroid and growth hormone,
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I want you to realize that there's a repeating logic.
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First of all, there are neurons in your brain
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in an area called the hypothalamus,
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which it just means it's below the thalamus, hypo.
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It sits at the base of your brain in the front,
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it's part of the forebrain.
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So it's more or less above the roof of your mouth,
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maybe about a centimeter or so,
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and then about a centimeter forward in most people.
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And neurons in the hypothalamus release hormones
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that are called releasing hormones.
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So we've talked in previous episodes about, for instance,
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gonadotropin-releasing hormone.
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So those are little neurons that then signal
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another brain area called the pituitary
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to release other hormones.
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Today, we're going to see this again.
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In the brain, you have neurons
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that release thyrotropin or thyroid-releasing hormone.
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You also have growth hormone-releasing hormone.
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So anytime you hear releasing,
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chances are those are neurons that are in your brain
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and they extend little wires we call axons
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into your pituitary,
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and the pituitary releases a bunch of hormones
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into the bloodstream,
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and the pituitary releases things
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that most often have the name of stimulating hormone
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because they stimulate organs.
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So in keeping with the theme of thyroid hormone,
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you have thyroid-releasing hormone in the brain,
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tells the pituitary to release thyroid-stimulating hormone,
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and then the thyroid, which we'll talk about in a moment,
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releases thyroid hormones.
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In the testosterone and estrogen episode,
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we talked about how you have
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gonadotropin-releasing hormone.
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There's the releasing again up in the brain.
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Remember, releasing hormone comes from the brain.
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Then you had things like luteinizing hormone
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and follicle-stimulating hormone,
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which were in the pituitary,
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and those traveled to the ovaries or the testes
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and acted on those tissues, okay?
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So please try and embed this logic.
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If you hear the word releasing hormone,
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it's coming from the brain,
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and that makes it actionable in certain ways
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that we'll return to later.
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In addition, the pituitary is letting go
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of all these hormones into the bloodstream
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that are stimulating different tissues.
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So for thyroid, it's thyroid-stimulating hormone,
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and then it goes to the thyroid,
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and the thyroid is a little butterfly-shaped gland
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that's right around the Adam's apple.
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If you want to see yours,
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not directly because it's got skin over it,
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what you would do is you'd take a sip of water,
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you'd look in the mirror, and you'd swallow.
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And the thing that moves up and down,
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that is your thyroid.
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Now, some people call it your Adam's apple
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because it sits right near this protrusion in the trachea,
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which is the Adam's apple.
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No matter whether or not you're male, female,
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or regardless of what your chromosomal background is,
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everyone has an Adam's apple.
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It tends to be more pronounced,
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and people, they got a surge of testosterone
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early in development
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because it has a testosterone sensitivity to it,
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and that actually controls the timbre,
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the so-called deepness of the voice.
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So the thyroid gland sits right there,
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and it's got four little bumps behind it
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called the parathyroid gland,
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and it releases two hormones into the blood
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to stimulate different tissues and their metabolism,
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and those hormones are called T4 and T3.
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So if this is already sounding like a lot of information,
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it's really easy, I promise.
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Releasing hormone comes from the brain,
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stimulating hormone comes from the pituitary,
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and in this case, we're talking about the thyroid
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binding up that stimulating hormone and saying,
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oh, I need to release something
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that releases T4 and T3, and guess what?
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You can basically forget about T4.
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T4, it's not completely inactive, it has some roles,
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but T3 is the one that's more or less active.
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Now, what does thyroid hormone do?
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A lot of people think, oh, thyroid, it's like metabolism,
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and people who are hypothyroid
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all have bulging eyes and are real thin,
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and people who have hypothyroid are overweight,
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and their eyes are half closed or something,
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and indeed, thyroid hormone controls
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a lot of the features of the face and the eyes,
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and it can control amounts of adipose tissue and so forth,
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but the main role of thyroid hormone, of T3,
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is to promote metabolism,
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and that doesn't just mean the consumption of energy,
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it means the utilization of energy,
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including the buildup of tissues,
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so it acts on all sorts of target tissues in the body.
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It acts on muscle, it acts on the liver,
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it acts on the cartilage, it acts on the bone,
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and it's not just involved in using energy,
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it's also converting energy.
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I do realize I said that twice.
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It's involved in taking fats
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and breaking them down into fatty acids
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and converting those into ATP,
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which is an important thing for cells to use energy.
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It's also involved in taking sugars
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and turning those into energy,
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and yes, it goes to adipose tissue, to fat.
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We have different kinds of fat that we'll talk about today,
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but it goes to white fat,
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and it liberates or helps liberate some of the fats
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from those fat cells and use them for energy,
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and this is why higher thyroid
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is associated with leaner bodies.
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Lower thyroid is associated with less lean bodies.
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So one thing that's absolutely key and is actionable,
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we're right there already in discussing tools, is iodine.
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Iodine comes from things in the ocean, right?
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And here are a couple of interesting facts about iodine,
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and then we'll talk about
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whether or not you should be supplementing iodine or not.
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First of all, iodine is most common in sea salt,
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in kelp, and in seaweed,
link |
and most people can get enough iodine
link |
from the food they eat and or the table salt they consume.
link |
Almost all table salt from all over the world,
link |
regardless of where you are, contains iodine.
link |
The thyroid needs iodine in order to produce thyroid hormone
link |
and you need sufficient levels of thyroid hormone.
link |
Not too much, but you need it.
link |
So chances are you are getting enough iodine,
link |
although you might not,
link |
especially those of you following
link |
a particularly quote-unquote clean diet
link |
might not be getting enough iodine.
link |
Here's the deal with iodine.
link |
Iodine combines with an amino acid
link |
that we've talked about before called L-tyrosine.
link |
L-tyrosine comes from meat, from nuts.
link |
There are some plant-based sources as well.
link |
It is the precursor to dopamine,
link |
but in the thyroid, iodine combines or works with L-tyrosine
link |
to produce T3 and T4, the thyroid hormone.
link |
So you absolutely need sufficient iodine,
link |
you need sufficient L-tyrosine,
link |
and then you also need something else
link |
which is called selenium,
link |
and we'll talk about selenium in a moment.
link |
So there's a condition
link |
that shows up in little pockets in the world.
link |
It's not super common, meaning it's not very widespread,
link |
but in certain areas that are far away from the ocean,
link |
at one point, this was historically
link |
in the Midwestern states of the United States,
link |
in some mountain regions of other countries,
link |
in some areas of Africa that were far from the ocean,
link |
people would get extremely swollen bulges in their necks,
link |
and this was called goiter.
link |
And the reason they were getting those swollen bulges
link |
is because the thyroid itself was hypertrophy,
link |
it was growing in an attempt to churn out more thyroid,
link |
and because it was getting a lot of stimulating hormone
link |
from the pituitary,
link |
but, and I don't want to go too far off track here,
link |
but as you recall, the brain and the pituitary
link |
are paying attention in a cellular sense
link |
to the levels of hormones in the blood,
link |
and when those hormones get too high,
link |
they shut off the stimulating hormone,
link |
they shut down the signal to make more,
link |
kind of like a thermostat.
link |
When the levels are too low,
link |
like there's not enough testosterone in the bloodstream,
link |
or there's not enough estrogen,
link |
the brain will continue to push out the signal
link |
Similarly, if there's not enough thyroid circulating,
link |
or there's not enough iodine to make thyroid,
link |
therefore not enough thyroid hormone circulating,
link |
the thyroid gland itself is not getting shut down,
link |
there's tons of stimulating hormone and releasing hormone
link |
coming from the brain, like release, release, release,
link |
and there's no way they can make thyroid hormone,
link |
instead the gland just gets bigger and bigger and bigger,
link |
and so people get goiter.
link |
This is one of the reasons why table salt has iodine in it,
link |
although there are other foods
link |
that have iodine in it as well.
link |
So how much iodine do you need?
link |
Well, you don't need a whole lot.
link |
Some people who are hypothyroidal might,
link |
and I want to emphasize might,
link |
you absolutely should talk to your doctor.
link |
This is a serious matter.
link |
Anytime you're talking about hormones
link |
or manipulating levels of thyroid,
link |
you absolutely want to talk to your doctor.
link |
Some people benefit from supplementing iodine.
link |
It is contained in most salts.
link |
It's in Himalayan salt, not always, but often.
link |
I know these days there's a lot of excitement
link |
about pink salts and sea salts,
link |
and the kind of artisan salt thing
link |
has kind of taken off in the foodie land, which is great.
link |
Some of them are actually quite tasty.
link |
You can just take it directly if you like the taste of salt,
link |
but iodine can be supplemented through things like kelp
link |
and seaweed and kelp tablets.
link |
Now, if you are hyperthyroidal,
link |
you make too much thyroid, that actually can be a problem.
link |
So really the best way to figure this out
link |
is to get your blood levels tested of thyroid hormone.
link |
But there's so much iodine in the ocean
link |
that believe it or not, people that live near the coast
link |
can actually just absorb it through the air
link |
just by breathing ocean air.
link |
So that gives you a sense of just how little iodine
link |
you actually need to consume in food or in salt.
link |
So if you're within a few miles of the ocean
link |
or you visit the ocean from time to time,
link |
you're probably getting plenty.
link |
It does have to come together, as I mentioned,
link |
And this is why foods that contain L-tyrosine
link |
and provided that you have sufficient iodine in your diet,
link |
and if you have sufficient selenium in your diet,
link |
does serve to increase your metabolism.
link |
And that is, again, is for the growth and repair of tissues.
link |
And that's really important.
link |
It's not just about keeping your metabolism high
link |
so that you can be on the leaner side of things
link |
or adjust your body weight, excuse me,
link |
your body composition ratios the way you like.
link |
Repair of injuries, repair of brain tissue,
link |
clearance of any damage from neurons,
link |
clearance of any damage to the body
link |
is also going to depend on thyroid.
link |
Again, metabolism being this kind of rate
link |
of fuel consumption and use in the body generally,
link |
not just about body mass indexes and things of that sort.
link |
So let's talk about selenium because it's really important.
link |
And even though most people are getting a lot
link |
of sufficient iodine,
link |
and most people are probably getting enough L-tyrosine,
link |
I'm guessing most people may not be getting enough selenium
link |
if their goal is to increase thyroid hormone,
link |
at least that's what the literature says.
link |
Without going into the biochemistry,
link |
selenium is important in order for thyroid hormone
link |
to be made because of the way that it allows L-tyrosine
link |
and iodine to interact.
link |
And the thing is most people aren't getting enough selenium
link |
because they don't eat foods that are high in selenium.
link |
Now, how much selenium you need
link |
will depend on where you live.
link |
It actually varies country by country.
link |
Some countries I found say that you should get
link |
100 micrograms, some say 200, some say 155.
link |
The average was about 155 micrograms,
link |
the countries I looked at.
link |
People who are trying to increase thyroid levels
link |
might want to consume more selenium.
link |
And if you consume a vitamin, of course,
link |
you want to make sure if it has selenium
link |
that you're not overdoing it
link |
by consuming a lot of selenium-rich foods either.
link |
But nonetheless, I think it's fair to say
link |
that most people probably could do well
link |
by ingesting slightly more selenium than they currently are,
link |
although, of course, always talk to your doctor.
link |
Brazil nuts are the heavyweight champion of foods
link |
to get selenium from.
link |
It has very high concentrations of selenium.
link |
In just six or eight Brazil nuts
link |
contain something like 550 micrograms of selenium.
link |
It's also present in fish.
link |
So certain fish like yellowfin tuna,
link |
although nowadays, whenever I mention tuna or shellfish,
link |
which is the other rich source of selenium,
link |
people will tell me immediately
link |
there are all sorts of issues around farm,
link |
not farm, mercury, et cetera.
link |
So I've never particularly liked eating fish
link |
because of the way it tastes.
link |
So that's why I avoid it.
link |
But for those of you that like it,
link |
I'm sure you're much more skilled
link |
in knowing which fish to buy
link |
and which fish not to buy.
link |
Ham, of all things, contains a lot of selenium.
link |
For whatever reason, pork does.
link |
I'm not a big consumer of pork.
link |
Beef has some selenium.
link |
But what's interesting, if you look at the sources,
link |
pork, beef, turkey, chicken, cottage cheese,
link |
eggs, brown rice, what you want to understand
link |
is that Brazil nuts, six to eight Brazil nuts,
link |
has 550 micrograms of selenium,
link |
and all the other foods I mentioned
link |
at much greater portion size
link |
than equivalent to six to eight Brazil nuts,
link |
either by volume or by calories,
link |
they have something like 30 to 50 micrograms of selenium.
link |
So if you're not eating Brazil nuts,
link |
and I'm guessing most people aren't,
link |
and you're not eating a lot of animal-based foods,
link |
which I know many of you aren't,
link |
then you're probably not getting enough selenium.
link |
And again, you can have these levels measured,
link |
or you can just check what you're consuming
link |
and figure out whether or not you're meeting the ration
link |
that you need in order to get healthy levels of thyroid.
link |
It is present in things like mushrooms,
link |
but again, in a bowl of mushrooms,
link |
what is the equivalent to a bowl of mushrooms?
link |
12 micrograms of selenium.
link |
And if the daily ration is something
link |
in the 100 to 200 range,
link |
again, look it up for the area you are,
link |
you can see really quickly why,
link |
even though things like mushrooms and spinach
link |
and milk and yogurt and lentils and cashews,
link |
so now we're into the vegetarian segment
link |
in the list that I constructed,
link |
you're probably not getting enough selenium.
link |
So it's kind of an interesting thing
link |
if you're an experimenter
link |
and you get the clearance from your doctor,
link |
you could try increasing your selenium levels
link |
and see how that impacts your metabolism.
link |
Again, Brazil nuts are probably going to be
link |
the most direct way to get sufficient selenium levels,
link |
but because levels are so high in Brazil nuts,
link |
it also means that you could overdo it as well.
link |
I'm not really aware of what the consequences are
link |
of getting too much selenium,
link |
although you can get too much of anything
link |
and I'm guessing those consequences aren't good.
link |
I also want to mention that for children,
link |
their daily requirements of selenium are much lower,
link |
as low as 30 or 40 micrograms for kids 14 years or younger.
link |
And in some areas, I really want to underscore this,
link |
the amount of selenium that's recommended daily
link |
is as low as 55 micrograms.
link |
So it's not that you should be shooting for thousands
link |
or even high levels of hundreds of micrograms of selenium.
link |
And again, that's micrograms, not milligrams.
link |
So again, look into what you need,
link |
but if you're somebody who's interested
link |
in keeping thyroid function healthy and productive,
link |
then you certainly want to make sure
link |
you're getting enough iodine,
link |
you're getting enough selenium
link |
and you're getting enough l-tyrosine.
link |
And it's interesting when you start looking
link |
at the various foods, especially highly processed foods,
link |
then you start to realize that perhaps many people,
link |
maybe you, are not.
link |
Not incidentally, selenium has some other effects on health
link |
that can be quite positive.
link |
And even though these don't relate
link |
to thyroid or growth hormone function specifically,
link |
I think you might want to know about them
link |
given that we're on the topic of selenium.
link |
The first is that there are three studies,
link |
all of which showed very high efficacy
link |
for reducing the risk of something called preeclampsia.
link |
Preeclampsia is seizures that are related
link |
to blood pressure issues
link |
during or around the delivery of a new baby.
link |
And it actually, it's a rare-ish condition,
link |
but it actually can be quite deadly.
link |
And so the fact that selenium is important
link |
for offsetting preeclampsia risk is interesting.
link |
I don't know the exact mechanism,
link |
and I'm guessing there are only a few of you out there
link |
that are either pregnant or thinking of conceiving soon,
link |
but that's worth noting.
link |
Obviously, anything related to pregnancy or lactation,
link |
especially talk to your doctor.
link |
I'm guessing that selenium
link |
is probably in a lot of prenatal formulas,
link |
but that's one clear benefit of having sufficient selenium.
link |
The other is a reduced prostate cancer risk.
link |
There's a study showing that having sufficient selenium
link |
can reduce prostate cancer risk.
link |
And there is some evidence that if you consume foods
link |
from areas with soil that's low in selenium,
link |
that can be a problem.
link |
And last episode, we talked about all these issues
link |
related to soil quality,
link |
things that are making their way into food
link |
that are disrupting hormones and so forth.
link |
But having sufficient selenium from food
link |
could offset the low content in any soil.
link |
And so that apparently can reduce prostate cancer risk.
link |
It's a minor effect, but it's a statistically
link |
And the other one is a reduction in acne,
link |
which is interesting.
link |
I'm guessing that that probably has to do
link |
with the thyroid hormone pathway
link |
because of the way thyroid hormone can impact the liver.
link |
And it turns out that the liver
link |
and various biochemical reactions in the liver
link |
And that's probably an episode all into itself,
link |
but those are just some additional benefits
link |
of getting sufficient selenium.
link |
Okay, so we're already deep into tools
link |
related to making sure that you have sufficient
link |
selenium, iodine, and L-tyrosine
link |
in order to make enough thyroid hormones
link |
that can support your metabolic processes
link |
in your liver, your muscles, your tendons,
link |
for whatever purpose,
link |
keeping your metabolism high for body composition reasons,
link |
or for healing, for keeping your brain working well.
link |
Earlier, I mentioned there are people
link |
who are following very clean diets.
link |
So these are people that consume no processed foods.
link |
Any starch they might eat is going to be
link |
maybe a rice or a grain,
link |
or any protein they might consume
link |
is going to be either from,
link |
let's hope from humanely raised animal sources,
link |
or maybe they're pure plant-based.
link |
Believe it or not,
link |
those folks are actually very susceptible to low iodine
link |
because it turns out that diets that are very meat rich
link |
and don't have many vegetables,
link |
as well as diets that are very vegetable rich,
link |
but don't have many meats or salts,
link |
are at risk of lowering thyroid hormone
link |
by way of the iodine pathway and other pathways.
link |
And so let me try and simplify this for you.
link |
Chances are if people are doing the all meat diet,
link |
they're not sprinkling,
link |
they're not wrapping those steaks in seaweed,
link |
and they may or may not be supplementing with iodine.
link |
Chances are they're probably consuming iodine salt,
link |
but their requirements go up
link |
if they're not consuming vegetables.
link |
People who are consuming vegetables,
link |
it's kind of interesting,
link |
we always hear that we should have
link |
our cruciferous vegetables,
link |
and those are so important,
link |
but they're actually substances,
link |
compounds within high quality cruciferous vegetables
link |
that can interfere with thyroid hormone function.
link |
So if you're eating a lot of that stuff,
link |
a lot of cabbages and just look up your other,
link |
I think broccoli is a cruciferous vegetable,
link |
and I won't read off the whole list,
link |
you could just put into the internet.
link |
But if you're, you know,
link |
we're always told to eat a lot
link |
of the dark leafy green stuff.
link |
Well, unless that dark leafy green stuff is kelp or seaweed,
link |
chances are that we're not getting enough iodine
link |
unless we're adding salt to our food,
link |
and chances are that we may be lowering
link |
the total amount of thyroid that we're making,
link |
as well as the fact that in plant-rich diets,
link |
it's hard to get enough L-tyrosine.
link |
And I don't want, you know, I'm not here to inflame
link |
any of the vegans or the carnivore folks.
link |
I don't take a stance either way on any of that.
link |
I'm just learning, trying to report the science.
link |
The point I want to make is your health is important.
link |
So if you are purely plant-based
link |
and you're eating a lot of cruciferous vegetables,
link |
make sure you're getting enough iodine.
link |
It does seem like the cruciferous vegetables
link |
can increase the need for further iodine.
link |
And same thing if you're purely,
link |
and you're on this all meat diet or your keto,
link |
and you're not ingesting many vegetables.
link |
So I always thought that the cleaner the diet, the better,
link |
but it turns, and probably that's true
link |
from the standpoint of, you know, hormone regulation,
link |
you know, estrogen and testosterone and other hormones,
link |
the highly processed foods really are terrible.
link |
There's so much evidence for that.
link |
The phthalates in plastics and the processed foods
link |
and the emulsifiers,
link |
all the stuff we talked about previous episode,
link |
but it does seem to be that people that are not getting
link |
enough iodine for whatever reason,
link |
really need to check out whether or not
link |
their iodine levels need to be increased
link |
because of the fact that they are consuming so many plants
link |
or so many meats, and in some cases,
link |
plants that actually lower thyroid hormone.
link |
And not to beat a dead horse or cabbage,
link |
but there are a number of things that iodine can do
link |
that are positive, that are sort of,
link |
they're related to thyroid, not directly.
link |
They're kind of offshoots of the thyroid pathway.
link |
They're downstream of it, we would say,
link |
in terms of how they impact metabolic function.
link |
One of those is to reduce something called
link |
C-reactive protein.
link |
Some of you may have heard of CRP or C-reactive protein.
link |
C-reactive protein is something that you want to keep
link |
at modestly low levels.
link |
It's associated with inflammation
link |
and various forms of heart disease
link |
and even eye disease, macular degeneration.
link |
So it does appear that iodine supplementation
link |
or getting sufficient iodine from food,
link |
either works, is associated with reduced levels
link |
of C-reactive protein in the blood
link |
and an anti-inflammatory effect.
link |
And the anti-inflammatory effect brings us back
link |
to our old friend interleukin-6.
link |
Remember, there are these inflammatory cytokines.
link |
They have many, many names
link |
because there are many, many of them.
link |
Interleukin-10 is the one that's anti-inflammatory.
link |
Interleukin-6 is the one that's inflammatory.
link |
Anytime you see IL-6, that usually means
link |
that there's an inflammatory response, there's a wound,
link |
there's inflammation of the brain,
link |
somebody is either sleep deprived or had a brain injury,
link |
or they're dealing with some sort of infection,
link |
IL-6 is kind of a catchall for inflammation.
link |
And it does appear that iodine supplementation
link |
can reduce circulating IL-6 associated with inflammation.
link |
So in that sense, iodine can have
link |
an anti-inflammatory effect.
link |
So by now, it should be abundantly clear
link |
if you care about thyroid hormone,
link |
if you care about the pathways that it impacts,
link |
like having a high level of metabolism,
link |
which I guess if for no other reason is attractive,
link |
because then you can eat more
link |
and still maintain a healthy body composition,
link |
but also for brain health, cognitive function, tissue repair,
link |
all that stuff, keeping C-reactive protein low,
link |
keeping IL-6 low, make sure you're getting enough iodine,
link |
selenium, and L-tyrosine.
link |
If you're curious how thyroid actually increases metabolism,
link |
allows you to eat more, et cetera,
link |
it relates to something we covered last issue,
link |
Remember, when you eat something, blood sugar goes up,
link |
insulin is secreted from the pancreas,
link |
and it makes sure that blood glucose doesn't go too high,
link |
which can damage tissues, or too low,
link |
which can make you hypoglycemic.
link |
Thyroid increases glucose uptake by various tissues,
link |
in particular muscle and bone.
link |
It actually can increase bone mineral density,
link |
which is a really good thing as you get older.
link |
Injuries, when I say older, I mean basically 30 and older,
link |
the reason you can recover more quickly from injuries
link |
if you have a healthy thyroid and healthy thyroid pathways
link |
is because you can consume energy,
link |
that energy is diverted toward bone repair,
link |
and muscle repair, and cartilage repair.
link |
And so the way it does this again is by increasing ATP,
link |
but the whole idea here is that iodine, selenium,
link |
L-tyrosine allow thyroid to be at healthy levels
link |
so that thyroid then can take glucose in the blood
link |
and divert it to tissues for it to be used,
link |
in particular your brain,
link |
and that's why these things that we're talking about
link |
supplementing or getting from food
link |
can actually improve or support brain function.
link |
People are always asking me,
link |
what is the food that I should eat for my brain?
link |
Like, are blueberries good for your brain?
link |
Or they do ask me, are walnuts good for your brain
link |
because it looks like a brain?
link |
We talked about that earlier.
link |
The fact of the matter is that what you need
link |
are nutrients that support hormones and biological pathways
link |
that support the brain.
link |
That's the way to think about it.
link |
And I realize when people ask,
link |
what should I eat to support my brain?
link |
That's basically what they're asking in short form.
link |
So keeping your thyroid hormone healthy,
link |
at healthy levels that is,
link |
is going to be terrific for your brain
link |
because 75% of your metabolism is from your brain.
link |
The ability of your brain to use glucose or ketones
link |
for that matter is going to be aided
link |
by having healthy thyroid.
link |
So do the things, take the things,
link |
eat the things that are going to allow you
link |
to have healthy levels of thyroid hormone.
link |
I'm sure a number of you are out there wondering,
link |
do I have healthy levels of thyroid hormone?
link |
Those can be measured from the blood.
link |
There's some telltale signs of having really high thyroid
link |
or really low thyroid.
link |
And I could start listing those off.
link |
They're easy to find online as well.
link |
Things like bulging eyes, inability to maintain weight,
link |
shaky, anxiety, that's kind of hyperthyroidal,
link |
thinning of hair, this kind of thing.
link |
I don't want to get into diagnosing hypothyroidism
link |
and hyperthyroidism.
link |
It's just impossible because you're there and I'm here
link |
and we're kind of shouting back and forth
link |
through a tunnel of video and comments.
link |
If you're concerned about having excessively high
link |
or excessively low levels of thyroid hormone,
link |
absolutely look up what the symptoms are,
link |
talk to your physician.
link |
And there are a number of good treatments.
link |
I didn't talk about prescription drugs
link |
that can improve symptoms related to hypo or hyperthyroid.
link |
Of course, they have synthesized thyroid.
link |
So if you don't make enough thyroid, you can take thyroid.
link |
It's by prescription.
link |
If you have too much thyroid,
link |
sometimes they'll take out the thyroid gland
link |
or they can administer drugs
link |
that will either block receptors
link |
or will interfere with some of the pathways
link |
from the brain to the pituitary
link |
or from the pituitary to the thyroid
link |
in order to adjust thyroid hormone that way.
link |
So there are the big guns in terms of the treatments
link |
for different thyroid disorders,
link |
but we're not talking about thyroid disorders.
link |
We're talking about how to get
link |
and maintain thyroid levels in healthy ranges
link |
and some straightforward ways to do that
link |
through diet and supplementation.
link |
There's also a lot of evidence
link |
that for people who menstruate,
link |
levels of thyroid hormone can fluctuate dramatically
link |
across the menstrual cycle.
link |
So that's really going to be a process of experimentation.
link |
I don't know that you could, in theory,
link |
take blood at different phases of your cycle
link |
and figure out whether or not your thyroid hormone
link |
was excessively high or low
link |
at different phases of the cycle.
link |
That's going to be pretty tough to do
link |
if you have an endocrinologist
link |
that's willing to do that with you, terrific.
link |
I think most people are going to have to figure out
link |
how supplementing the sorts of things
link |
that we talked about before or getting them from foods
link |
relates to different aspects of their cycle.
link |
In general, the first half of the cycle before ovulation,
link |
people create carbohydrates and sweets more related to the,
link |
and that makes total sense
link |
based on the biology of the menstrual cycle.
link |
Thyroid hormone is going to go up as you,
link |
as anyone, male or female, menstruating or not,
link |
increases more starchy carbohydrates.
link |
This is interesting because ketogenic diets
link |
have been shown to slightly lower thyroid levels.
link |
And that makes sense because in ketogenic diets,
link |
blood glucose levels are very low
link |
and thyroid hormone is secreted in large part
link |
in proportion to how much glucose is in the bloodstream
link |
and how much that glucose needs to be regulated.
link |
So I'm not trying to demonize the ketogenic diet.
link |
I think it definitely has its place.
link |
There are 22 studies now showing
link |
that it can dramatically reduce blood glucose.
link |
And about a third of those show
link |
that thyroid hormone levels are slightly reduced,
link |
sometimes significantly, if not more,
link |
in the ketogenic diet.
link |
That may explain, I want to highlight,
link |
may explain the fact that when people go back
link |
to a more traditional diet,
link |
if they've been on a ketogenic diet for a long time,
link |
that oftentimes they will gain weight very quickly
link |
as they bring carbohydrates back into their diet.
link |
Some people are cycling between ketogenic and non-ketogenic
link |
every three, four days, so-called cyclic ketogenic diet.
link |
Some people are staying ketogenic for long periods of time.
link |
Some people, six days on, one day off.
link |
So there's a huge variation there.
link |
The point is that carbohydrates, starchy carbohydrates
link |
in particular, support the healthy production
link |
And so if you're very low carbohydrate,
link |
you're going to have a reduction in T3 and T4.
link |
And so if you're going to bring carbohydrates
link |
back into your diet,
link |
then you might want to do it more gradually.
link |
And for those of you that menstruate
link |
and are craving carbohydrates
link |
in the early part of the cycle,
link |
that is actually associated with having a healthy cycle.
link |
If any of you have had a healthy cycle on a ketogenic diet,
link |
that would be interesting.
link |
Maybe let me know through the comments
link |
or point me in the direction of some research
link |
if you're aware of it.
link |
So as you can start to see,
link |
there's this really beautiful interplay
link |
between the different hormones,
link |
between insulin and glucose,
link |
between estrogen and thyroid,
link |
between thyroid and blood glucose and the ketogenic diets.
link |
It all starts to fit together
link |
in ways that make a lot of sense
link |
once you understand just kind of the core elements
link |
of what the hormones are
link |
and the variety of tissues that they work on.
link |
The simple version of this is
link |
if you haven't had a carbohydrate for a year,
link |
then your T3, T4 levels are going to be pretty low.
link |
And I'm sure there's some ketonistas out there.
link |
They're going to say,
link |
wait, no, thyroid hormone levels go up with keto.
link |
That might be true for other reasons,
link |
indirect reasons related to hormone pathways
link |
that are cascade from being in ketosis
link |
for long periods of time, great.
link |
But for most people that don't consume any carbohydrate,
link |
T3, T4 are going to go down.
link |
And when they start to consume foods
link |
that require thyroid metabolism
link |
in order to work with, to metabolize,
link |
then weight gain can sometimes happen more quickly.
link |
So it's just something to consider
link |
and it's something to work with carefully
link |
if you're going to be cyclic ketogenic, long-term ketogenic.
link |
And if you're not ketogenic
link |
and you're consuming carbohydrates
link |
and the three things that we talked about earlier,
link |
selenium, tyrosine, and iodine,
link |
chances are, unless there's an underlying condition there,
link |
that your levels of thyroid
link |
are going to be in healthy range.
link |
Next, we're going to talk about growth hormone.
link |
Growth hormone has received a ton of attention
link |
in the last 20 years.
link |
I actually remember when it was first sequenced.
link |
This was a huge deal.
link |
There was a huge patent drama.
link |
I won't mention the universities or the people involved.
link |
There were companies and monster patents and payouts,
link |
and it was really interesting.
link |
You can look that up online
link |
if you're interested in some of the scientific history.
link |
Growth hormone is a pretty straightforward one
link |
for you to understand now
link |
because it follows the exact same logic as thyroid hormone.
link |
In fact, their functions are so closely overlapping
link |
when we first look at the face of it
link |
that you're probably going to think,
link |
why do you have these two systems?
link |
So just very briefly, growth hormone releasing hormone,
link |
so remember, releasing means it comes from the brain,
link |
comes from the brain,
link |
and tells the pituitary to release growth hormone,
link |
and then growth hormone is released into the bloodstream
link |
where it goes and acts on a ton of tissues,
link |
muscle, ligaments, bone, fat, et cetera,
link |
to increase metabolism.
link |
It sounds just like thyroid hormone,
link |
and they do work in parallel,
link |
and that's why we've lumped them together
link |
in the same episode.
link |
They increase metabolism and repair and growth of tissues.
link |
A conversation about growth hormone would be incomplete
link |
if we didn't talk about the kind of extremes.
link |
There are certain people who are born
link |
that don't make enough growth hormone,
link |
and they end up very short in stature.
link |
There are certain people who make a ton of growth hormone,
link |
and they end up very, very large.
link |
They tend to have very large appendages.
link |
They have something called acromegaly.
link |
It's kind of like a ridging of the forehead.
link |
It's actually a bone ridge.
link |
They are giant, and it used to be called giantism,
link |
and most people, of course, are in a range of height
link |
and appendage length.
link |
That doesn't imply
link |
that there's a growth hormone disruption there.
link |
Growth hormone received a lot of attention
link |
after it was sequenced,
link |
because that meant the opportunity to inject growth hormone
link |
and replace growth hormone that was lost,
link |
and there was actually a lot of cases
link |
of people taking their kids
link |
and trying to get them to be taller for whatever reason
link |
by injecting growth hormone.
link |
Today, we're going to talk about the things
link |
that anyone can do to increase growth hormone,
link |
and there are reasons why
link |
certain people would want to do that.
link |
People who overproduce growth hormone
link |
certainly would not want to do that.
link |
People who underproduce it would probably want to do that.
link |
People that make normal, quote-unquote,
link |
levels of growth hormone might want to do that as they age,
link |
because during puberty and development,
link |
the pituitary is churning out tons of growth hormone.
link |
It's responsible for the growth, not surprising,
link |
of the body and all its features,
link |
height just being one of those.
link |
And so as we age, we make less growth hormone,
link |
and that is one of the reasons
link |
why we recover more slowly from injuries.
link |
It's one of the reasons why we accumulate body fat,
link |
and it's one of the reasons why our metabolism slows.
link |
And so growth hormone replacement therapy
link |
has been tremendously popular in the last 20 years,
link |
which is not to say it doesn't carry its problems, it does.
link |
Here's one of the major problems
link |
with injecting growth hormone.
link |
Not saying people shouldn't do this
link |
if the doctor has approved it
link |
or it's in keeping with their particular life goals,
link |
but growth hormone, if it's in levels that are too high,
link |
will cause growth of all tissues.
link |
So not just muscle, not just reduction in body fat
link |
by metabolizing, by allowing fatty acids
link |
to be pulled out of storage and used for ATP,
link |
but it will also cause increase in growth of the heart
link |
and the lungs and the liver and the spleen.
link |
And so this is the concern with abuse of growth hormone.
link |
So we're not going to be talking
link |
about abuse of growth hormone.
link |
We will, however, talk about tools that anyone can use
link |
to increase levels of growth hormone.
link |
Some of them are behavioral,
link |
some of them are supplement-based,
link |
and some of them interact with behaviors and supplements.
link |
And what's cool about the discussion about growth hormone
link |
is that the tools that exist out there
link |
to increase growth hormone are very actionable.
link |
Most people can do these without the need for any equipment
link |
or even any supplement,
link |
although there are some supplement-related themes
link |
for tools for growth hormone increase.
link |
And also the increases that one can get in growth hormone
link |
So normally when you talk about the difference
link |
between taking something as an exogenous substance
link |
like testosterone or estrogen
link |
versus using supplements or behaviors to increase them,
link |
you're talking about tenfold differences
link |
from administering the prescription compound.
link |
In terms of growth hormone,
link |
there are things that can increase growth hormone
link |
three, four, 500% or more.
link |
And even though that's a short-lived increase,
link |
they can have very powerful effects on metabolism
link |
and on repair of tissues.
link |
So let's talk about those.
link |
Okay, let's go step-by-step
link |
in terms of the things that anyone,
link |
perhaps everyone should be doing
link |
in order to maintain healthy growth hormone levels
link |
or increase growth hormone levels.
link |
Unless you have overproduction of growth hormone,
link |
chances are these things are going to benefit you.
link |
However, as always, I want to emphasize,
link |
talk to a doctor before you do anything,
link |
including remove any treatments.
link |
So anything you would add or take away,
link |
that's a responsibility of you and your healthcare provider.
link |
Okay, I don't just say that to protect me,
link |
I say that to protect you.
link |
First of all, growth hormone is released
link |
every night when you go to sleep,
link |
and it's released in the early part of sleep
link |
during so-called slow wave sleep.
link |
So the two conditions that have to be met
link |
in order for growth hormone to be secreted regularly
link |
for tissue repair, et cetera,
link |
are you need to get into slow wave sleep,
link |
the so-called deep sleep,
link |
and you need blood insulin and glucose to be relatively low.
link |
So eating within two hours of sleep, excuse me,
link |
eating within two hours of going to sleep
link |
is going to suppress growth hormone release.
link |
That's very clear.
link |
However, some people are going to have problems
link |
falling asleep if they are too hungry.
link |
So you have to work with that
link |
and decide what you're going to eat
link |
and when you're going to eat that thing
link |
so that you're not so hungry
link |
that you're having trouble falling asleep.
link |
The episodes on sleep that were covered
link |
in episodes two, three, and four
link |
of the Huberman Lab Podcast
link |
has, I believe, more tools there
link |
than you could ever want or make use of
link |
in terms of how to optimize sleep.
link |
So you can refer to those if you like.
link |
So don't eat too close to sleep
link |
and then get into slow wave sleep.
link |
And as I talked about in one of those earlier episodes,
link |
the first half of the night,
link |
slow wave sleep and deep sleep predominate.
link |
The second half of the night,
link |
it's another kind of sleep we call REM sleep.
link |
So what is special about this early phase of sleep?
link |
This is how you should be thinking
link |
if you listen to this podcast.
link |
You should be thinking,
link |
okay, I hear that something is important,
link |
it's related, it's in the pathway,
link |
but mechanistically, when we say get into slow wave sleep,
link |
get into deep sleep,
link |
that's when growth hormone is secreted.
link |
The question you should be asking yourselves
link |
as scientists of yourselves is,
link |
wait, why slow wave sleep?
link |
What in particular about slow wave deep sleep
link |
allows the pituitary to release growth hormone?
link |
Because if you can understand that,
link |
if you can understand a little bit of mechanism,
link |
there are actually ways that you can increase
link |
the amount of growth hormone that you release
link |
both in sleep and out of sleep.
link |
So the answer is it's a delta wave activity in the brain.
link |
Delta waves are these big giant waves of activity
link |
in the brain that correlate with slow wave sleep,
link |
as opposed to faster waves of activity
link |
that is associated with rapid eye movement sleep.
link |
So slow wave sleep and the delta activity
link |
actually triggers the neurons in the brain,
link |
the releasing hormone, right?
link |
Growth hormone releasing hormone neurons
link |
to signal to the pituitary.
link |
Now, how do I know this is true?
link |
And what can you do with this?
link |
Well, we know this is true because researchers
link |
have taken people and sleep deprived them
link |
and they just asked,
link |
well, is it just one period of time every 24 hours
link |
and then the pituitary releases growth hormone?
link |
If that were the case,
link |
that would say that growth hormone is just released
link |
in a so-called circadian dependent way every 24 hours,
link |
there's the pulse of it.
link |
But no, it's always relating to slow wave deep sleep
link |
And this is cool because what it means is that
link |
even if you're not measuring your brain waves during sleep,
link |
which most of you probably are not,
link |
you might be measuring slow wave sleep or deep sleep
link |
using a device like a whoop or an aura.
link |
And even if you're not,
link |
what this means is that during the day,
link |
there's the potential to also increase
link |
growth hormone release if you can get the brain
link |
into the so-called delta waves.
link |
And it turns out there are things you can do in waking
link |
as well to increase growth hormone release.
link |
So we're going to talk about those next,
link |
but as a tool and to just really make sure
link |
that we put brackets around this,
link |
try and have blood glucose not too high.
link |
So if you do need to eat close to bed,
link |
you wouldn't want to eat anything
link |
that would increase blood glucose too much.
link |
Try and not eat too close to bedtime,
link |
get into deep sleep early in the night,
link |
get the growth hormone release,
link |
and understand that it's the delta waves of activity,
link |
these sweeping big waves of activity in the neurons
link |
that stimulate the brain to stimulate the pituitary.
link |
Because once you understand that,
link |
then you have something to anchor to in terms of thinking,
link |
what are the things I can do in waking
link |
that will allow me to release more growth hormone,
link |
which for most people is going to be a good thing.
link |
Several times before on this podcast,
link |
I've talked about the fact that I'm not a big fan
link |
of melatonin supplementation for most purposes.
link |
It might be helpful under conditions of jet lag.
link |
However, there are a lot of reasons
link |
why I personally don't like melatonin.
link |
It interacts with the reproductive hormones,
link |
testosterone and estrogen,
link |
and that whole axis in ways that are unattractive,
link |
at least to me, it suppresses puberty during development.
link |
It's present in much, much higher doses in most supplements
link |
than one would normally make, like 100 fold, 300 fold.
link |
However, today I'm going to talk about an instance
link |
where very low levels of melatonin supplementation
link |
might actually be advantageous.
link |
And that is aiding the transition
link |
to the delta wave slow wave sleep I just described,
link |
because that's the pattern of sleep
link |
and brainwave activity that triggers growth hormone release.
link |
So whereas most melatonin supplements are one milligram,
link |
three milligrams, 12 milligrams, this kind of thing,
link |
that is super physiological.
link |
There are some data showing that microgram,
link |
maybe 500 micrograms of melatonin, so half a milligram,
link |
can be beneficial in shifting the pattern
link |
of early night sleep
link |
toward more of the slow wave deep sleep delta activity
link |
and improving growth hormone release.
link |
Not a lot of studies, but the ones that I saw are quality.
link |
They were done in subjects that, you know,
link |
both sexes, sufficient numbers, et cetera.
link |
So this is interesting.
link |
So if you're interested in melatonin supplementation,
link |
you might think about it just at very low levels, you know,
link |
hundreds of micrograms as opposed to the milligram dosages.
link |
Most of the ones out there
link |
are going to be in milligram dosages.
link |
So that's one way that some studies have shown
link |
that you can increase the amount of growth hormone
link |
that's secreted in early phases of sleep.
link |
Now, the delta wave activity
link |
and the slow wave activity in the brain
link |
being very important for growth hormone release
link |
and growth hormone release being so important
link |
for metabolic functions and peeling away unwanted body fat
link |
and repairing tissues, et cetera, forces us to ask,
link |
well, what other things can we do in waking
link |
in order to increase growth hormone release?
link |
So let's start with the ones
link |
that have a potentially big effect,
link |
but are a little bit harder to access.
link |
And for that, I want to point toward a book,
link |
which is really kind of interesting.
link |
It's not focused on growth hormone,
link |
but the book is called Altered Traits.
link |
It's an excellent book.
link |
Altered Traits by Goleman and Davidson,
link |
Science Reveals How Meditation Changes
link |
Your Mind, Brain, and Body.
link |
Very interesting book.
link |
For those of you that are interested in meditation,
link |
and perhaps those of you who are not,
link |
but are considering it,
link |
what they talk about in this book is the fact
link |
that meditation has two separate lines of effects.
link |
One of those lines of effects
link |
are things that change your state.
link |
So you're stressed, you sit down, you meditate,
link |
and you relax, and you go into a particular state.
link |
The other are the changes that occur over time,
link |
and those are changes in trait.
link |
So personality can actually change
link |
with long bouts of TM meditation or repeated meditation.
link |
In any case, the reason we're talking
link |
about altered traits today
link |
is because certain types of meditation
link |
can get people's brains into states
link |
that very closely mimic slow wave sleep.
link |
If you hear snoring in the background,
link |
Costello is, it sounds like he's in slow wave sleep,
link |
these big oscillatory snores
link |
that he's in 23.6 hours per day.
link |
So what this means is for people that are interested
link |
in increasing growth hormone,
link |
a meditation practice that allows you
link |
to get into these slow wave delta type frequency activity
link |
in the brain may be very beneficial
link |
because as I mentioned before,
link |
that's what's gating growth hormone release.
link |
It's not just a circadian phenomenon.
link |
It's actually controlled by these brain waves.
link |
I did look up binaural beats.
link |
I get so many questions about binaural beats,
link |
and it's a really attractive idea, right?
link |
Binaural beats, for those of you who don't know,
link |
you listen to one frequency of tone,
link |
doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, in one ear,
link |
and another frequency of tone in the other ear,
link |
doo, doo, doo, doo, and then the brain essentially
link |
takes the average of the two,
link |
or there's some other wiring in the brainstem
link |
that makes it not quite the average,
link |
but takes the average of the two for sake of discussion,
link |
and that frequency is what the brain entrains
link |
There are a lot of apps that are claiming
link |
that you can get the brain into delta waves
link |
using binaural beats.
link |
I could not find quality peer review studies
link |
supporting that, but I know there are a lot of fans
link |
out there of binaural beats.
link |
If you know of any literature that's independent
link |
of the company that makes the binaural beat technology,
link |
so unbiased research, please send it my way,
link |
but in Altered Traits, Goleman and Davidson talk about
link |
the fact that people who do 20 minutes of sitting meditation
link |
per day can access these slow wave sleep-like brain states.
link |
Now I've talked a lot on here about non-sleep deep rest,
link |
things like yoga nidra and hypnosis.
link |
I'm not aware that those will put people
link |
into slow wave sleep per se, or delta waves per se.
link |
So we're really talking about 20 minutes
link |
of more traditional type meditation.
link |
Okay, so we talked about very low doses of melatonin
link |
as a way to trigger delta waves
link |
and more growth hormone release in sleep.
link |
There are science to support that.
link |
We've now talked about a waking behavior of 20 minutes
link |
of sort of what I would call standard meditation
link |
of just sitting there concentrating on one's breathing
link |
to try and access delta waves, binaural beats,
link |
no science yet, who knows,
link |
maybe there's science to support it.
link |
If you're aware of it, let me know.
link |
Now let's move to the things that one can do
link |
that have been shown to have, let's just be honest,
link |
pretty enormous effects on growth hormone release in waking.
link |
And these are things that are very actionable.
link |
One of the things that can have a dramatic effect
link |
on levels of growth hormone release in waking,
link |
as well as in sleep the following night is exercise.
link |
But the key is the type of exercise and the duration.
link |
Now there's a logic to this.
link |
There are hundreds, if not thousands of studies
link |
measuring growth hormone, both during
link |
or sometimes after exercise or the following night.
link |
And the conclusion that one takes away from all of these
link |
is that exercise has to be of particular duration
link |
and intensity in order to get growth hormone release.
link |
So first I'm just going to tell you what I found to be
link |
the maximum amount of growth hormone release
link |
as it relates to a particular form of exercise.
link |
The particular form of exercise is either weight training
link |
or it can be endurance training,
link |
but the endurance training and the weight training
link |
actually have to be limited to about 60 minutes,
link |
Now this is important because it's been shown
link |
over and over again that if one exercise is too long
link |
with weights or endurance exercise,
link |
that cortisol levels go high enough
link |
that it starts to inhibit the testosterone
link |
and even the estrogen pathways.
link |
This is why I believe people who over exercise
link |
or exercise a lot can lose their menstrual cycles,
link |
they stop menstruating.
link |
It's why you get suppressions and testosterone
link |
if people train too long and too hard.
link |
The cutoff has always been 60 to 75 minutes
link |
of the hard work part.
link |
It's going to vary a lot from person to person,
link |
but in terms of growth hormone,
link |
the conditions that seem to lead
link |
to the greatest growth hormone release are one, get warm.
link |
This is interesting, we're going to talk about temperature.
link |
So a proper warmup seems to accelerate
link |
the release of growth hormone
link |
once the hard work phase starts.
link |
So 10 minutes of warmup or so
link |
was the number that I extracted from all these studies.
link |
There's a beautiful review on this by the way.
link |
Growth hormone response is a varying, excuse me,
link |
growth hormone arginine and exercise.
link |
We'll talk about arginine in a few minutes.
link |
That's by Kannalei, K-A-N-A-L-E-Y.
link |
It was published in Current Opinion
link |
in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Clear.
link |
The Current Opinion journals
link |
are generally of pretty high quality
link |
in terms of the reviews,
link |
just because they tend to be pretty recent.
link |
And then the references they're in are also quite good.
link |
So what does this mean?
link |
This means warm up and when you say warm up,
link |
it doesn't mean just warm up the limbs and tissues
link |
that you're going to use so you don't get injured,
link |
actually warm the body.
link |
So there was actually some discussion
link |
about whether or not in cold winter months,
link |
people should wear like a stocking cap,
link |
bringing the conditions of making the room warm.
link |
So getting the body warm as a warm up
link |
seems to be important because temperature of the body
link |
seems to be an important condition
link |
or prerequisite for certain patterns of exercise
link |
to maximize growth hormone release.
link |
So this is really interesting to me.
link |
I have an obsession with how body temperature,
link |
light exercise and food interact.
link |
We're going right there with the fact that if you get warm,
link |
you bring up the body temperature a degree or two
link |
or maybe three and then start exercise.
link |
It does appear that high intensity exercise,
link |
but again, as discussed in a previous episode,
link |
not exercise that brings muscles to failure,
link |
So if it's weight-bearing exercise,
link |
it would be getting close to that final repetitions
link |
where you can't complete them,
link |
but not pushing through those or even going to failure,
link |
but getting close leads to anywhere from 300 to 500%
link |
increases in resting growth hormone levels
link |
and 300 to 500% increases in growth hormone
link |
the following night when you go to sleep,
link |
which is incredible.
link |
Now I want to dissect this properly, okay?
link |
So one of the other conditions that seemed to be important
link |
again was to have relatively low blood glucose.
link |
So it's looking a lot like the conditions you need for sleep
link |
in order to get maximum growth hormone release in sleep.
link |
So not having blood glucose too high or too low,
link |
that's a discussion unto itself.
link |
You want to have sufficient energy to do the exercise,
link |
but getting warm, not having blood glucose
link |
too high or too low,
link |
so probably not eating too close to exercise
link |
or not ingesting a lot of sugars during the exercise.
link |
That was supported by the fact that ingestion
link |
of a sports drink that contains caloric sugar
link |
immediately flat-lined the growth hormone levels.
link |
So really interesting relationship
link |
between insulin, glucose, and growth hormone.
link |
So then doing the training for anywhere from 60 to 75 minutes
link |
to maximize growth hormone release.
link |
And then the other interesting thing
link |
was that even after the exercise,
link |
taking body temperature back down to normal levels
link |
relatively quickly seemed to be associated
link |
with these big spikes in growth hormone.
link |
Otherwise, what would happen is you get these big spikes
link |
in growth hormone, but if the exercise went too long
link |
or if body temperature remained too high for too long,
link |
then you didn't get the second increase in growth hormone
link |
the following night, okay?
link |
So I hope I made that abundantly clear.
link |
Warm up well, get body temperature up,
link |
exercise 60 to 75 minutes.
link |
Don't go to absolute failure
link |
if your interest is in growth hormone release
link |
both during the exercise and later that night.
link |
And if you can bring body temperature back down
link |
to normal levels by cooling off,
link |
maybe cool shower or maybe ice pack or something,
link |
or maybe just turning off the heat in the room
link |
or going outside, whatever it is,
link |
then you increase the probability
link |
that you're going to increase growth hormone
link |
the following night as well.
link |
And again, these are big increases, 300 to 500%.
link |
And it's almost like you're getting a second sleep during
link |
the day, but if the exercise is too hard,
link |
if body temperature stays too high for too long,
link |
you disrupt the whole process
link |
and you don't get the effect of increased growth hormone.
link |
Growth hormone is really powerful,
link |
but it doesn't work alone.
link |
In fact, a lot of the effects of growth hormone are mediated
link |
by its effects on the liver.
link |
So growth hormone is released, goes to the liver,
link |
and then the liver releases something called IGF-1,
link |
insulin growth factor one.
link |
Insulin growth factor one was popular
link |
in the neuroscience community as an area of focus
link |
because of its ability to trigger improvements in memory
link |
and learning after exercise.
link |
And indeed, exercise triggers both the release
link |
of growth hormone and IGF-1.
link |
IGF-1 seems responsible for a lot of the effects
link |
of improved memory.
link |
Some people report that that is due to increased number
link |
of neurons or neurogenesis, birth of new neurons.
link |
It's pretty clear that in humans,
link |
that's not what's happening.
link |
Yes, in animals, not in humans.
link |
IGF-1 nonetheless has positive effects
link |
on memory and cognition.
link |
And a great way to trigger IGF-1 release
link |
and growth hormone release is through exercise.
link |
Now, the interesting thing,
link |
and the reason I'm bringing up IGF-1 here,
link |
is that certain patterns of exercise,
link |
actually duration of exercise,
link |
have different effects on IGF-1 and growth hormone,
link |
depending on whether or not the exercise is done
link |
There's what we call a sex dependent effect.
link |
And the sex dependent effect is as follows.
link |
In this particular study and several others,
link |
what they did is they had people exercise,
link |
they measured growth hormone and IGF-1 levels
link |
from the blood before, during, and after exercise.
link |
And they could see when the greatest increases occurred.
link |
This was standard sorts of resistance exercise.
link |
So some squats, there was a sprint-like activity.
link |
It doesn't really matter what the specific exercises were.
link |
None of them were to failure.
link |
These were in kind of the 10 repetition or less range,
link |
six sets, so kind of standard weight training stuff
link |
that anyone might do.
link |
But what was interesting is that women were able
link |
to access the biggest peak in growth hormone
link |
and IGF-1 early in the exercise, so in the first 30 minutes.
link |
So what this means is even if you just have 30 minutes,
link |
at least for women, there's going to be a big increase
link |
in growth hormone and IGF-1 in the first 30 minutes.
link |
For men, the biggest increase occurred later
link |
in the exercise, which was 60 minutes or so total.
link |
And so the sex dependent effects are interesting.
link |
They point to the fact that things like cortisol,
link |
testosterone, and estrogen, which of course vary
link |
in different levels in men and women,
link |
are going to impact the release of things like IGF-1
link |
and growth hormone.
link |
And yes, they did control for all sorts of things
link |
like diet, and they controlled for weight
link |
and prior experience.
link |
It's actually a quite nice study.
link |
If you'd like to check it out, it's by Pierce et al.
link |
Growth Hormone and Insulin Glow Factor-1 Molecular Weight.
link |
Isoform response to resistance exercise are sex dependent
link |
in frontiers and endocrinology.
link |
Fine Journal in 2020, so it's quite recent.
link |
So what does this mean?
link |
This means if you're exercising
link |
and you want growth hormone release, warm up,
link |
do the type of exercise we've been discussing.
link |
Women in the first 30 minutes
link |
is when you're going to get the maximum benefit
link |
in terms of growth hormone and IGF-1.
link |
Men, you have to keep going for the entire 60 minutes,
link |
so don't tap out early if you're interested
link |
in getting the growth hormone and IGF-1 release.
link |
And the same conditions apply about then cooling down
link |
and not making the exercise last so long
link |
that you don't get the increase in growth hormone
link |
the following night.
link |
My experience thus far in doing this podcast
link |
is that people fall into one of two categories.
link |
There are the, just tell me what to take people,
link |
the people that are really eager to try supplements
link |
and maybe even prescription compounds.
link |
And then there are people
link |
who are a little bit more shy about supplementation.
link |
They are more focused on what they can do with diet
link |
and behaviors and things of that sort.
link |
I don't have a bias either way.
link |
I try and offer tools that are supported
link |
by the scientific literature.
link |
And I always point to safety margins.
link |
There are supplements that can increase growth hormone
link |
to a considerable degree.
link |
And no, these aren't growth hormone itself,
link |
although that of course will increase growth hormone
link |
to a considerable degree.
link |
We will talk about prescription drugs at the end,
link |
not just growth hormone,
link |
but some other things that are quite prominently
link |
in particular in the entertainment industry.
link |
It's pretty interesting compounds.
link |
But first let's talk about supplements.
link |
So this has been known about for some time,
link |
but arginine, the amino acid arginine,
link |
as well as the amino acid ornithine
link |
can increase growth hormone levels substantially.
link |
Now, arginine has a number of effects.
link |
You can get it from food, you can get it from supplements.
link |
Some people take it in pill form or capsule form.
link |
Some people will actually take it by IV, intravenously.
link |
The levels and the amounts of arginine required
link |
to get big growth hormone release increases
link |
is pretty substantial.
link |
So some people will take arginine before bedtime.
link |
Some people will take it before exercise.
link |
The prerequisite again is low blood glucose.
link |
Blood glucose is high, it's going to quash the effect.
link |
The amounts of arginine that people take
link |
are anywhere from three grams to 10 grams
link |
or sometimes even more.
link |
Although this is definitely a case of more is not better.
link |
There is a threshold at which growth hormone release
link |
is actually blunted by taking more than nine grams
link |
Now, nine grams of arginine orally is a lot of pills.
link |
It's at minimum nine pills.
link |
And it can cause some GI disturbance, right?
link |
People can feel nauseous.
link |
Some people will throw it up.
link |
Some people will get some constipation or diarrhea, et cetera,
link |
or just stomach aches.
link |
I'm certainly not suggesting people do this,
link |
that they take arginine,
link |
but that's the reason why most of the studies
link |
that looked at the role of arginine on growth hormone levels
link |
did it by IV, intravenous infusion.
link |
So what's interesting, however,
link |
is that whether or not it's by mouth or by vein,
link |
taking arginine can dramatically increase
link |
growth hormone release.
link |
And the levels or the amount of increase
link |
raised was anywhere from 100 on the low end,
link |
but anywhere from basically from 400 to 600%
link |
So these are huge increases in growth hormone.
link |
Now, I've never tried arginine.
link |
Arginine is out there for a number of different purposes.
link |
One of them is to increase growth hormone.
link |
Some of the supplements out there to increase growth hormone
link |
include arginine and ornithine.
link |
Arginine does have the effect of dilating arterioles
link |
and it basically increases blood supply.
link |
The arginine pathway is involved in vasodilation.
link |
It's actually the pathway that's downstream
link |
of a lot of drugs that are used to treat things
link |
like erectile dysfunction.
link |
And anytime people have problems
link |
with peripheral blood flow of any kind,
link |
they focus on compounds that will either disrupt the enzymes
link |
or will adjust the levels of amino acids
link |
to get more vasodilation.
link |
So taking arginine for the purpose
link |
of increasing growth hormone will also have the effect
link |
of dilating blood vessels.
link |
And for people with blood, excuse me, with heart conditions,
link |
that actually can be a serious issue.
link |
Now, here is something really important
link |
and interesting to note,
link |
which is that increasing arginine levels
link |
with the specific goal of increasing growth hormone release
link |
can actually short circuit the effects of exercise
link |
on growth hormone.
link |
Several studies I looked at looked at the interaction
link |
of taking arginine and the exercise
link |
or just the arginine or just the exercise alone.
link |
And so you don't, unfortunately,
link |
if growth hormone increases your goal,
link |
you don't unfortunately get to increase growth hormone 800%
link |
by taking arginine and exercising.
link |
It always seems to be clamped at about 300 to 500% increases,
link |
still large increases.
link |
So I make that point for several reasons.
link |
First of all, be aware that arginine has these other effects
link |
on vasodilation, take those seriously
link |
if you have a heart condition
link |
or take them seriously in any case.
link |
Second of all, you can supplement with arginine,
link |
not exercise and get these big increases in growth hormone
link |
by taking them before sleep.
link |
But if you're taking the arginine before exercise,
link |
you are going to short circuit
link |
or clamp the effects of exercise on growth hormone, okay?
link |
So it's something that one could use,
link |
but it doesn't have a synergistic effect with exercise.
link |
The two more or less cancel each other out, not to zero,
link |
but you end up with the same effect you would
link |
had you done one or the other.
link |
So hopefully that's clear.
link |
The other thing is if one's goal
link |
is really to increase arginine in the blood
link |
for whatever reason,
link |
arginine may not actually be the best way to do that
link |
because of the way it's metabolized in the gut.
link |
It doesn't have access or get access to the tissues
link |
that you're most interested in
link |
in terms of increasing growth hormone
link |
or vasodilation for that matter.
link |
And in that case, there's something else called L-citrulline
link |
which has powerful effects on vasodilation,
link |
powerful effects on potentially on growth hormone levels
link |
via the arginine pathway.
link |
But basically L-citrulline acts as sort of a donor
link |
or let's say it's kind of a biological prerequisite
link |
for arginine and can lead to even bigger arginine increases
link |
than you would get if you took arginine itself.
link |
And so L-citrulline is out there.
link |
Keep in mind that anything that dilates the blood vessels
link |
will lower blood pressure.
link |
So L-citrulline, yes, will lead to increased blood flow
link |
for whatever purpose you want to use it for,
link |
whether or not that's pumps in the gym or whatever.
link |
It also can lead to big increases
link |
in arginine and growth hormone,
link |
but it will lower blood pressure.
link |
So be aware of that
link |
and understand that the biology isn't so straightforward.
link |
L-citrulline may actually be the better way
link |
to get arginine increases than arginine itself.
link |
And ornithine can also increase growth hormone,
link |
although that's also through an indirect pathway.
link |
And nowadays there isn't a lot of focus on ornithine
link |
as a way to increase growth hormone.
link |
That was kind of all the rage in the 90s,
link |
not so much anymore.
link |
Nowadays, the people who are really in the know
link |
for this stuff tend to focus on L-citrulline.
link |
And if you're interested in L-citrulline or arginine,
link |
I highly recommend you go to our old friend,
link |
good friends examine.com,
link |
because there you can put it into the list.
link |
You can just put search and it's totally free.
link |
And it will tell you that blood pressure
link |
will be slightly decreased.
link |
Power output in the gym will increase.
link |
There's very strong effects on blood glucose.
link |
Fatigue is reduced notably.
link |
Big increases in nitric oxide.
link |
That's also related to the increase in vasodilation.
link |
Plasma, arginine, very high, excuse me,
link |
notable effects, very high support for studies
link |
which allow people more training volume,
link |
aerobic exercise, arterial stiffness is brought down.
link |
There's a huge list of things.
link |
Increase in growth hormone.
link |
So two studies showing this was done double-blind.
link |
Great, you always want to see double-blind,
link |
placebo-controlled.
link |
This was only done in males, not in females.
link |
Unfortunately, just have data from males.
link |
But increases in growth hormone,
link |
it's a small but a real significant effect.
link |
And again, from quality studies.
link |
So there's a huge number of effects there.
link |
And some of the other kind of more interesting ones
link |
about L-citrulline that you might not have thought about
link |
are things like muscle oxygenation,
link |
as we scroll down, decreases in C-reactive protein.
link |
So a lot of the same things that you might expect,
link |
excuse me, from the same sorts of compounds we saw before.
link |
The takeaway here is if you want to increase growth hormone,
link |
think about the arginine pathway,
link |
but arginine itself might not be the best direct route
link |
L-citrulline might be a better option,
link |
but please do consider and take very seriously
link |
the effects on blood pressure.
link |
So we've been talking about big effects
link |
from supplementation or exercise on growth hormone,
link |
this extremely powerful hormone.
link |
And one thing to note is that
link |
the profile of growth hormone as we age changes.
link |
I mentioned that earlier,
link |
but it's important to understand how it changes.
link |
One thing that's particularly interesting to me
link |
as somebody who's in his 40s
link |
is that it's actually between ages 30 and 40,
link |
that the amount of growth hormone that you release
link |
each night is reduced by two to threefold.
link |
That's really incredible.
link |
We hear so much about testosterone levels going down
link |
as we age or estrogen levels going down.
link |
But if you recall from the testosterone and estrogen episode
link |
talked about the fact that if you really look at the data,
link |
just for instance, on testosterone,
link |
there are men in their 90s,
link |
and they are not rare, it turns out,
link |
that are making as much testosterone and DHT,
link |
dihydrotestosterone, as they were in their 20s, okay?
link |
So we hear so much nowadays about how
link |
testosterone levels are dropping,
link |
sperm levels are dropping, et cetera.
link |
And I don't dispute that.
link |
I talked about that in that episode.
link |
But it's clear that testosterone levels
link |
vary tremendously from person to person.
link |
And just getting older does not necessarily mean
link |
that testosterone levels are dropping.
link |
Growth hormone levels, it seems,
link |
are dropping when people are in their 30s and 40s,
link |
and they're dropping substantially.
link |
And that seems to be the case across the board.
link |
You're just not going to find people
link |
in their 40s, 50s, and 60s
link |
that are making as much growth hormone
link |
as they were in their teens and 20s.
link |
And as somebody who, I feel really good,
link |
but as somebody who definitely noticed
link |
that as I got into my 40s,
link |
that even if I slept the same amount,
link |
I wasn't feeling quite as,
link |
I would say, able to recover from exercise or wound healing,
link |
even with the same amount of sleep.
link |
And I was trying to optimize a great number of things.
link |
This business of growth hormone
link |
became of particular interest to me.
link |
And since the ways to manipulate growth hormone
link |
in men and in women are so straightforward,
link |
and since everybody goes through this
link |
age-related decline very dramatically,
link |
it seems to me that the things
link |
that we're supposed to be doing anyway,
link |
like exercising, like trying not to eat too close to bedtime,
link |
trying to optimize sleep,
link |
all of these are wonderful tools
link |
that we should be pursuing and perhaps using,
link |
and they can actually offset
link |
the two to three-fold decrease, right?
link |
If we're talking about a two to three-fold decrease
link |
for people that are in their 30s and 40s,
link |
and then we're talking about increases from exercise
link |
or from maybe from supplementation,
link |
but certainly from exercise of 300 to 500%,
link |
well, then all of a sudden we're in a position
link |
to actually offset the age-related decline
link |
and growth hormone completely just through behaviors.
link |
And I think that's quite interesting and quite powerful.
link |
Now I'd like to discuss a way
link |
that anyone can increase their levels
link |
of growth hormone dramatically.
link |
And when I say dramatically, I mean dramatically.
link |
I'll get to the numbers in a couple of minutes,
link |
but we have to remember how growth hormone
link |
is released in the first place.
link |
Remember, it all starts in the brain, in the hypothalamus.
link |
The hypothalamus is a brain area
link |
that controls things like sexual behavior,
link |
temperature regulation, circadian behavior,
link |
meaning when you want to be awake
link |
and when you want to be asleep, aggression, all of that.
link |
There are other brain areas involved too,
link |
but it has a rich collection of different neurons
link |
involved in all these very basic functions.
link |
Now, as we talked about, the releasing hormones,
link |
the growth hormone releasing hormone
link |
comes from neurons in the hypothalamus.
link |
Those then communicate with the pituitary
link |
and the pituitary releases growth hormone.
link |
And then the growth hormone acts
link |
on all these different tissues,
link |
muscle, liver, cartilage, et cetera, body fat.
link |
Makes them use energy.
link |
That's why you lose body fat
link |
when growth hormone levels are high.
link |
It makes you grow muscle, strengthens bones, et cetera.
link |
Now, one of the things that has a profound effect
link |
on growth hormone levels, growth hormone release
link |
Now, the data on this are very strong
link |
and the data come from both animal studies
link |
and human studies.
link |
So there are a number of studies that have explored
link |
how making animals cold or hot can increase growth hormone.
link |
And if you're guessing which direction this is going to go,
link |
you can probably imagine that making animals
link |
or people warmer is the way to go
link |
if you want to increase growth hormone.
link |
Now, anytime you're going to increase temperature
link |
of yourself or anyone else or an animal, it is risky.
link |
I want to be really clear about this.
link |
Not everyone should engage in the behaviors
link |
I'm about to describe.
link |
But, and I should just say the reason it's risky
link |
is it doesn't take much of a temperature increase
link |
in the brain to cook the brain, to cook neurons.
link |
And after that point, neurons can't come back
link |
and people can die from hyperthermia.
link |
We have a much greater range in terms of cold.
link |
You can also die of hypothermia.
link |
You can freeze to death.
link |
But you have a much greater range of getting cold
link |
than you do warming up the brain.
link |
However, there are really strong data pointing to the fact
link |
that sauna, aka deliberate hyperthermia,
link |
not too high, however,
link |
that sauna can increase the release of growth hormone
link |
and other hormones.
link |
And what's so dramatic about this literature
link |
is the size of the effects that are reported.
link |
So first of all, let's talk about
link |
these temperature increases.
link |
And yes, I will refer to things that people can do
link |
even if you don't own a sauna.
link |
Because I realize not everybody has a sauna
link |
in their backyard or has access to a sauna.
link |
So first of all, recall our study about exercise
link |
where warming up a few degrees before the exercise
link |
led to bigger and quicker increases in growth hormone
link |
during the exercise bout itself.
link |
So that already pointed in the direction
link |
that temperature was important.
link |
Now, the degrees, no pun intended,
link |
that we're talking about increasing body temperature
link |
is by entering saunas that are somewhere
link |
between 176 degrees Fahrenheit,
link |
so that's 80 degrees Celsius,
link |
and all the way up to like 210, 215 degrees Fahrenheit.
link |
I personally know people that go even higher than that,
link |
but they've trained themselves to deal with
link |
with very high heat.
link |
So again, high heat is dangerous.
link |
You must clear this with your doctor.
link |
Now, what happens in high heat?
link |
Couple of things happen in high heat.
link |
First of all, you start getting bigger stroke volume
link |
of the heart, kind of like an exercise.
link |
Once you get well-trained in endurance activity,
link |
your stroke volume, the amount of blood
link |
that your heart can pump each time gets larger.
link |
You dilate the blood vessels, right?
link |
There are a lot of things that happen also.
link |
You're sweating, your body's trying to unload heat.
link |
So dilation of blood vessels, arginine increases in heat.
link |
We're starting to see and hear a common theme,
link |
but it appears that getting into,
link |
I'm not saying getting the body up to 212 degrees Fahrenheit,
link |
I want to be very clear,
link |
not talking about getting the body
link |
up to 100 degrees Celsius, that would be terrible.
link |
But entering environments where it's very hot
link |
for short periods of time,
link |
anywhere from 20 minutes to 30 minutes,
link |
where the temperature is 80 degrees Celsius
link |
to 100 degrees Celsius,
link |
or 175 degrees Fahrenheit, more or less,
link |
to about 210 degrees Fahrenheit, more or less,
link |
has been shown to increase growth hormone release 16 fold.
link |
That's right, 16 fold, that's 1,600%.
link |
Now, there are also effects on other hormones,
link |
prolactin, cortisol, et cetera.
link |
So the pattern that was described in this study,
link |
and there've been many studies now,
link |
endocrine effects of rupita sauna were done in 17 humans.
link |
This was from doing this repeatedly.
link |
So it wasn't the first time they did this.
link |
They actually had to do this three days in a row.
link |
And the pattern was to get into the sauna for 20 minutes,
link |
followed by a 30 minute cooling period.
link |
Remember, you don't want to spend long periods
link |
of time at high heat.
link |
You can cook your brain and other tissues.
link |
Be very careful as you approach this if you decide to.
link |
But 30 minutes, excuse me, 20 minutes sauna,
link |
followed by 30 minutes of cooling,
link |
followed by 20 minutes sauna, again,
link |
led to a five-fold increase in growth hormone.
link |
And then by doing that day after day after day,
link |
on the third day, you would see these huge increases
link |
of like 16 fold, up to 16 fold.
link |
And there are now many studies like this.
link |
This was described a few years ago.
link |
But since then, there have been a number of other studies
link |
that have pointed in the direction
link |
of deliberate hyperthermia, but not too hot,
link |
that you kill yourself in order to increase growth hormone.
link |
And I know I keep highlighting the dangers there,
link |
but again, anytime you're going to mess with heat,
link |
you have to be cautious, you have to be careful.
link |
So standard sauna can be useful.
link |
If you don't have access to a sauna,
link |
one way that people do this,
link |
we have to look to our friends, the wrestlers, right?
link |
They wear plastics, which are basically body suits
link |
that are fairly inexpensive that you can buy
link |
on any online purchase platform, I should say.
link |
Some people in the old days
link |
before they had these plastics things so readily available,
link |
I actually knew people that wrap themselves in garbage bags
link |
and then throw on sweats and a hoodie
link |
and then go out for a jog.
link |
Again, you have to be really careful,
link |
especially on a hot day, overheating can equate to death,
link |
but that's another way to heat up.
link |
You don't actually need a sauna.
link |
I've known people who will do this in hotel rooms
link |
while they're traveling.
link |
They'll turn on the heat, make a hot bath.
link |
They won't actually get in the bath,
link |
but they'll fill the room with steam and heat
link |
and they'll put on a hoodie and some sweat pants
link |
and they'll sit there with wool socks on
link |
and they'll get warm for 20 minutes.
link |
Then they'll take a cool shower and then they'll do it again.
link |
I guess when the hotel's paying the water bill,
link |
you don't worry about it too much.
link |
Some people of course own saunas.
link |
There are a lot of ways to do that.
link |
I have friends who were in the military
link |
who made saunas out of cars while they were overseas,
link |
all sorts of things.
link |
You do have to be careful.
link |
I know I've said it many, many times.
link |
I just don't want anyone to hurt themselves,
link |
but these increases in growth hormone are tremendous
link |
and what they probably stem from
link |
are increased activity of neurons within the hypothalamus
link |
that stimulate growth hormone release from the pituitary.
link |
And that's probably because the growth hormone
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releasing hormone neurons in the hypothalamus
link |
sit very closely and may even be intermixed
link |
with some of the neurons in the hypothalamus
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that regulate heat and body temperature.
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Remember metabolism is in part a heat.
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It's like a furnace of how much energy you're consuming
link |
and using for building or for energy usage purposes.
link |
So sauna can be very, very interesting.
link |
And again, it's 20 minutes, 30 minute cooling,
link |
20 minutes again, proceed with extreme caution,
link |
but nonetheless, these are pretty extreme effects
link |
in terms of their abilities to increase growth hormone
link |
Along the lines of temperature and hormones,
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I just want to mention a very recent study just came out
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March, April, 2021, endocrine effects
link |
of repeated hot thermal stress
link |
and cold water immersion in young adult men.
link |
Unfortunately, it was just in men.
link |
They didn't look at women, but nonetheless,
link |
I think the data are relevant to everybody
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as a general theme.
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This is Podstowski et al.
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I will put a link to the study in the caption
link |
and they looked at testosterone, prolactin, cortisol,
link |
And what they found was that the sauna does indeed lead
link |
to a significant decrease in cortisol, a stress hormone,
link |
a hormone that you want to be released early in the day
link |
but sauna definitely led to a significant decrease
link |
in cortisol, but did not change testosterone, DHEA
link |
or prolactin levels.
link |
So that's interesting.
link |
And it turns out that the cold did affect
link |
some of these hormones,
link |
but the results there were a little bit more mixed.
link |
So the takeaway here is that heat seems to have
link |
positive effects on growth hormone, big effects.
link |
It seems to have positive effects
link |
on reducing cortisol levels.
link |
And it does not seem to have effects on things
link |
like testosterone, DHEA or prolactin directly.
link |
You can imagine that a shift in any hormone
link |
is going to alter the levels of other hormones
link |
down the line, sort of indirect effects,
link |
but in terms of direct effects,
link |
just during or immediately after the sauna bath,
link |
there were no effects.
link |
So we've talked about diet, supplementation,
link |
behavioral tools, and of course,
link |
we talked about the underlying biology and logic.
link |
And hopefully you heard the safety precautions
link |
Now I'd like to just briefly talk about
link |
the prescription side of all this.
link |
There are, as we know, many people taking growth hormone
link |
because it's been prescribed to them by a doctor.
link |
And presumably there are people taking growth hormone
link |
even though it has not been prescribed by a doctor,
link |
which is none of my business.
link |
But the point here is that most all of the hormones
link |
that we make have been synthesized.
link |
So there are versions of them in little bottles
link |
or little ampules that people can inject.
link |
Here are a couple of important things to consider.
link |
If you're going to go that route.
link |
First of all, talk to a physician, right?
link |
They actually are only legally available through a physician.
link |
Second of all, anytime you're injecting something,
link |
you're going to shut down your own production.
link |
That's the way that the hormone system works.
link |
If you take thyroid hormone,
link |
you won't make thyroid hormone, at least in the long run.
link |
If you take testosterone,
link |
you will shut down your own production of testosterone.
link |
If you take estrogen, the system's a little more resilient,
link |
but eventually you will shut down
link |
your production of estrogen.
link |
And the same is true for growth hormone.
link |
So a decision to go that route of taking something
link |
is often not always a decision to do it forever.
link |
However, if you're willing to sustain a period
link |
of being without a given hormone,
link |
some people can do things and then stop taking them
link |
and then wait out the period
link |
in which they're not making testosterone,
link |
estrogen, or growth hormone, and then it will come back.
link |
Sometimes, and sometimes it won't.
link |
There's a kind of new area that's developing now
link |
that I think deserves our attention,
link |
not because I'm encouraging it, but because it is happening.
link |
And in keeping with the science
link |
and in keeping with trying to keep things modern,
link |
it's worth us discussing, and those are peptides.
link |
So these days you hear a lot about peptides.
link |
I'd like to clarify a little bit about what peptides are.
link |
Peptides is a really huge category of biological compounds.
link |
Peptides are just strings of amino acids, right?
link |
So we've talked about L-tyrosine, arginine, ornithine.
link |
Those are amino acids.
link |
Those are individual amino acids.
link |
And those are put together into little small peptides
link |
or they're what are called polypeptides,
link |
which are just longer peptides.
link |
Turns out that for any substance like growth hormone
link |
or growth hormone-releasing hormone,
link |
it's made up of different amino acids
link |
in different sequences, just like your genes are made up
link |
of As and Gs and Cs and Ts,
link |
nucleotides in different sequences.
link |
It's like a recipe.
link |
Peptides tend to be short sequences of amino acids
link |
that resemble a hormone enough
link |
or resemble some other peptide enough
link |
that it can lead to the similar or same effects
link |
when you inject them.
link |
So for example, we make growth hormone-releasing hormone
link |
from our brain, which stimulates growth hormone
link |
from the pituitary.
link |
You're probably getting tired of me saying that by now.
link |
But people now will take things like sermorelin,
link |
S-E-R-M-O-R-E-L-I-N, sermorelin,
link |
which is not the entire peptide sequence
link |
of growth hormone-releasing hormone,
link |
but it's a subset of those.
link |
And when people inject it before they go to sleep at night,
link |
is typically how it's done on an empty stomach,
link |
then that stimulates the release of growth hormone
link |
from the pituitary.
link |
So this is not taking growth hormone.
link |
This is taking the stimulating hormone
link |
or what's often called a secretagogue or a mimic, all right?
link |
It causes a secretion of the hormone that one wants.
link |
People will do this for thyroid hormone too.
link |
Some people are doing this by prescription
link |
with a real medical need.
link |
Other people are doing it for just longevity reasons,
link |
which kind of falls into that gray zone
link |
of they wouldn't die without it,
link |
but they want to enhance their life.
link |
And so they're doing that
link |
because they believe it's the right thing for them.
link |
Prescription, sermorelin is prescription.
link |
Do they shut down your natural production
link |
of growth hormone-releasing hormone?
link |
Well, the answer is yes,
link |
but some of these peptides actually have the effect
link |
of changing gene expression.
link |
Remember way back to the beginning
link |
when I was talking about hormones,
link |
they can actually change gene expression
link |
and they can actually set pathways in motion
link |
for continued production of a hormone
link |
even if you stop taking the compound.
link |
Now that can be good or that can be bad
link |
because as you recall, growth hormone
link |
in big increases in growth hormone that are short-lived
link |
like sauna or I should say exercise or arginine or sauna,
link |
it seems like has these huge effects,
link |
or early nights, first phase of sleep early in the night,
link |
these sorts of things.
link |
Those are transient,
link |
but when one is injecting over and over a constant level,
link |
you can put into action gene expression programs
link |
that can be long-lived.
link |
And let's say you have a particular tumor in the body,
link |
tumors will grow when they see growth hormone
link |
even if that tumor is unhealthy for you, right?
link |
You've got growth of tissues all over the body.
link |
So again, I'm not saying whether or not
link |
people should do these things or not doing them.
link |
One thing I do know is that they are in very prominent use
link |
in the movie industry,
link |
people who want to peel off body fat quickly,
link |
they do increase recovery time, they increase healing rates,
link |
people are also injecting things like gastric peptides,
link |
they're actually stomach peptides
link |
that we talked about in the previous episode,
link |
things related to the ghrelin pathway
link |
and other things from the liver
link |
that can improve the rate of tissue and wound healing.
link |
You can bet that in the upcoming Olympics,
link |
a lot of people are using peptides and compounds
link |
and I'm not pointing fingers at anyone in particular,
link |
it's just this is separate from hormone augmentation
link |
of like injecting gh or injecting testosterone.
link |
People are now working further up the pathways.
link |
Other names of some of the peptides
link |
are things like hypermorulin, tessomorulin.
link |
Some of these have clinical uses,
link |
others have just been made as compounds for people
link |
in the kind of longevity field
link |
or the self-augmentation field, if you will.
link |
So again, not promoting their use,
link |
but they're definitely out there
link |
and so now if you hear about them
link |
or someone's talking to you about them,
link |
now hopefully you have a better understanding
link |
about their underlying biology
link |
and you can think rationally about whether or not
link |
they are the right decision for you.
link |
Okay, once again, covered an enormous amount of material.
link |
Hopefully now you understand thyroid hormone
link |
and what it does and a little bit about its mechanism
link |
or maybe a lot and growth hormone and what it does
link |
and how both of them take care of our metabolism.
link |
They dictate how many nutrients we can eat and make use of.
link |
They can pull from body fat stores, repair muscle,
link |
repair cartilage, they really are incredible compounds
link |
and they are actionable.
link |
They're things that we can do
link |
like getting that early phase of sleep,
link |
perhaps supplementing with arginine, maybe not,
link |
hopefully getting adequate exercise, warming up properly,
link |
not making the exercise too long or too intense will help,
link |
maybe sauna or things like it,
link |
deliberate safe hyperthermia, the emphasis on safe
link |
might be things that are of use.
link |
Regardless, even if you're not interested in the thyroid
link |
or the growth hormone pathways,
link |
this brings to a close our month on hormones
link |
and so now hopefully you understand
link |
not just thyroid and growth hormone,
link |
but the logic that underlies thyroid hormone,
link |
growth hormone, estrogen, testosterone,
link |
why we eat, why we stop eating, cholecystokinin, ghrelin.
link |
If these names don't mean anything to you,
link |
then perhaps go back and listen to those episodes
link |
but regardless, I hope that you come away from this
link |
with a deeper understanding about these hormones
link |
which are so powerful in controlling
link |
the way our brain functions
link |
and the interplay between the brain and hormones
link |
because it is really a bi-directional conversation.
link |
The brain is telling the body what hormones to make,
link |
the hormones are influencing all the tissues of the body
link |
but also telling the brain whether or not to eat more
link |
or grow more or think more, et cetera.
link |
So I really appreciate your time and attention.
link |
If you like this podcast and you're finding it useful,
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please recommend it to other people.
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If you are on YouTube, please subscribe.
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Please leave us a comment or feedback
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We do read all of the comments
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And I mentioned supplements this episode.
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They are certainly not necessary
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And last but not least,
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I thank you for your time and attention
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and above all for your interest in science.