Episode #16: Maximizing Manhood

Summary

In the second part to our Testosterone and Hormones series, Coach Kyle and Dr. K discuss testosterone and hormone optimization. They cover topics such as alternatives to direct testosterone replacement, maintaining fertility while on testosterone, the use of DHEA, the effects of detox on hormone levels, and the impact of soy on estrogen levels. They also share personal experiences and insights from their own journeys with hormone optimization.

Takeaways

  • Maintaining fertility while on testosterone replacement therapy is possible with the use of gonadorelin or HCG injections.
  • Enclomiphene is a pill that can be used to increase testosterone levels and is a good option for those who prefer not to do injections.
  • DHEA supplementation can help optimize hormone levels, especially in women.
  • Detoxing can improve hormone balance by removing toxins that disrupt estrogen levels.
  • Soy can have both estrogenic and anti-estrogenic effects, so it’s important to choose organic, glyphosate-free sources.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

00:35 Dr. K’s Horseback Adventure

01:10 Meeting Dave Asprey

03:05 Recap of Last Episode

04:01 Maintaining Fertility on Testosterone

06:18 Approach to Testosterone Replacement Therapy

09:36 Alternatives to Testosterone Replacement Therapy

13:27 DHEA and its Effects

26:27 Effects of Soy on Estrogen Levels

30:53 Conclusion

Sponsors

This episode is sponsored by Toxic Roots.  The optimal resource for online health coaching for optimizing performance and removing toxins. Click on the link below to get started on finding your toxic roots. 

Website: https://www.toxicrootswellness.com/

Instagram: @toxicrootswellness

X: @toxicroots 

People

Peak Performance 

Dr. K 

Coach Kyle 

Transcript

Kyle Hulbert (00:21)

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Peak Performance Podcast. I am Coach Kyle.

Ben Kosubevsky (00:25)

and I’m Dr. K. Thank you for joining us today as we discuss testosterone and hormones part two. So today we’re gonna get into all the stuff that we left out last time. Alternatives to direct testosterone replacement, a couple other supplements that you can take and not necessarily supplements, more so medications. We’re gonna talk about how detox can affect your hormone pathways. Let’s get into it. I’m doing great today, Kyle. How are you?

Kyle Hulbert (00:48)

Let’s do it. So Dr. K, how you doing?

Good, good. Aren’t you leaving like in a few days to go across the Sahara on a horse?

Ben Kosubevsky (00:59)

part of that was true. Two thirds of that was true. I’m leaving in five days and it is a horseback adventure, but not the Sahara. We’re going to Botswana and Africa.

Kyle Hulbert (01:08)

That’s very cool. So how’s your, is your horse riding like up to par now? Cause I know you like didn’t know to ride a horse like a while ago.

Ben Kosubevsky (01:14)

As of like June 30th of last year, I had no idea I had to ride a horse. Started July 1st. I think I’ll be okay. You know, if this podcast suddenly disappears from the internet means I got eaten by a lion.

Kyle Hulbert (01:26)

Please avoid the lions when you’re out there. Oh goodness. Well, before we jump in, I have to tell you, I was at a conference last weekend and I had the honor of going to Dave Asprey’s house and hanging out with them for a little bit. You know, as a little bit of a fangirl because, I followed Dave Asprey for so long. He’s actually been a pivotal person in my health journey. Cause he’s the reason that I know you. So his conference is where I met the doctor that referred me to you.

So I got to actually hang out with him for a little bit and he made me a danger coffee espresso at his house. I was like, wow, this is, this is really cool. But the point of this, besides me, just fangirling or fanboying, I don’t know, is, you know, sometimes people say don’t meet your idols. And cause they might turn out to not be who you think they are. And Dave Asprey is one of those, people that is like, he’s better than you hear on the podcast.

Like in person, he’s a real human. He’s engaging. He’s empathetic. Like he’s kind. He is a cool, cool guy to hang out with. So I just figured I put my two cents out there because I see a lot of people hating on, you know, his stances on things, but, you know, regardless of what they say, I’ve met him in person. I hung out with him and it was really cool to see that he’s a human.

Ben Kosubevsky (02:44)

You know you’ve made it when you have your first hater.

Kyle Hulbert (02:47)

Yeah. Yeah. I don’t think we have a hater yet. Do we have a hater? Except the person who hates my exercise bike calling you out again. Oh my goodness. Okay. Let’s let’s get into it. So as a recap of last episode on testosterone, which if you’re listening, you’re probably just rolling right to the next one, but testosterone very important for both men and women. It’s a key element in how your body,

basically produces the feeling of drive or will to do things, to succeed, to live, to live life well. It also governs a lot of things like sex function, body composition, other things. We talked about supplementation, how we don’t really like supplements and the supplements that are out there because they’re a very mild effect on testosterone, if any, and they’re relatively expensive and there’s so much hype and crap out there that it’s hard to navigate. We also talked about…

the types of testosterone replacement therapy or testosterone optimization therapy, how you can do it, injections, creams, gels, pill, and pellets. And then we alluded to, but wait, there’s more. And then at the end of the episode, we talked about, you know, don’t go on testosterone replacement therapy without having a plan to maintain your fertility. So that’s kind of where we left off. Do you want to start by telling us why we don’t want to go on testosterone?

if we want to remain fertile and have children?

Ben Kosubevsky (04:12)

Yeah, so just like any other supplementation hormone in the body, if you give your body enough of something, it’s going to say, hey, great, I don’t need to make any more of it. And then it shuts down its own pathways. And the longer those pathways, they shut down, the harder it is for the body to restart them. Basically, the way the body works is it works on receptors, right? Let’s say there’s a thousand testosterone receptors. And when

800 of them are full, the body says, okay, stop production, wait until we’re back down to 600, wait for 200 to get used and kick back on. Kind of like a pump. And then if we suddenly start taking in a thousand testosterone and all thousand of our receptors are full, our body’s pump never has to kick on to restart our own system.

Kyle Hulbert (04:58)

And so over time, this leads to like an atrophy of the system essentially, where it might just go offline for some people or take years to come back. And that’s why a lot of people say when you go on testosterone, it’s a lifelong thing. But it doesn’t have to be if you do it correctly or intelligently, if you don’t want it to be. And that’s a big point. Before we dive into ways we can approach this and maintain fertility,

Ben Kosubevsky (05:01)

Yes.

Kyle Hulbert (05:22)

You know, I would like to talk a bit about the reasons why you wouldn’t care. So if you’re an older gentleman and you don’t want to have kids and you don’t care about fertility, then I wouldn’t worry about any of these things we’re going to talk about because, you know, at the end of the day down regulating and you’re okay with staying on testosterone for the rest of your life. Cause that’s a big point. you know, at the end of the day, you’re not worried about having children. And if you can have the optimal testosterone levels all the time, then that’s what you’re going to do. And that’s a choice you can make.

The other benefit to being on testosterone and not using well, testosterone alone or testosterone in conjugation with one of these strategies we’re going to talk about and not just these other strategies is that these other strategies work more naturally in the body to increase testosterone production, which gives you this kind of ebb and flow naturally. Whereas testosterone injections give you that up and then you can maintain it pretty, pretty well high. So you feel a little better around the clock.

Is what I’ve found at least in my experience. So why don’t we go ahead and jump in? So I think the best way to start this is to tell people like, when you put someone on testosterone, who wants to maintain fertility or maybe doesn’t want to do it for the rest of their life. How do you approach it?

Ben Kosubevsky (06:32)

So there’s two options and let’s talk about the first option we’re going to talk about is maintaining fertility while taking direct testosterone replacement, which is with, there’s two different ways to do it. One is a peptide called gonadareline. And on today’s date, I still believe that we can get gonadareline. It was not one of the ones that was shut down by the FDA. I ordered some for a patient a couple of weeks ago. Or it’s commercially produced alternative HCG.

Both of these, they keep your FSH and LH pathways open to force your body to keep making more of your own so that your own testosterone production never declines.

Kyle Hulbert (07:12)

So can you give us a quick synopsis about LH and FSH and just kind of how that works?

Ben Kosubevsky (07:19)

I would try and keep this simple because hormones are one of the most complicated things out there. So I alluded to receptors before, right? And feedback loops. And so if you guys have listened to our thyroid, talk before, it’s a similar idea. A receptor starts in the brain, comes down into the, other part of the brain and then goes into in guys, the testes and women, the ovaries. And from there, more hormones are made.

and then eventually spit out testosterone and estrogen. That’s a really simple way, you know, up in the sky overview of it, but the details don’t really matter for the common person honestly, where they’re made. But that’s the idea. As the trick with that, you make 500 FSH that turns your body into saying, hey, I need to make 300 testosterone. And that loop continues and then waits for one to go down and kicks up.

Kyle Hulbert (08:10)

So basically, FSH and LH are the, more or less to hyper -simplify it, are the signals to make testosterone. Okay. I think it’s also important to note here that if your LH and FSH are very high through one of these strategies, but you have a testicular injury, meaning your body is unable to produce the actual testosterone, it will not matter what the signal says. Is that correct?

Ben Kosubevsky (08:19)

Yes.

Yes. Yeah, you know, it’s like you can’t squeeze blood out of a stone. Once it’s dry, it’s dry.

Kyle Hulbert (08:40)

Okay.

Yeah. So these strategies will not work for someone who has a testicular injury and believe it or not, it’s more common than we would like to admit with all the sports and especially young people getting into sports early nowadays.

Ben Kosubevsky (08:57)

Yeah, so for people like that, they just need straight testosterone. Other stuff just doesn’t matter.

Kyle Hulbert (09:03)

Yeah. So, and that’s very important because if you have a testicular injury, you don’t need to worry about these other strategies. You just need to know that if you want to optimize your testosterone levels, which you probably need, if your body’s not producing testosterone from a testicular injury, you’re going to be on it for the rest of your life because of that injury. Okay. Moving forward. So these, so you said you put someone on gonadal relin or HCG, um, along with testosterone injections. Can you, can you tell us like how that, what it looks like?

Ben Kosubevsky (09:33)

Yeah. So, most of my people are on testosterone injections twice a week. That’s just the, that’s the minimum easiest one. Like we talked about before, the best thing to do is every day or every other day, but twice a week works for most people. And then gonadorelin or HCG, they are also done twice a week. And we started a similar thing. I have a base dose I start people at for, I use gonadorelin I prefer it. Studies have shown that has, it is stronger with less side effects. So I always use gonadorelin as long as I can still get it.

Kyle Hulbert (09:33)

A vertical.

Ben Kosubevsky (10:01)

But I start people on that similar thing of 0 .2 milligrams, I forget its exact dosage, but 0 .2 milliliters of it twice a week on different days than testosterone.

Kyle Hulbert (10:13)

So you do it basically on off days to like help your natural production on those off days. And so again, to simplify this, these HCG or gonadorelin and basically what they do is they go in and they tell the body to make more testosterone, conflicting with the signal of the actual testosterone that is actually reducing the signal to make sure that your natural pathway stay optimized. Okay. So,

I mean, is that the only route you would do while you’re actually on the testosterone injections or would you do something like Enclomiphene alongside testosterone injections?

Ben Kosubevsky (10:48)

I have never put someone on Enclomiphene along with testosterone. Doesn’t sound like the worst idea. I’ve just honestly never thought of doing that.

Kyle Hulbert (10:57)

It is a strategy that people use. I’ve heard of a few doctors that do it. The downside in my opinion is in Enclomiphene is much more expensive than the other two options. So, you know, taking in Enclomiphene it’s just a more expensive option or way to do it.

Ben Kosubevsky (11:13)

I don’t think it’s horribly, I mean, it’s about $90 for 15 pills, whatever that works out to be.

Kyle Hulbert (11:22)

$90 for 15 pills roughly. Yeah, I get a quarter of my HCG injections for 200 bucks roughly. And I take a fairly hefty dose.

Ben Kosubevsky (11:33)

Yeah.

So it’s more expensive, but that’s just go say it’s not unreasonably expensive.

Kyle Hulbert (11:41)

Gotcha. So it is something that people could try. I have heard of doctors that do that, running it alongside. So what, so like, is this the approach you would try right out of the gate with like a younger male that has lower testosterone or would you try to use one of these substances like by themselves first?

Ben Kosubevsky (11:59)

Enclomiphene I almost, unless, actually you taught me this, unless they’re like a severely overweight older male, I start everyone on Enclomiphene first. It just works so much better in my opinion than testosterone and people don’t get tired of poking themselves because it’s a pill you take every other day or every day, just depending on what your levels need.

Kyle Hulbert (12:19)

Yeah, that’s a, big differentiation you made there. The, Enclomiphene is a pill and gonadorelin and HCG are both injections. So there’s this whole needle phobia. And again, you get sick and tired of sticking yourself. I don’t because I’m a biohacker and that’s just kind of the life I live, but most people prefer Enclomiphene So you put people on Enclomiphene first, which I really liked the strategy because it’s basically you’re trying to get the most out of your body for as long as you can. Right.

Ben Kosubevsky (12:40)

So.

Kyle Hulbert (12:48)

You just want to send a louder signal to your body to produce more testosterone. So it’s a, basically a staged approach, which you would try something like in Enclomiphene or HCG, you’re going to gonad o relin. Maybe you would dose up one or two times. And if those weren’t working for someone, then you probably have a problem in the testes at which you would need to move to testosterone injections and then still supplement with one of these other options to maintain fertility. Okay.

Ben Kosubevsky (13:13)

Correct. So I feel like we’ve alluded to Enclomiphene we should talk about how it actually works. Like what’s it do?

Kyle Hulbert (13:23)

Yeah. You want to, you want to take that one or you want me to. It’s, it’s been a minute. So correct me if I’m wrong here, but, and Enclomiphene is a SERM So it’s a selective estrogen receptor modulator. When what it does is it basically blocks aromatization. So the transfer of testosterone into estrogen. and what it does is so there’s two different like variations of this drug. And we’ve said Enclomiphene

Ben Kosubevsky (13:26)

You can go ahead.

Kyle Hulbert (13:49)

And a lot of people have heard Clomid and Enclomiphene is a different version molecularly than Clomid. And in Enclomiphene only blocks a portion, the portion that you want to block of the estrogen aromatization. And that by letting there be less aromatization that helps the LH and FSH kick up, send a louder signal. Did I nail that?

Ben Kosubevsky (14:13)

Yeah, you nailed it better than I could have actually. You did bring up one distinction though, pretty much no one uses Clomophene anymore. Everyone is on Enclomiphene It has less psychiatric side effects. Regular Clomophene can cause things like anxiety and depression, guys, whereas Enclomiphene has severely reduced side effect profile.

Kyle Hulbert (14:34)

And, you know, it is sad because in the functional medicine, that’s world, that’s well known, but I do, I have heard of a lot of doctors like that are not really abreast of the difference. and I don’t want to like poo poo on doctors, but it’s, it’s big pharma really, really big pharma is the, cause they have the brand name Clomid and then Enclomiphene is a compounded medication for the most part. And so that distinction, Clomid is being pushed by pharma and Enclomiphene is not.

But you want to make sure that if you’re doing testosterone replacement therapy or something like these, you want to do Enclomiphene So what can people expect in terms of results from Enclomiphene? What have you seen? And then I’ll tell people what I’ve seen.

Ben Kosubevsky (15:17)

So the first thing I want to talk about, enchlomophen, people feel weird the first week or two when they’re starting it. Usually mental, sometimes fatigue. So I always warn people about that for the first week or two. It’s okay, it will go away as they get used to it. And then after that, so we always retest hormones on Enclomiphene after two weeks and we kind of see where their levels are. Most people have a spike that it’s appropriate for.

how high that spike is varies. I’ve seen the jump 100 points, I’ve seen the jump 400 points. Because I start people on 25 milligrams every other day, and then after two weeks we evaluate and move from there.

Kyle Hulbert (15:54)

Yeah. So standardized dosing on this is almost every other day. Like the dosing guidelines from like whoever makes it, I’ve looked it up a few times. They recommend every other day. However, in my experience as a biohacker, every day for me at a lower dosage had way less side effects. And that’s just how it worked for me. Do you have patients prefer every other day or am I just the weird one out here?

Ben Kosubevsky (16:23)

truthfully, I don’t think, you know, the common person doesn’t really know enough. and you know, getting, unfortunately getting people to truly tell you how they’re feeling is rare. Most people are like, Oh, I feel terrible or Oh, I’m fine. And getting fine details in between is really hard. so I kind of have to judge most of it by the numbers and that’s just, you know, the human condition.

Kyle Hulbert (16:41)

Yeah, there are, you know, if for the audience, if you ever really want to get into this, there are specific surveys that you can take. They are tested instruments that can basically test and give you a score for your low testosterone symptoms. And so something like that might be helpful for your doctor to help them guide their dosage and medication suggestions. But that’s going above and beyond. If you want to, I’m sure your doctor will be very appreciative of your surveys.

So, let’s summarize a little bit. We have Enclomiphene Gonadarelin, HCG. Gonadarelin and HCG are injectables. And Enclomiphene is a pill and they can be taken alongside a protocol with testosterone replacement therapy with testosterone cypionate or something like that. Or they can be taken just by themselves to increase testosterone. So that’s where we’ve gotten so far. We’ve talked a little bit about pricing.

Ben Kosubevsky (17:11)

Yeah, right.

Kyle Hulbert (17:39)

but they’re not terribly expensive. I’ve found Enclomiphene is more expensive than HCG for me. it’s running what it, what is it when I was on Enclomiphene it was probably $500 a quarter. Roughly on my day. Yeah. Yeah. Daily dose.

Ben Kosubevsky (17:53)

Yeah, if you’re on it every day, yeah, that’s about right. Because it’s $3 ,000. So it’s $180 a month -ish. Yeah.

Kyle Hulbert (18:00)

Yeah. And then so my, it’s about 200 bucks a month for my, or 200 bucks a quarter for my HCG, which I take every other day.

Ben Kosubevsky (18:10)

Okay, so the next thing let’s talk about is DHEA.

Kyle Hulbert (18:16)

D -H -E -A, the mother of all hormones.

Ben Kosubevsky (18:20)

You want to explain what you mean by that?

Kyle Hulbert (18:23)

So I’m not actually really sharp of the science on here, but the, the layman’s terms, the layman’s breakdown of it is essentially, I believe that the other hormones, the other sex hormones are synthesized from D H E A it’s kind of upstream hormone. so basically if you have more of this D H E A, then your body has more of the raw materials to make testosterone, but it all.

Ben Kosubevsky (18:45)

Yeah, basically it’s made in your adrenals. It stands for dehydroepiandrosthenone. I think I pronounced that right. Maybe I didn’t. But it’s made in your adrenals and a couple other places and it helps to shift, makes more testosterone and estrogen.

Kyle Hulbert (19:02)

Yeah, so the double -edged sword here is, it helps make more testosterone and estrogen. So it can cause estrogen side effects. And I believe there’s a specific type of DHEA called 5 -keto -DHEA, which limits the estrogen symptoms of DHEA. So if you’re male and you want to supplement with DHEA, I would get the 5 -keto -DHEA version of it.

Ben Kosubevsky (19:10)

Yep.

Kyle Hulbert (19:30)

DHEA I think is probably one of the most efficacious tools for hormonal replacement therapy for women. Cause it helps bring the whole, bring the whole pool up. And usually people feel a lot better on it from, from my experience.

So do you use DHEA regularly with your male clients?

Ben Kosubevsky (19:51)

I use it more for females. I don’t do a lot of female hormones, but guys, it’s rare by will if they’re close to where I want them to be. And the estrogen is not too high. I will add DHEA just to give them that extra boost without having to up their testosterone.

Kyle Hulbert (20:06)

Yeah, I like that. Okay, so I think we’ve covered them. Is there anything else we need to talk about before we move on? I’ve got one topic I want to hit.

Ben Kosubevsky (20:14)

One more thing about DHEA, if a guy has stubborn belly fat and they can’t seem to get rid of it, dosing DHEA, there’s been trials that show that doing it for six months can actually help get rid of that belly fat.

Kyle Hulbert (20:26)

Wow. That’s good to know. I didn’t know that one. Do you know the reason behind that? They probably don’t either. The researchers are probably like more research needed. I’ve seen that so many times in research papers. They’re like, this is what we found, but we’re really not sure about it.

Ben Kosubevsky (20:29)

Yeah.

Haha.

Kyle Hulbert (20:47)

So, you know, I mentioned a little bit about estrogen, and symptoms. there are some people online influencers, you know, who comes to mind as Jay Campbell and he is very pro estrogen. and I somewhat agree with his stance. and I somewhat don’t, but his thought process is that estrogen is very protective, neuroprotective and protective for your organs.

And it also protects you from a lot of the cancers and prostate cancer that people are like scared about with testosterone replacement therapy. I somewhat agree with that, but I also have to say that high estrogen symptoms as a male are a real thing. I’ve experienced them myself. You know, I’ve literally, I’ve had my estrogen too high during my journey and I’d be like watching TV with my wife and a commercial for a Chevy truck would come on. I’d be like bawling.

I’m like, it’s so sad. And then you get like sensitivity in the breast tissue and mood swings and things like that. And those are general signs that your estrogen is too high. Now, what some doctors do is prescribe an astrozole. I do not love this approach unless it’s done very, very judiciously. An astrozole can have massive side effects, especially long -term. If you’re on…

this medication, it’s a, it’s basically blocks estrogen essentially. And so what it does is it reduces your estrogen levels and can lead to sarcopenia, bone issues, and possibly some cancers down the road. So if you’re going to entertain this, this is not an everyday medication. There’s a very long half life on it and the dosage should be very low. Dr. K, you got two cents about that.

Ben Kosubevsky (22:33)

And yeah, the unfortunate part is I get a lot of patients that come to me because they won’t get their hormones under control and they’re doing hormones at like one of those hormone wellness places. And they put pretty much everyone on estrogen

Kyle Hulbert (22:48)

Yeah, that’s it. Well, you know, it’s, it’s kind of the whole like double edged sword because you know, if I take a standard prescribed dose of an AstraZol for two days, I will look shredded. I will look ripped because all of the water and puffiness has drained out of my body and I have no estrogen. Day three and four, my sleep goes to crap. And then I start getting inflamed again, which throws all the other hormones back off.

And it’s this like crazy cycle. so standard dosage, I think is like one milligram is how the pills come. and really like some places like these wellness places are recommending a milligram a day, which is insanely high. I mean, really, if you have to take these to mitigate symptoms, a quarter of it and eighth of it is probably where you should start, which is annoying because you’re crushing up the little pill and it’s, it’s a very tiny pill. but.

I’m of the mind and Jay Campbell kind of talks to this a little bit. If you’re getting high estrogen symptoms, you’re probably doing too much with your testosterone replacement. You should probably take your dosage down, whatever route you’ve gone and get to a more manageable level. And now this doesn’t necessarily follow the numbers. So you could be a person that had 300 testosterone and you go on one of these therapies and you have 500, but you start getting estrogen symptoms.

Now what that means is most likely you need to live at 400, clean up your diet, lose some weight, and then you can keep increasing and that will mitigate those symptoms going forward.

Ben Kosubevsky (24:21)

And I want to make a point there, testosterone replacement should make you feel good. Not great, not like Superman. You should just feel a little bit better.

Kyle Hulbert (24:29)

Yeah. If you feel like you can conquer the world, you’re probably a little too high. And if what happens to is, you know, aromatization, which is the conversion of testosterone into estrogen happens in fat. So the higher your body fat, the more likely you’re going to aromatize testosterone. so the level at which you can supplement is lower. So as you go up, it’s probably like a stair -step approach. You need to start a very low dose of testosterone replacement therapy.

You work really hard, you lose a little weight, lose a little fat, and then you can bump your dose. You lose a little more fat, you bump your dose, and then you can tolerate until you get to where you want to be, seven, eight, 900. And then that’s where you’ll find out kind of that’s your sweet spot. like I mentioned, my sweet spots eight or 900. If I go over that, I’m starting to have some estrogen symptoms. And that’s probably because my body fat’s at still about 20%, which I’m going to work on getting that down. And then I’ll, and then I’ll try, see if.

see if I feel good at 1200, we’ll see. So any points on that Dr. K?

Ben Kosubevsky (25:31)

No, I think you pretty much got it. Let’s get to our last point, which is detoxing and how that affects your hormone levels.

Kyle Hulbert (25:35)

Yeah.

detoxing and how it affects your hormone levels. Well, it seems like it would work, right? It seems like it would be good.

Ben Kosubevsky (25:47)

Usually tends to work, yeah.

Kyle Hulbert (25:49)

It’s funny, because every time I go see Dr. K, I have to take my dosage down on everything. Because if I don’t, I’ll get massive estrogen symptoms because my testosterone just goes to the roof after I’ve done a detox protocol or an E BOO with Dr. K. So I’ve got to preemptively bring my dosage down because that detox really cleans me up and makes my endocrine system run a lot better.

Ben Kosubevsky (26:10)

Yeah. so you know, if you go back to our heavy metal talk, a lot of these hormones, they mimic minerals and they can block receptors and body cadmium is notorious for affecting, I think it’s estrogen specifically, right? so what happens is the body, the cadmium ends up getting plugged into estrogen receptors and your body, it doesn’t know what’s getting plugged in. It just knows that, you know,

something’s in the receptor. So cadmium’s in there, body says, okay, great, we have estrogen, we’re good. And then as you clear it out, all of a sudden your body senses a massive drop and starts pumping out more estrogen.

Kyle Hulbert (26:46)

Yeah. So heavy metals can affect us. We’re also looking at things like Xenoestrogens and estrogens and from chemicals that are actually a thousand times more potent than human body estrogens. Things that mimic estrogen from mold. It’s really everywhere. It’s in all of these toxins. And actually it’s a main way that toxins disrupt our hormones is through upsetting estrogen balance. So.

Specifically, when it comes to the person, depending on what type of toxins you have, clearing those will naturally, most likely, increase your testosterone and your hormone levels overall.

Ben Kosubevsky (27:27)

So last question, can soy, because I feel like everyone’s heard this, can soy affect estrogen levels in guys?

Kyle Hulbert (27:34)

Yes and no. So, but when you need, when you, wow, this is a rabbit hole. We could, we could go on this forever, but I’m trying to make it quick. So soy, the main offender here is not the soy itself. It’s the stuff the soy is treated with. So first of all, all the pesticides and all the mycotoxins that come on the soy are highly estrogenic and those can definitely affect your testosterone and estrogen levels.

Ben Kosubevsky (27:37)

That’s a very good answer.

Kyle Hulbert (28:04)

go down and you look at something like the actual effects of pure soy. And it has been shown to exhibit both effects, a minor, and I mean minor, a weak estrogenic effect and a weak negative estrogenic effect. And how that can work is it binds loosely to the estrogen receptor. Sometimes it blocks regular estrogen, which just binds more strongly. And sometimes it causes an increase of estrogen. So it could go either way.

Ben Kosubevsky (28:33)

So organic soy is better, ideally.

Kyle Hulbert (28:35)

Yeah, organic soy is better. You really want to like, you really want to try to find a, if you’re going to eat soy or tofu, you really want to find a source that says, you know, glyphosate residue free, pesticide free. That’s really what you want to do. I wouldn’t worry about it too much. I would literally just focus on trying to get an organic source. I wouldn’t worry about actually eating soy for your testosterone levels. That’s not to say.

You know, if you’re pounding soy protein shakes, you know, 50, 100 grams of soy protein a day, that can probably throw some stuff off.

Ben Kosubevsky (29:12)

And for our vegan bodybuilders out there, tofu is a soy product.

Kyle Hulbert (29:17)

It is. Yes. Tofu is soy. And I actually had a tofu smoothie the other night. I use silken tofu. It’s actually pretty decent. Yeah. it was good. So I was told by my gut results, that’s a tofu with a super food for me. I didn’t notice any estrogenic effects one, which way or the other. So I wouldn’t catch on it too much. You know, you hear all the, the people going soy boys and that, you know, that’s like a,

negative connotation term for someone with a lot of estrogen. It’s kind of weak. So, but really I wouldn’t worry about it too much, but if you’re going to do it, look for a clean source glyphosate residue free organic.

Ben Kosubevsky (29:59)

Okay, I think that about wraps it up for us.

Kyle Hulbert (30:02)

That’s it. Well, thank you guys so much for joining us. This is Testosterone Part Two. If you have questions or want help with your testosterone or hormone levels, please hit us up on our Instagram or you can find me on Instagram at Toxin Free Kyle.

Ben Kosubevsky (30:19)

And I’m Dr. K or the osteo doc. Thanks everybody for joining us and we’ll see you next time.

Kyle Hulbert (30:25)

See you next time.