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Increasing your natural testosterone

Increasing your natural testosterone can be achieved through various methods. Some supplements have shown potential in increasing testosterone levels, such as Tongkat Ali and Maca root . Zinc supplementation has also been found to increase testosterone levels and improve sperm quality . It is important to note that individual responses may vary, and it is recommended to consult with a healthcare professional before starting any supplementation routine. In addition to supplementation, lifestyle factors can also play a role in optimizing testosterone levels. Factors such as getting sufficient sleep, regular exercise, maintaining a healthy weight, and managing stress levels can all contribute to healthy hormone levels . It is important to note that testosterone replacement therapy should only be pursued under the guidance of a healthcare professional, as there are potential risks and considerations to take into account .

How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

Huberman Lab

Andrew Huberman: Sex hormone binding globulin can bind up too much testosterone to the point where it's having negative effects on libido or on muscle growth and fat loss and things of that sort. This is true in males and females, or it can be doing exactly what it's supposed to do, which is shuttling testosterone to the proper tissues and organs where it has all these effects, including the brain. So there are supplements, in particular Tonga Ali, which has this other name. It's something I call Tonga Ali. Sometimes it's called, and these, forgive me that it's hard to pronounce, but uricoma longifolia jack. They always seem to have these names that kind of allude to androgenic features. Like, I don't know why longifolia jack, I don't know. I think it's kind of obvious. why that sounds sort of androgenic. This has been shown in several studies and you can find these on examine.com or you can go to PubMed if you like, I've looked at these, that it does seem to have some pro-fertility, pro-free testosterone and subtle aphrodisiac effects. It does also seem to be a slight anti-estrogen. So the reports of this, people take this anywhere from 400 to 800 milligrams a day. Again, I'm not suggesting you do that, but that's kind of what's out there. And there is some decent scientific literature to support the fact that it liberates some of the bound testosterone and allows more free testosterone to be available.

Developing a Rational Approach to Supplementation for Health & Performance

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Andrew Huberman: Maca root can increase libido. found to be particularly effective in women, but in men as well, and in all people who are suffering from lowered libido due to intake of SSRIs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, for whatever reason. SSRIs are used to treat OCD, they're used to treat depression, any number of different things. Maca root can be, in many instances, effective in increasing libido. It does that, however, through augmentation of dopamine-related pathways and some of the hormone pathways upstream of testosterone and estrogen. The reports that maca increases testosterone are somewhat scant and a little bit weak, to be honest. So it's having these indirect effects that may impact testosterone downstream. So again, I'd put maca alongside ashwagandha, alongside shilajit. Supplements that are impacting multiple hormone pathways toward increased libido, increased fertility, increased testosterone or estrogen likely through indirect pathways. Okay, now with all that said, I'd like to provide some examples of supplements that work more directly on specific hormone pathways aimed at achieving more specific goals, such as elevated testosterone or elevated free testosterone, or elevated growth hormone for that matter, and elevated thyroid hormone. I'd like to talk about growth hormone first because it's actually a pretty short discussion. First of all, the best way to augment growth hormone is to get quality deep sleep, especially the sleep that occurs in the first three or four hours of the night is when growth hormone is released.

Maximizing Productivity, Physical & Mental Health with Daily Tools

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Andrew Huberman: This sounds like a terrible thing, but actually it's a good thing because it allows testosterone to be transported to the various tissues, including the brain, where it can exert its various functions. For those that have, lower than desired levels of testosterone or too much 6-hormone-binding globulin, it turns out that 400 milligrams per day of something called Tongat Ali, which is a form of ginseng, can actually help increase levels of free testosterone. Many people experience a positive subjective effect and some objective effects as well, meaning increases in free testosterone when they do blood analysis. There are some data on that, not a ton in the peer-reviewed literatures. And again, always approach these with a sense of caution and definitely talk to your doctor. If you want to learn more about that, you can go to examine.com. There's a lot of information there listed about that. The other compound that's relevant both to or I should say people that are trying to optimize testosterone and or estrogen is Fidogia. Fidogia agrestis is actually an herb that increases the levels of what's called luteinizing hormone. Luteinizing hormone is a hormone that's released from the hypothalamus within the brain that travels to the gonads, either the ovaries or the testes to stimulate the release of estrogen or testosterone. And phytogeogrestis has been shown, albeit in a limited number of studies, to increase levels of luteinizing hormone and thereby levels of testosterone and estrogen in ways that some people find beneficial. So I just want to mention those two.

Dr. Kyle Gillett: Tools for Hormone Optimization in Males

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Andrew Huberman: Some individuals do it only for cosmetic reasons, even if it can have deleterious effects on like the cosmetic appearance, for example, of your skin in the long run. But everyone has their different reason as far as when does the benefit outweigh the detriment. Not very often if you're in your 20s, and certainly almost hardly never. There's always rare cases like Kalman syndrome and whatnot, but almost never if you're very young.

(someone): Okay. So for people in their twenties, thirties and beyond forties, et cetera, whose testosterone and estrogen levels are at the appropriate ratios and in the, within the normal reference range, and they feel pretty good, right? We talked about the Adams exam or this sort of like feel pretty good as sort of code for libido, energy recovery, et cetera, and are feeling, you know, at least workable for, for their lifestyle for those people, what, can they do besides get great sleep, train, but not too hard or too often, et cetera, et cetera. What are some of the things in the realm of supplementation that can help them optimize their testosterone and estrogen without suppressing their own endogenous production of testosterone and estrogen?

Andrew Huberman: Let's mention creatine as the first one. Creatine is interesting because it has multiple different effects. It helps with amino acid synthesis. It also helps with oxidative stress. It can also serve as the backup fuel tank for your mitochondria, so kind of holding back up ATP.

Developing a Rational Approach to Supplementation for Health & Performance

Huberman Lab

Andrew Huberman: So let's consider each of those in tandem. There are certain supplements, things like Shilajit, for instance, something from Ayurvedic medicine, which mainly has the active ingredient fulvic acid, which is known to, for instance, increase things like FSH, follicle stimulating hormone, which in women is going to increase certain aspects of egg growth, hence the name follicle stimulating hormone. It's going to stimulate certain aspects of fertility, it's pro-fertile and in males can make for more sperm production or more motile sperm. FSH is also going to indirectly increase testosterone in males. It's known to increase libido in both males and females. So things like Shilajit can indeed augment multiple hormones and support multiple hormone systems generally in the direction of pro-fertility, pro-libido and increasing estrogen and testosterone. Now there are other supplements such as ashwagandha that also fall into this category of affecting multiple hormones. Ashwagandha is a very potent supplement in terms of reducing cortisol levels. It has also been shown to increase testosterone levels but probably indirectly. And that's because cortisol and testosterone sort of exist on a seesaw in terms of pathways. They're on separate pathways, but those pathways interact enough that when cortisol is lowered in general, testosterone tends to increase. Now it is important that with certain hormones like ashwagandha that you don't take them for more than two weeks at a time at high dosages.

Dr. Kyle Gillett: How to Optimize Your Hormones for Health & Vitality

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Andrew Huberman: L-theanine is also another exception.

Andrew Huberman: Great. Well then, at least I haven't put anything into the world that's... that's wrong in that category yet. And hopefully I won't, but if I do, I'll correct myself. So let's talk about testosterone in males. You see these headlines all the times now that testosterone levels are dropping, sperm counts are dropping, phenotypes of men are changing over time. And I can't quite follow the literature on that because obviously those are hard controlled experiments to do. because techniques change over time and sensitivity of techniques change over time. But regardless, I'm aware that a lot of people are considering increasing their testosterone by taking testosterone. A few years ago, that was considered steroid use and it was really extreme kind of stance. Nowadays, it seems like there's more discussion about it. First off, I'd like to know, does testosterone supplementation, and here I'm talking about prescription from a doctor, Does it make one more prone to prostate cancer? That seems to always be the first question that comes out.

Andrew Huberman: Yeah. And there is a huge amount of misinformation about this too. So testosterone is not going to cause a prostate cancer. However, normal aging causes prostate cancer and testosterone will grow your prostate cancer.

Dr. Peter Attia: Exercise, Nutrition, Hormones for Vitality & Longevity

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(someone): Uh, in reality we can fix this another way. So, so the first order question is, Do we believe clinically you will benefit from normalizing your free testosterone or taking it to a level, let's call it 80th to 90th percentile. So upper normal limit of physiologic ranges. That's the first order question. And that's going to come down to symptoms and that's going to come down to some biomarkers. I think there's two years ago, was it two years ago or maybe a year ago, a very good study came out that looked at pre-diabetic men, you've probably talked about this study, and looking at insulin resistance and glucose disposal with and without testosterone. And the evidence was overwhelmingly clear. Testosterone improves glycemic control. Testosterone improves insulin signaling. This shouldn't be surprising, by the way, given the role muscles play as a glucose reservoir and a glucose sink. So now I include that as one of the things that we will consider as a factor for using testosterone. Now, again, it's not the only one. So you can accomplish that with exercise, you can accomplish that with these other things, but then you get into a little bit of the vicious cycle of will having a normalized testosterone facilitate you doing those things better? So, let's just assume we come to the decision that this person is a good candidate for testosterone replacement therapy. The next question is, what's the method we're going to do it? Are we going to do it indirectly or directly? Now, we used to use a lot of clomid in our practice.

Developing a Rational Approach to Supplementation for Health & Performance

Huberman Lab

Andrew Huberman: There are supplements that can potently increase GNRH, and or luteinizing hormone, and then indirectly increase testosterone and estrogen. And I always like to remind people, testosterone and estrogen are present in both males and females, okay? And both are important for things like libido, muscle growth, and so on. A lot of people think that, oh, in males, you know, having very high testosterone and low estrogen is actually ideal. It's actually not ideal if you want to keep your libido. Anything that lowers your estrogen too far is going to reduce your libido. You don't want estrogen too high, but you also do not want it too low. So supplements that can tickle this pathway or actually can act as a bit more of a directed hammer on this luteinizing hormone pathway may also impact GnRH are things like Phytogea agrestis, this is an herb that I've talked about before on the podcast, that when taken at dosages of 600 milligrams per day, many people, not all, report elevated levels of libido, elevated sperm production, elevated testosterone, in some cases, elevated estrogen, a bunch of hormones downstream of luteinizing hormone. Now, are you going to be a phytogeoaggressive responder or a non-responder? There's simply no way to know except by trying it. If you are going to go down this route, There are two very important considerations.

How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

Huberman Lab

Andrew Huberman: Again, I'm not suggesting you do that, but that's kind of what's out there. And there is some decent scientific literature to support the fact that it liberates some of the bound testosterone and allows more free testosterone to be available. Some of the reported quote-unquote side effects are things like excessive alertness and insomnia if it's taken too late in the day and so forth. But I encourage you to explore that further if increasing free testosterone is something that you're interested in doing. Examen.com includes a lot of other things that can increase testosterone. One of the things that's been purported to free up testosterone in the blood are things like nettles, stinging nettles. Although I should point out that the literature points to stinging nettle also having some fairly potent effects on the prostate and on the liver. And so it might be a tricky molecule, maybe not an attractive one for people to take. So we talked about creatine, we talked about tonga ali. It's clear that boron, Which is really interesting, believe it or not, I think boron comes from, I think these were like meteors that landed on Earth and now they extract boron. It's a, you know, one of these crazy stories that when you look at it, you go, how could that possibly be? But there's actually, that's how it works.

How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

Huberman Lab

Andrew Huberman: There are some very interesting compounds out there that have been used and that are supported by quality peer-reviewed studies. And again, I'll refer you once again to this amazing website, examine.com, where you can put in essentially any condition or any supplement, and it will point you to the human effect matrix, not animal studies, but human studies that have explored these things. Now, there are a huge variety of them here, so I won't go into all of them, but some of the pro-estrogenic compounds that have been shown to be powerful in the context of menopause, as well as other conditions where estrogen is lower than one would like, include a description and some of the literature, I'll get into this in a moment, of something like black cohosh, I think that's the correct pronunciation, it's literally the word black, and then C-O-H-O-S-H. And it's very interesting. There are 13 peer-reviewed studies that have reached prominence in the kind of commercial landscape where this substance, black cohosh, has been promoted as a way to increase estrogen. Turns out that the effects are consistent, but are fairly minor, fairly minor increases in estrogen. So it does seem to be a real effect. It is significant over the placebo effect, but there's also a significant placebo effect in some of these studies as well. So what's interesting when you look at these studies is that many of them were carried out over a period of six plus months, they're double blind studies, et cetera. And almost all of them led to modest increases in estrogen and modest decreases in menopause related symptoms. Now, a few additional details about these studies.

Dr. Kyle Gillett: Tools for Hormone Optimization in Males

Huberman Lab

(someone): Going back to testosterone therapy, then again, notice folks, I've deleted the replacement part because I think so many people are using testosterone therapy without the need to, the sort of reference range need to, to replace anything, but rather building on what they already have for purposes of increasing vitality, et cetera. Going back to that, my understanding is that taking HCG several times per week can help maintain spermatogenesis and fertility, even while people are on testosterone. But, and you and I were talking about this earlier, that there's tremendous variation. Some people will take a small amount of testosterone and just crush their sperm count. They just won't make any viable sperm. Other people can maintain viable sperm production while on testosterone, especially if they're taking HCG. Is that right?

Andrew Huberman: Correct. And there's many reasons for this. Some of this has to do with heat damage to the testes. So potentially cold therapy could be helpful for that.

(someone): Ice baths, cold showers. Or just avoid, and certainly avoiding sauna and hot tub.

Andrew Huberman: Yeah. Stopping the daily hot tub can restore fertility in many people.

(someone): I know a number of people that are trying to conceive children that go into the sauna and they'll just put a cold pack in their shorts or between their legs, depending on whether or not they're wearing shorts or not when they go in, or they'll alternate ice and heat in a way that maintains coolness of the milieu in which the sperm live. In other words, they're cooling their scrotum deliberately in order to avoid killing

How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

Huberman Lab

Andrew Huberman: And then you get deficiencies in LH and FSH, and so people will take HCG to stimulate the gonads. So there are a variety of reasons why these drugs were created. But there are certain supplements, not many, that apparently can increase luteinizing hormone and thereby can increase testosterone and estrogen. And one of the more well-documented ones is phytogia agrestis, that's F-A-D-O-G-I-A, separate word, A-G-R-E-S-T-I-S, which, at least according to the literature that I was able to find, can increase levels of luteinizing hormone and thereby levels of testosterone or levels of estrogen. And again, if an individual were to take phytogia agrestis, what they would probably find is that testosterone and estrogen would increase of any chromosomal or gonadal background, but remember it's the ratio of both. So both, if someone has low estrogen, high testosterone, let's say they have testes just by way of example, then both of those would be expected to increase. And if someone has high estrogen and low testosterone, and let's just say has ovaries, then both of those would increase by taking Phytogeoagrestis. The side effect profile of phytogeogresis hasn't really been documented, so it's a little unclear. I just want to emphasize that anytime someone's going to start taking supplements or modifying sex steroid hormones, getting blood work done is extremely important for safety reasons and also just to know whether or not things are working.

How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

Huberman Lab

Andrew Huberman: So companies paying for research, which is different than independent research by people who are not biased in terms of the outcome. And the reason I didn't throw out things like bulbine natalensis is they seem to have liver toxicity similar to high levels of anabolic exogenous steroids. There's some problems associated with them that make them important to think about if you're curious about this area and the endocrinology, but also somewhat precarious. And that's one category. So stuff that doesn't have a lot of evidence in humans might actually be dangerous. The other category of things that has been shown to improve or levels of, or increase, I should say, I don't want to say improve, because it's up to you whether or not you want to increase or decrease estrogen and testosterone, that's highly individual, how could I know, are the things that are kind of housekeeping for production of estrogen and testosterone. Things like magnesium, things like D3, things like zinc. Those are the things that are going to create an overall milieu of opportunity to produce normal endogenous levels rather than increasing endogenous levels further. And so I really want to highlight that there's a difference between taking something to create a kind of backdrop of general support and taking something that's going to create a big inflection in the levels of a given hormone. So once again, we covered a tremendous amount of information. We covered some basic science of hormones and pheromones, estrogen and testosterone and their derivatives. We talked about supplementation and behaviors, competition and parenting, and how all these things interact.

Dr. Kyle Gillett: How to Optimize Your Hormones for Health & Vitality

Huberman Lab

Andrew Huberman: So testosterone is not going to cause a prostate cancer. However, normal aging causes prostate cancer and testosterone will grow your prostate cancer. So, if you're a 80-year-old male and you have an autopsy, then there's at least a 50% chance that you have a prostate cancer. If you're 90 or 100 years old, there's at least a 90% chance. So, for humans with a prostate, it's only a matter of time until you get a prostate cancer. So that begs the question, do you want to take something that's going to grow it for sure once you have it? So it's an individual assessment and it's important to follow things like PSAs as well.

Andrew Huberman: So a PSA of four or less, I mean ideally you wouldn't be at four because that's kind of the upper threshold, is the simplest readout of whether or not there's excessive prostate growth. There's benign prostate hyperplasia where the prostate is growing, but it's non-cancerous, correct? And then of course there are the symptomologies, like people have challenges with urination, they have sexual difficulties, et cetera. I'm always struck by the correlation that people draw between testosterone and prostate health. And the fact that, or I should say the claim that testosterone makes prostate health worse, because if you think about it, young males have high testosterone often, if not always, certainly often. And you don't see a lot of prostate overgrowth and cancer in young males.

Dr. Kyle Gillett: Tools for Hormone Optimization in Males

Huberman Lab

Andrew Huberman: The more exclusionary your diet is, for example, if you have celiac disease or if you're planning on fertility soon, then perhaps it's more reasonable to take a multivitamin.

(someone): In a previous discussion of ours, I asked you about caloric restriction and testosterone. And if I recall correctly, the idea was that if somebody is overweight, they have excess fat adipose tissue, then getting rid of some of that adipose tissue through caloric restriction and exercise, provided it's done not too fast in a healthy way, is going to be beneficial for testosterone in the long run. But that for individuals who are not carrying an excess of body fat, caloric restriction is actually going to lower testosterone. First of all, do I have that correct? And second, are there any addendums to that that you'd like to give us now?

Andrew Huberman: That's correct. If you look at an individual in a caloric deficit, several changes will happen. One is that they'll have less building blocks for hormones. Another is that they will be in a catabolic state more often, so that balance of anabolism and catabolism will be different. They'll likely have less signaling from growth hormone and IGF-1. And they'll also have the high SHBG that we defined earlier as the binding protein. So they're free androgens and free estrogens will go down.

(someone): Got it. Okay. So we touched on sleep being critical. I would say throughout the lifespan, try and get enough quality sleep, at least 80% of the nights of your life.

How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

Huberman Lab

Andrew Huberman: There's actually a lot of examples of men in their 90s They're 90s who still have testosterone levels that mimic pubertal levels, which is remarkable and speaks to the huge variation in testosterone levels across individuals. So let's talk about other sources of these hormones, and then it will make clear what avenues you might want to take in order to optimize these hormones. The other glands and tissues in the body that make these hormones, testosterone and estrogen, as I mentioned briefly, are the adrenals. So the adrenals ride out top the kidneys and the release of these steroid hormones from the adrenals, in particular testosterone and some of its related derivatives, are mainly activated by competition. So let's talk about competition, because it turns out that competition is a powerful influence on the sex steroid hormones, and the sex steroid hormones powerfully influence competition. So most people don't realize this, but most males of a given mammalian species never get to reproduce. In fact, they never even get to have sex at all. And we don't often think about that, but testosterone plays a powerful role in determining which members of a given species will get to reproduce, which ones of that species will actually get access to females. And so here I'm not talking about humans specifically, but it's well-known in species like elephant seals, in species like antlered animals and rams, for instance, that the higher levels of testosterone correlate with access to females. Now, one interpretation of this is that the females are detecting which males have high testosterone and selecting them.

Dr. Peter Attia: Exercise, Nutrition, Hormones for Vitality & Longevity

Huberman Lab

(someone): And the results were really clear that the higher your testosterone and the more your estradiol was in kind of that 30 to 50 range, the better you were. So if estrogen was too low, even in the presence of high testosterone, the outcomes were, were, were less significant.

Andrew Huberman: And this is 30 to 50 nanograms per deciliter, not 30 to 50% of your, of one's testosterone. Okay, great. Um, so we haven't talked, but Clomid is, you know, we have not talked a lot about Clomid. I'd love to get your thoughts on Clomid.

(someone): So clonophene is a fertility drug. It's a synthetic hormone. It's actually two drugs, M-clonophene and I forget the other one. And it tells the pituitary, uh, to secrete FSH and LH. So, uh, you, and, and so the advantage of, of Clomid is it's oral and it's meant to be taken orally. So, you know, a typical starting dose would be like 50 milligrams three times a week. And if you do that, you'll notice in most men, especially young men, FSH, LH goes up. In any man, the FSH and LH go up, but if a man still has testicular reserve, he'll make lots of testosterone in response to that. Because that's the first order question we're trying to answer is, is your failure to make testosterone central or peripheral?

How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

Huberman Lab

Andrew Huberman: So now let's talk about how exercise in its various forms, weight training, endurance work, weight training to failure, or less intense weight training can impact testosterone levels. But I want to remind you that we're talking about testosterone both in males and females. And Based on what you know from earlier in the episode, testosterone can have numerous positive effects in both males and females provided they're in optimal range. So if you look on the web, people say, oh, you know, testosterone is increased by weight training. You want to do the big, heavy compound movement, squats and deadlifts and chins and things of that sort. But what about the scientific studies? Like what's the actual basis for this? Because if you just take a step back and look at this from the perspective of a scientist, you'd say, okay, what is a squat? A squat is loading up a bunch of weights on a bar and then, you know, sitting down essentially and standing up over and over again. What's a deadlift? It's lifting heavy weights from the ground. Why would that increase testosterone? This is what's often not discussed in the weight training or even the exercise science community. What would actually stimulate the release of testosterone from the adrenals and or testes? And which one is it, adrenals or testes or both?

Developing a Rational Approach to Supplementation for Health & Performance

Huberman Lab

Andrew Huberman: They're on separate pathways, but those pathways interact enough that when cortisol is lowered in general, testosterone tends to increase. Now it is important that with certain hormones like ashwagandha that you don't take them for more than two weeks at a time at high dosages. If you want to know more of the specifics around ashwagandha and how long to take it, how to cycle it, et cetera, Please see our episode on master stress. Please also see the examine.com website and put in Ashwagandha. It will get into some of that description, but Shilajit, Ashwagandha, and things for instance, like L-carnitine, a supplement that we often discuss. in terms of fertility because it can indeed improve sperm motility and quality and egg quality. So it's a pro-fertile compound, but it also impacts various mitochondrial pathways. So it's having a more indirect effect on hormones. There are many other compounds present and available supplements that are purported to be pro-hormone support, in particular for testosterone, estrogen, fertility, and libido. There is a description, for instance, of things like maca root. Maca root can increase libido. found to be particularly effective in women, but in men as well, and in all people who are suffering from lowered libido due to intake of SSRIs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, for whatever reason.

Maximizing Productivity, Physical & Mental Health with Daily Tools

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Andrew Huberman: Costello incidentally loves butter as well. along the lines of hormones and testosterone. I get a lot of questions about this, I think, because a lot of online communities are sort of obsessed with testosterone. And I just want to emphasize that, yes, having sufficient levels of testosterone is vitally important for brain function, and having sufficient levels of estrogen will allow your brain to actually function. It turns out that estrogen is one of the main ways in which the brain maintains longevity and maintains its ability to think. So we should all be seeking optimal testosterone levels for ourselves, both testosterone and estrogen. And many of the things that we've discussed up until now, morning sunlight, exercise, fasting, those can support testosterone and estrogen in meaningful and positive ways. I get a lot of questions about hormone optimization. We did an entire month on this topic. We did an entire episode on testosterone and estrogen optimization. I just want to briefly highlight two things that could be relevant. And then if you want more details, please go see that episode. The first is that Testosterone can exert its various functions only in its unbound form, free testosterone. We all make a particular binding protein called sex hormone binding globulin that essentially binds up testosterone, prevents it from being free. This sounds like a terrible thing, but actually it's a good thing because it allows testosterone to be transported to the various tissues, including the brain, where it can exert its various functions. For those that have,

How to Optimize Fertility in Males & Females

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Andrew Huberman: It's called Effective Zinc Administration on Plasma Testosterone, Dihydrotestosterone, and Sperm Count. This is but just one study among many now. This dates back to 1981, but there've been studies subsequently that point to the fact that supplementation with zinc at those high levels can really be helpful in terms of increasing sperm count, testosterone, and even testicular size of all things. One important point about taking zinc, this 120 milligrams of zinc two times daily, definitely needs to be done with meals. If you've ever taken zinc on an empty stomach, even if you just take 15 or 30 milligrams of zinc, you can feel very nauseous, not well for a few hours. So make sure that you're taking zinc with full meals. So this would mean that you're taking in at least two full meals per day. I should also mention that zinc supplementation did not appear to impact gonadotropin-releasing hormone or prolactin. So it seems to be a fairly targeted effect on the testosterone and related pathways in males. As far as I know, there have not been systematic explorations of the effects of high levels of zinc administration on females. I would hope that those studies would soon be done. But meanwhile, if you're a male and you're interested in improving sperm quality and your testosterone levels overall, for whatever reason, zinc likely is a good candidate. And that pretty much summarizes the compounds that men and women should take in order to maximize egg quality, sperm quality, and fertility.

Dr. Kyle Gillett: Tools for Hormone Optimization in Males

Huberman Lab

(someone): that no alcohol is definitely better for all aspects of health than any alcohol. And anyone that says that, well, red wine contains these various things. Well, it doesn't contain enough of those positive things to have a positive effect, but that if people do opt to drink alcohol, that two drinks per week and meaning 20 grams of alcohol. So that's probably two 12 ounce beers or two, you know, four ounce glasses of wine is going to be the upper limit beyond which you're going to start seeing all sorts of negative effects.

Andrew Huberman: The other thing to keep in mind with alcohol is it has a lot of calories, 7 kilocalories per gram, almost as much as fat, which is 9. And then it's also very GABAergic, so it can activate inhibitory neurotransmission, and that can also affect... how much LH and FSH is released. So that can also decrease testosterone, almost kind of similar to how opiates can decrease testosterone.

(someone): I feel very lucky that I don't enjoy alcohol, never really did, can kind of take it or leave it. Certainly don't like sedatives like Valium or anything like that, which as you just mentioned can suppress testosterone. You said the word fat, so I'm gonna pick up on that and say, In order to optimize hormone production, is it important to have some saturated fat in one's diet? And what happens on very low-fat diets to testosterone, estrogen and other steroid hormones?

Andrew Huberman: Fat's interesting because there are so many different beneficial fats, omega-3s, almost every American gets plenty of omega-6s in any developed country really. When it comes to saturated fat, there's more of a correlation with hormone optimization.

How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

Huberman Lab

Andrew Huberman: And so the reason we're getting nitty gritty about this is because ultimately we'd really like to understand what are the optimal protocols? You know, out there in the literature, you hear move heavy objects to increase testosterone. Some of that will be converted to the more powerful androgen DHT by five alpha reductase, et cetera. But we really don't understand yet how these particular behaviors increase testosterone and whether or not it's doing that by modulating the receptors or it's modulating testosterone release directly, presumably testosterone release directly and sensitivity of the receptors. That's what most of the muscle physiology studies that I was able to find point to. But this basically boils down to a particular set of protocols where if you want to increase testosterone for whatever reason, that weight training with heavy loads, but not to failure seems to be the best supported, at least scientifically supported solution to that. Now, it may not raise your testosterone levels as high as you want, but it's definitely taking things in the correct direction. Now, many of you might be endurance athletes or also enjoy exercise besides heavy weight-bearing exercise. And there are several studies exploring whether or not endurance activity can increase or decrease androgen levels, and whether or not you combine endurance activity and weight training, whether or not that has any effect if you do the endurance activity first or second. And the takeaway from all of this was that endurance activity, if performed first, leads to decreases in testosterone during the weight training session as compared to the same weight training session done first, followed by endurance activity.

What about diet and sauna?

Diet and sauna can have potential effects on testosterone levels, but their impact may vary.

Regarding diet: Consuming foods rich in healthy fats, such as avocados, nuts, and seeds, can support hormone production . Consuming zinc-rich foods like oysters, beef, and pumpkin seeds may also help maintain healthy testosterone levels . Additionally, certain supplements like Tongkat Ali and Maca root have shown potential in increasing testosterone levels .

Regarding sauna: Sauna sessions can decrease cortisol, a stress hormone, but do not directly impact testosterone levels . Sauna exposure can have positive effects on growth hormone levels . However, it's important to note that sauna protocols and duration may affect the outcomes . Sauna can also promote cardiovascular health and mental well-being .

It's worth mentioning that individual responses to these methods may vary, and it's always a good idea to consult with a healthcare professional before making any significant changes to your diet or lifestyle.

How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

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Andrew Huberman: And that's probably because the growth hormone releasing hormone neurons in the hypothalamus sit very closely and may even be intermixed with some of the neurons in the hypothalamus that regulate heat and body temperature. Remember, metabolism is in part a heat. It's like a furnace of how much energy you're consuming and using for building or for energy usage purposes. So sauna can be very, very interesting. And again, it's 20 minutes, 30 minute cooling, 20 minutes again, proceed with extreme caution, but nonetheless, these are pretty extreme effects in terms of their abilities to increase growth hormone levels. along the lines of temperature and hormones. I just want to mention a very recent study just came out, March, April, 2021. Endocrine effects of repeated hot thermal stress and cold water immersion in young adult men. Unfortunately, it was just in men. They didn't look at women, but nonetheless, I think the data are relevant to everybody as a general theme. This is Podstowski et al. I will put a link to the study in the caption. And they looked at testosterone, prolactin, cortisol, et cetera. And what they found was that the sauna does indeed lead to a significant decrease in cortisol, a stress hormone, a hormone that you want to be released early in the day when you wake up. But sauna definitely led to a significant decrease in cortisol, but did not change testosterone, DHEA, or prolactin levels.

The Science & Health Benefits of Deliberate Heat Exposure

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Andrew Huberman: So let me describe what they did in this study. They used an 80 degree Celsius environment. So that's 176 degrees Fahrenheit. And they had subjects do this sauna for 30 minutes, four times per day. So that's two hours total in one day, 30 minutes in the sauna, a period of cool down rest, 30 minutes in the sauna again, cool down rest a third and a fourth time, okay? So two hours total in this 80 degree Celsius environment. So that's a lot, but what they observed was really quite significant. So they had subjects do this protocol and I should mention they had both male and female subjects in this study. And the entire study lasted a week. They did this two hours of sauna exposure on day one, day three, and day seven of that week. And they measured a lot of different hormones, cortisol, thyroid stimulating hormone. thyroid hormone itself, luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone, which are hormones that essentially drive the production of other hormones. We won't get into that too deeply, but if you'd like to learn about FSH, follicle stimulating hormone and luteinizing hormone, please see the episode on optimizing testosterone and estrogen at hubermanlab.com. They looked at prolactin and they looked at growth hormone. I'll just cut to the chase and tell you the effects on growth hormone. In subjects that did this two hour a day, 80 degree Celsius protocol experienced 16 fold increases in growth hormone.

The Science & Health Benefits of Deliberate Heat Exposure

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Andrew Huberman: Shifts in the output of hormones, both from your adrenals and possibly from the testes and ovaries and even within the brain. One of the more striking examples of that comes from a study that was published in 2021. The title of the study is endocrine effects of repeated hot thermal stress and cold water immersion in young adult men. And indeed the study was in this case, just done on men. I'll just briefly describe the protocol they use. They had these men attend four sauna sessions of 12 minutes each. So again, well within that range of five to 20 minutes, 12 minutes, the temperature of those saunas was 90 to 91 degrees Celsius. So I'll just quickly do the calculation. Admittedly, not in my head, that's 194 degrees Fahrenheit. And they did that four times. Afterwards, they had a six minute cooldown break during which they did get into some cool water or cold water of about 10 degrees, which is 10 degrees Celsius is 50 degrees Fahrenheit. And then they measured hormones at various times throughout this study before, during, and after. They looked at testosterone, they looked at DHEA, which is in the androgen pathway. They looked at prolactin and they looked at cortisol. The significant effects of the protocol that I just described were on cortisol, a so-called stress hormone, so-called because when we are very stressed for long periods of time, cortisol levels tend to increase dramatically.

How to Control Your Metabolism by Thyroid & Growth Hormone

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Andrew Huberman: And what they found was that the sauna does indeed lead to a significant decrease in cortisol, a stress hormone, a hormone that you want to be released early in the day when you wake up. But sauna definitely led to a significant decrease in cortisol, but did not change testosterone, DHEA, or prolactin levels. So that's interesting. And it turns out that the cold did affect some of these hormones, but the results there were a little bit more mixed. So the takeaway here is that heat seems to have positive effects on growth hormone, big effects. It seems to have positive effects on reducing cortisol levels. And it does not seem to have effects on things like testosterone, DHEA, or prolactin directly. You can imagine that a shift in any hormone is going to alter the levels of other hormones down the line, sort of indirect effects. But in terms of direct effects, just during or immediately after the sauna bath, there were no effects. So we've talked about diet, supplementation, behavioral tools. And of course, we talked about the underlying biology and logic. And hopefully you heard the safety precautions for all of those. Now I'd like to just briefly talk about the prescription side of all this. There are, as we know, many people taking growth hormone because it's been prescribed to them by a doctor. And presumably there are people taking growth hormone even though it has not been prescribed by a doctor, which is none of my business.

Fitness Toolkit: Protocol & Tools to Optimize Physical Health

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Andrew Huberman: this is a study out of Finland, showed that you get massive, even 16-fold increases in growth hormone, which are extremely beneficial for metabolism and for recovery. So these massive increases in growth hormone are seen when you are doing these sessions of sauna that are repeated on the same day, and you're only doing that about once a week. Whereas if you do sauna more often, there are certainly benefits to that, but it's time-consuming and you need access to sauna more often than one day a week if you're doing it more than one day a week. But if you do it one day a week and you're doing a lot of sessions within that day, as I've detailed here, you see these massive increases in growth hormone that are not observed if you're doing sauna more often for the other benefits of sauna. Now, the effects of cold are many. It's not just vasoconstriction, but the effects of cold are also counterbalanced by some of the problems with deliberate cold exposure that maybe you've heard about on this podcast and a lot of other podcasts and seem to be a kind of a, buzz theme on Twitter and elsewhere. And the point is this, there are a number of quality studies showing that if you do deliberate cold exposure in particular, ice baths are getting into very cold water. immediately after an endurance training session or a strength and hypertrophy session, it can indeed, yes, it can disrupt or prevent some of the adaptations that you are seeking with strength and hypertrophy and endurance workouts. Okay, so you heard that right. And I believe that to be true based on now several quality peer-reviewed studies.

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Andrew Huberman: Well, we did an entire episode on this topic as well, the use of sauna for sake of growth hormone release. If you want to check that out and all the details you can look at the episode on growth hormone, you will experience a growth hormone release from sauna, hot bath, and hot shower, provided they're done for sufficient duration and sufficiently high temperature. For all the details of that, please go to that episode. It's all laid out there. It's all timestamped. It's all captioned in English and Spanish, et cetera. But basically what we're talking about is 20 minutes in the sauna, or if you're one of those folks who's really chasing growth hormone release, you could do 20 minutes, then get out of the sauna for 10 minutes and just cool off at room temperature, and then get back into the sauna, then get out, and then shower or dry off and head to bed. Shorter bouts of sauna will work also. The longer bouts of sauna cooling, sauna cooling, have been shown to lead to huge increases in growth hormone. And growth hormone, of course, is involved both in muscle growth, but also growth and metabolism of all tissues, fat metabolism, and repair of various tissues. So it's not just about growth. You hear growth hormone, you think hypertrophy, but the enhancement of metabolism and health and repair in a number of tissues. So that's one way you can leverage heat toward the transition to sleep by the ways in which exposure to heat actually cools off your body. Now let's talk about actually getting to sleep.

The Science & Health Benefits of Deliberate Heat Exposure

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Andrew Huberman: just before sleep and then take a warm, a shower afterwards, then they find it easier to fall asleep. And that makes sense because their body temperature is dropping. And in fact, if your goal is to really promote the maximum amount of growth hormone release, that's also going to be the best time of day to do it, especially if you haven't eaten in the two hours before sleep, okay? So if you're really going for growth hormone release, you're really trying to optimize sleep, and the two things are actually linked because of the release of growth hormone that happens from the pituitary in the early nights sleep, well, then you would be wise to do your sauna maybe once or maybe twice a week in the evening or at nighttime, then taking a warm or cool shower just briefly, just enough to kind of rinse off all the sweat from the sauna. then get ready for sleep and to do that, not necessarily fasted, but to try and keep your levels of glucose and insulin somewhat low in your bloodstream. The reason I say that is that having elevated blood glucose and or insulin tends to blunt or reduce growth hormone release. And that's true for any number of different stimuli, including exercise and including sauna. So there's a really nice study on this that I can point you to. Is this study that was published in the journal stress, literally, that's the name of the journal. I love it when journals have these names like pain or stress. I find that somewhat amusing for reasons that escape me, but nonetheless amuse me. The title of this study is growth hormone response to different consecutive stress stimuli in healthy men.

Using Deliberate Cold Exposure for Health and Performance

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Andrew Huberman: And of course, blood flow relates to organ health and tissue health generally. So perfusion of that region and those, and the gonads to be specific, with additional blood, you could imagine in some ways increasing testosterone. That's reasonably plausible. The other probably more likely mechanism relates to the dopamine increases caused by cold exposure that we talked about earlier. Again, anytime you have a somewhat stressful stimulus, but in particular with cold exposure, it seems that the catecholamines, norepinephrine, epinephrine, and dopamine all increase. And dopamine is known to be in the pathway that can stimulate testosterone. And so while there isn't a direct relationship between dopamine stimulating testosterone, there is an interesting pathway whereby dopamine increases can trigger increases in things like luteinizing hormone, which can trigger increases in testosterone as well as estrogen for that matter. So I know that there are a lot of people out there that are interested in the use of cold exposure for increasing testosterone. And some of those people in communities are indeed using cold exposure directly on the gonads, on the testes in order to do this. I'm not certain that that direct contact is necessary. And in some cases it might actually be quite dangerous. dangerous or you at least should be careful in terms of tissues there and avoiding damage. But nonetheless, I think that a dopamine impact on testosterone is very likely given the 250% increases in dopamine that have been observed with cold water immersion. And all of that points to the fact that cold water immersion

Using Deliberate Cold Exposure for Health and Performance

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Andrew Huberman: One could, of course, take a cold shower. One could, of course, use cold immersion of various kinds, and you're still going to get that exposure of the groin and the testicles to cold. Now, I should point out that people do report, at least anecdotally, increases in testosterone as a consequence of this practice. And I have to imagine that they are measuring their serum testosterone, that they're not just guessing that their testosterone went up. If you know of a study exploring this directly, please let me know, put it in the comment section on YouTube, or even just email me. We have a email that you can find at hubermanlab.com. Please email me the reference. I wasn't able to find a reference, but I can imagine two reasonably plausible mechanisms by which deliberate cold exposure to the groin and particularly the testicles would increase testosterone. The first is somewhat direct, which is that anytime you cool a body surface, that if it's cold enough, you're going to get vasoconstriction. And then subsequently you're going to get a rebound increase in vasodilation, meaning you're going to constrict the blood vessels in that area. And then after the cold is removed, there's going to be more blood flow to that area. And of course, blood flow relates to organ health and tissue health generally. So perfusion of that region and those, and the gonads to be specific, with additional blood, you could imagine in some ways increasing testosterone.

Using Deliberate Cold Exposure for Health and Performance

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Andrew Huberman: But nonetheless, I think that a dopamine impact on testosterone is very likely given the 250% increases in dopamine that have been observed with cold water immersion. And all of that points to the fact that cold water immersion very likely increases testosterone, but as a downstream consequence of the cold water immersion effects on dopamine and luteinizing hormone. And again, there's no reason to think that the increases in luteinizing hormone wouldn't also increase estrogen, probably not to, you know, dangerous or levels that one would want to avoid. But I don't think that there's anything particularly specific about cold for inducing testosterone and not other hormones. I think it's very likely to increase as a number of different hormones. I do hope that there will be a systematic study on this in the not too distant future. I also hope to not be a subject in the cooling of the gonads experiment. Now, I promise you the last topic was the last topic, but there's one other really important point that I think everyone should be aware of if you're going to use deliberate cold exposure. And that brings us back to the very first thing that we discussed today along the lines of deliberate cold exposure, which is that your baseline temperature is going to be lowest about two hours before you wake up. It's going to increase in the morning and as you wake up and increase throughout the day and afternoon, and then start to drop in the evening and come down at night as you head to sleep. I also want you to remember that if you are to cool the external portion of your body, in particular your torso, the net effect of that is going to be an increase in body temperature.

The Science & Health Benefits of Deliberate Heat Exposure

Huberman Lab

Andrew Huberman: Again, see that episode for those, but many people are overworked. They're overstressed. They're for one reason or another, they're subjected to many, too many stressors or their level of stress resilience isn't high enough to keep their cortisol levels clamped at a healthy level. So the protocol I described of 12 minute exposures to 90 degree environment, that's again, 90 degrees Celsius. followed by a six minute cool down break in cool water, 50 degrees or so, that's pretty cold. I can imagine that you could also just take a cool shower or a cold shower afterwards. That had a very significant effect on lowering cortisol. So there you have a tool. It's not a completely zero cost tool because you need to heat the water and you need to have access to hot and cold water, at least hot and cold contrast of some sort, but it's fairly minimal cost for most people, especially if you start getting creative about maybe taking a, 12 minute jog wearing a lot of clothing. If it's hot out, then getting into a cool shower, you might not get the same extreme or significant reduction in cortisol that was observed here with these very specific protocols, but it's likely that you would get a similar result overall. Now I mentioned they did look at these other hormones and I'll just tell you that they did not see significant shifts in testosterone, prolactin, DHEA, et cetera, using this protocol. As you'll soon see, there are other sauna protocols that can impact those other hormones.

Dr. Kyle Gillett: How to Optimize Your Hormones for Health & Vitality

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Andrew Huberman: ruminant cheese and milk and butter from ruminants and or the meats and the meats. Yes. So, and for people who are following a purely plant-based diet or, or mostly plant-based diet, are they at risk of not getting enough of certain types of fats or other nutrients to maintain that healthy ratio of testosterone to estrogen or not?

Andrew Huberman: If they're a vegetarian, they're probably not at risk. If they're a vegan, they very well could be at risk. Most vegans are aware of this very acutely and they'll supplement with algae or they'll supplement with other sources of healthy fats.

Andrew Huberman: I see. So the takeaway that I'm drawing from this is that less so than getting saturated fat, it's key to get these healthy trans fats from ruminants or the food products of those ruminants, as well as to get proper amounts of omega-3s.

Andrew Huberman: And to be clear, you don't need any trans fats. It just happens that those omega-3s and omega-6s are in a trans isomer.

Andrew Huberman: I see. Okay, so that's nutrition. What other supplements can support healthy testosterone to estrogen ratios?

Andrew Huberman: Anything that alters aromatase can support healthy testosterone to estrogen. And your testosterone to estrogen ratio, think about it as How much estrogen activity do you have at the beta-estradiol receptor and your alpha-estradiol receptor?

The Science & Health Benefits of Deliberate Heat Exposure

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Andrew Huberman: Remember your biological systems are not counting things off minute by minute, second by second, at least not in most cases. So for those of you that are interested in improving metabolism, check out the episode on cold or just, take the sober protocol as I call it, which is 11 minutes total per week of uncomfortably cold, but safe cold exposure. So uncomfortably cold means you really, really want to get out of the shower or the, or the ice bath or whatever environment, but you can stay in 11 minutes total per week, divided across a couple of sessions. And then 57 minutes per week, or so of deliberate heat exposure, again, uncomfortably, but uncomfortably hot, excuse me, but safe to stay in, probably divided up across three or more sessions. Okay, so we've talked about the use of sauna to decrease cortisol. We've talked about the use of sauna to increase heat shock proteins. We've talked about the use of sauna to increase FOXO3. Now I'd like to talk about the use of sauna to increase growth hormone. Growth hormone is a hormone that we all naturally secrete from our pituitary, which also resides near the roof of our mouth. The signal for the pituitary to release growth hormone arrives from neurons that exist in the hypothalamus. So growth hormone releasing hormones, believe it or not, that's what they're called, stimulate the release of growth hormone from the anterior pituitary gland into the general circulation. And then growth hormone impacts metabolism and growth of cells and tissues of the body.

The Science & Health Benefits of Deliberate Heat Exposure

Huberman Lab

Andrew Huberman: can leverage the dynorphin system in a short-term in an acute way that allows mood to improve after the sauna exposure. So for those of you that don't like heat exposure, keep in mind that a lot of the observed positive effects on our biology relate to metabolism, cardiovascular function, but also mental health. And along those lines, there is a wonderful study again, published in 2018. I don't know why I guess 2018 was a big year for deliberate heat exposure studies. The title of this study is sauna bathing and risk of psychotic disorders. And this was a prospective cohort study. Again, we'll provide a link to this study. It's a really interesting study that explored the relationship between mental health. So people suffering from various forms of psychosis, schizophrenia, and other forms of psychosis and use of sauna. So essentially what this study did is they looked at a very large number of subjects, more than 2000 subjects. who had no history of psychotic disorders. They were classified into three groups based on their frequency of sauna use, either once a week, two to three times per week, or four to seven times per week. This should call to mind that earlier study on all risk mortality and cardiovascular event risk. And then they explored the hazard ratio for psychosis specifically, meaning how likely it was that people would develop psychotic symptoms or full-blown psychotic illness according to their frequency of sauna session. So again, this isn't causal, this is correlative.

Dr. Susanna Søberg: How to Use Cold & Heat Exposure to Improve Your Health

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(someone): So not in one session, of course, but they had two to three visits to the water and the sauna per week. So when we divide that out, it corresponds to being in cold water one to two minutes at a time, but also in the sun at 10 to 15 minutes at a time. And I think this is very like also similar to what we see in other studies when we look, for example, to the observational studies from the Finnish cohort study from for example, they published this very amazing paper in 2015, some results from this long course study where they show that up to 30 minutes in the sauna was healthy and you lower your risk of cardiovascular disease. And that's like the threshold. And if you go further than that, then there is not more healthy benefits to gain from that. So and before that, it's like 19 minutes, then you will have this dose response relationship up to 19 minutes. That's really decreasing your risk of cardiovascular diseases. And I think that's per week, 90 minutes per week. 90 minutes per session now. Per session. Yeah, per session. If we then compare that with my study, which was 10 to 15 minutes per session, then I think it fits very well with what we call the hermetic stress or healthy stress that you expose the cells to this kind of like potent, very stressful situation. where they increase heat shock proteins in the cells and that will repair the cells. But if you then overdo it and you go beyond the maybe 30 minutes in the sonar, this observational study from Finland with more than up to 2,000 sauna bathers, where they have followed these for 20 years, they see that 30 minutes per session is like enough.

The Science & Health Benefits of Deliberate Heat Exposure

Huberman Lab

Andrew Huberman: Now I mentioned they did look at these other hormones and I'll just tell you that they did not see significant shifts in testosterone, prolactin, DHEA, et cetera, using this protocol. As you'll soon see, there are other sauna protocols that can impact those other hormones. So if you're seeking to use sauna to reduce stress, I think this is a very interesting and potentially useful research-backed protocol. And again, we will provide a link to the paper if you'd like to read more about the data. So that is one set of biological effects on cortisol and the related protocol. What about some of the other benefits of sauna? Well, we'll talk about those, but I want to talk about those in the context of the underlying mechanisms, because if you understand those underlying mechanisms, you can really tailor your sauna protocols for your particular needs. One of the more dramatic and important effects of going into a hot environment for some period of time is the activation of so-called heat shock proteins, or HSPs. Heat shock proteins are a protective mechanism in your brain and body to rescue proteins that would otherwise misfold. Now, what do I mean by this? Well, most of you are familiar with the fact that if you have protein in the kitchen, like a steak or a piece of chicken or a piece of fish, and you heat it up, it changes its texture, right? Raw meat is different than cooked meat, to be quite blunt about it. Heat changes the quality of proteins, not just in terms of how they taste, but the way in which they are configured.

Maximizing Productivity, Physical & Mental Health with Daily Tools

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How to Optimize Fertility in Males & Females

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Dr. Kyle Gillett: How to Optimize Your Hormones for Health & Vitality

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Andrew Huberman: So, you have to, you know, especially if they're on oral contraceptives, which is a different topic, their DHT is very likely undetectable, especially if it's free DHT. You can measure both a DHT and a free DHT. but if someone's DHT is already low or if they have somewhat insensitive androgen receptor via genetics or via lifestyle, then I recommend they avoid bioavailable curcuminoids like bioavailable turmeric, black pepper extract, and they might be a good candidate for creatine. Creatine, like creatine monohydrate, can significantly increase the conversion of testosterone to DHT.

Andrew Huberman: Interesting. There's also a lot of really interesting data coming out now about the role of creatine as a brain fuel and maybe even as a cognitive enhancer over time. The data are still ongoing, but some of the studies in humans are pretty impressive, at least to me. I'm glad you mentioned this thing about curcumin and black pepper. I wish we'd had this conversation six years ago because I had the experience of, jumping on the bandwagon of the excitement around turmeric. And I took a turmeric supplement. It was a couple of capsules of what I thought to be, and I think was high quality turmeric. And I've never felt as poor as I did in the subsequent few days, flatline of let's just say everything that, one would want to have in life, energy, vitality, just, it was a cliff.

Developing a Rational Approach to Supplementation for Health & Performance

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How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen

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Dr. Kyle Gillett: Tools for Hormone Optimization in Males

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Andrew Huberman: Good forms of iodine often come from the ocean. If you look at a chart of hypothyroidism, there is a tendency to have more hypothyroidism the more inland you go.

(someone): So trying to eat some cruciferous vegetables each day would be the best way to improve thyroid hormone.

Andrew Huberman: Along with plenty of iodine. You don't want too much iodine signaling. Many people are familiar with radioactive iodine tablets, and that's basically an extremely high amount of iodine to block out the, like the radioactive iodine that comes from after, you know, like a nuclear meltdown or whatnot.

(someone): So we've got creatine, betaine, L-carnitine with allicin, garlic to offset the TMAO, vitamin D3, boron, tonga, alif, dogia, some fasting. Love to talk to you about peptides. So I can imagine a hierarchy. The hierarchy starts with behaviors and nutrition. Behaviors, of course, includes training and limiting stress and all the things we talked about before, sunshine, et cetera, and optimized nutrition. Then we talked about supplements, all the things we just listed off to optimize testosterone. And we can get into this, but estrogen as well, which is important for libido and brain function and tissue function and joints feeling good, et cetera. But then we get into the realm where one might or could consider exogenous hormones, get taking a small dose of testosterone or taking a small dose of

Dr. Kyle Gillett: Tools for Hormone Optimization in Males

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(someone): And then we'll go back to this issue of what really is optimization.

Andrew Huberman: Let's briefly mention vitamin D, which is also a hormone. It's actually a sterol hormone. If you have deficient vitamin D and you replace it, then you will optimize your testosterone. Let's also mention boron, so if you have a very high SHBG, boron can acutely help lower it, usually in a dose of 5 to 12 milligrams per day. It's not really a sustained effect, but boron is depleted in soils. In many countries, I believe it's very high in soils, in Greece and Turkey, so eating dates or raisins that are from those areas potentially have more boron. Boron also might be one of the reasons why the reference range for testosterone is much higher in those countries. than other countries.

(someone): And just to remind people that SHBG, sex hormone binding globulin, is attaching to the testosterone molecule and limiting the amount of so-called free testosterone that's available to have its impact on cells. When Dr. Peter Attia was on this podcast, in fact, sitting in that very chair, he said that the ideal level of free testosterone in males should be about 2% of one's total testosterone. Would you agree with that number or disagree? I'm sure Peter would be fine if you said either.

Andrew Huberman: 2% is a good rule of thumb. Usually the reference range is between about 1% and 4%.