The Dr. Chalmers Show Season #3, episode 15 - Hormones are not that difficult, and here are some easy and critical takeaways.

While working with my patients on their wellness journey, hormones are some of the most critical and least understood components necessary for a healthy lifestyle.

Thanks for listening, and Chalmers Wellness has some great information through podcasts, interviews, and my research rolling out in the next few months.

The following is an automated transcript and may be edited for grammar, and please listen to the podcast for exact verbiage.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:00:10] So I talk a lot about hormones the more I work with hormones, the more I see stuff that other doctors have done, the more irritated I get Hormones aren't that hard. They're just really not that hard. I get it. Some of the stuff that I talk about is kind of difficult, and I understand why docs don't get hormones are pretty easy it's like flipping switches.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:00:31] When people draw TSA age and they they look at it, they know where TSA is good so your your thyroid is good. I understand that the T and TSA stands for thyroid. However, if you understand that the s stands for stimulating. Then you understand that the way this works is that this is a hormone that works on the Thyroid it's not a thyroid hormone it's a brain hormone, the entire pituitary it tells the thyroid to do stuff.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:01:01] So what you're actually saying is that your brain is doing a good job telling the thyroid to do something. You have to look at T3 T4 at least I if you want to pull the reverse T3 T4 fantastic. There's other things support for thyroid, but you have to pull T3 T4 to say anything about the thyroid. And in fact you can't even really tell if rts h is where it's supposed to be without T3 to T4.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:01:23] Because what's supposed to happen is that if you have too much T3 your brain goes, Ooh. We looked at the body and saw we have too much T3 we're going to make a lot less or No TSH So that your, your Thyroid will then make less T3.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:01:38] If your T3 is low we should see high T3 I would tie TSH That's what we should see so that we go, Oh, look, the problems of the Thyroid, you're not producing any any T3. But without the T3T4 you can't, you can't figure out any of this stuff so you've got to pull all three.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:01:56] Testosterone is fantastic for women. It is fantastic for men. Men need a lot more. Usually about ten times more. You get a woman with 100 testosterone levels that's that's great. Guy with a thousand that's great so that's where your ten times more comes from.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:02:12] Estrogen is not super important for guys you can keep it down then you know, most people can keep it in the 15 to 30 range and as men and they're great. It is really important for women who are trying to have a baby or trying to breastfeed. If they're not trying to have a baby, they need very little as long as they don't have vaginal dryness or hot flushes, night sweats, they've got plenty.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:02:41] I don't care if it's 20 if you pull up your your your hormones and you're like your estrogen is 20. If you ask the woman, hot flashes, night sweats, vaginal dryness, she goes, No, I'm great. I don't have any of that stuff then she's fine.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:02:55] Because again the way hormones work is that the hormones activate receptor sites guess what? Other stuff activates those receptor sites too. Like BPA, Soy, lots of all those plant sufferers like we should eat more plants. Yeah, you're flooding the body with estrogens and a lot of those a lot of those chemicals are energy based so that which is problematic.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:03:19] The problem is, is that you can't see how many receptors you have. So you can only see how many, how much hormone you have. So the analogy I use for this and this one is not great. I'm hoping to come up with some better from this later.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:03:32] But the analogy I use is like a parking lot so you have 50 spaces and you look out in the parking lot and you say, Hey, how many blue cars we have out there? And there are six blue cars. And see how great that means Out of the 50 spaces there, six blue cursors, 44 open spaces, You No, no, that's not what that means you just ask me how many blue cars there were. There's five white cars, three red cars, two motorcycles, a bus and an RV. You're like, Oh my gosh. What? There's a lot more receptor sites taking off than there are estrogens. Well, yeah, that's how that's one of the reasons we see cancer spool up.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:04:07] And then people pull estrogens and they're like, Oh, you're estrogens. Fine. You're not estrogen dominant as you are. You can't cause all the other trash that's sitting on your estrogen receptors.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:04:16] So that's the other piece you kind of have to understand how these things work, where they should be and if you look at a blood level, you should be like, Oh, well, you should be here, but you're not. So that tells me that something else is activating these receptors sight.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:04:28] So that's the big thing Testosterone is the healing hormone it heals everything in your body, heart, brain, blood, vessels, gut. I can't get all suppliers to repair without giving people testosterone bone density, osteoblasts information is driven by testosterone. So you have to have testosterone.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:04:51] It is the primary anti-aging hormone so it's critically important there's I don't know the exact numbers, but it's high. I might be wrong saying 90% of men who have low T and have anxiety and depression can be seriously helped, if not completely fixed by giving them testosterone. But I see at my office every single day so testosterone is super important.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:05:19] Progesterone is kind of a between Z so because I hate giving women estrogen, because if you give a woman estrogen, you're just asking to give them cancer that's a great one just look up HRT, Estrogen, Cancer. You're going to find lots and lots and lots of articles about women who are given estrogen and they got cancer.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:05:40] So we're getting testosterone. Testosterone converts into estrogen if a hot flashes night sweats, vaginal dryness doesn't go away. We'll give them a little bit of natural progesterone, and that will usually convert over into estrogen enough that they don't have any issues. It's only then that I'm down for estrogen treatments for women and it's like I said, it's very, very, very rare that they actually need them after the testosterone of the Progestrone.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:06:06] There's there's a host of other old growth hormones, a fantastic one that's a big one I use, again for ulcer colitis, for anti-aging. So I like I like getting it from the body. So I'll use peptides small and I formalin test them all in. But, you know, those are that's kind of how we play with that.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:06:27] But the the, the fear and the hatred that our country's developed for testosterone is hilarious, is sad and hilarious. By the way, the hatred for steroids. I know a lot more women on steroids than I know men. I would say it's 50 to 1 for teenagers, that women are on steroids not men.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:06:52] Because estrogen is a steroid and birth control is taking steroids. So there you go progesterone is a steroid. You know, they're all made from cholesterol. So that's a steroid is made from a sterile, which is cholesterol so that's kind of where they're at. But that's that's a big one.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:07:13] The only other big hormone that you really need to make monitoring it up is D3. D3 is a hormone, and it's not a vitamin, which I guess kind of goes to show the level of hormone knowledge that we have in the country. I mean, the first rule of vitamin is cannot be made in the body and D3 is made in the body. So it violates the primary rule of vitamins to begin with.

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