42: Why Testosterone Matters & Strategies To Balance It In The Body with Jackie Bowker

You may know testosterone as the hormone of desire and libido and that’s both for females and for males. Did you know that it’s really important that females have a really good levels of testosterone just as males need to. There’s a super direct link between blood sugar regulation and insulin resistance and testosterone. So the first place we need to look, if you have a testosterone imbalance or low in testosterone is we look at your blood sugar. Testosterone is awesome at preventing depression, maintaining a positive mood, it’s really great to protect against breast cancer. It’s fantastic for bone formulation and bone strength. And you may know it as really improving your physical endurance and promoting lean muscle development and tone and decreasing body fat. So, so many benefits to having really good levels of testosterone in our body. Not too much, and not too little. Hi, there, welcome to the feel better now podcast. I’m your host, Jackie balca. And if you’ve arrived here, no, there is something in here to spark yourself to create a better future, in your health, in your career, in your relationships for both yourself. And for those around you. Just one small action step at a time. With so much love and gratitude to be your guide. Let’s get started. Jackie, do I need testosterone. Hello, everybody, I am super excited about this podcast, we are going to talk about hormones. Yay. And that’s really because I have had so many requests to talk about hormones. And I love talking about hormones. I am a 44 year old female in Peri menopause, which is the age range of the transition into menopause. So it’s a life stage. It’s really important in this life stage of perimenopause that we make sure that all of our hormones are balanced not to sell sex hormones, but our stress hormones as well. So that we can be feeling the very best that we can in the world. So if you’re an entrepreneur or a leader, and you’re open to and interested in making more money, being more creative, being a better leader, having more focus or clarity for more ideas and better products, then you probably realize that it’s important to be happy on the inside. And that’s what I love talking about. And that’s what I specialize in. I love making happy cells making happy hormones, it’s super critical, especially when you’re in the age range of moving into your 40s 50s 60s to really work on yourself on the inside. Making yourselves as happy as possible is going to make you more money, it’s going to help you to better in life, in business in your relationships. So here’s the obligatory disclaimer though, I’m a functional medicine practitioner and nutritionist got expert, but I may not be your practitioner. So it’s really important to work with your primary care team on your personal situation on your personal data set of data. This is not medical advice for you. This is general information so that you can be empowered to go and have a conversation with your primary care team. And of course, if that’s us, we would love to talk to you about it and balance your hormones, so you can be the best you possibly can in the world. There is so much to talk about with sex hormones, and most of the conversation is generally about estrogen and progesterone, but not a lot about this beautiful little hormone called testosterone and even less about what hormone that converts into testosterone, which is DHEA. So today’s podcast, I want to talk about testosterone, the testosterone deficiency, not very common in cycling females, it’s far more common to see an excess in cycling females. But as we move into perimenopause and postmenopausal females, it is much more likely to look at a testosterone deficiency. So today I want to focus on that. First of all, let’s talk about what testosterone does in the body. So super important. You may know testosterone as the hormone of desire and libido and that’s both for females and for males. Did you know that it’s really important that females have a really good levels of testosterone just as males need to is a super direct link between blood sugar regulation and insulin resistance and testosterone. So the first place we need to look if you have a testosterone imbalance or low in testosterone is we look at your blood sugar. Testosterone is awesome at preventing depression, maintaining a positive mood. It’s really great to protect against breast cancer. It’s fantastic for bone formulation and bone stress. I think and you may know it as really improving your physical endurance and promoting lean muscle development and tone and decreasing body fat. So, so many benefits to having really good levels of testosterone in our body, not too much, and not too little. In clinic, we run a beautiful test called the Dutch dried urine hormone test. I have talked about this before. And that’s because it’s a test where we can see levels of hormones across the board, you can see levels of estrogen and progesterone, testosterone, DHEA. And as well as our stress hormones, cortisol and our sleep hormone, melatonin, and all of those do a dance and we look at all of them together, I was just looking at a hormone test prior to recording this episode. And we thought that the client may have low testosterone, I’m so glad we ran the test. She’s a menopausal female, we saw fantastic levels of DHEA fantastic levels of testosterone, the issue was in the estrogen and progesterone. So it’s just so fantastic to see where the problem really could be. And then we can decide what we do about it. We match the data that we see in the tests with the data that we see from what you’re reporting. I was always trained. If I listen to you long enough, you’ll tell me what’s wrong with you and how to fix it. So overall, my whole philosophy is test, don’t guess. But testing is just as much about listening to the patient as it is about testing to see what’s on a laboratory report. The data is great, because we can’t get of the plethora of information that can help us make a strategic decision, a personalized protocol. We can’t get all of that information from blood levels alone. One of the most important things to note with a testosterone deficiency and I see this so much in my clinic, people are coming to me saying My doctor said I’ve got low testosterone, what do I do about it? The first thing is I always say to the patient, I’m always going to ask you more questions back before I can give you the answer to that because we have to work out why you have low testosterone in the first place. We can’t just throw some testosterone over the fence and see what it does in the body and lift those If only it was that easy. So it’s important to look at why is that testosterone low in the first place. Progesterone, for example, really controls androgen levels in the balance, it controls testosterone levels. So if you’ve got low progesterone levels, you’re more likely to have a deficiency in testosterone purely because you don’t have that hormone progesterone to control the testosterone levels. So we look at all of the hormone pathways. The other thing is that testosterone is is produced in the ovaries and converted from DHEA. So we have to look at both of those pathways as well. We always have to look at the health of our adrenals especially because we live in such a chronically stressed society. If you suspect you have low testosterone, this goes for both females and males, we immediately look at the health of our adrenals we have to look at what’s happening with our cortisol levels. And assessing how much stress hormone we’re outputting is going to help us to determine what is going on with our testosterone. If we do suspect low testosterone, and that is confirmed with a Dutch dried urine hormone tests. We can also confirm it with a saliva test as well if you just want to look at the testosterone marker. I don’t do that in clinic because I always actually want to look at the health of the adrenals as well as what’s happening with the androgens. You can just test testosterone using serum so using blood or you can use saliva as well. I have a preference to look at the dried urine Dutch hormone tests because I can see what’s happening across the board. So in my patients with low testosterone and really across the board, we are looking at the health of the adrenals what we can see is that those adrenals are pumping out stress hormone cortisol and the first action to take is to really get that cortisol under control. Herbs are such a good way to do that and love herbs like Rhodiola ashwagandha Phosphatidyl serine Phosphatidyl serine is so great and we can’t get large amounts of it in foods adaptogenic herbs like licorice ginseng Schisandra I always wondered for years why I loved licorice tea and then I realized that it was a beautiful adaptogenic herb so you can use foods that support this as well as supplements. And other great vitamin is vitamin C the adrenals absolutely love and soak up like a sponge vitamin C. So it’s really good to make sure that you are sufficient in vitamin C and there’s so much vitamin C and beautiful fruits and veggies. I love to supplement with vitamin C as well. There’s a fantastic test you can do where you can essentially take vitamin C and increase your levels until you notice a difference in loose stools. And once you notice that difference in loose stools, you can pull back to the last dose And that is essentially your personalized dose of vitamin C that you use. But I’ll always go to food first. So lots of beautiful fruits and veggies, especially with the color all the way through. But getting all of that vitamin C, all of those polyphenols, all of that immune support. And then I love doing that test to say how much extra you need. But trust me, those adrenals gobble up vitamin C. So it’s really, really good to support you that way. The adrenals also love healthy fats. So getting your cortisol and control with food sources. I remember in functional nutrition class, and I asked one of my mentors, often Natasha Campbell with bride, how can I get the adrenal support? And she said, but so the adrenals and the brain, they’re both fatty organs. They both love healthy fats. And so really good quality organic butter. We always have a block of that in our house, and I watched my children, my daughter, Coco, she absolutely loves butter. And I really watch her and children have such a unique quality where they are still able to moderate the food that they eat and take what they need from the food. So it’s really interesting to watch how much butter she uses. I was going back to that question I asked her to Natasha and I think about that as she’s putting a really big slab of butter. I’m thinking about all of that the adrenal support she’s giving herself I’m thinking about butter and the butyrate that it makes and how much that feeds the bow, which is really important because she’s so young at the moment, she’s not having supplements she’s not able to swallow yet. So we are really using whatever we can from food. We’re testosterone deficiency, it’s also really important to look at your estrogen because testosterone converts to estrogen. And we are seeing so much we’re seeing an epidemic of estrogen dominance now. So we need to make sure that we hold the conversion of testosterone to estrogen. If we have got low testosterone, we want to protect that and we want to make sure it’s not shunting to estrogen. I love using cruciferous veggies like cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, when we do when we are estrogen dominant to move the excess estrogen out of the body, and to make sure that ition is chanting to a safe form of estrogen with less low testosterone. I love supporting the androgen pathway with foods like maca, zinc rich foods like seafood and meats and great supports like ginseng. Tribulus is a fantastic one that maca, maca, you can use in your smoothies, you can buy supplements, but I just it’s got a really beautiful caramel flavor. So you’ll often see it listed in my smoothies that I make. And I’m usually giving that to my male clients. I’m saying go to the health food store, get a really good quality maca because quality makes a huge difference. But Peruvian maca has been shown to increase testosterone levels. So it’s really beautiful to get that in such a highly absorbable food source. And finally, we need to look at DHEA because DHEA converts into testosterone as well. So if you’ve got really low levels of DHEA, we need to look upstream at that. And we need to look at how can we support healthy levels of DHEA. So we then end up with healthy levels of testosterone given that DHEA is going to convert into testosterone. This was a super tactical podcast and all on balancing your hormones. What is important for me is that for you to realize, as a business leader, as an exceptional, highly talented, highly committed entrepreneur, I’m sure you want to make more money and put more better products out in the world be a better team leader, all of those things like show up your very best. And as well as make more money, we make more money, you can do the most amazing things because you have that freedom, and you’re able to really deliver on your true purpose in life. So to do that, we need to make sure that at a cellular level, you are making healthy cells, you’ve got the right hormone balance. So that’s why I always focus on the mindset and the biochemistry and to get the biochemistry lab, right, we really need to look at why. So if you do have low testosterone, the question is why do you have it in the first place, we have to look at your blood sugar, we have to look at your estrogen and progesterone balance. We have to look at diet and lifestyle supports to get your blood sugar and your adrenals your stress under control. So these are all things that need to be taken into consideration when you’re thinking about how to be the best leader that you can be how to make the most money, how to be the very best how to share your very special message with clarity with purpose with creativity, and how to be happy and vital and anti age. So I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode. We’ve gone in lots of different directions on why low testosterone is such an important discussion to have. I would love to help you out with that there’s always a link in the show notes if you feel like you want to work with us and that we can help you Balance your mind, rebalance your biochemistry so that you can show up and be the very best entrepreneur and business leader that you can be. Don’t hesitate to contact us, we would love to be here to support you. I’ll see you next week. Bye bye. If you made it to the end of this episode, celebrate yourself because it means you are truly dedicated to feeling better in your health, in your career in your relationships, and I am so proud of you. And if you want more of the feel better now so tune in every Monday for new episodes and join our community on Instagram at Jackie Belka for all the behind the scenes action and more. Hey, why don’t you sign up for a chance to have your question answered at feel better institute.com/sign up that feel better institute.com/sign up but most of all, please keep reaching to feel better because the world needs you to feel good. So you can share that very special gift that only you have. So with that said, See you soon here’s to feeling better now. Bye bye. few decades back