Hormone Balancing: Should You Try it?

This episode explores the science and myths around hormone balancing, discussing both potential benefits and risks associated with various treatments and lifestyle changes.

1. Hormonal imbalances are less common than popularly advertised, with conditions like Cushing's syndrome being quite rare.
2. The concept of "adrenal fatigue" is widely debunked in the medical community, with no substantial evidence supporting its existence.
3. Increasing testosterone levels artificially can have significant side effects, including lowered sperm count and potential infertility.
4. The risks associated with hormone therapies, such as heart attacks and prostate cancer, have been overstated in the past, though other risks remain.
5. Lifestyle changes, like diet and exercise, are often more effective than hormonal supplements for improving overall health.

1: Introduction to Hormone Balancing

Discusses the pervasive belief in hormone balancing as a cure-all for various symptoms. Focuses on cortisol and its impacts. Wendy Zuckerman: "Let's discuss the best way to balance your hormones." Rose Rimmler: "Adrenal fatigue... it's trouble."

2: Debunking Adrenal Fatigue

Explores the myth of adrenal fatigue and its lack of scientific backing, while discussing real conditions like adrenal insufficiency. Rose Rimmler: "Adrenal fatigue does not exist."

3: Testosterone Myths and Realities

Examines the myths surrounding testosterone, its real medical implications, and the cultural obsession with boosting it. Mohit Khera: "Testosterone is very important for your health."

4: The Risks and Benefits of Testosterone Therapy

Details the potential benefits for those with clinically low testosterone and the risks involved, including effects on fertility. Wendy Zuckerman: "What about the risks?"

5: Estrogen and Women's Health

Covers the misunderstandings about estrogen's role in women's health and the inaccuracies spread by wellness influencers. Rose Rimmler: "Estrogen is related to some menstrual conditions, but not as broadly as claimed."

1. Consult a Doctor: Always consult with a healthcare professional before starting any supplement or hormone therapy.
2. Healthy Lifestyle: Focus on maintaining a balanced diet and regular exercise routine rather than seeking hormonal supplements.
3. Manage Stress: Rather than focusing on cortisol levels, address the root causes of stress in your life.
4. Educate Yourself: Seek information from reliable, scientifically backed sources when researching hormonal health.
5. Monitor Symptoms: Keep track of any symptoms and discuss them with your doctor to rule out serious conditions.

Tons of us are feeling run-down and crummy and are wondering: What can we do about it? Well, lots of influencers have an answer: balancing our hormones. These influencers, including some doctors, recommend special supplements, diets, exercises, and prescriptions to tame our cortisol, boost our testosterone, and tackle our estrogen. Are they on to something? We get to the bottom of it with endocrinologists Dr. Deena Adimoolam and Prof. Anne Cappola; and urologist Prof. Mohit Khera.

People

Deena Adamoulam, Mohit Khera, Ann Coppola

Content Warnings:

None

Wendy Zuckerman

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and you're listening to science versus. So a lot of us are feeling pretty drained right now. A bit crappy. Maybe you're not sleeping enough or you're sleeping too much. Well, more and more, we're hearing that one thing could be behind all this.

Your hormones, they're not balanced. If you're a man or a woman with messed up hormones, listen up. Let's discuss the best way to balance your hormones. If you are not getting your hormone. Levels tested, what are you doing?

People are saying that because of stuff like stress and chemicals in our environment, our hormones are out of whack and our bodies aren't working the way that they're supposed to. So one hormone that might be messed up is your stress hormone, cortisol. This is something that I wish I knew years ago. Cortisol, it's a real mother. Here's five signs that you're running on stress hormones and high cortisol, and you probably need to make some huge lifestyle.

Rose Rimmler

I'm talking about adrenal fatigue. Yeah, you're talking about adrenal fatigue. Everybody's talking about adrenal fatigue. It goes from high cortisol to then having a cortisol crash. And that, my friends, is trouble.

Wendy Zuckerman

And it's not just cortisol. Apparently, for a bunch of us, our testosterone is in the toilet and it's making us feel awful. Guys, we have an epidemic of low testosterone among men. I have felt like absolute for the last year. Low t sucks.

Rose Rimmler

You don't even feel like a man. You all depressed and. And youll also hear that our estrogen is running amok, causing things like painful periods. Theres a good chance your estrogen levels are higher than they should be. You might be estrogen dominant.

Wendy Zuckerman

And these wellness gurus, I mean, some of them are even healthcare professionals, also have advice on how we can fix our hormonal imbalance. Theyll recommend supplements, special diets, exercise regimes, or even just direct injections of the hormone that youre missing out on. And all over the Internet, people swear by these techniques. They say they've used them and they feel great. Oh, my God.

Rose Rimmler

This has changed my life. Feel amazing. The way that it's made my energy, the way it's made me mentally far more clear, has been incredible. Probably one of the best things I've. Ever done for my health.

Hormone therapy has definitely changed my life.

Wendy Zuckerman

So if you are feeling not your best self and you want to get a little pep in your step, can you fix it by balancing your hormones. And also, what are the risks here? When it comes to hormones, theres a lot of what are you doing? But then theres science. Science versus balancing your hormones is coming up just after the break.

Mohit Khera

If you want to make a change this year, check out how to be a better human, a podcast from Ted. I'm Chris Duffy. I'm a comedian, and each week on how to be a better human, I sit down to have an honest and hopefully funny and revealing conversation with an expert who can help us to see the world in a new way. This season, we're diving into everything from how you can love better to how to create habits that stick, to how to have hope in a world and at a time where that feels really challenging. You can find all those topics and so many more on episodes of how to be a better human wherever you get your podcasts.

Wendy Zuckerman

If you ever wanted to meet the nerds behind the science sound bites, I've got the podcast for you, and it's called ologies. It's hosted by the very fabulous Allie Ward. And each week she looks at a different ology. She's covered etymology and cosmology, but also lemurology, which is about lemurs, and neuroparasitology, which is about parasites that attack the brain. Ologies is fun and tells these juicy science stories.

I think you're gonna love it. So check out ologies with Alie Ward wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome back. Today on the show, we are finding out if we need to be hacking our hormones. Senior producer Rose Rimmler has been hacking away at the science. Yeah, Rose, how are you feeling? Wow.

Rose Rimmler

There is just so much out there. There truly is. Do you just dip your toes into the hormone balancing world and it's like, whoa, a whirlpool. They can suck you right in toe first. Yes.

Wendy Zuckerman

Okay, so what I wanna start by asking you is about cortisol, because you go online and people will say that having too much cortisol can lead to a bunch of stuff that I may or may not be feeling right now, not sleeping properly, feeling anxious. Oh, no. So do we need to be worrying about cortisol? So, cortisol is this hormone that our adrenal glands make. And they make it when we're under some kind of stress, but we also make it routinely throughout the day and especially in the morning.

Rose Rimmler

So we make it within the first half hour or so of waking up. And that helps us just like, you know, jump out of bed with our fresh lease on life, which I know Wendy is what you do every morning, I assume. I can't remember the last time I bound out of bed. Well, it does help you wake up, and then it goes down throughout the course of the day. So it's good.

It's a good thing. But having a lot of cortisol in your system is not a good thing. And I came across a particular story that really drove this home for me. I heard it from doctor Deena Adamoulam. She's an endocrinologist.

So a hormone doctor. What happened? So, for Dina, this all started when this patient walked through her door. Do you remember the moment you first met her? I do.

Deena Adamoulam

I had never seen her before, so sometimes I always ask my patient, can I see your driver's license? Because that gives me a good indication of what they might have looked like within the past five to ten years. And it was clearly a drastic difference. From what I could see. What Dina saw was that this woman's face had gotten a lot rounder, and it was very red and had more acne than usual, that she had gained a lot of weight, but it was primarily in her stomach, and she had lost hair.

Rose Rimmler

She had all these terrible bruises. And overall, she told Dina that she just felt terrible. And Deana wanted to know what was going on with her hormones, so she does a bunch of tests. When we did her blood work, I. Found that she clearly did have very high levels of cortisol.

Deena Adamoulam

Her cortisol was more than five times the upper limit of normal. Five times. Five times. Whoa. Yeah.

Rose Rimmler

It looked like the patient had Cushing syndrome, which means that the body is just flooded with cortisol. And Dina immediately starts trying to work out, like, what could be causing this in this person. And she thinks maybe she has a tumor that's causing her body to pump out too much cortisol. I've seen maybe three or four cases in my entire career. And when you see these patients, it's devastating.

Deena Adamoulam

They look like how this patient was. Looking in front of me. This gets Dina really worried, because these patients, they don't always get better. Sometimes I can't help them. I've had patients of mine die from Cushings.

Rose Rimmler

But before Dina sent her off to get a bunch of scans and tests and to look for a tumor, she asked her one more question. Is there any supplements that you're taking? Is there any, you know, vitamins that you're taking? Is there anything that you haven't been prescribed by a doctor? And here's where Dina realizes what's causing all this.

What did she say to you, she. Told me that she was taking a supplement. Oh, yeah. This woman had gone online and seen all this stuff about how boosting your cortisol can improve your energy. And so she took a supplement that promised to do that.

And by the time she's seeing Dina, she'd been taking it for months. Oh. And so when Dina heard that, weirdly, it actually was kind of a relief. As soon as she said that, that was a kind of like an aha moment. Like, thank God I don't think this person has an adrenal tumor.

Deena Adamoulam

And I have a path forward for this person to get better. So what the hell was in the supplement? Cause I just assume all this garbage people sell online, like, does nothing, but I know. I assume that too. I assume it's like M and M's or something.

Wendy Zuckerman

Shit. Well, Dina didn't remember the name of the supplement. She wasn't sure exactly what was in it, but she remembers that it claimed to have a bunch of sciency sounding stuff like adaptogens in it. Uh huh. Maybe they actually did something.

Rose Rimmler

But there's a much simpler explanation here, which is that it's possible this supplement was spiked with the pharmaceutical version of cortisol. Like a corticosteroid, like synthetic cortisol. That is like a western medicine. Yes. And the reason I say that is because studies have found this before.

There was actually a study that analyzed twelve different adrenal support supplements. So these are marketed to exactly the kind of person, like Dina's patient who was feeling low energy. Right, right. All natural, probably saying things like that. All natural.

Wendy Zuckerman

So how many of them had actual drugs in them? All of them had pharmaceutical stuff. Most of them had at least one steroid hormone. Oh, at least once. And then.

Rose Rimmler

So this is very possible that's what happened. And, you know, there are other case reports of people who have taken supposedly all natural supplements that ended up getting this jacked up cortisol level thing happening to them and getting bad symptoms. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. Okay, so then with Deena's patient, like, what happened?

Wendy Zuckerman

Please tell me she stops taking it. So she stopped taking the supplement and she got better? She did get better, but it took. A long time for her body to recover and change to go back to normal. I would say that took more than six months to a year for her to start losing some of the weight for her to feel like herself again.

Deena Adamoulam

So it was really a really significant hit on her body in just so many ways. Oh, okay. So what we have learned is like, really beware of those supplements that are saying things like, all natural. Cause, you know, you're really not helping with your cortisol imbalance. Right.

Rose Rimmler

Well, I'd take it a step further, because the thing is that this woman probably never had a cortisol imbalance until she gave herself one accidentally by taking these freaking supplements. And that's because having an actual medical problem where you naturally have too much or too little cortisol is rare. So, like, when it comes to Cushings, where your body starts pumping out too much cortisol, each year, out of a million people, less than ten people get diagnosed with this. Oh, wow. That is quite rare.

Wendy Zuckerman

Okay, so that's having too much cortisol. But then what about having too little? There's that thing online about adrenal fatigue. Right. So the idea there that you hear people talk about online is that what happens here is that you're under so much stress that your adrenal glands are constantly pumping out cortisol, and then they burn out.

Rose Rimmler

They just, like, you've overused them, and they fail. But the thing is that there's just no evidence for this. Oh. According to this big review paper that went through all these papers that were on supposed adrenal fatigue. Right, right, right, right, right, right.

Well, they ultimately concluded. I mean, it's in the title of the paper, it's called adrenal fatigue does not exist. Oh, wow. Wow. That's a strong statement.

Wendy Zuckerman

I read a lot of scientific papers that are come out so strong. And also, annoyingly, like this doesn't mean that there is no possibility someone can have a problem with low cortisol. That's a disease that exists. It's actually called adrenal insufficiency. Right.

Rose Rimmler

So that sounds very similar to adrenal fatigue. Yes. Yes, it does. But the thing with adrenal insufficiency is, is it's a very serious disease, and it's not just about feeling tired and crummy. We're talking extreme chronic fatigue.

And Dina says you need to treat it or it can be fatal. It's really, really hard for them. It requires medical intervention. You can't just have adrenal insufficiency and go on with your life without having some kind of medical help. Okay, so if you don't have a medical condition involving cortisol, there's really no need to worry.

I mean, no, because your cortisol levels are supposed to go up and down throughout the day, and it's supposed to go up if there's a stressor, because it'll help you get through that stressor. You want that stuff to happen. People who don't have these specific conditions, the body will balance it out naturally. That is what the brain is for, basically, to say more or less, cortisol, please. Right.

But I will say it's true that chronic stress is bad for you, and chronic stress is associated with having higher cortisol. But even then, if you are someone who feels like you're under chronic stress, I spoke about this with Doctor Ann Coppola. She's another endocrinologist at the University of Pennsylvania. She says that even then, focusing on the cortisol is the wrong way to think about it. I'm not a believer that we need to do something if we're feeling stressed to try to bring our cortisol levels down.

Why not? It seems like it's a good idea. They need to come down. Why not tackle the root problem? The stress, not the response.

Ann Coppola

Right. So try to manage your stress. That makes more sense. That makes sense. You know, if stress is causing this elevated cortisol, you gotta handle the stress, not the cortisol.

Wendy Zuckerman

Yeah. It's like if you have a housemate that's never replacing the toilet paper. The answer isn't hide the toilet paper in your room. You know, you've got to talk to your housemate about the problem. Is that right?

Uh, yeah. That's suspiciously specific. Um.

He used so much toilet paper, Rose, it was crazy.

Rose Rimmler

Ann actually had an analogy that's kind of like that. You know, you don't want to give perfume when you really need a bath. Better analogy. Yeah. But guys both really brought your a game.

Wendy Zuckerman

Thank you. And Ann says, if you really feel crappy and run down, you deserve to have a doctor take you seriously and try to figure out what's wrong. But just don't expect a diagnosis of adrenal fatigue. Okay, so here's where we're at. When it comes to balancing your hormones for stress, the answer is, don't do it unless you have a medical condition that you need medicine for.

Do not try to balance your cortisol levels. Don't diy endocrinology. And if you are really stressed out, try to focus on that. Although I know, I know how hard that can be. Yeah.

Rose Rimmler

So let's move on. We're gonna take a break. When we come back, we're gonna find out if we're really in a testosterone crisis. Coming up.

Wendy Zuckerman

Welcome back to the show. Today we are talking about hacking your hormones. Do you need to do it. How do you do it? Rose Rimler is here, our guide into this hormone balancing world.

Where are you taking me next, Wendy? I'm taking you to your favorite place, the ball sack.

So, what are we gonna do while we're here? It's a strange place. Look around you. This is where testosterone is made. Oh.

Rose Rimmler

And people with testicles. And it's made in other parts of the body, too, especially people without testicles. But let's just get down to brass tacks. We're here to talk about testosterone, right? Okay.

And what people on the Internet are saying about it. So, what are people on the Internet saying about testosterone? They are saying that testosterone levels in men, generally, across the board, are plummeting. This is why a lot of men just feel crappy, don't have a lot of energy, don't feel like they're best selves, and that the solution is to take some extra tea. Mm.

Wendy Zuckerman

Okay. And you hear this a lot on social media from wellness influencers, of course. Of course. Which sounds like it's a very new thing, but it's really not new. And men have actually been trying to boost their testosterone for ages.

Rose Rimmler

And I talked about this with Mohit Kara. He's a doctor and professor of urology at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas. It goes way back, even 2000 BC. Ancient manuscripts talk about the ingestion of testicular tissue. But they would eat it.

Mohit Khera

They would eat it. Wait, whose testicular tissue were they eating? Goat, dog, pig? Hippos. Hippos.

Rose Rimmler

How do you name it? Oh, gosh. How big is a hippos balls? Something I didn't think I'd say today. I don't know.

That sounds like a riddle. And a lot of the motivation for eating hippo balls or whatever has come down to this idea that more testosterone means being more vital, more alive. Like, there was this doctor in the 1920s who believed that he had boosted his patients testosterone, and he wrote that his patients changed from feeble, parched, dribbling drones to men of vigorous bloom who threw away their glasses, shaved twice a day, dragged loads up to 220 pounds. Whoa. And even indulged in such youthful follies as buying land in Florida.

I don't know what that means. That seems like a dig at Florida, which kind of comes out of left field, but away from hippos balls. Florida real estate. No. We do know testosterone is very important for your health, and it's important for men to have enough testosterone.

Cause if they don't have enough testosterone, they can feel pretty crappy. So here's mohit? Low energy, low libido, erectile dysfunction, decreased muscle mass, increased fat deposition, poor sleep, poor cognition, and some depression as well. Wow, that's a long list. You got muscle issues, brain issues.

Wendy Zuckerman

You want enough testosterone, right? Yeah. So then the question becomes, how many men out there don't have enough? Like, are we truly in a testosterone crisis? Very interestingly, there is evidence that testosterone levels are going down over time.

Mm hmm. So, for example, there is a study that came out fairly recently that looked at testosterone levels in 1999 in guys aged 15 to 39. This is in the US. So you pluck out, like, what, Ryan Philippe or whatever, take him out of his cruel intentions, set, test his testosterone. Okay.

Rose Rimmler

And then test the guys of that age range in 2015 and found that the younger generation really did have lower levels of testosterone than the older generation. So it was somewhere in the ballpark of 25% less on average. Sorry, I was so impressed by your ball poc pun that I missed the number. What was it? Not intentional, not cruel.

Intentional, not cruel. Intentional. Wait, but seriously, how much? Loa. About 25% less.

Wendy Zuckerman

25%? That doesn't sound good. And other studies have also shown testosterone declines over time, too, by different amounts and in different populations. Okay. Uh huh.

Rose Rimmler

And we don't totally know why this is happening. I mean, one big theory is that it's related to chemicals in our environment, like endocrine disruptors, because we know that those can mess with our hormones. But we also know that this is linked to obesity, and that's partly because fat cells make an enzyme called aromatase, which I talked about with Mohit. You know what romatast does? It eats testosterone.

Mohit Khera

It just eats it up and converts it into estrogen. Right. It's constantly eating up. Whatever I'm making the testicles. I'm making.

It's eating it up. And we do see that men who lose weight bring their testosterone levels back up. Aha. Okay, interesting. All right, so this is.

Wendy Zuckerman

There is something weird going on here. So how worried do you think we need to be? I mean, this is not a good thing. It's, like, not a sign that our population is in the best of health, but I think it's a stretch to really freak out about this. Like, when we look at men who have low levels of testosterone and some of the symptoms that Mohit mentioned.

Rose Rimmler

So stuff like low libido, bad sleep, low energy. The best estimate that we have suggests it's only about 6% of the male population that have, like, low t with symptoms. 6%? Yeah, it's not everybody. That number gets a bit higher as you get older.

Wendy Zuckerman

But, I mean, good news. The majority of men don't need to be worried about this. Right. And it seems like a lot more men are worried about this than need to be. So I'm thinking of this clinical trial that reported that they had to turn away 85% of the guys who showed up to be in the study thinking they had low t because of these symptoms.

Rose Rimmler

Because when they actually got tested, their testosterone levels were fine.

Wendy Zuckerman

So if you are in the. In the minority that does actually have low t and has symptoms, will you feel better by topping it up? You know, a cheeky shot of t in the arm? Shot gel pellet? Yes.

Yes. So should you do it? I mean, yeah, for some people, it really might help them. So we have these studies that are collectively called the t trials, where they recruited nearly 800 people with low t. So these were older guys.

Rose Rimmler

They had symptoms and gave them testosterone or placebo. And statistically, they did see an improvement in guys moods and in people with depression. There was an improvement in their depression symptoms. Great. And we have a newer and bigger study that found the same thing, a bit of an improvement for people with depression.

Wendy Zuckerman

Oh, that's cool. That's really cool. Yeah. But I think a lot of guys might expect that they would get a much bigger benefit here. None of these studies were showing that guys were just, like, jumping out of their beds like Grandpa Joe and Charlie and the chocolate factory.

Rose Rimmler

Mowitz says that rarely happens. Not exactly. I mean, and some patients will feel an improvement in energy. There are some men that come back and say, wow, this was a big difference. And I do see that.

Mohit Khera

But most men will say this. Really, it helps, and it's good, but I just don't want the listeners out there to think I just take testosterone and the world's gonna be great. In fact, Mohit says that testosterone is so far off from being a golden ticket to being the best you, that even for patients who are getting testosterone therapy, he tells them that to really be healthy and feel really good, they also have to do all the other regular ass stuff. Rose, I don't have a pill on the planet stronger than diet, exercise, sleep, and stress reduction. In other words, many patients will come in and say, look, I'm gonna take the testosterone, and I'm gonna keep eating potato chips and watching tv, and I want everything to be great.

I said, that's not gonna work. And of course, a lot of guys are taking this because of their sex drive. And we know that if you've got low t. Getting a bump might bump up your libido. But if you're in the normal testosterone range, it's just like jacking yourself up with more testosterone.

Rose Rimmler

Doesn't seem to work for that. Okay, so that is some of the benefits. If you've got low t, taking more might bump up your sex drive, might give you a little mood boost. But if you think you're about to be buying land in Florida, think again. Yes.

Florida is safe from hordes of testosterone fueled real estate speculators.

Wendy Zuckerman

Okay, so now what about the risks? You know, the stuff that perhaps wellness gurus are a little less keen to talk about. Yeah. So some good news here is that for a long time, it was thought that taking testosterone could cause heart attacks and prostate cancer. Oh, right.

Rose Rimmler

But this big new study that Mohit was a part of finds that that's not the case. And what we showed in that trial was there was no increased risk in heart attacks, and there was no difference whether they took testosterone or placebo. There was no increased risk in prostate cancer. And the same is true for trans men taking testosterone. We're not seeing a higher risk of heart attacks or stroke in that population.

But there are other downsides to testosterone. So the big one is that sperm count plummets. And Mowitz says a lot of men on t actually don't realize this. So it's very unfortunate. I see many of these patients that go to these outside clinics.

Mohit Khera

They are started on testosterone supplementation. They're young men. They were never told that they would become infertile if they took this medication. They show up and they say, I want to have a child. Did he say infertile?

Wendy Zuckerman

Yeah. When you take testosterone, your brain thinks, oh, my body has enough testosterone. I'm going to make less of it. And then you also make less sperm. So that's why your sperm count goes low on testosterone.

Yeah, yeah. And that's actually why testosterone is being studied as part of a male birth control method, which we talked about in an episode that came out a couple years ago. And even though this is reversible. So you go off t and your sperm count goes back up. Oh, great.

Rose Rimmler

It can take a while to bounce back. Like six months to two years. Oh, wow. And it might not bounce back to where it was before. And then the other thing I asked Mohit about, because, personally, I was really curious about this, was this idea of taking tea and getting really aggressive.

Cause you probably heard of roid rage or getting roided out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that real that was my question, too. I did find an experiment in the literature where scientists gave guys big doses of tea and then followed them for six weeks. Oh, my God.

To see if their mood changed and if they got more aggressive. It was interesting. Cause they actually recruited the guys, like, partners or spouses or close friends, who they hung out with a lot and asked them, is this person changing and how are they changing? Oh, wow. And what they found was that basically different people responded really differently.

So there were a couple of guys that said that they felt like they were getting more aggressive, for sure. And researchers, they actually pulled one guy from the study because his behavior was getting, quote, alarming. But most people's behavior didn't change much at all. Oh, wow. And this is true for trans men who are on t as well.

Like, you see these really mixed results. But it's interesting, right? Like, the same, like, big dose of testosterone might not affect someone at all, and another person get, like, alarmingly angry, you know? Yeah, it's very strange. It's kind of unpredictable.

Wendy Zuckerman

And then just quickly, what about tea for women? Cause I'm starting to see. I don't know what this says about my algorithm, but more and more ads and wellness gurus promoting this. Should women be taking testosterone? You know, there was this international panel that got together and rounded up studies of testosterone and women and looked at what it might be helpful for and what it might not be helpful for.

Rose Rimmler

And they concluded that the best evidence that we have here is that testosterone could help with low libido in postmenopausal women. That's it. And that was it. And it's worth pointing out that if you're a woman of any age, playing around with t has some different risks for you than for men, because women typically have very low levels of testosterone. So bumping it up, you can easily go so high that you cause some changes that are actually.

Might really bother you if you identify as a woman. So, you know, you can permanently deepen your voice, lose hair. That's on your head. And if you're pregnant, taking testosterone can harm the fetus. Mm hmm.

Wendy Zuckerman

Okay. All right, so I guess the final hormone to hack is estrogen. What have you been saying? I've been looking at hormone balancing content for several months now, but, yeah, one thing I've noticed is this trend of people demonizing estrogen. It's like, if you feel tired or moody or weird, bam, it's your estrogen.

Rose Rimmler

If there is something off about your menstrual cycle, bam. Estrogen. And they say that you need to get it stabilized, usually by taking supplements or eating specific foods at certain times of your cycle. So is there any science behind this? Now, the truth is that estrogen is related to some menstrual conditions, like fibroids, endometriosis, like, really bad pm's.

But a lot of this content suggests that if your period isn't, like, the perfect, most smooth, painless, predictable experience that's been coordinated by fairies, then your hormones are way off. But that's just like. It's just not true. Take painful periods, for example. Okay?

So there are influencers that would have you believe that if you have cramps during your period, it's a sign that you have an excess of estrogen, right? And it's like, no, not necessarily. We know that most people who get painful cramps during their periods, they make more of a certain type of lipid called prostaglandin, and that's why their cramps are more painful. It's more prostaglandin, not estrogen. And we've known this for decades.

And if I could just rant, like, a little bit longer. Yes, please. These influencers are just taking little bits and pieces of things and just pasting them together. They're like, it makes me think of a decorator crab. They're like, oh, I'll take a little bit of kelp, and I'll take a little bit of shell, and I'll put it on my shell, and then I'll make a whole new outfit.

No one will recognize me. Like, no, we get it. You're a crab. What's an example of influences putting weird faux science together? And they're turning it into advice.

They're telling people a good example of this. And this is my final debunk of the episode, okay. Is when I see all these videos of people saying, don't do this kind of exercise or that kind of exercise because it'll affect your hormones in some bad way. I have a friend who's postmenopausal who told me she's been watching a lot of this wellness stuff. And she was like, I was thinking I'd get back into running, but then I saw all this stuff online that said postmenopausal women shouldn't run because it'll make them put weight around their belly because of, like, hormonal reasons.

Wendy Zuckerman

Aha. Uh huh. And I'm like, uh, Wendy, I looked into this, and what I have here in my hot little hands, it's actually online, but I have here a 2022 review of aerobic exercise on abdominal fat, which did not find that people's belly fat increased, it found the opposite. People lost a little bit of belly fat, including several studies specifically on postmenopausal women. No.

Rose Rimmler

So this is stupid. Yeah. And if you need to hear it from an expert, I ran this by Anne. Yeah, I agree with you. That's stupid.

Ann Coppola

Yeah, I wouldn't absolutely, you know, I absolutely think that's stupid. And it just really. It's like an instance where it just makes you want to spritz water on the influencers, like, bad influencer. Bad influencer. Let people go for a run if that's what they want to do.

Wendy Zuckerman

Geez. Yeah, there's so much with hormones. Yeah, there's so much here. But just in general, for most of us, you can just trust that your hormones are trucking along and just helping you out in the world. Here's Anne.

Ann Coppola

I think what I would like to convey is that you don't need to mess with them. Don't even try to. They're doing what they're supposed to do, and so you're just kind of getting in the way. Okay. No more supplements, no more hippo testicles.

Rose Rimmler

Well, I wouldn't say that what you do in your off time is what you do. Yeah. But as a general rule, using all of this, whatever dietary advice about what to do to balance your hormones and these exercise advice, this is all just let your hormones fluctuate as they're naturally meant to fluctuate? Yeah. And actually, I read a review paper that summed this all up really nicely, where they said, basically, that the pursuit of balancing your hormones is a biological fantasy.

Wendy Zuckerman

Oh, wow. Wow. Can't wait for that Disney movie to come out. So.

So bottom line, no more trying to balance your hormones through some advice from a sciencey sounding person on TikTok. No, don't do it. Um. Oh, Rose, I can't believe how much research you did for us to ultimately come to that conclusion. Yeah, I know, but that it's.

Rose Rimmler

That's what you gotta do. That's the job, Wendy. That is the job. Mm hmm. Okay, so how many citations are in this week's episode?

79. 79 citations. And if people wanna see them in all of their glory, where should they go? They can check the link to the transcript of the episode, and they can find that link in our show notes. Thanks, Rose.

Thanks, Wendy.

Wendy Zuckerman

This episode was produced by Rose Rimler with help from me, Wendy Zuckerman, Michelle Dang, and Meryl Horne. We're edited by Blythe Terrell fact checking by Erika Akiko Howard mix and sound design by Bobby Lord music written by Bobby Lord, Bumi Hidaka and Peter Leonard research help from Timmy Broderick recording help from Alex Stuckey thanks to all of the researchers that we spoke to for this episode, including Doctor Amit Rabal, Doctor Andrea Sansone, Professor Bob Spencer, Doctor Daniel Ripon, Doctor Emma Aden, Doctor Hannah Truxell, Doctor John Hox, Doctor Jonathan Little, Professor Paul Cook, and Professor Paula Hillard. Special thanks to Joel Werner, the Zuckerman family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. Science versus is a Spotify Studios original. Listen to us for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We are on all the podcast apps, so find us there. But if you are listening on Spotify to follow us, just tap the bell icon and then you'll get notifications when new episodes come out. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.