40. Boost Energy & Libido: Testosterone's Impact on Your Life

Thank you , erin , for coming and let everybody know a little bit about yourself and your background .

But actually what happened was my husband got treated for hormone replacement and when I saw the change in him , that's when , like this light bulb went off in my head I was like , oh my gosh , what is this ?

And immediately I was like , okay , this is what I want to do and I just I just changed everything and I just started going after some clinicals that were in you know the wellness space . And then eventually , I just changed everything and I just started going after some clinicals that were in you know the wellness space .

And then eventually I got myself on hormones about three and a half years ago , and I remember thinking I don't need hormones , I'm great . I mean , I'm in good shape , I eat well . And then , of course , I took my hormones and I was like , how would I live without them ? This is spectacular . So yeah , it was just watching personal transformation , yeah .

You know , it's like all of a sudden , one day you're feeling a little older and and you may not , you weren't , you didn't recognize yet that that that was you , but you , we all kind of have that shift and then you start feeling good again and you're like oh , how did you know ?

How did I know I wasn't feeling a hundred percent anymore , cause we don't right . It's funny like having when we're talking about dosing hormones and today , guys , we're going to talk a lot about testosterone and all the hormones probably we'll get to in this short amount of time just little snippets and then we'll have Aaron back .

But we want to focus on testosterone today because that is well one . It's where your husband started , I'm sure too , and the change that happened there . For us women it can take a combination of , you know , quite a few different hormones to get us back , but for men it's going to be , you know the big testosterone and um , and let's talk about the difference .

Uh , I guess you know in in what people , how they might be living and feeling and that transformation that does happen going on on hormones and testosterone replacement therapy specifically . So are you okay talking about yeah , husband stuff , absolutely , absolutely . We could talk about mine too . I always do .

If you've been listening here , you know about us and our relationship and everything already and I know now about it too .

And you know , for us in our mid thirties we just weren't introduced to hormones . We didn't even know this was a potential issue . He went to three different endocrinologists that were all like you're fine , you're in the normal range , and if you know anything about the range of testosterone for a man , oh yeah , let's talk about that .

I mean that you could be crying in the corner for the rest of your life at that number , Like that's , you can't do anything at that number . But again , right , endocrinology

, conventional medicine , you're good , you're fine , like it's just low , but you've got this . But when we moved to Florida from New York and we actually found a hormone provider , they were like , oh yeah , that's a low number . You'd probably feel better if it were closer to 900 . Well , what a , what an amazing idea .

And sure enough , the minute he started taking it . Granted , at the beginning those dosages were a little bit too low , at least from what I know now . Yeah , but change right . It was like night and day .

But when things start to feel better and they come out of like , for women I call it like the fog right , where they've just been in this haziness and not sure what's wrong . It's almost like an out of body experience . You're like . That used to be how I felt and now every day I try to you know , manage what is a totally different experience .

You know , in this body , in the same body . But for men , I don't think they put it together as much as say and say , like you know , I feel depressed and that could be coming from my body , not my brain , right ? Even though we know testosterone and the hormones affect the brain , but these are low levels in the whole body and not in it's .

It's hard to explain if you , if you haven't experienced it , or you may be sitting there thinking and feeling . This could be me , this could be my spouse . This could be . You know what we're experiencing as we . You know what you said mid-30s .

So I think if I could just make a general recommendation , I would say if you're in your late 20s , early 30s , just get a baseline , just see where you're at , because you might be surprised at how low something is which could directly relate to a symptom that you can't really find resolution to .

You know , only treating it in the last five years , after figuring out the symptoms and knowing what I know now , I would have benefited from thyroid hormone for the last 20 years . I mean , it changed my whole life , the way my body worked , everything , and I didn't probably need testosterone back then . But it was the same thing with me too .

With testosterone , with adding progesterone . We have I mean , we have young women on progesterone therapy , teenage girls , early 20s , and we have guys , men on in clomiphene or testosterone therapy that are , they're young , their levels shouldn't be bottomed out , and they are and you know they were .

Some of us came just running a baseline , just like you talked about to own , to find that they were way lower than they should have been . And when you put the pieces together and you talk about the symptoms and what's going on it's like all these aha moments and light bulbs going off you see somebody start to put it together that this has been the problem .

Now , why is it the problem ? Like you said , we don't I mean we don't know we could go chase that rabbit all the way down the hole right . Why is all of our you know hormone ? Why are all of them low at certain times For men right ?

Endocrine disruptors , fragrances , environmental toxins , food we eat , lack of sunlight , lack of sleep , too much screen time all the things right . And you could do all the things right and still have issues .

It's like they've really stepped back , they're kind of watching their life go by and they said they just feel like they're not even in their body anymore . They're like right , like such a an observer , but just not wanting to engage . And and I really think it's a form of depression .

And a lot of women say I know I'm not depressed , but I want to say nothing's wrong , right .

My OBGYN told me that and she said you know , let's try this birth , birth control , this will even you out . And it did not even anything out it put me in a rage where my hair was falling out and my family couldn't live with me , and then my primary care put me on an antidepressant , anti-anxiety .

So in this you know where I'm trying to figure out what's going on and why I'm feeling the way . I'm feeling one of the biggest things that I've never talked about or really explained and you said this and it reminded me . I used to just see my texts on my phone , whether it was , hey , do you want to come bring the kids and do this ?

Or hey , I have a new client for you . Or hey , I'm interested in your program , can you call me back and give me some information . It didn't matter if it was family , friends , leads for my business . I would just put the phone back down and say , like , I'll get to that later .

I just had no oomph to even answer somebody about hey , let's get together for a play date , and I would put things off and my anxiety would grow because I felt like I was letting people down or I was withdrawing .

It was the weirdest , like this negative feedback loop that I was stuck in , where I was causing myself more anxiety from not taking action and doing the things . But I could , I couldn't get up and do the things . I couldn't even answer text messages .

It was like that was too much , because the planning , the next step of whatever I had to do , led to the next thing and I knew I wasn't going to have the energy for it , so just like , okay , that's , I'm not going to deal with that . Now , like two weeks later , I run into somebody and they're like I text you and I would feel so bad . It was just

part of what , like this darkness in this cloud that I couldn't figure out and I couldn't explain .

It's all paired together and they're a mess and they're wondering what's going on , because these are the answers that they've gotten from their doctor and they've been told that everything's normal , correct . Another thing is being able to change body composition , being able to preserve the lean muscle mass that you have , or actually change your body and put some on .

I mean , this is so hard without testosterone . You want to talk about that a little ?

So I mean , even you know , late twenties , early thirties , I was still needing to use my body very physically and I noticed , like as I got older , how hard it was to continue teaching , how hard it was to continue choreographing programs , and the amount of strength that still took to do that .

And now that I am on testosterone , I would say I mean , this sounds crazy , but I feel like I can not work out for maybe two , three , four days Not that I like to do that and the muscle mass remains and you're like what the heck ? This is like never before .

So it's just like a good example of wow , it is maintaining , it's holding it there , and so , yeah , I don't know what else you would like to , what direction you want to go with that .

For five years I was always in the gym , always pushing heavy weights , doing way too much , you know , and breaking my body down . From what I know now , I was over training , um , but the , the average woman who is now getting into weightlifting at 40 years old is looking at wanting to get toned . That's the vision for everybody .

Right , they want , and which is awesome , because we don't have a lot of people I don't have anybody coming to me that ever says I just want to be skinny , right , people , women want to look toned , they want to look muscular , they , they like that .

When I was doing that , um , you know , in the early two thousands , uh , it wasn't really a , it wasn't a thing .

I mean I stood out in with other people , you know I was okay in the gym and then if I left , if I was in a group of normal people , I , I look , I was 140 pounds , I looked huge , um , standing next to a girl that was 140 pounds without muscle and uh , but now this is what .

This is a trend and it's an awesome trend and and women want it and they work so hard , they cut their calories and they're not putting on muscle and they're very , um , frustrated by it . They're not .

Their bodies aren't changing Like they see the girls on Instagram or you know , and you shouldn't compare yourself , but you know the social media and the stuff is out there , right , and you may be doing the same workouts , maybe a coach is giving them to you , you're following a trainer and your body isn't changing the way you want it to change , and this could

be because your testosterone levels are low . And yeah , and we see it with men too . I have men coming to us for the same reasons . Right , if their testosterone is in the lower ranges , they can't lose weight , they can't change their body composition . This is where that you know , dad bod comes from , right , in air quotations .

But the you know , the bigger belly , the softer shoulders and chest right , which is opposite than you know if somebody you think high testosterone right , Broad shoulders , tapered waist not that everybody has to be super chiseled like that , but in general , right , the shapes that we are talking about are influenced by hormones , and either you know healthy levels of

them or unhealthy levels of them .

You can really see a change with them if they , if they are , you know , softer in terms of the muscular presentation , if they come in even five or six weeks later and they , they haven't exercised , they haven't changed anything but add testosterone , their body has changed .

You can visually see the shape change and they may not have lost weight or the weight has remained the same . But you're right , the composition different , right , they do look different and they might be doing more , more energy , even if they're just doing more around the house .

When somebody says , you know , I just have no motivation to do something , I mean some people might think that that's just laziness or it's in your mind or it's lack of discipline , like we see . I know you too like low hormones , like not enough energy coming in , not enough good substance , nutrients and things .

So there are reasons that now your , your lifestyle and your habits , your food , is also influential to how your hormones are working . But if we're bottomed out , because we're older , because we're you know many of the reasons we've talked about , yes , and you know .

These are very extreme cases , but they're surprising because I didn't know they weren't unhappy in their marriage . It wasn't anything . They discussed with me . And then , eight months later , well , I divorced my partner and I'm like , oh , I'm like wow , okay , I hope that's a good thing .

And they're like I've been wanting to do it for 20 years and I'm like holy cow . And they're like finally had the confidence to do it . And I'm like holy cow , and they're like finally had the confidence to do it .

And I'm like holy , so you just it's like it really we call that a spousectomy right Very medical term Sometimes it may not be your libido , it may not be your hormones .

pick people more like their sibling or their , their dad if they're on birth control , and that can change . I don't . I don't know there's it's been a while since I I don't believe it Softer men looking at you know for softer , more um more emotional men when you're on birth control .

I don't know , I don't know how they can nail this stuff down and test it exactly .

And now , when I think about the balance , I feel holy cow .

Now I mean , I don't have medical literature to put the two together , I'm just , you know , observing , and these girls were really , they were really struggling to be physically competitive with girls that weren't on birth control . And so clearly , you know , you're suppressed , you're , you are suppressing estradiol , progesterone , testosterone . You're suppressing everything .

So , yeah , you may have a um , I don't know better menstrual cycle , better , whatever that means for you , but my gosh , you're compromising in terms of muscle strength , in terms of um metabolism , in terms of mood stabilization , all of these things that are just so important to the growth and the mindset of an adolescent , to , you know , 20s , 30s , whatever it is

.

Um , yeah , and I mean when we see women that are , you know , still on birth control into their forties sometimes they don't even need it , right , but they are , um , and I , I know there's a time and a place and we , if you don't want to perimenopausal baby , which most of us don't we've got to have solutions .

And we say like around here , you know , vasectomy is our favorite form of birth control , let them go get it . And we have plenty of conversations with men who don't understand what the birth control is doing to their partner and how much it's wrecking havoc still in their hormones .

And every man that we've had that conversation with , when you tell them they're like , oh really , like , of course I'll go do it , I'll get it done . And you know , two days with a bag of peas right there and you're good , right , exactly .

Or years and years until menopause of a woman continuing on birth control , continuing to weigh down their thyroid hormone , their testosterone levels Some of them crush your estrogen , so your low levels of estrogen way before menopause .

We see that in 20 year old girls , all the time , right , levels of estrogen under five , I mean constant UTIs , you know , not feeling well , joint pain , just depressed , right , not feeling vibrant at all , and you look , they shouldn't be a mess , but they're a mess in their labs , right ?

Yeah , I , usually something that maybe we could go over , emily , is just when we talk about each hormone , I like to connect the symptomology to each hormone . That way everybody can kind of understand what each one does . Yeah , yeah , that's awesome , so , okay . So maybe , um , testosterone , we could just start with that .

That is physical energy , libido , confidence , assertiveness , decisiveness , motivation to do life , and you know all those things . I know I think I repeated motivation , but thyroid is mental energy , mental clarity , focus , memory , just to kind of put those two . So testosterone is more of your physical energy and thyroid is more of your mental energy .

Progesterone is your sleep hormone , your anti-anxiety hormone , mood stabilization hormone , right ? So there's just a sense of calm and peace to you when you have this on board .

And then estradiol I just like to think of it as your overall wellness female hormone , because it really , when you lose it , you start to have menopausal symptoms hot flashes , night sweats , mood swings and a gazillion other symptoms that can present as menopause , as we know .

But also estradiol gives you beautiful skin , it gives you a wonderful memory and it really helps just your mood . It really helps with the depressive symptoms as well , just like testosterone .

You know , when you're thinking , how do I feel today ? Did I get through my day having to stop and think and I couldn't remember things ? I couldn't finish a sentence , right ? Are we looking deep enough at the thyroid ? Are we doing a full thyroid panel ? You know , is it ? You know , I didn't want to go to the gym , I didn't want to get up .

I don't feel good about my body . I don't , you know , feel like I can make . I mean , I got girls that can't make decisions about what they're going to eat through the day .

We're kind of explaining it in different situations and how it comes up for us and what we see in our patients , and it's just so fun to listen and get feedback and testimony from you know women not necessarily the one that say says I'm leaving my husband after 20 years , but if that's good for her that's good for her is what she needed to do .

And this is a girl that didn't like working out at all and now she is , you know , with just home workouts , even just thriving . Just feeling strong is fun . It is so much fun . I mean , when I really got into weightlifting after high

school , and not just as an athlete but as a bodybuilder , I mean it was fun to push your body into sea . And you know we , we joke and say you know your purse weighs probably 10 pounds , but then you go wake like pick up the pink weights in the gym and stick to like the five pounds .

But when you're like confident that your body can do something safely and you're not worried about things and it's just fun , it's awesome .

The antidepressant didn't fix it right . There was no fix for it , and it is why I kept looking and found the hormone help . That I did Because it was not something that we were willing to compromise on . We went from having sex every day to like don't touch me , I don't know what's wrong with me , I'm crying , I'm raging , my hair's falling out .

I gained eight pounds in a month . When my hormones hit the fan , my testosterone was a three . When I tested it , it literally said on the range zero to 60 . So it was in the normal range . I don't know if you now they're making the range four , it says 60 . So I would . I would have been out of the normal range .

But on my original testosterone and hormone labs it said zero to 60 and I was normal Three yeah .

Yeah , you know . So I'm sure you see that same range .

Right , and maybe you're good at 60 or 70 or . But I've seen providers pull women back from being in levels at 70 or 80 , you know , pull back on their cream dosing so or make them go to every other day or something crazy .

So it's okay if you're , if your levels are out of that normal range when you are supplementing with testosterone therapy , you're going to need them to be in order to feel better .

How about you ? As far as you know , Definitely , definitely .

I'm just using picking this as a minimum to maintain the muscle mass that you are going to still lose with that GLP one . It's like you know , at least if you've got testosterone on board , then maybe we've got a prayer to just hold that muscle in place . At least what you've got you know while you're continuing to lose the weight .

That's my two cents with it . I don't recommend going on a GLP-1 without hormone optimization period just for that reason .

We get their thyroid optimized , we add testosterone and we've seen people drop weight like crazy doing the same things they were doing , right , just tweaking the diet maybe a little , but same doses or lower doses . I have a girl that was on . She's on half the dose of terzapotide .

You know , once we optimize thyroid , once we optimize testosterone , half the dose that another clinic had her on , where she had plateaued after 30 pounds , wouldn't lose any more weight , still had 30 pounds to lose and we're almost at her goal now on half .

And she's like I don't , you know I was spending so much more money doing huge doses of triseptide without getting results and she stayed there for months and months and they just kept trying to turn up the dose when there were all these underlying

problems that the GLP-1 is not going to . It's going to help your metabolism . It's going to help the insulin resistance . There are things that it does do very well , but it's not going to bring your hormones back .

It's totally different . And then on the other end of that say you are trying to titrate somebody off . That medication . You need those hormones . They've got to be there , or you're I mean my gosh all that work , then you know yeah .

If you have had a thyroid issue your whole life and you've been overweight and dieting your whole life and it's never been addressed because you never had somebody to do the labs for you read it in a way that they're looking at optimal numbers , not just a TSH or a T4 , maybe You're lucky if you get a T4 .

If that is an underlying issue for you , you're never going to use the GLP-1 as this jumpstart , get your weight off and be able to come off of it , and everybody wants to come off of it . Now we have a lot of people that say , now that they're on it , they're never coming off of it . They love it . I'm one of those people . I love microdosing the GLP-1s .

I just love them . I love how my body works on them , how my joints feel on top of the hormones . But some people want to come off and that is going to be how you do it . You get everything else in check . That's part of the wellness journey . That's part of your . You know your next steps .

And then the other one is everybody's seeing you're going to lose all your muscle . We all know that you lose some muscle when you lose any weight . But the testosterone is going to protect your muscle . It's going to help protect it as you get older , no matter what , right ? But a little bit of workout .

I mean , we're seeing people put on muscle on the triseptide and redditrutide with testosterone . Not in huge calorie deficits , they don't and they're losing fat and putting on muscle , which is mind blowing , right ? You can't do that regularly . You cannot . Like everybody joins a gym , especially this time of year . They cut their calories .

They're on 1200 calories , whether you're on a GLP one . Of year they cut their calories . They're on 1200 calories , whether you're on a GLP one or not . They're going hard in the gym and wondering why they're not changing their body composition , right ?

So I mean this can't be done without help , or you have to overeat and gain muscle and gain fat , and then you have to cut and you have to go into a calorie deficit and strip it off . Strip off the fat that you gained with the muscle . That's what you do .

I mean it will literally take ages off of your life .

And so you know , some women have just testosterone , some women have testosterone and estradiol , depending on where they are in their hormone journey , and it is absolutely . They just start to have these little breakthrough symptoms . And the big one I see with women is sleep . They're like why am I not sleeping ?

I'm taking my progesterone because your testosterone is starting to dwindle , so yeah , yeah .

more difficult and complicated to manage , just because I mean , right , Holy cow , Like you're , you still have a female's estradiol that's going up and down . Sometimes females are still making their own progesterone , Sometimes not , it's just it's every individual is different . But oh my goodness , Like .

And then when the estradiol drops super low , sometimes women are depressed for , you know , a couple months , and then all of a sudden they're like I'm back , I feel great , Like everything's fine and it's tough . And that period of perimenopause could last , you know , 10 years . I don't know it could last , you know it could last a month .

You don't want to do anything and it's sad . We all know women like that . We do . And now , knowing what I know , like looking back on the older women in my life as I was growing up and meeting , I'm like gosh , they needed something .

They may never engage sexually for God knows how long because they're both dropping at the same time . So if your partner , you know if , if you're both female really consider the hormone replacement just for that aspect , because you may not realize that you don't have a male testosterone level driving the partnership .

So , yeah , it's a very interesting concept , and to think about just the different dynamics of any relationship , I mean , yeah , but if your partner's testosterone is low , you're in the same situation , though , as two lesbians Absolutely , absolutely .

But they don't necessarily need healthy testosterone levels all the time to want sex like women do . I mean , they just don't . So who knows ? That's a whole nother .

Whoever is sitting in front of me has their own individual response to whatever we give them . And if you're working with someone who's very like you know here just take this dose of estradiol Well , hold on . You've got to ask a few more questions , because where you start is going to make a big difference .

You know the way in which you take it is going to make a big difference , you know so it's . You really want to make sure individualization is happening . You know the customization is happening , because that's what it's all about .

You should not be on a good hormone replacement therapy program and be experiencing eight out of 10 symptoms still . It's not just for the hot flashes , it's not just , you know , for the night sweats . It should cover a range of symptoms that you're experiencing . So don't settle for just .

You know your 0.05% estrogen patch milligram , you know , and that's what you got put on . And now you're on hormones and you're still looking for 20 other answers to the symptoms that you experience every single day . It should not be like that , yeah .

What we do is just making sure you really talk to the patient , making sure you understand what's going on and you know we're definitely on the same page with that .