What About Testosterone?

Just tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to be involved in this space .

And I noticed a lot of my male patients , you know , would have chronically , you know , just low testosterone , low energy , low libido and just complain of symptoms like aches and pains and poor sleep and stress and depression . And so at the time I was really motivated to try to help guys improve their you know testosterone through natural ways .

You know , hey , let's improve your sleep , let's , you know , start eating better and doing these lifestyle , you know , habits to improve testosterone .

And as , as I evolved , I started to really integrate my clinics and hire other practitioners , doctors , and really got into functional medicine at a level where it was incorporating hormone replacement therapy and even even regenerative therapies . I was really into helping improve joint health and things like that peptide therapy . So those are things we can talk about .

But then basically , covid happened and my practice , my brick and mortar clinic , started really dwindling in terms of our patient base , and so I was kind of looking for another way to , you know , reach people .

That was COVID proof or at least or more telehealth proof , and so partnered up with my colleague and the CEO of our company and we started Blokes almost three years ago and this allowed us to start to basically reach people virtually no matter where they live . We initially actually first started just like five or six , like a handful of states .

Now we are currently able to reach in all 50 states . So that's like the long , you know , the short version of a long journey , but I'm very passionate about , you know , men's health and women's health . Kind of more traditional , as we talked , I'm a girl dad and I think men , our goal is to provide and protect and I take that very seriously .

And I want guys to really kind of feel , you know , energized , feel good and feel vitalized as long as they are alive .

And I think you know part of that is getting labs done , assessing , you know , certain markers , especially testosterone , and , you know , in helping provide and even in recommend tools to help , you know , optimize testosterone and other things that can add to their longevity .

need to look at our lives , look at our lifestyle , our stress . You mentioned sleep , you mentioned , you know , exercise , these other things . You know it's like rapamycin is not the cure for you need to .

You need to get your lifestyle in order too , and it's it's not a simple pill for pill for any of these chronic diseases or these things , and , as you said , this applies to testosterone too . So , once we get our lifestyle in order , then we can look at these other things . But let's start off . Let's back up . First of all , everyone's heard of testosterone .

They've heard different things in the news and with body builders and weightlifters . What exactly is testosterone and why is it important for us in our bodies ?

In fact , testosterone goes into our cells and it goes into our cell nucleus and testosterone actually influences our own , you know , genetic expression . So testosterone , you know it really impacts us at the level of the DNA , which is pretty profound , and it also will help us as , as men you know , uh , and women you know , build muscle , maintain muscle .

Testosterone will help with , you know , enhance libido and kind of what you mentioned . Pretty much everything that we do that is good for our , our health eating better , getting better sleep , managing stress all these things have been shown to increase testosterone .

And the longer we have I call optimal testosterone , it seems like with men it also translates to a decrease in chronic conditions over the time . In fact , a lot of chronic conditions that men suffer from heart disease , cancers actually correlate with a declining testosterone . So this is a hormone that is very important .

It actually kind of peaks when we hit puberty , as young men , and that's when you see young men get more muscular and grow and voice deepens , and so it is responsible for , for those things , uh , as well , but it really , um does help contribute to what , um , I feel , what makes men feel like men beat to be , fathers , to be , you know , good leaders , good

husbands , um , and when testosterone drops , uh , I'll ask questions like you know what's your libido ? Like you know what is what's your ability to build muscle like compared to you know 10 , 15 years ago , what's your sleep quality like ? And oftentimes , when testosterone declines , all of those things also seem to be on the decline .

The problem , the challenge with testosterone that we face with aging is too little of it . So what we're going to be talking about is how we , how we supplement it . What is optimal ? You mentioned a few , a few signs , uh , just things that will indicate that what , what are the ? You know what's the gold standard ? Uh , you know blood test or what ?

Uh , if I , if I experienced these things , then I , I , uh , what's the next step in finding out if I , if I experienced these things , then I , I , what's the next step in finding out if I , if testosterone is the issue ?

Because guess what , as testosterone drops , as a man starts to experience a lower testosterone , it actually contributes to more insulin resistance . In fact , when we improve a man's testosterone , meaning help it go , increase and get more optimized , we oftentimes will see an improvement in hemoglobin A1c that will actually drop .

But a great place to start is have a lab test done that looks at total testosterone , estradiol , sexual and binding globulin albumin , because then you can actually calculate what the free testosterone is as well . And there's a difference between total testosterone that's like how much testosterone is in the blood .

I like to really hone in and pay attention to what the free testosterone is , because it's the free testosterone that is what's bioavailable , that's what the cells can actually utilize , and a lot I've seen in cases where a man can have optimal total testosterone but still have suboptimal free testosterone based on other markers in the body , like a high sex hormone ,

binding globulin and or even high estradiol or or things like that .

It's , it's not in a lot of things we're finding out , but how about with this thing ?

They'll get lab check done and , to your point , like normal essentially is you know when we're getting compared , being compared , point like normal essentially is you know when we're getting being compared to like other essentially unhealthy individuals , and they create this kind of like normal or standard range and so that is different from optimal .

So like the normal standard range for like testosterone , I mean it's . It's a huge range . It's like it varies from what lab , but it could be anywhere from like 250 to like 980 or something like that . I like to see men in optimal testosterone 700 to 1100 .

And this is after looking at thousands , thousands , thousands of labs where guys actually feel , yes , I feel my libido is improved , my energy's improved , my focus , I have less brain fog , I'm sleeping better , I'm building muscle . Usually we don't see these things when a guy's living at around 300 . So there's definitely a difference between optimal and normal .

We don't want to be normal , we don't want to be like a normal 40-year-old or a normal 70-year-old or whatever . We want to be optimal for that and that could be very different .

So so now it's possible , if we , if we've identified , we've identified a symptom , that we a set of symptoms , we get the blood tests that were low in this , then we look at our lifestyle and we , you know , we go through the checklist . We look at our sleep , our diet , our you know all the things that we can change .

We've optimized all those and we still and we repeat the lab tests , let's say , and we still have this , this suboptimal level of testosterone . What are the options there ? What ? What could people consider at that point ?

We don't want to just treat the labs , but really treat the patient and if they're still experiencing these things , they're still obviously , you know , suboptimal .

Um , I'll , we got to find out , okay , what , what's this man's goals and what's his age and where is he at in his life , If , if he's younger and if he's still , if fertility , for example , is still important to this guy , if and if you know and and , uh , you know also , just , you know where he , you know where he as is at as far as exercise and his

goals in life . We can offer something called in clomiphene , and in clomiphene is a medication that is very effective for stimulating the body's own testosterone production , and this is very effective for guys , like I said , that are really still prioritizing fertility and maybe want to have children and and those kinds of things .

And we've seen really great and significant increases in testosterone within clomiphene , and this is basically relying on a man's ability to still make his testosterone , on a man's ability to still make his testosterone .

Now , if a guy is maybe older and he's , you know , in his like you know , late 50s , 60s , 70s , like my dad's 75 , and he's on TRT , so he's actually on testosterone replacement therapy and that has been very effective for him to keep his testosterone levels in that optimal range , help him feel better .

In fact , his you know , his friends and he hangs out with around his age are impressed with how he looks and how , how he feels and what's he , what is he doing , and asking him questions , and so he's referring a lot , of , a lot of his buddies over to to us , and so , but yeah it , there are options .

You know , testosterone replacement therapy has its place . There's also clomiphene , n-clomiphene or you know . By the way , not to get too complicated , but clomiphene is kind of similar to n-clomiphene . N-clomiphene is actually an isomer of clomiphene and clomiphene's been around for since , like the 1960s .

It's FDA approved for fertility for women , but it's used off-label for men to once again boost testosterone production and even enhance fertility in men . So , um , and then there are also , uh , certain peptides and supplements that we often can recommend if a guy is like , yeah , I don't really want to , um , I want to try something more natural .

I want to try something a little more . Um , that's not a prescription . So we have we've even formulated some products that have things like Tongkat Ali , Fenugreek , DHEA , some other things that kind of have been shown . Ashwagandha have been shown to help increase testosterone .

So there's there is a more supplement , supplement kind of way option there than you have the prescribable in clomiphene as well as testosterone .

Is it a pill ? What will the patient experience ?

We often start low with our dosing , move relatively slow . We want to monitor and check labs with our patients . We actually like to recommend at least a split dosing protocol , which is injecting twice a week . More older therapies that have been around for a while , like once a week , was like the standard for a long time .

However , when you're injecting a larger dose of testosterone , we start to see an increase in higher estradiol numbers and hematocrit hemoglobin numbers .

So we found when we cut that dose in half and do it twice a week , sometimes even three times a week , you're administering a lower dose , and so we see not so much of the aromatization , not so much of a giant bump in estradiol , as well as hematocrit and hemoglobin numbers stay a little bit in a better range as well .

So it's fairly non-invasive and , to your point , very easy to do on your own .

If a patient has really high blood pressure or some sort of cardiovascular risk , once again we won't treat them until they get clearance from their doctor . So we work with patients , physicians , to make sure that they're a really good candidate for because , honestly , like you said , at the end of the day , there really is no such thing as a magic pill .

I mean , testosterone is is great when it's optimal , but we want to make sure that that person is healthy , you know .

And so , once again , addressing those lifestyle components , you know , make sure that they're eating right , making sure they're they're healthy individuals , because we don't want to making sure they're healthy individuals , because we don't want to throw something in that could , you know , cause an issue ?

That , then , is his estradiol , uh , his estrogen levels go through the roof , so he's taking , you know , aromatase inhibitors and things like that .

And if you dose a man appropriately , uh , which you know that's that's why I'm a fan of the uh frequent , you know split dosing or even sometimes three times a week dosing , we don't see a need for aromatase inhibitors like anastrozole , or a need to really block estradiol , which happens to be a very beneficial metabolite of estrogen or of testosterone .

Rather but yeah , to your point it's it's when you dose the man appropriately , versus giving him these gigantic , you know superficial , like dosages , you can really um enhance the man's life versus , you know , having uh all these side effects that I think a lot of those things , um , most of our patients don't experience really anything but but improved mood , but

improved mental health , and you know more I we have patients that are actors and they say they can memorize health and you know more . Uh , we , I have patients that are actors and they say they can memorize their lines better .

You know , they almost like they have less brain fog , better sleep quality , better libido , so like it helps them the relationships and , um , and once again it helps with , uh , you know , building muscle and and just feeling better .

It allows patients to go and order a lab right there and then they can get go to our local lab , core or quest and get their lab draw done and then they'll get be able to schedule with one of our providers to go over their labs , look at their hormones and decide if they are a good candidate for one of the therapies to optimize optimize their testosterone .

But as far as managing the testosterone and everything , your company would provide that through through a telemedicine , telemedicine portal and all that's . Yeah , what are the biggest questions people ask you about when they come to you ? Uh , uh , what . What are the biggest questions they ask you about testosterone ?

Uh , now , with testosterone , the answer is it's kind of interesting because if a guy uh comes in , let's say , his testosterone level is like 300 and he gets on testosterone and in that therapy gets him to uh like a 900 typically . Yes , a lot of times when guys get on TRT they start to feel better , they start to change their lifestyle , they start to .

So it can be that catalyst that helps them do the things that can in fact help increase their own testosterone production . But oftentimes when a guy decides to , for whatever reason , discontinue taking testosterone , his levels don't stay at the level that they were on the therapy .

So they typically will go back to maybe where they were , or a little bit higher , depending on what lifestyle factors that they've implemented . Within clomiphene we've seen interesting differences Within clomiphene because it's stimulating a man's testosterone production .

We oftentimes don't see a significant decline in their levels if they discontinue after like six months or a year of being on a clomiphene . It just seems like the mechanism of action is so different .

But , once again , all these things I feel like are significantly influenced by the lifestyle factors that they embark on when they start to feel better and really I encourage guys to take advantage of those benefits of having elevated testosterone . But that's probably the most common question , I guess Do I have to do this forever ?

Not necessarily , but it's like you want to , kind of . If you're feeling better and if it's improving your health and maybe adding years to your life , I feel like let's do it as long as possible .

I , I , maybe , I , I , how can people you mentioned the , the website there how , how can people follow you on social media and find out more of the work you're doing ?

And um , yeah , and we're happy to you know , educate and that's our goal is to help guys feel their best

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We see testosterone goes up , so it kind of it kind of there's like a relationship there , so it definitely lends itself to improving health for sure .